Thanks to new "ethics reform" legislation, the panel of judges that will take over public hearings into alleged violations of ethics, campaign finance and other laws under the Louisiana Board of Ethics' jurisdiction, won't even be in place by the Aug. 15 deadline.
Changes in state law mandate that the administrative law judges be appointed at a meeting of the ethics board, but there is only one of 11 board members still serving, due to the resignations of 10 board members. For that reason, the appointments can't happen, and neither can enforcement of ethics laws.
“It will happen whenever there is a board, whenever there’s a board meeting,” Administrative Law Judge Chief Ann Wise told The Advocate.
State law gives the presidents of private colleges 60 days to nominate candidates. The governor or legislators have another 60 days to appoint from the list provided by the college presidents. It is likely those seats will be vacant until October.
The three-person administrative law judge panels (state employees used by state agencies to settle certain types of disputes) are taking over the functions previously performed by the ethics board due to legislation passed in February's special session on ethics. Beginning Aug. 15, the board will be relegated to an investigatory and charging body with no judicial authority, one of various changes most ethics board members objected to, resulting in the en masse resignations.
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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