BC Council to navigate Bossier way challenges

At its next meeting, the Bossier City Council will begin facing the consequences of getting along and going along with the old Bossier way, but will have a chance as well to begin its repudiation, focused upon happenings in newly-reelected Republican Vince Maggio’s district.

City elections occurred as news broke about a questionable deal the city made with two property owners in Maggio’s district. At the Council meeting days before the election, Republican Councilor Brian Hammons queried as to why the city was giving each a new parking lot.

As this space previously had noted, the answer City Attorney Charles Jacobs gave, that supposedly the owners had threatened lawsuits over alleged damage from construction of the nearby Walter O. Bigby Carriageway, when investigated lacked credibility. Instead, available evidence suggested that public dollars were being spent to aid the private business of a friend since childhood of GOP Councilor David Montgomery, a conclusion also forwarded in a post at the news and entertainment web site SOBO.live. That media outlet put in a public records request to obtain exact documentation of the incident.

Low stimulus crucial to LA amendments' defeat

It’s time to settle the debate that has arisen about results concerning recent statewide constitutional amendments that failed, and we begin by reviewing a major contributing factor to their defeat by nearly 2:1.

On paper, the most persuasive interpretation would be the results mainly are an artifact of structural turnout patterns. For decades, as the major political parties have become increasingly ideologically pure and polarized, the effect first observed half a century ago of the top-bottom nature of Democrats – support shaped like a barbell wider at the top of the socioeconomic scale, thinner in the middle, and again expanded at the bottom – and the toy top nature of Republican support – thinner at the top and bottom of SES, thick in the middle – has given way to a more defined inversion of the class system insofar as political parties go.

Increasingly, this reordering where now support for Democrats resembles more an inverted pyramid and Republican identifiers shape into a standard wine bottle has implications for election turnout. In the middle of the 20^th century observers believed higher-turnout elections favored Democrats, since less-reliable voters disproportionately had lower SES characteristics who in turn disproportionately voted for Democrats, but as the inversion began to accelerate (because of the emergence of the affluent society after World War II that brought a different issue mix in elections to the fore) that tendency disappeared.

Cast critical eye on opposing less govt spending

Already the narrative is being pounded home by leftist-sympathetic traditional media that suppressing federal government spending will prove as cataclysmic to America as Ramses’ stubbornness did to Mosaic Egypt. Don’t buy it, as illustrated in a case in Louisiana.

Recently, the Acadiana Advocate delivered a story about the impact of reduced federal spending on farm subsidies. In particular, it lamented projected cuts to U.S. Department of Agriculture programs that help food banks and schools purchase food from small local farmers.

It agonized a bit over the lost income this market distortion would cause farmers, but the main problem it conveyed was the distribution of free or subsidized food would be attenuated. Individuals associated with food banks and similar organizations were reported wringing their hands over the possibility of increased “food insecurity,” which allegedly a seventh of Louisianans suffered.

Election reformist tide swamps BC insiders

The clean sweep starting in 2021 of Bossier City elected majoritarian branch officials that was completed last week also resulted in a near clean sweep of Bossier political insiders in favor of reformers, the latest city elections produced.

Exactly four years ago the city was being run by a mayor with 16 years in office and a set of city councilors who had among them 127 years of service. Come Jul. 1, it will have a mayor of 4 years in and combined service among councilors of just 12 years. None will have been in office more than four years.

Moreover, this rolling revolution will put a majority of reformers outside of the current political establishment in charge of the Council, a first in the city’s history. In their rookie terms, both Republicans Chris Smith and Brian Hammons left no doubt as to their reformist chops. They will be joined the GOP’s Cliff Smith, who through his activities as a concerned citizen left no doubt of that status.

Try again with fiscal reform minus bad timing

The constitutional amendment that rewrote the fiscal portion of Louisiana’s Constitution failed primarily because of a tactical error made by Republican Gov. Jeff Landry and his legislative allies.

This amendment, #2, sunk last weekend with only 35 percent of the vote on 21.3 percent turnout. The key to understanding why and how this translates into the blunder is in who was activated to vote against it.

Much was made of some conservative opposition to it, but the size of the loss is the first indication that this didn’t have much to do with the result. Picking up on a Trojan Horse meme circulated by the left designed to ensnare them, these individuals put their thinking caps aside and shunned the pro-growth, smaller government aspects of the reforms in favor of panicked long-shot interpretations that passage meant the state would tax churches out of existence. However, only had the result been a much closer loss would they have made the difference.

