Bossier spending way up; public doesn't know why

Bossier Parish contemplates spending for fiscal year 2023 that will leap by a fifth. If only citizens knew why without going to a lot of inconvenience related to the opaque way the Police Jury does business.

Next week, the Jury will consider final adoption of the budget, going from $103 million in FY 2022 to $128 million this year. Major areas of increased spending include judicial functions, up $2.5 million to $6.2 million; public works, up $12.5 million to nearly $55 million; and culture and recreation, up over $6 million to nearly $17 million. Revenues hardly have kept pace, actually falling over $2 million from last year to almost $91 million. And that’s with state and other funds (from the federal government in special one-time payments such as in the name of the pandemic and Democrat-imposed spending bills) down about that much year-over-year. The parish has to dip into reserves as a result, leaving $61 million left.

This accounting isn’t precise. The Jury posts on its website the budget after its adoption, in broad categories for the general fund and for each special fund. But it doesn’t list figures from the previous year, either budgeted or actually spent. So, the actually spent figures may differ, and substantially, but if you want to know for sure, you’ll either have to trawl through every meeting’s minutes to see if the Jury made adjustments or make a public records request and hope a document with a running tally exists.

North LA racially polarized voting perhaps waning

A couple of interesting theories about the nature of politics emerged from Shreveport’s recently-concluded mayor’s race, especially in context of other north Louisiana major cities. These deserve further scrutiny.

Banging around the rumor mill is that Democrat state Sen. Greg Tarver lost, despite his many decades in elected offices and longstanding alliances in a majority-black electorate against white Republican Tom Arceneaux, because he didn’t try hard enough, His real goal, so goes the argument, was to deny Democrat Mayor Adrian Perkins reelection, and once he had done so with Perkins failing to make the runoff, he checked out, explaining his lackluster performance.

It's an intuitively simple explanation as to why Arceneaux won in fairly convincing fashion a contest by the numbers he had no business winning. It also has a lot of problems, beginning with Tarver treating the contest from start to finish very seriously.

Edwards one loser after Shreveport elections

Shreveport city elections provided a bumper crop of winners and losers, besides the obvious mayoral victor Republican Tom Arceneaux and other vanquished non-Republicans in the contest, specifically Democrat state Sen. Greg Tarver.

WINNER: Local black elected Democrats other than Tarver allies. In politics in Shreveport’s black community, Tarver is the last of the pioneers and over the years increasingly has polarized this arena. While leftist at its foundation and built upon the idea of black empowerment, Tarver has embraced the system rather than trying to reshape it – he’s not woke by any stretch of the imagination – utilizing his power and skills to make gains for the black community as he sees it.

Over time, a majority of black elected city and parish officials in the have swung away from alliances with him, because they take a more militantly ideologically stance and/or because they prefer not to hitch their fortunes to his constellation. A Tarver win would have put them on the outside of city governance with little influence in it, but with his defeat they can cooperate selectively with the Arceneaux administration while shunting Tarver and his allies to the background.

Race less relevant in north LA mayor elections

It began in Monroe in 2020 and by the end of 2022 all four of north Louisiana’s major cities will have white mayors, mostly new and not Democrats among cities mostly with black Democrat-majority electorates, challenging existing notions about what candidates can win where.

This remarkable development north of Interstates 10/12 started with the election of independent Friday Ellis in Monroe, knocking off longtime black incumbent Democrat Mayor Jamie Mayo. Then, Monroe’s electorate contained 63 percent Democrats and 55 percent black Democrats.

In 2021, in Bossier City Republican Tommy Chandler beat GOP Mayor Lo Walker, who had been in office or served as city chief administrative officer for 32 years, Then, the electorate was about 80 percent white and over half Republican.

Arceneaux cracked black solidarity to triumph

In understanding the Shreveport mayor’s election, the 2006 contest wasn’t the proper benchmark to explain Republican Tom Arceneaux’s upset victory over Democrat state Sen. Greg Tarver, it was Monroe’s 2020 race, thereby providing a model for potential future GOP wins.

Despite a black majority electorate and a majority of Democrats in it, Arceneaux not only defeated Tarver, he won going away with 56 percent of the vote. It marks the first time since 2006 the city had a white mayor and only its third Republican ever, the first since 1998.

That 2006 election provided a cautionary lesson why this triumph seemed so unlikely. Back then, in the general election Republican Jerry Jones plus two other Republicans gained 45 percent of the vote, leaving black Democrat Cedric Glover at 32 percent, and white Democrat Liz Swaine got 13 percent. That math should have given Jones a close victory in an electorate then barely majority white.

LA hasn't plague of locusts, but of pessimism

Louisiana doesn’t suffer from the plague of locusts realignment theory, but from a plague of pessimism that poses a challenge its Republican majority must address.

