Recently a group of retired generals appointed by Gov. Bobby Jindal assessed the Louisiana National Guard and produced a report. The Jindal administration dismissed portions of it and has refused to release the panel's findings. The Times-Picayune reports that the rift began last week "when Jindal reappointed Maj. Gen. Bennett Landreneau as the state's adjutant general without reviewing the report by the governor's Recommendation Committee for the Adjunct General of the Army National Guard, a position that oversees the Louisiana National Guard."
Former Louisiana Adjutant General Ansel "Buddy" Stroud, the panel's chairman, expressed concern about statements from the governor's office saying no committee report existed. Stroud said the committee completed its report in January - but the governor's office repeatedly canceled meetings to deliver it.
In a letter to Jindal's Chief of Staff Timmy Teepell, Stroud wrote that the committee members were "flabbergasted and insulted" that their review had been ignored by the governor. On Monday, Teepell sent a letter to Stroud saying he thought Stroud was biased against Landreneau and might even have a conflict of interest. Retired Brig. Gen. Sam deGeneres, a member of the panel, told The Times-Picayune: "He has challenged Gen. Stroud's integrity, as well as ours, and that's not acceptable. Mr. Teepell owes Gen. Stroud a public apology and he owes the members of the committee a public apology."
David Calhoun and Elizabeth “EB” Brooks are the first two employees of Lafayette Central Park Inc., the nonprofit charged with turning Lafayette Consolidated Government’s 100-acre Johnston Street Horse Farm property into a passive public park. Calhoun was named executive director, and Brooks is director of planning and design.
There will soon be a whole lot of shakin’ going on at Benny’s Sportshack Supplement Depot, a new concept by Opelousas native Benny Nele. Located at 2002 Johnston St., the supplement shop, smoothie bar and café, featuring hot off the press paninis and wraps, plans to open in late May.
This year’s Cool Town issue is all about people who are not native to South Louisiana but made a conscious decision to be here, to be among us, to participate in our culture and contribute to it.
A shelved ordinance transferring $200,000 from a northside drainage project to a south Lafayette development may not break any laws, but it stinks to high heaven.
An effort to restore a shuttered dancehall and document other vacant or razed honky-tonks could serve as a model for saving an endangered species of entertainment.
Lafayette’s gene pool has been host to a long line of eccentric characters who have blurred the lines between crazy, genius, disturbed and curiously entertaining.
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