On election eve, Bossier way rears its ugly head

On the eve of city elections, controversy erupted at this week’s City Council meeting that displayed graphically the old Bossier political way, a mixture of electoral, transactional, and crony politics possibly involving corruption and certainly advertising for change from it via the upcoming electoral exercise.

Perhaps any or all of Republican Mayor Tommy Chandler, City Atty. Charles Jacobs, Asst. City Atty. Richard Ray (if watching the proceedings from afar), and nominal City Engineer Ben Rauschenbach had a sinking feeling when, during the meeting after GOP Councilor Brian Hammons had brought Rauschenbach to the podium for questioning about an agenda item, Hammons said he had an unrelated matter on which to query him. Hammons, whose day job is in building, then described a scenario where business owners were asking him about, and even petitioning for, the city reconstructing parking lots for private businesses – a matter they claimed the city had performed and one that never came before the Council for approval. He asked Rauschenbach what he knew of it.

The Waggoner Engineering employee, who by virtue of the firm’s contract with the city serves as its engineering chief, usually has information about projects and their costs at his fingertips. But this time he said he would defer to Jacobs or Ray to explain. Jacobs was present, and what ensued should be presented verbatim:

Landry finally defeats "baantjies vir boeties"

Last week, Republican Gov. Jeff Landry completed the inevitable defeat of baantjies vir boeties, making a bad but unfortunately necessary policy less obnoxious while telling special interests and courthouse gangs to go pound sand.

Baantjies vir boeties – “jobs for the boys” – was an expression heard in the old Republic of South Africa during the reign of the National Party up until majority rule came about in 1994. The instituters of apartheid pursued this strategy to keep white support from erosion by moderate-to-radical competitors focusing on economic class concerns that could distract from its racial politics message, doing so through heavy government regulation and spending to provide employment in both the public and private sectors. (Many other polities had ruling regimes that promised the same, but the old RSA example was the starkest in its brazenness.)

The same tactic, in the same sense that it was to use government power to reward supporters with jobs and other concessions, Democrat former Gov. John Bel Edwards foisted upon Louisiana when he stipulated changes to the Industrial Tax Exemption Program. This procedure had allowed a new concern a partial-to-total break from property taxes for up to a decade. The state’s Board of Commerce and Industry – mostly gubernatorial appointees and the rest being elected or appointed officials including a designee of the governor – rules on these with the governor having a veto power. Thus, a governor basically can dictate the parameters by which breaks are given.

Obtuse LA public defense board unnecessary

If this slovenliness is what we get from Louisiana’s Public Defender Oversight Board, policy-makers might as well chuck the whole thing.

Earlier this year, State Public Defender Remy Starns declared he wouldn’t renew the contracts of five of the state’s 35 district defenders. Perhaps not coincidentally, the five argued against a pay plan Starns had brought to the board last year that ultimately in the main was not accepted, which would have cut their salaries.

As a result of legislation last year, the Board underwent a name and function change. The changes took it away from an active management role and more towards the word added to its appellation, “oversight.” It did retain the power to oversee finances to the point to have power over financing decisions as under existing contracts.

Bill provides redress for subsidized bad policy

A bill the Louisiana Legislature will consider during this spring’s regular session would redress bad federal government policy that diverts use of lands within the state to low priority purposes.

HB 4 by Republican state Rep. Chuck Owen would allow individual parishes to have a final say over carbon capture sequestration within their boundaries, subject to a popular veto. The governing authority may disapprove of a sequestration siting, but if it approves a referendum may be called by 15 percent of registered voters to hold a vote disapproving. Either way, local interests will determine whether such projects get built.

That’s as it should be, because of the bias built into the tax code that is the only thing, other than ideologically-based faith, that prompts any building of these facilities placed underground to store carbon produced in industrial or consumer surroundings. Understanding the interlocked nature of the process explains where Louisiana is and why the law is beneficial.

Monroe council budget alterations unwise

A Monroe City Council majority seems determined to launch a risky pay raise plan and apportion more funds to a special district with a checkered recent history, contrary to independent Mayor Friday Ellis’ fiscal year 2026 budget.

In a special meeting, the Council proposed a number of changes to the Ellis plan. Most were incremental in nature in keeping with the roughly $72 million ceiling, but a couple stood out as significant.

One shoveled $323,000 more into salary increases for city employees. The Council majority of Democrats Rodney McFarland, Verbon Muhammad, and Juanita Woods previously had expressed a desire to attempt some kind of permanent pay hike.