Succeeding Prator to act as political barometer

The Caddo Parish sheriff’s contest looms as the highest-profile this election cycle among the chief law enforcement officers and tax collectors of Louisiana, while also serving as a barometer of political change.

All but Orleans Parish will vote on these offices this fall, although the new terms won’t begin until the middle of 2024. The most populous, East Baton Rouge, finds Democrat long-tine Sheriff Sid Gautreaux at this point without competition, as occurred last time. But the next highest-populated, Caddo will welcome a newcomer with the deferral of Republican even longer-time Sheriff Steve Prator to attempt a seventh term.

At the beginning of June, Prator was all ready to go for that, but by the end of the month opted out after he evaluated his health as more tenuous than he had realized and decided to retire. Not long after he had announced he would run for reelection, Democrat Henry Whitehorn said he would entering the race, although claiming it wasn’t as a mission to oppose Prator. Republican Eric Hatfield, a perennial candidate with an extremely checkered past of legal problems and controversy over a stint as a constable that led to his defeat also has said he will run.

Bossier Jury must answer for unlawful behavior

The Bossier Parish Police Jury, and particularly Parish Administrator Joe E. “Butch” Ford, are back in hot water because an elected parish official, normally an establishment ally of theirs, carried out his sworn duties.

Ford has been mired in controversy ever since, without a formal search, he was named administrator at the start of 2022. State law mandates that such officials register to vote in the parish that they helm, but since the mid-1980s Ford had maintained a residence in Caddo Parish, had a homestead exemption attached to it, and had registered to vote there.

In fact, Ford didn’t change his registration to a Bossier Parish address until ten months into his contract, violating the law throughout. And when he did, he ran into another problem: his registration didn’t match his exemption, which state law said had to happen if a registrant declared a homestead. That took another three months to occur.

Inevitable veto session seeks double history

Perhaps the Louisiana Legislature will blaze yet another new trail this month, in two ways dealing with gubernatorial vetoes.

This branch of state government, with each chamber now controlled by Republican supermajorities, began making history in 2021 when for the first time it cued up a veto session in response to Democrat Gov. John Bel Edwards vetoing high-profile popular bills passed by large majorities. With the House GOP then a bit below supermajority status required to meet override vote goals, it failed to repair the damage.

But it succeeded in 2022 when it had another veto session, although attached to a special session that led to the former occurring during the period allotted to the regular session. There, it went one-for-one in restoring congressional maps Edwards had vetoed.

Bossier establishment seeks to take down Mills

Even a less-demonstrative legislator can’t return to office without putting up a fight if he isn’t part of the good-old-boy network in the Bossier Parish.

Last month, Republican state Sen. Robert Mills received a challenge from GOP School Board Member Adam Bass for his Senate District 36 spot. Mills joins Republican state Rep. Dodie Horton in drawing opposition, in her case from GOP businessman Chris Turner, while Republican state Rep. Alan Seabaugh is looking to make the jump to the state Senate seat shared by Caddo and Bossier Parishes, conceptually the same as that held by term-limited GOP state Sen. Barrow Peacock, and who faces opposition from retired basketball coach Mike McConathy from the GOP.

Horton drew the ire of the parish’s political establishment when she spearheaded efforts to bring accountability to the Cypress Black Bayou Water Conservation and Recreation District, while Seabaugh’s sin was to back insurgent candidates in Bossier City elections. Yet Mills, by contrast, has kept a low profile in parish politics, whose majority-Bossier district after reapportionment will shift more decisively into the parish for the next eight years.

Landry win over woke EPA perhaps his biggest

The way Louisiana Republican Atty. Gen. Jeff Landry keeps racking up wins, you almost wish he would say “no thanks” to running for governor and attempt to stay on in his present job, especially after posting his biggest W to date.

Several times in his present term Landry, in conjunction with any of another to over a dozen other state attorneys general have won key cases against federal government overreach (as well as picking up some corporate settlements). Last week he and Missouri’s put another notch in their belts by having a federal district court rule that several federal government agencies and officials had to desist collaborating, if not pressuring, social media companies over constitutionally protected speech.

Their lawsuit argues that the federal government overstepped in its efforts to convince social media companies to respond to or deemphasize, if not block, postings containing information about vaccinations for the Wuhan coronavirus or that could affect elections. Evidence continues to mount that agencies and officials coordinated with several social media companies to influence news content or sources that likely affected the outcome of the 2020 presidential election and suppressed validated information critical about government policy concerning the pandemic.

