Shreveport mayor forums do little to move needle

While largely low key, the Triple Crown of Shreveport mayoral forums this week couldn’t provide much in the way of information for voters, but it did give the candidates a chance to test out and shoot down some of each other’s main talking points.

Over three straight nights, local television stations presented topical forums, covering policies dealing with crime, economic development, and infrastructure. The format of answers less than a minute gave little opportunity for the candidates selected to participate – Republican former City Councilor Tom Arceneaux, no party Caddo Parish Commissioner Mario Chavez, Democrat Councilor LeVette Fuller, Democrat Mayor Adrian Perkins, and Democrat state Sen. Greg Tarver who opted out of the final one on infrastructure – to speak in more than broad platitudes, but, even so, on occasion succeeded in drawing contrasts to each other.

The embattled incumbent Perkins expectedly aggrandized his record, alleging that under his watch crime was down and the city’s fiscal health improved, pointing to most recent statistics that indicated increased city revenues and lower crime rates. He also took credit for some individual successes, such as pay raises for city employees, the expected buildout of an Amazon fulfillment center, and a supposedly incoming new baseball field with team to go with it in place of the half-demolished Fairgrounds Field, currently still standing only because of a court order halting any further destruction over health concerns.

Bossier jurors indifferent to following law

It seems Bossier Parish can’t stay away from controversy regarding the qualifications of its parish administrator – and its Police Jury apparently doesn’t care whether it follows the law.

Earlier this year, longtime parish engineer Joe Edward “Butch” Ford, Jr. was named to replace retiring longtime parish administrator Bill Altimus. However, earlier this week during their weekly Internet narrowcast Bossier Watch hosts Rex Moncrief and Duke Lowrie, in response to an anonymized e-mail message, brought up that Ford apparently isn’t a registered voter in the parish and therefore wouldn’t be eligible to serve in that position.

The parish doesn’t have a home rule charter and thus state statute defines its government. R.S. 33:1236.1 empowers parishes to appoint a “manager” – which would equate to a parish administrator – and assistant, but both must be registered voters in the parish.

LA should resist wasteful carbon capture aid

Climate alarmists have become so panicky that they’ve started to sabotage their own efforts in Louisiana – and if they were intellectually honest, they would have started a lot earlier to put more extensively the brakes on the extremely high cost, low return, government-directed move away from fossil fuel usage

Their house organ Louisiana Illuminator recently ran a piece about the drawbacks of carbon capture and sequestration, at least in terms of its use of other resources, specifically water used by utilities. It points out the huge volume necessary that would severely strain, if not overwhelm, available water sources across the state in a quest to suck out carbon from energy producers largely using fossil fuels.

Naturally enough, the article doesn’t delve into the cost issue, which would be catastrophically high: CCS technology in a standalone air capture situation such as described costs up to $120 a ton, many times the cost of producing the electricity. This then, if the entire state Public Service Commission followed the lead of its more scientifically-ignorant members, ordinarily would come out of ratepayers’ pockets.

Another wake-up call to fix scoring jolts BESE

Louisiana graduating high school students’ miserable performance on the ACT college readiness test not only throws a crimp into the state’s higher education master plan, it also screams even more loudly to reform a school accountability picture that at present deceives.

Last week, the ACT organization released last year’s results. As does five other states, Louisiana requires all high school students to take the exam, while another eight states have regulations that lead to over 90 percent of such students to do the same. Theoretically, the fewer students that take it, the higher the average of those who do, because lower achievers are disproportionately disinterested in pursuing post-secondary education and don’t sit for the test.

The state finished fifth-worst overall, the same within the cohort of 14 of 90 percent-plus takers. This was the fifth yearly decline in a row, so, even if the Wuhan coronavirus pandemic likely had a negative impact exogenous to typical educating, the erosion began well before that and demonstrates a genuine trend, although that fall has been seen at the national level as well. Louisiana’s 18.1 composite score was 1.7 below the national average and 0.55 below its cohort.

Lax rules nets BC councilor big taxpayer bucks

If you live in Bossier Parish, make yourself at home at Republican Bossier City Councilor David Montgomery’s residence, his office building very near where the Walter O. Bigby Carriageway will terminate, or at his four acres off Swan Lake Road. After all, you and your fellow citizens paid for them by putting nearly $2.8 million in his pocket since 2008.

Montgomery by far has received more money for doing business – selling insurance – with political subdivisions than any other current member of the City Council, personal disclosure forms filed with the state reveal. New members Republicans Chris Smith and Brian Hammons from 2020 haven’t received a cent, nor have the grayer beards of Democrat Bubba Williams since 2008 and Republican Jeff Free from 2012. Williams, like Montgomery and no party Jeff Darby, all of whom had served on the Council prior to 2008, has no public information about his finances reported before then because that was when the state instituted new ethics laws mandating this recording.

Only newcomer Republican Vince Maggio, who since 2020 has made through his grocery store about $12,000 in lottery sales commissions, and Darby, whose total received through contracts by his counseling firm over the years (last in 2018) with state corrections comes up just over a half million dollars, have any income from political subdivisions other that salaries and per diem payments for their public service. Notably, these came from the state, with Maggio’s an automatic byproduct and Darby’s competing with other providers statewide. (For his part, GOP Mayor Tommy Chandler reported no income from other political subdivisions in 2020-21.)

