Bumping Trahan: A lesson in political infrastructure
If you don’t believe there’s a constant flow of petty jockeying going down at the State Capitol when the Legislature is in session, then there’s probably a piece of oceanfront property with your name on it in Shreveport. Lafayette Rep. Don Trahan, the Republican chairman of the House Education Committee, confirmed as much Thursday during an otherwise mundane hearing.
His feathers were noticeably ruffled during a debate over a resolution that would request a reconfiguration of funding for Louisiana’s community and technical colleges. The change is needed due to Gov. Bobby Jindal’s workforce development plan, which places community and technical colleges on the frontlines of training Louisiana’s emerging labor market.
“No one has been behind this push longer than I have,” Trahan said in one of a few high-handed mini-speeches he gave during the hearing. Before the bill could be properly introduced, Trahan commandeered the microphone (among the many perks afforded to him as chairman) and explained how he was the true catalyst behind House Concurrent Resolution 65, “even though I was bumped down to a co-author,” he added.
So who knocked Trahan off the top of the resolution and stole his glory? It was none other than GOP House Speaker Jim Tucker of Terrytown who wiggled his way to authorship (undoubtedly one of the many perks afforded to him as the elected leader of the lower chamber).
Even without Trahan’s name atop, the resolution was advanced by the committee without opposition. It heads next to the full House for further debate, where the Lafayette representative will have another opportunity to air his grievances — this time under the glare of Tucker, who appointed him chairman.
Is it a crime for citizens to photograph, video, or take notes of a police officer in the line of duty, or a right protected by the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution? Locally, such activity, as witnessed recently, will at the very least result in a night spent behind bars.
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.
At Thursday's State of the Economy luncheon, LEDA President and CEO Gregg Gothreaux said PXP has already quietly hired 180 people for its Broussard expansion.
Episcopal School of Acadiana’s Dr. Joshua Caffery, chair of the school’s English Department, is headed to Washington, D.C., and the Library of Congress as the latest winner of the Alan Lomax Fellowship in Folklife Studies.
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.
Subscribe to this comment's feed