Rate hikes to compel Monroe to more efficiency

The day of reckoning has come for Monroe water, sewerage, and waste customers, with hopefully the delay induced by a penny-wise, pound-foolish City Council majority won’t end up costing ratepayers over time more than the amount of money they were able to retain over the past year.

At its last meeting of the year, councilors sent out a warning that customers of city water, sewerage, and water services could expect to see a rate hike by May. Democrat Chairman Rodney McFarland likened the increase to halt a “kicking the can down the road” on rates and said he would vote for whatever the independent Mayor Friday Ellis Administration determined was necessary. While it’s good practice to ensure these services pay for themselves and leave a healthy balance in reserve for future needs, practically speaking the fund can’t go too low because of stipulations attached to bonds issued for capital items, and as well as the lower the reserve, the higher interest rates on bonds issued will be. Indeed, existing debt was dropped two notches in quality by one of the big ratings firms because of this repeal.

It was a remarkable turnaround for McFarland, who along with fellow Democrats Verbon Muhammad and Juanita Woods blew up the mechanism that would increase rates in line with inflation. Previously, the city had an ordinance with that escalator clause to back the bonds but not long after McFarland and Muhammad joined the Council, they repealed that, saying they should look at this on a periodic basis and not forced into anything. Early this year they did take a gander and kicked the can down the road by denying an Ellis request to move rates higher by 2.7 percent.

Christmas, 2025

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 Easter, 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 Memorial Day and Veterans' Day.

With Thursday, Dec. 25 being Christmas Day, I invite you to explore this link.

New panel must move faster to ease water concerns

It goes somewhat against the grain of Louisiana’s history of minimal government interference, but it might be time to for the state to adopt a comprehensive water management policy. And it has the means to do it if it gets to it.

Louisiana’s growing success with attracting data centers has introduced concerns about power and water provision. To date, estimates provided by potential locators have indicated no one of them will cause a shortage of power or produce a spike in costs nor cause a water shortage or even significantly deplete any particular source.

But success breeds success, and if the data centers keep coming, trouble will follow unless local governments decide to cut them off, forgoing tremendous economic development opportunities. While the Louisiana Public Service Commission can plan out the power side of things, an equivalent planning process on the water side has yet to surface.

Lewis on course to serve just one PSC term

Having their poster child arrested on suspicion of drunk driving isn’t exactly what Louisiana Democrats wanted as a holiday present, and his continued controversial behavior threatens to wear out his welcome with party elites and voters.

Democrat Davante Lewis famously defeated long-time incumbent Democrat Lambert Boissiere for the District 3 seat on the Louisiana Public Service Commission in 2022, running an insurgency campaign. Despite starting only in the summer and spending about a quarter of Boissiere, Lewis positioned himself as a “progressive” Democrat and attracted huge out-of-state money to topple Boissiere both in overall fundraising and votes in the ordinarily low-stimulus race. In doing so, he became as well the highest-profile black elected official in state politics.

Lewis won while levying criticism against utilities, claiming his opponent and other PSC members were in the pockets of regulated utilities because they accepted contributions from them that contributed to higher rates, and spouting rhetoric against fossil fuel production over the myth of catastrophic anthropogenic global warming. However, his 2023 campaign ethics annual report revealed donations from utilities outside of Louisiana and from entities in the renewable energy business (he has, in contravention with state law, yet to file a 2024 report).

Landry to enter Greenland history books?

So, one day in the future when Greenlandic schoolchildren are studying about their state’s independence will they see a picture of Louisiana Republican Gov. Jeff Landry in their textbooks?

Recently, GOP Pres. Donald Trump appointed Landry special envoy to Greenland. Special envoys are presidential picks, who may or may not be career foreign service employees, for temporary purposes to aid in a specific area of policy involving foreign states. Adding Landry to the roster (which may or may not require Senate confirmation) means the U.S. will have a baker’s dozen of these, most appointed this year by Trump.

It's unclear what exactly Landry’s new portfolio will be. Special envoys can have a day job and Landry certainly will keep his, but this may be a tactic by Trump on his quest to create more U.S. influence over the strategic geographic placement and resources that Greenland has. Trump has spoken of greater U.S. control over the area for security reasons, going so far as to say he would like to see it become part of the U.S.

