Closed primaries corrective to what ails LA

Some Louisiana special interests and media outlets entirely miss the point when they criticize Republican Gov. Jeff Landry’s inclusion of instituting closed primaries in the ongoing special session of the Louisiana Legislature.

This subject matter invites the Legislature to replace the state’s blanket primary system, where any voter regardless of party label can vote in what’s actually a general election where all candidates run together regardless of any label, with a closed primary system. The system used nationally for presidential elections, in a closed primary only voters who record affiliation with a party, or who are unaffiliated with any party but who are allowed by a state party to participate, may vote only for a nominee from that party. The general election then features nominees and no party candidates.

Particularly for Louisiana, advantages of closed primaries are many and supposed criticisms are unconvincing. Perhaps the most overwrought is that voters who don’t affiliate with a major party are “disenfranchised.” This is ludicrous: any registered voter would be able to participate in a general election comprised of party nominees and any no party candidates, just not able to participate in the most important decision a party can make of which candidates to present to voters. And if a voter felt it important to influence a nomination, he simply and easily can register with that party to participate in that process.

Maggio key to ensuring good contract for BC

If Bossier City Republican Councilor Vince Maggio has any ambitions beyond his current political perch, he has an opportunity to enhance those by putting the brakes on the runaway train of a Manchac Consulting no-bid contract renewal to run city engineering and other services.

The politics and legal dubiousness of granting Manchac yet another shot at an uncompetitively-sought deal for this service are well-known. Even though the contract doesn’t expire for four-and-half-months, the existing language – technically the original contract with a half-dozen amendments to be extended by another – mandates renewal within the week or else it can’t add on an extra $26,000 monthly for additional unspecified duties, hence the rush.

Of the many legal questions hanging over this approach, all but a question about whether the contract’s limitations violate the city charter’s empowerment of the mayor to hire and fire a permanent city engineer, could be resolved by formally withdrawing from a renewal and issuing a request-for-qualifications within the next couple of months. If no action is taken, the contract automatically renews next month at the current $169,000 per month level, although the city would have to follow ordinance – which it never has done regarding the Manchac contract thereby violating its own law – in (dubiously) declaring this service subject to a single source provider for that to be legal.

LA right to decline doling out new cash benefit

Louisiana should pass on joining a pandemic-inspired cash payment program to lower-income families intended to provide a souped-up add-on for school-served meals when schools are out in the summer, because there’s a better way to do it.

This week, the U.S. Department of Agriculture announced which states would participate in its Summer EBT program. Qualifying families – essentially those who already are eligible for the National School Lunch and Breakfast Programs, which can supply free meals for children of families starting at 130 percent of the federal poverty level and subsidized all the way up to 185 percent of FPL (for example, a single parent and school child earning before taxes no more than $36,482 annually) – receive $40 per child for three months.

Louisiana actually goes well beyond school meal program rules, which is run by the Department of Children and Family Services. A law passed last year has state taxpayers chipping in to waive the amount due from the families that qualify only for subsidization. Additionally, a number of schools serving high proportions of qualifying families can apply for the Community Eligibility Provision that considers all attendees eligible regardless of family income.

Landry, legislators mustn't let up against DEI

Advice to Republican Gov. Jeff Landry and the Louisiana Legislature when it comes to the state’s higher education institutions concerning the anti-Semitic Trojan Horse of diversity, equity, and inclusion policy and personnel: don’t trust them but make them earn your trust through well-designed legislation.

While DEI could be as innocuous and benign as ensuring laws are followed against well-defined discriminatory practices, in practice in academia it has become an insidious worldview that alleges people not of color who allegedly control government, business, and societal institutions use that power, whether consciously, allegedly to oppress all others through any practice, whether in law, that in terms of outcomes in the distribution of resources, whether tangible or monetary, generally leaves all others with relatively fewer that for redress demands policies to redistribute those resources to those others. Increasingly it has come under scrutiny for its demonizing of whites as oppressors by inclination solely by their racial identification, its efforts to grant preferential treatment to non-whites, and its propagation as foundational in educating across all disciplines starting from the moment a child begins schooling.

Landry and a number of legislators ran against allowing DEI as a worldview to infect educational institutions, and a number of returning legislators had backed, some publicly, a measure last year that would have made higher education institutions report spending on DEI that unfortunately didn’t pass. Their concerns are part of a larger trend among the states that have passed legislation to curtail DEI ideology’s propagation on campuses in their classrooms and administrations.

Session to shuffle multiple election fortunes

Republican Gov. Jeff Landry didn’t waste any time in proposing momentous changes to Louisiana’s electoral system that could be in place by February.

As expected, a day after his inauguration Landry called the Legislature into special session to deal with a federal district court request regarding a Louisiana case to redraw congressional district boundaries. The court gave the state until Jan. 30 to map out districts in line with its interpretation of recent Supreme Court jurisprudence that gives race preferential treatment among criteria for reapportionment. While the state has about a third of the population identifying as black, only one of six districts is majority-minority in resident composition.

