Today, tit. Tuesday, tat.
Hoping to take the wind out of Councilman William Theriot’s sails ahead of Tuesday’s council meeting, officials from Lafayette Utilities System argued Thursday that the long-term financial viability of the city-owned utility’s LUS Fiber business is on the horizon. LUS Director Terry Huval, along with Lorrie Toups, chief financial officer for Lafayette Consolidated Government, and CPA Burton Kolder discussed the fiber-to-the-home/business venture’s sustainability during a presentation at City Hall — five days before Tuesday’s City-Parish Council meeting, during which Theriot will give his own presentation on the financial health of LUS Fiber and, we expect, make the case for LCG discontinuing its financial support of the initiative.
LUS officials have been on a public-relations sally for the last week, making the case that despite the spin-off’s financial losses since it was launched in 2009, those losses were anticipated and built into LUS Fiber’s business plan and the business is on track to break even and begin turning a profit by 2015. A briefing on May 21 before the council revealed that LUS Fiber closed out 2011 with a $29 million deficit, a figure The Daily Advertiser parsed into an alarming headline the next day: “Audit: LUS Fiber lost $45,000 a day.” But in a more measured article in The Advocate, Kolder put LUS Fiber’s losses into context: “Normally, most start-up businesses lose money the first three to five years,” he told The Advocate. “... It would be expected.”
The briefing last week, as expected, reignited Theriot’s ideological opposition to LUS Fiber — and that’s what this really is: an ideological argument about a publicly owned utility competing with private enterprise, with Theriot carrying the water for the big, private telecom operators in Lafayette who have opposed LUS every step of the way.
MAY 17 Here's a column from James Gill, this time in the Advocate. Gill, who has jumped ship from the Picayune, writes about the absurdity of dueling polls in this post. The numbers are so wildly different, it is obvious that both sides are "cooking the books," he writes. In particular, he looks at Sen. Mary Landrieu, and how her recent actions in DC have been received by those polled. Gill's acerbic, amusing prose is a welcome addition to a paper so conservative as to be occasionally lacking in personality.
MAY 17 Blogger Tom Aswell continues delivering bombshells about the state education department and Gov. Jindal's education "reform" efforts. In this post, he reports that students in the Shreveport area have been signed up for a charter school without their knowledge or consent. Most interesting to Aswell is how this Texas-based charter (with ties to GOP types) got the personal student information it has, if the students didn't give it.
MAY 17 This post by JR Ball in the Baton Rouge Business Report is an interesting tongue-in-cheek look at recent Baton Rouge economic development efforts. Among the items he examines is the idea that gaining a Costco makes BR a "world-class city." (Really? All you need is a different brand of Sam's? MK!) This effort, and other recent ones, are all built on the taxpayer's back, with tax zones, tax incentives and tax rebates, Ball writes.
MAY 17 Blogger CB Forgotston is critical of the legislature's reliance on a revenue-estimating committee's decision to include projected tax amnesty income in this year's forecast. That's a problem, CB posts, because the deadline for these people to pay their taxes is June 30, 2014. So when do you think these people who haven't paid taxes in years are going to pay their taxes? Surely not before June 30, and that means the money won't be there for this year's budget, he argues.
MAY 17 Here's an interesting blog out of California by a Hollywood writer, attorney and academic named Brian Alan Lane. He blogs about higher ed, and was a whistle-blower in a scandal over false credentials. In this post, he takes aim at LSU's new top dog, King Alexander. It's convoluted and a little confusing, but it sure makes Alexander a lot more interesting than he was yesterday.
MAY 17 Blogger Robert Mann writes about the LSU Board's refusal to allow Dr. Fred Cerise to testify before the legislature about Gov. Jindal's plan to close down all the state's charity hospitals and dump the poor on the private system. It's hard to imagine anyone more qualified than Cerise to testify about that, so why would anyone try to prevent him doing so? Mann thinks it is because the powers that be aren't interested in hearing any truth about the plan.
MAY 17 This post on the Louisiana Sinkhole Bugle, a blog that notes developments in the Bayou Corne and Jefferson Island salt domes, talks about a proposed expansion of the salt dome storage under Lake Peigneur in Iberia Parish. Residents are working against it for several reasons, including two biggies: the sinkhole disaster in Bayou Corne and the continuing, unexplained bubbling on the surface of the Lake.
MAY 17 NOLA police arrested more people Thursday accused of either being involved in the Mother's Day shooting or hiding the suspect afterward, this Gambit story reports. The NOLA police chief said he suspects the whole thing was gang-related and throws out a challenge to the gangs: he's got informants now, he says, and he knows a lot more than the gangs want him to know. The people who live in the neighborhoods terrorized by gangs are ready to talk, he says.
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