Monroe voters hand Ellis win, rebuff Council

Score that Monroe independent Mayor Friday Ellis 2, Monroe City Council Democrat majority 0, on the issue of extending a city sales tax for capital improvements as a battle over city spending priorities continues.

Earlier this month, the Monroe electorate passed a renewal of the city’s one percent sales tax, first levied in 1994 just for streets but expanded in 2001 for infrastructure of all kinds. During Ellis’ first term in office it was used to raise and spend $120 million on various projects from its generation of $18.8 million annually to back that. The city’s latest five-year capital improvement plan lists $289 million of projects in that time frame, of which the sales tax proceeds would help to fund by backing debt for that.

It was a reauthorization that Council Democrats Juanita Woods, Rodney McFarland, and Verbon Muhammad tried twice to delay. On May 28 the Council, after McFarland and Muhammad had won elections to their seats but before taking them, approved sending the measure to the Dec. 7 ballot – about five years ahead of schedule, with Woods voting against. It was to last 25 years although originally it had been set not to expire at all.

LA must encourage generational opportunity

Louisiana policy-makers, from Republican Gov. Jeff Landry to the Legislature to the Public Service Commission, can’t blow the huge generational economic opportunity that, whether entirely intended, has come the state’s way.

In the past three months, two separate data center campuses have hit the drawing board in the state. The projects by Meta and Hut 8 (which may team up with Meta) if completed (scheduled within the next year or two) will change and in quantum fashion the state’s high technology sector. It’s part of a sweeping trend in the industry that plays exactly to the state’s strengths.

As cloud computing and artificial intelligence gain wider penetration into the global economy, areas that have three assets will win economic development based on these that in each instance attracts billions of dollars in investments and creates hundreds, even thousands, of well above-average paying jobs: lots of relatively inexpensive land, loads of relatively inexpensive energy sources, and a workforce enabled to service it all. And in these, Louisiana has hit the jackpot.

Edwards exit, Landry agenda spur development

Just under a year into the Republican Gov. Jeff Landry Administration it’s instructive to see how from night to day went the state’s economic development prospects.

Recently, Louisiana Department of Economic Development Secretary Susan Bourgeois related the process of how Meta will bring billions of dollars of investment to the state in Richland Parish. The technology company snapped up a state-owned site for a data center that will create hundreds of well-paying jobs that will necessitate Entergy Louisiana to build three gas-powered generation sites, two nearby, just to provide enough energy for the complex.

She said not long after Landry’s election Meta came calling, and a years-long process ended up only taking months to complete. Hastening the process was Act 730 passed this year, which exempts data centers creating a minimum of fifty new direct, permanent jobs in Louisiana and involving at least $200 million in new capital investment in the state between Jul. 2024 and Jul. 2029 from paying any state or local sales tax on data-related equipment for 20 to 30 years.

Fleming to pose tough challenge to Cassidy

There’s nothing like getting an early start it seems for Republican Treas. John Fleming, who two years out from the 2026 Senate election has declared his intention to take on vulnerable GOP incumbent Sen. Bill Cassidy.

He may not be the last quality candidate to enter the fray from his party. In the past, Cassidy might have expected only token opposition from anywhere on the political spectrum. Finishing two terms off a convincing 2020 win, he has banked through the third quarter of 2024 $5.8 million.

However, immediately after reelection he began making controversial votes, principally in favor of convicting after impeachment Republican former Pres. Donald Trump and for an enormous spending bill Democrats favored that ballooned the deficit further and ignited inflation that had little relatively in worthwhile or sensible objectives. If he took this course because he wanted to obviate a challenge from prominent conservatives by throwing bones to moderate and even liberal voters because of the blanket primary system in place where all candidates regardless of party run together in the general election, it backfired.

Race cannot dominate Monroe fire chief pick

Democrats on the Monroe City Council have embarked upon an unwise and disappointing course that puts ideology over good administrative practice.

At the last Council meeting, the trio rejected independent Mayor Friday Ellis’ nomination of 24-year veteran Daniel Overturf to become the next fire chief of the city. He would have replaced longtime chief Terry Williams. The two Republican councilors supported the decision.

The vote perturbed the union that represents the Monroe Fire Department’s and apparently much of the rank-and-file, a number of whom appeared in his support at the meeting. An anonymous survey sent out revealed 85 percent of respondents approved of Overturf’s nomination, and numerous professionals recommended him. He was one of 17 to take and pass the hiring exam, which was conducted through the state, for the position, ranking tenth on education and experience.