While the political left sees that as a mandate to create two M/M districts, in reality the jurisprudence allows for a wider range of options that ultimately the U.S. Supreme Court may wish to make more narrow. To ensure best adherence to all traditional principles of reapportionment, the Legislature should alter one of the non-M/M districts into an opportunity district that places the white/black ratio of residents at about 1:1 (roughly 45 percent each), and if plaintiffs to the case that triggered the judicial intervention disagree, they can continue the litigation that means a final map may not be in place until 2026 elections.

Landry puts leftist business-as-usual on notice

That crash you heard was Republican Gov. Jeff Landry throwing a brick through the plate glass window of business-as-usual leftist populism infecting Louisiana public policy. And not a moment too soon.

Landry gave the state a head start in knowing some of his policy priorities of when projected inclement weather bumped up his inauguration a day early (although he would not officially take the reins for another 19 hours). In his subsequent speech, he made clear he would come after certain orthodoxies underpinning policy of his predecessor Democrat Gov. John Bel Edwards and allies.

His overall theme – Louisiana as home, but welcoming back those who had departed it for presumably greener pastures – pulled back the curtain on what was to come: leaving implied things were wrong with the state that could be fixed. He gave in the first part a paean to Louisianans, interspersed with hints of what was to come with assertions that government was not to “disenfranchise” people nor to be driven by divisive elite interests, and spoke of a need to “repair and reform” government.

Third time charmed to bury LA's liberal populism

Louisiana was at this same spot 16 years ago. We don’t need to return to it a third time.

There was much optimism then as Republican Rep. Bobby Jindal prepared to take the oath of office as governor. He had said a lot of great things in his campaign and swamped the field, with the promise that he could make a definitive break from the state’s dying corpse of a liberal populist political culture, unlike the outcome of the only previous semi-serious attempt, the governorship of Republican Buddy Roemer.

In retrospect, it was too much to expect. Jindal had won as much for his agenda as he had as a reaction to botched administration, as well as inferior policy-making, by Democrat Kathleen Blanco. And he did do as he said, making government smarter, as well as deliver on ethics and education (and to a lesser degree civil service) reform and on income tax cuts.

Bossier govts violate comment law; some worse

Bossier City didn’t quite get right new transparency requirements required under state law. And other parish governing authorities haven’t even tried, in violation of that law, while some of those others have violated a different but related law for over a decade.

Last year, the Louisiana Legislature passed what would become Act 393 of 2023, effective last Aug. 1. This mandated for most state government boards and all local plenary governing authorities that they broaden their capacities for people with disabilities or their caregivers for direct participation in most meetings of those bodies, including those appointed or elected to such bodies.

The new law covers a lot so perhaps it’s no accident that Bossier City didn’t get around to changing its rules for compliance until its first meeting of this year, in conjunction with a change to its meeting dates. The new policy adopted enables both councilors and potential participants to participate remotely if the former “provide[s] a medical certification of disability on forms provided by the City Clerk” and the latter “complete[s] an application for remote participation and provide a medical certification of disability on forms provided by the City Clerk.”

Supreme Court squabble solved best by expansion

Partisan, racial, and electoral politics have all come into focus over membership on the Louisiana Supreme Court, as conflict bubbling behind the scenes over the past few years has burst into open struggle among the justices – begging old wine in a new bottle from incoming governor Rep. Atty. Gen. Jeff Landry.

Last month, most Louisiana Supreme Court members signed onto a request for the Louisiana Legislature to take up its reapportionment soon. The Legislature almost certainly will be called into special session in fewer than two weeks by Landry to deal with an unrelated and court-forced reapportionment matter.

The Court hasn’t been reapportioned since 1999 when it was rejiggered to create a minority-majority district among eight. Constitutionally, states who elect judges aren’t required to reapportion on the basis of population because judiciary are not considered to be majoritarian organs of government making policy as they confine themselves to adjudication, although a languishing long-shot suit trying to reverse that in Louisiana remains pending.

BC Council needs resolution not to act illegally

It’s nothing new for Bossier City to make end runs around the law to accomplish what a handful of governing elites want. But at the first City Council meeting of the year it’s unusually ambitious in its attempts both to tempt constitutional fates over public expression and, yet again, violate its own charter and ordinances.

Already this year a Council majority has brought infamy onto itself by rejecting a charter imperative – all of Republicans David Montgomery, Jeff Free, and Vince Maggio, Democrat Bubba Williams, and no party Jeff Darby on multiple occasions – to schedule a pair of ballot items on term limits for elected officials, resulting from certified petitions following charter guidelines. It also managed to get itself sued over conduct relating to restrictions on public comment at meetings and attempted secret meetings.

Part of that suit addresses behavior under the existing rules for comments, but another part asks to have the entire set declared unconstitutional because it is overly restrictive. Existing jurisprudence suggests that those rules are on thin constitutional ice, and certainly leave much room for patently unconstitutional behavior in their application.