Looking back at a midterm election that broke decades-old reliable modelling of partisan outcomes, one hypothesis to explain focuses on the Wuhan coronavirus pandemic’s tendency to have some individuals, argued disproportionately likely to vote for Democrats, move from areas with surplus Democrats to those with a relative paucity, in order to escape restrictions typically imposed more heavily in states run by Democrats.

A corollary to this not so event-specific is that policies, such as higher taxation and more wasteful spending and transfer payments, in Democrat-run states increasingly burden individuals, particularly those producing more economic benefits for society, so to escape these some people – including especially those who ironically backed politicians that delivered those very policies they now seek to avoid the consequences of – move to places without such policies. More bluntly, that subset are locusts who degraded their former environment now taking wing to more pristine ones to do the same if they can help it. After all, they and their families always can move on while the less advantaged stuck there have to suffer their damage.

Attack ad volley won't alter Tarver path to win

Unsurprisingly and inevitably, first one then the other shoe dropped in Shreveport’s mayor race, muddying up a contest the candidates had kept clean while leaving its trajectory essentially unchanged.

Last week, a radio ad began circulating on stations with larger proportions of black listeners that highlighted Democrat state Sen. Greg Tarver’s past marital difficulties. It claimed his first two spouses accused him of abuse, and that one shot him “to save her own life.” That may be conjecture; what we do know publicly is nearly 35 years ago after returning from a legislative session Tarver entered his residence where his second wife was and a short while later exited with gunshot wounds. No charges ever were filed but a divorce was not long after, followed by his marriage to his third and present wife.

Upon this surfacing, Tarver alleged runoff opponent Republican Tom Arceneaux had leverage over their appearance. Apparently, a group called Watchdog PAC LLC had produced it, which Tarver said also had produced attack ads on behalf of vanquished candidate Democrat Mayor Adrian Perkins prior to the general election. Contrary to statute that requires any entity spending at least $500 in an election cycle that, among other things, opposed a candidate to register with the state and to produce donation and expenditure reports, while a similarly-named political action committee run by a longtime Republican political operative registered with the state through 2017, this group isn’t currently registered.

Clearer still, Edwards virus policy cost lives

If only Louisiana’s political culture had been different and Democrat John Bel Edwards not been governor, a significant portion of Louisianans might be alive today who perished in the first almost two years of the Wuhan coronavirus pandemic.

The first point is being made even as I write and you read this. In communist China, its typically servile population has taken to the streets to protest government attempts to impose harsh lockdowns in a futile attempt to bring the zero Covid fantasy to life. Although official government reporting of virus statistics is highly suspect on this issue, a recent wave of infections prompted the reaction, which unlike in the past the populace seems willing to challenge.

At one time, early in the pandemic Louisiana had restrictions almost as virile. Edwards and most state governors issued orders that didn’t entirely stop movement and commercial relations, but did substantially restrict activities in public for what was considered nonessential for a few weeks, justifying this by arguing it would allow public health authorities time to get ahead of the virus to stamp it out.

Lower income taxation may bring sports winners

As a recent blockbuster baseball deal showed, Louisiana legislators in the midst of studying an overhaul of the state’s tax system might want to consider rearranging things to boost sports performances that in turn could increase state and local tax revenues.

The Texas Rangers last week landed baseball’s best pitcher (when healthy) Jacob deGrom in free agency with a five-year, $185 million deal. When reviewing details of the deal, a major consideration why the Rangers outbid other clubs for his services was no state income tax in Texas. If the Lone Star State had the same tax system as the Bayou State, that deal to deGrom would have been worth (without any manipulations for tax avoidance) almost $4 million fewer (major leaguers nationwide are taxed half on their home state/country, the other half on the various state/country tax laws where they visit to play road games).

Legislators have met this fall to gather information on tax system reform, with many in the body articulating that a rate reduction, if not abolishment, of individual income taxation should be up to the plate. Among its neighbors, Texas and Tennessee have no state income tax, Mississippi has cut its recently and its governor wants elimination of it next year, and Arkansas and Oklahoma have joined Louisiana in recent reductions.

BC no bid fixation to grift taxpayers again

This week, the Bossier City Council seems poised to offer up another sweetheart deal to public works contractor Manchac Consulting Group and to deliver the sucker punch to taxpayers telegraphed weeks ago when it renewed a deal for a facility hardly any citizens use.

With the backing of Republican Mayor Tommy Chandler, the Council will consider dipping into its anything-goes debt-fueled slush fund to spend $1.5 million on new tennis courts at the city’s Bossier Tennis Center. Fewer than three months ago it approved a no-bid three-year contract renewal at $36,000 annually for a company run by longtime center tennis professional Todd Killen to operate it, which obligates him to make a few kinds of service provision but lets him rake off whatever revenues he otherwise can gather, without his having to make any capital expenses.

At the time, in particular GOP Councilor Chris Smith voiced concern about that kind of arrangement, musing that rethinking the deal, or even city ownership of the facility, might make sense especially because the bargain didn’t set aside some of the revenues an operator could keep for future capital expenses. He was ignored, and now those chickens are coming home to roost.