Black voter antipathy to Broome denies last term

And now Louisiana can say its second through eighth largest cities have Republican chief executives (and the ninth-largest has a non-Democrat; fifth largest will be St. George whose first elected mayor inevitably should come from the GOP), now that East Baton Rouge Parish has elected Republican Sid Edwards to boot out of office current Democrat Mayor-President Sharon Weston Broome – thanks to black voters.

Broome had a fight on her hands for a third term when she trailed Edwards by five percentage points in the general election, not even cracking 30 percent of the multi-candidate field. Incumbents showing that poorly are in trouble, and this weekend Edwards, a high school football coach of renown and school administrator but rookie politician, closed the deal with voters.

He did it because of turnout. The 331 precincts can be parsed by race of registrants to determine this, assigning these to “favorable” or “unfavorable” precincts for each candidate, where from Broome a favorable precinct was one with greater than 80 percent black registrants – overwhelmingly Democrats – and an unfavorable one was where more than 80 percent of registrants were white – a plurality if not a majority of Republican typically. For Edwards, the definitions for each would swap.

Bossier Parish Jury: black hole of transparency

Like a successful burglar in the night, the Bossier Parish Police Jury passed a budget that nobody can decipher outside of the courthouse much less knew about, perhaps because nobody outside of parish government really could tell what was in it.

This should come as no surprise, as the Jury has a history as the most opaque of major northwest Louisiana governments, if not of any nine-figure local government in the state. Unlike other are larger local governments, in its agendas, other than some maps to go along with zoning decisions (which is the bulk of its decision-making), its various ordinances and resolutions contain no documentation or attachments, just their titles and extremely brief descriptions. Compelled by state law to transmit its meetings and those of its committees, for the former it chooses a low-quality Facebook Live format which at least creates an archival copy, as for the latter it uses Zoom that keeps no copy for future viewing.

Its staff can’t even get right the new state law that compels such governments to send out agendas to its meetings and any of its committee meetings to any requestor. I made such a request originally to the parish’s public information officer Rod White, which got shuttled to the assistant parish secretary Ashley Ezell who then wrote after the Nov. 20 meeting saying the agenda bounced to the e-mail address to which she had sent that note (no mention about the committees). It baffles me why it would bounce when she subsequently sent successfully a message to that account, but I wrote her back saying the address was good, for obvious reasons.

Caddo must reject budget-busting wage hike

Recently headed in the right direction, the Caddo Parish Commission can’t veer back into stupidity, as it threatens to do by compounding a mistake it has made previously.

This week, the Commission will decide whether to extend a $15 an hour minimum wage policy to significant contracts and contractors. Earlier this year it committed the folly of doing that to its employees. The silly argument made at the time for that was it made for a “living” wage that would diminish poverty and therefore crime.

Of course, research demonstrates that setting artificial wage floors that overpay for the contribution a particular activity makes for society ends up to the detriment of society. Visibly, it eliminates jobs either by having to spread out more work to fewer people in order to make it economically viable and has a similar ripple effect upwards in pay grades, and/or in background this increases automation as that becomes relatively cheaper eventually to the point of the most cost effective strategy.

GOP has real shot at winning EBR mayor-president

If early voting is any indication, the GOP has a real shot at grabbing the chief executive’s job in the parish with the state’s most voters

East Baton Rouge Parish is where most of the runoff election action is for Louisiana thus fall. It’s got a slate of city-parish elections (now whittled to a couple of Metropolitan Council spots) topped by the mayor-president’s showdown between Democrat incumbent Sharon Weston Broome and challenger Republican high school football coach and administrator Sid Edwards.

It’s a pairing that surprised a number of media analysts that should not have, given that about a third of parish voters are Republicans and Broome had to split Democrats with eventual third-place finisher former state Rep. Ted James, as well as Broome’s unimpressive tenure heading the city that ranks low in quality of life and stagnant from 2010 to 2020 in population and estimated to lose numbers since. More recently, Broome fought then botched the transition of parish unincorporated areas into St. George that could cost the city hundreds of millions of dollars.

LA must do more to ban DEI, promote civics

It’s time for Louisiana not only to ban legally race-conscious practices in programming and personnel actions in the state’s higher education institutions, but to go beyond that to aid in understanding why.

Recently, the Louisiana State University Board of Supervisors voted to end practices such as requiring diversity statements for hiring and review programs for whether these privilege race-conscious activities and to institute a policy of neutrality in institutional communications on issues of the day. Some, like LSU’s Baton Rouge campus, have taken this a step further voluntarily by at least renaming, and presumably repurposing, academic offices and positions fundamentally tied to the diversity, equity, and inclusion concepts.

But it’s not enough. The three other systems since then have not done the same. Two will have their supervisors meet int December and the Southern University System’s supervisors met this past weekend; it didn’t address the topic and the other two don’t indicate that they will.