Board wants to buck Court, waste taxpayer bucks

From clown show to freak show, perhaps only the Cypress Black Bayou Recreation and Water Conservation District Board of Commissioners could pull off such ignominy in a span of just over a week.

The regular Jun. 21 meeting featured comedy, doubtlessly unintentional on the part of those who provided it, that for most viewers in Bossier Parish turned surreal upon realization this was their tax dollars at work. It occurred a couple of months after the Louisiana Supreme Court ruled that lower courts had to judge whether Executive Director Robert Berry, who also serves as the appointee of the Bossier Parish Police Jury to the Board, was in violation of dual officeholding law by having both posts – with the majority opinion issuing stern instructions that made clear any lower court would have to rule that he was.

That meeting demonstrated several things:

Independence Day, 2023

This column publishes every Sunday through Thursday around noon U.S. Central Time (maybe even after sundown on busy days, or maybe before noon if things work out, or even sometimes on the weekend if there's big news) except whenever a significant national holiday falls on the Monday through Friday associated with the otherwise-usual publication on the previous day (unless it is Thanksgiving Day, Independence Day, Christmas, or New Year's Day when it is the day on which the holiday is observed by the U.S. government). In my opinion, in addition to these are also Easter Sunday, Memorial Day and Veterans' Day.

With Tuesday, Jul. 4 being Independence Day, I invite you to explore the links connected to this page.

Edwards salutes LA with middle digit once more

As a parting gift to Louisianans, Democrat Gov. John Bel Edwards gave them the middle-fingered salute that forever cements his reputation as Gov. Nyet.

It’s not so much the volume of vetoes, contrasted to his predecessor Republican Gov. Bobby Jindal who in his first term vetoed 74 regular session non-appropriations bills and 50 in his second term, while Edwards vetoed just 29 in his first term and wrapped up with 78 in his second. In part, it’s because Edwards cast nearly half his vetoes in just the past two years while Jindal cast only a few in his last quarter of service.

But mostly it’s because Jindal’s vetoes only rarely struck anything but low-profile measures while Edwards’ have gone against some subjects of considerable popular and newsworthy concern. So much so that Edwards looks to have triggered a third veto session in an annual row, where these meetings to overturn vetoes had been unprecedented prior to his time in office, and where one override became the first to succeed.

Prevent subversion of admissions by race ban

As expected, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down race-conscious criteria for admissions into universities. Now it’s up to Louisiana to ensure it actually gets done in the state.

The Court issued a ruling in two cases today that using race as a general classification to make admissions decisions violated the Constitution. It granted more leeway to military institutions and said that colleges still can consider “an applicant's discussion of how race affected his or her life, be it through discrimination, inspiration, or otherwise,” but that evaluation of experiences must occur “as an individual – not on the basis of race.”

Given Louisiana’s structure to higher education, in effect only a few state schools are affected that much. Community colleges are open admission, and the two lowest levels, regional and HBCU, have such low entrance requirements that (20 on the ACT or SAT equivalent, which is barely above the average nationally although Louisiana’s average was just 18.1, of which a large proportion of those below the 19.8 national mean won’t ever pursue tertiary study) that enrollment proportions by race in the aggregate probably won’t differ by much with those in the population, even though ACT data also show that only five percent of black and 11 percent of Hispanic test-takers are by its definition “college ready” according to their scores, while 29 percent of whites and 51 percent of Asians are.

BC Council hiring oversight legal and desirable

Once again displaying his talent for being blindsided, Republican Bossier City Mayor Tommy Chandler squawked as usual ineffectively as the city debated budget control and employee hiring.

At present, the city has Ordinance 76 of 2019 on the books, which (after recent amendment) mandates that except for public safety personnel the City Council give approval to anyone receiving any compensation from the city for employment or contracting. It’s the offspring of a series of ordinances dating back to 2010 that attempts to exert budgetary control to maximize the chances that overspending or spending on unauthorized positions doesn’t occur.

But after the recent exception made for public safety, Chandler wanted more, and apparently in the runup to the meeting went on an offensive to have the Council discard the restriction completely. So, he was flummoxed when councilors shuffled to its scheduled Aug. 15 powwow an agenda item for this week’s (postponed a week) meeting to do precisely this.