Reports suggest Arceneaux-Tarver runoff on tap

If campaign finance reports reflect at least somewhat strength in the electorate, Shreveport’s mayoral race looks to be coalescing around a runoff between Democrat state Sen. Greg Tarver and former city councilor Republican Tom Arceneaux.

Reports with activity through the end of September showed these two candidates plus no party Caddo Parish Commissioner Mario Chavez had raised and spent the most money throughout the campaign and had the most on hand entering the home stretch, with Tarver leading in all. Notably, Tarver began campaigning long after the other two, although he could draw upon his Senate campaign resources.

However, a noticeable gap exists in money on hand, crucial to making across the finish line in the top two places as inevitably no candidate will receive an absolute majority. While both Arceneaux and Tarver had over $200,000 left – and Tarver nearly double that – Chavez had fewer than $45,000. More disturbingly for his campaign, since Tarver announced his candidacy in late July Chavez attracted only about 20 donations comprising not even five percent of his total raised.

Landry group fighting unrealistic energy policy

While climate alarmists seek to hurtle into renewable energy use by advancing their agenda through unwise regulatory reform – fought by Louisiana Republican Atty. Gen. Jeff Landry – even if the federal government gained power over siting power transmission lines the expansion turns out to be an exercise in impracticality, keenly felt by Louisiana-based power providers if not an object of fakery by them.

As the Democrat Congress raced towards producing even a stopgap budget for next year due at the end of last month, the party’s least-liberal member, West Virginia Democrat Sen. Joe Manchin, tried to attach an energy-related bill to the effort. Its most controversial part would have given the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission the power to force states to accept transmission lines.

At present, states, who can delegate this authority to their local governments, have sole authority to permit such lines. Advocates of solar and wind energy consider this an impediment to expanding these sources’ footprint, as lower-cost generation of this kind of power tends to concentrate regionally, and in recent years hundreds of state and local actions have denied this access.

Audit on Perkins shows him stupid or plays dumb

The timing could not have been worse for Democrat Mayor Adrian Perkins, fighting a tough reelection battle, to have voters hear from the Louisiana Legislative Auditor a review of his shady practices from the moment he entered office.

This week, the LLA released an audit covering two questions about Perkins’ behavior in office as it related to fiscal regulations. It mentioned the one-off effort came from numerous complaints apparently from inside and outside of city government about the switch in insurance carriers for excess workers’ compensation and property and also about payments for Perkins’ travel expenses.

Public knowledge abounded about the property insurer claim – a Perkins ally ended up brokering a change that eventually cost the city much more than by sticking with the previous agent, although the City Council belatedly approved it despite selection not following city policy – but few at the time knew Perkins in late 2018 also on his own authority (and apparently before his inauguration) dumped the workers’ compensation insurer, also in place since 2006, and, again abjuring city policy, didn’t follow purchasing regulations nor received Council approval. Perkins claims he asked the city to use a local vendor and have a competitive selection process, but interviewees said he ordered them to use a specific agent.

Statewide contests look to produce GOP schism

The entry of Republican state Rep. John Stefanski into the Louisiana attorney general’s race next year may reflect a battle for control over power in the state’s Republican Party between prominent politicians aligned with its conservative and moderate wings.

Stefanski becomes the third candidate to announce having a go at the post current GOP Atty. Gen. Jeff Landry shortly thereafter confirmed he was vacating after his term is up when he declared formally his intention to run for governor. One of Landry’s top deputies, Solicitor General Liz Murrill, a Republican, long ago declared as did no party Third District Attorney John Belton.

Murrill is a close political ally of Landry’s with each considered staunch conservatives, and as such Stefanski’s move puts him at loggerheads with Landry. Yet less well publicized are professional and policy ties that Stefanski has with Landry opponent GOP Lt. Gov. Billy Nungesser.

Bureaucrats subverting BC citizens park access

We have learned over the past month that “quality of life” provided by the spendthrifts in Bossier City government means not just paying for operating and maintaining a tennis facility almost none of its citizens utilize, for parking at its money-losing arena, but also for diamond sports facilities that the city won’t let them use in favor of outsiders and special interests.

Last week, the City Council initially considered apportioning $3 million in debt to build additional parking at its Tinsley Athletic Complex, which has an extensive collection of fields for several sports, most prominently football/soccer fields and baseball/softball diamonds. The head of the Bossier City Department of Parks and Recreation Clay Bohanan and Louis Cook, its head of maintenance, told the Council that on weekends and nights, especially Saturdays and Mondays, the place was jam-packed. This is part came in response to around $14 million of taxpayer dollars spent on adding several fields at the end of last year.

This led to a series of questions by Republican Councilors Brian Hammons and Chris Smith as to why, with all the land office business racked up during weekends and nights, the department disallowed field rentals during weekend days, a common complaint they received from citizens. In it, the councilors kept offering suggestions while the bureaucrats did their level best, often in arrogant and condescending tones, to shoot these down and insist what they did now was the only reasonable course of action.