LPSC makes good change, rejects Trojan Horse

A Louisiana Public Service Commission majority improved the state’s competitive position by streamlining its approval process for large power users while batting away a wolf in sheep’s clothing.

Last week, the PSC approved a directive sponsored by Republican Commissioner Jean-Paul Coussan that would cut red tape for such users, as defined by it. This permits quicker approval for projects that feature a minimum 15-year electric-service agreement with a new or expanding customer, confirmation from the Department of Economic Development that the project is a priority, and a user pledge that it will supply half of the revenue to cover at least half of its project’s fixed costs, which typically involves increasing transmission capacity.

Heretofore all requests to the PSC went through a usual process that might take up to two years for vetting. This new one, if the PSC agreed it met these criteria, could take only a third of that time. The Commission majority saw a need for this to expedite these, by definition, massive projects that, by definition, would take longer to get up and running and in the face of pressure from other states bargaining for locating these within their boundaries. By and large, this new procedure applies to data centers that collectively will require multiplicative increases in power over the next decade within the U.S.

Shreveport MPC autonomy debate tempest in teapot

In the background of an important decision made by the Shreveport City Council today is whether it needs the extra layer of bureaucracy that put it in this spot in the first place.

At December’s beginning, the Shreveport Metropolitan Planning Commission registered a tie vote (because of one absence) on whether to grant a special land use permit for a data center in the city’s west. This effectively denied the application, to the consternation of some policy-makers and especially Republican Mayor Tom Arceneaux.

Statute defines and empowers the MPC. Its nine members with six-year staggered terms the mayor appoints with Council approval, all Shreveport residents. It concocts a master plan of zoning and development and must approve changes outside of those parameters. Its budget the Council sets, from which it hires a staff that analyzes proposals and makes recommendations – a staff which had recommended center approval. However, dissenting members said visible public opposition at the meeting had swayed them to reject it.

Overbuilt LA higher education causing conflict

Battles over university and university system governance in Louisiana really boil down to the fact that Louisiana’s higher education provision is overbuilt.

Culminating a years-long effort that has developed in bits and pieces, the Louisiana State University System has moved to reorganize. It has abandoned the combination of the Baton Rouge campus with the system within leadership by its new recent hires, and rightly so.

Back when system and LSU leadership was combined, the plan for the system was to combine campus governance and implementation as much as possible. On the business sides, campuses were to find economies of scale, and in that aspect the strategy succeeded in creating a central back-office operation among other ways to save.

Big decisions soon to shape BC economic future

The next couple of weeks may make or break Bossier City’s transformation from big small town to an economic growth machine.

A lot of very consequential decisions are coming down the pike to the city in short order. It looks to implement a key personnel move just as it faces a big strategic decision, all with the backdrop of erasing a mountain of debt and the possibility of nabbing a huge water and sewerage customer.

City Chief Administrative Officer Amanda Nottingham will take of her job at year’s end to become essentially head lobbyist at Southwestern Electric Power Company. She has been a steadying influence for Republican Mayor Tommy Chandler, who doesn’t like to get too involved in the nuts-and-bolts of administration, but also faced hamstringing by the City Council by its often altering substantially or defeating administration proposals.

BESE must clarify unexcused absence policy

Louisiana’s Department of Education needs to cut through the confusion and make it clear: if a child doesn’t show up to school because parents fear la Immigración, it’s not an excused absence.

Last week, as the federal government publicized and launched an inter-agency effort to detain illegal aliens in the New Orleans metropolitan area, the location with a concentration of these scofflaw residents, Jefferson Parish, saw significantly higher truancy in its schools. It is conjectured that this resulted from families of illegal aliens keeping their children out of school for fear that agents would bust into schools and round up children illegally in the country.

That notion is ridiculous, given official directives that the only such intrusions now permitted would occur if a known criminal (likely incognito) was at a school and only after intensive vetting of the process. There are no jump-out boys launching into a school going door-to-door demanding papeles affirming citizenship or permanent residency; all that has been a fantasy propagated by left-wing education administrators and teachers, special interests, politicians, and media to try to score political points.