Wilson entrance to freeze LA governor's race

A preemptive strike by Louisiana Democrat activists appears nigh in an attempt to freeze out intraparty gubernatorial competitors, leaving most declared Republicans in the race hoping that won’t succeed.

The seeming inevitable entrance of Democrat Shawn Wilson into the governor’s race, fueled by his notice he will resign from leading Democrat Gov. John Bel Edwards’ Department of Transportation and Development in about two weeks, has as the only obvious reason behind that setting himself up to take one for the team. Any Democrat would run as a heavy underdog, but for party powerbrokers it’s as important that a quality candidate present himself than he wins.

To put it mildly, the party in Louisiana faces severe crisis. As its national level has careened without ceasing wildly leftward, it continues to pull the state level further away from the median Louisiana voters’ issue preferences. This causes it to win fewer elections then ever at the state and, to a lesser extent, local levels. The party’s rapid loss of white registrants – its 408,344 at present or 13.7 percent of the electorate and 35 percent of all Democrats is down nearly 100,000 and 3.2 percent of all having been 40 percent of Democrats four years earlier and eight years earlier is over 180,000 fewer or a total drop of 6.9 percent and from being 44.2 percent of Democrats – makes it increasingly noncompetitive except in areas with a near-majority or greater number of black registrants, who comprise only about a third of the statewide electorate.

Reasonable library bill helps parents, children

Woke politicians and journalists will expend a lot of energy this spring trying to construct a fable over proliferating bills addressing minors’ access to sexually explicit material in public libraries. Let’s dispel these myths right off the bat to understand the necessity of the bills.

So far, a pair attempts to restrict children from accessing age-inappropriate material. HB 25 by Republican state Rep. Paul Hollis doesn’t address the issue directly, but in its making explicit in state law that members of boards of library control serve at the pleasure of the governing authority it would allow such an authority to remove recalcitrant members that in its judgment failed to protect minors.

Directly addressing it is SB 7 by GOP state Sen. Heather Cloud. That would define objectionable sexual content in library materials for minors according to First Amendment jurisprudence, create a review process for patrons requesting that judgment of the board for disputed material, give parents the option of restricting that material to their children, and would penalize noncompliant boards by negating their ability to have capital outlay bonds approved.

Library takeover latest Bossier Jury lawlessness

It seems when it comes to dual officeholding, the Bossier Parish Police Jury just can’t find its way to following the law.

The Jury deliberately injected itself into controversy over dual officeholding law when it sanctioned the Cypress Black Bayou Recreation and Water Conservation District by reappointing to the governing board Robert Berry in 2018 after he became executive director of the agency in 2014, shortly after the Jury had named him to the board. That now has gone to litigation, with judges so far allowing this to go on (apparently confused in supposing that statute draws a distinction between ability to and acting on that ability to influence the board when it doesn’t) but a Supreme Court stop seemingly inevitable (although the Jury may try to moot this by not reappointing Berry when his term is up in the middle of the year).

Legal maneuvering in this case has gone on for over two-and-a-half years and made some headlines. But under the radar all this time and before there have been multiple jurors also in violation of the same law in regards to the parish’s Library Board of Control.

Tenure reform needed to aid LA universities

There’s no need to waste taxpayer dollars on initial skirmishes about the merit of tenure in Louisiana higher education. Skip the preliminaries and get on with the legislation.

Last year, Republican state Sen. Stewart Cathey authored a bill to convene study of altering, if not abolishing, the idea of tenure at state schools. It breezed through the Senate but, unusually for study bills, drew significant opposition in the House, mostly from Democrats.

A lot of these bills never produce the intended report, through a combination of institutional resistance and absent follow-through by those requesting the response, including from the author deciding to back off. Cathey chose the latter course but also has stated he intends to move forward with legislation congruent with the idea that the task force would have studied.

Hypocritical sportscaster discovers woke limits

Social justice warriors learn the hard way, as Shreveporter sportscaster Tim Brando found out last week.

Brando, a fixture around Shreveport Regional Airport for many years travelling to the various sports gigs he announces, occasionally ventures into social/political commentary when not behind the microphone. He found that voice again when complaining about a proposal by the Louisiana State University Board of Supervisors to name the basketball court at the Pete Maravich Assembly Center after both Dale Brown and Sue Gunter, past coaches of the men’s and women’s basketball teams, respectively.

Both were very successful, although by the numbers Gunter’s accomplishments were greater. However, Brown’s teams brought in far more dollars and much more publicity. His name currently graces the court, and in 2021 the supervisors rejected adding her name.

Musical chairs on for LA statewide offices

As gubernatorial candidates line up in Louisiana, a musical chairs game has broken out for other constitutional offices.

