Thinking about mounting a stereo on the hood of your car, shooting off your Glock during the Christmas parade or selling novelty lighters? Fuhgidabowdit!
Some 250 news laws go into effect at midnight, laws that were either signed into existence by Gov. Bobby Jindal or allowed to become law through gubernatorial inattention. Many of the new laws are parochial, applicable to a single parish or taxing district. The impetus for others were newsworthy events leading into the session. Act No. 150 (HB 44 by Rep. Juan Lafonta of New Orleans and co-sponsored by 17 other reps including Lafayette’s Rickey Hardy), for instance, creates the crime of discharging a firearm during a parade. The law was borne of a Mardi Gras parade shooting on St. Charles Avenue in New Orleans that left seven people including a baby injured.
Other new laws are more functional. Act No. 126, from House Bill 159 co-sponsored by Carencro Rep. Bobby Badon, extends the period of validity for drilling permits. Badon’s HB 410, signed into law as Act No. 208, shields farmers for shooting just about any four-legged critter messing with their crops. Act No. 305 (HB 731) is one among several new laws pertaining to education; it provides for criminal penalties for parents whose children are habitually truant or tardy at school. Rep. Fred Mills’ HB 551 targeting Chinese seafood, signed into law by the governor on July 7 as Act No. 330, could create a public awareness campaign and stricter testing on Chinese seafood products, provided the state and federal government pony up some cash.
Speaking of cash, Rep. Hollis Downs’ push to curb speed traps also goes into effect Saturday. Act No. 188 (HB 626) requires fines for speeding 10 miles an hour or less over the posted speed limit on interstates be forwarded to the state treasury rather than into the coffer of the town issuing the citation. The law could have an adverse impact on small towns like Washington in north St. Landry Parish, which derives a majority of its town revenue by posting officers in the median on I-49 on the far side of an overpass and ticketing speeders.
And then there are the laws filed under the broad heading “eyebrow-raiser.” Act No. 124, which moved through the Legislature as House Bill 55, prohibits the installation of an amplification system to the chassis of a vehicle for the purpose of broadcasting sound outside the vehicle. Who installs a stereo on the outside of the car? Not to be outdone, Act No. 140 (HB 490) clears the way for a Delta Sigma Theta special prestige license plate, while Act No. 293 (HB 522) creates a wild dolphin prestige license plate.
To see the complete list of new laws, log on to the Legislature’s Web site and click on the blue “Effective Dates of Acts” link.
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.
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