If you did nothing more than read Senate Bill 789 by Sen. Troy Hebert, it would be hard to decipher what the proposed legislation actually does. It speaks vaguely of expressway commissions in Louisiana and identifies a couple of parishes by population only. Below the surface, however, it expands one of the highest-profile boards in Lafayette.
It targets the Lafayette Metropolitan Expressway Commission, which is charged with overseeing the intensive planning process for a loop around the parish. The project is estimated to cost somewhere in the hundreds of millions of dollars and could result in tolls for drivers.
So what does Hebert, a Democrat from Jeanerette, want with the commission? “This bill would add new representatives to the board from Iberia and Vermilion,” he says. The legislation would expand the commission from 11 to 13 members, adding more voices to an already contentious issue. Hebert’s proposal has already sailed through the Senate with barely any debate (it has co-authors from throughout the region) and now motors over to the House for further consideration.
If the bill is ultimately adopted by the Legislature this session, the new members could be seated as early as Aug. 15.
In rendering his ruling, District Judge John Trahan all but called the real estate developer a liar for inconsistencies in his accounts of what prompted him to punch a school teacher unconscious.
Frank’s Casing Crew, now doing business as Frank’s International, will make its final appearance on ABiz’s list of the Top 50 Privately Held Companies in Acadiana this year, and once again, it will likely be at the top with more than $1 billion in annual revenues. The 75-year-old company specializing in tubular fabrication and installation services to the oil and gas industry plans to go public this year.
The defeat, or rather highjacking of House Bill 420 in the final days of this year's Legislative Session, say Reps. Vincent Pierre and Terry Landry, is the result of the propaganda spread by one unidentified local media outlet and an unnamed former state Representative, but nothing to do with the original legislation's lack of checks, balances or details.
City-Parish Council Chairman Brandon Shelvin heaped steady doses of condescending ire on a Blue Cross/Blue Shield of Louisiana executive while failing to reveal his financial ties to a BC/BS rival.
Abbeville native David Primeaux was a popular professor until his death late last year, and while he was successful at camouflaging a dark past, he couldn’t outlive it.
Tehmi Chassion’s failure to recuse himself in the school board’s selection of a group health benefits provider raises ‘serious questions’ on whether he violated state ethics law.
He’s a singer. A songwriter. A piano man. A family man. He’s even got his own Wikipedia entry. He’s David Egan. And he knows ancient secrets about the monolithic stones of Stonehenge that he’s not willing to share.
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