At the beginning of the year, a historic three such officers perhaps had the state’s top job in their sights. Republican Atty. Gen. Jeff Landry already had made official his intention for it, and days later GOP Treas. John Schroder joined him. However, Republican Lt. Gov. Billy Nungesser passed in favor of seeking his current post again.

In doing so, Nungesser initially pitted himself against GOP former Rep. John Fleming, who had announced formally for the job last year. That augured an interesting matchup, as a number of Republicans and conservatives had become disenchanted with Nungesser’s playing political footsie with Democrats like Gov. John Bel Edwards and his opposition to party-building efforts such as instituting closed primary elections for some or all contests in the state. By contrast, Fleming has impeccable conservative credentials, although the office has little ideological policy content in its administration.

Opposing subsidy may launch Peacock revival

Bossier Parish state legislators were disproportionately critical of a plan to spend $45 million in the hopes of lowering property insurance rates, with one in particular perhaps using that opposition as part of a road to political redemption.

Last week, the Louisiana Legislature met in special session to deal with a discrete item: funding a program designed to subsidize insurers to come into and write for years property insurance policies. This hopes to stimulate artificially, using surplus dollars from this year’s budget, competition that could drive rates down and offer a choice to homeowners currently having to acquire their insurance through Louisiana Citizens, the state-run (thus taxpayer-backed) insurer of last resort obligated to charge significantly higher rates. The 2020 and 2021 hurricane seasons sent an unusual amount of damaging storms to the state’s shore, sending insurers fleeing or bankrupting them that left policy-holders in the lurch at levels last seen after the hurricane disasters of 2005.

Overwhelming majorities in each chamber went with the plan, which proponents argued had to happen now in order for the possibility of lower rates to appear by the start of storm season. However, there were nine total dissenters to transferring the money, three of whom represent parts of Bossier. Of course, few homeowners in the parish would have properties uninsurable to the point that Citizens would have to step in.

Caddo Democrats' power play starting to pay off

And now we know at least part of the political agenda Democrats on the Caddo Parish Commission had on their minds when they muscled onto it a Democrat replacement in a thoroughly Republican district earlier this year.

This week, the panel will present reapportionment alternatives for parish residents to view. In the near future, it will vote on lines for fall elections and for 2027 as well.

We think the near future. That’s because the Commission already violated the parish charter (as well as its own articulated criteria for reapportionment, although that was a work session document and not formally passed as a resolution) when it failed to make its deadline of completing that work by the end of last year, even as it held public meetings for input to the process months earlier. Of course, the clock is ticking on finishing the process with qualifying for offices Aug. 8 but with a deadline about a month earlier to start signature-gathering for petitions to qualify.

LA must grab tax-cutting, growth opportunity

With $2.26 billion in surplus dollars from last year’s budget and foreseen for this year’s and the next, Louisiana has a chance to jumpstart its economy, following through from the double-edged sword impact of out-of-control Washington spending.

Last month, the state figured it closed out fiscal year 2022 with $727 million more collected than anticipated. A quarter of this is spoken for by the Budget Stabilization Fund and another tenth must go to paying down a portion of the state’s unfunded accrued liabilities, and the rest can go to specified nonrecurring functions including those. A good strategy here would put the nearly $473 million (perhaps a bit less, depending upon another statutory interpretation) towards paying down more of the latter, which would reduce costs to local education agencies that they could use, for example, for pay raises.

As for the $925 million appertaining to this year, $45 million went in the just-finished special session to entice insurers, and the state still owes the federal government $300 million for past flood protection efforts, although it hopes to have this waived. Assuming it doesn’t, for the remainder one advisable strategy would be to bank it for the upcoming FY 2026 sales tax hike roll-off that, according to the state’s forecast, will result in $550 million lower sales tax revenue compared to FY 2025.

DeSoto Jury has chance to fix deficient plan

At a committee meeting this week and then later this month, the DeSoto Parish Police Jury must do the right and legal thing and fix its malapportioned districts even if it causes heartburn for incumbents.

Last year, the Jury reapportioned itself but in a way the judiciary almost certainly would find unconstitutional. Population changes that left the parish almost the same according to the 2020 census but with a surge in the northern Shreveport exurbs and decline around Mansfield weren’t accounted for adequately in its enacted plan, which didn’t differ much from existing lines. It left northern districts overpopulated and other districts underpopulated in amounts that existing jurisprudence finds highly suspicious without extenuating circumstances.

Although the arguments for this deviation have changed, the latest has lit on incumbent protection – lines that don’t change each juror’s district much to provide continuity of representation – as the rationale. Under normal circumstances that would be a heavy lift, assigning so much importance to avoiding at least one pair or more of incumbents facing off in a new district for reelection as to induce malapportionment, or having districts with widely varying populations that is unconstitutional.