A bill that cleared the Legislature Monday and awaits Gov. Bobby Jindal’s signature would allow Lafayette and five other parishes — Caddo, Calcasieu, East Baton Rouge, Jefferson and Orleans — to levy a 3 percent tax on car rentals, with the revenue generated by the tax dedicated to various enterprises in each parish, and in the case of Lafayette one agency that evidently doesn’t exist.
The major beneficiary of the tax here would be the Lafayette Airport Commission, which would receive four-sixths of the revenue. One sixth of the tax would be distributed “to political subdivisions in the parish” and the remaining sixth would be directed to the North Lafayette Redevelopment Authority, a nine-member commission created by an act of the Legislature in 2008 but one that doesn’t appear to actually exist. Although several people we spoke to in Lafayette Consolidated Government had heard of the NLRA, the consensus is that while the 2008 bill authorized its creation, since there was no funding stream for the body at the time no one bothered to make appointments. The 2008 legislation authored by then-state Sen. Donald Cravins Jr. says the appointments to the NLRA must be made within 30 days of the bill becoming law, which would have been nearly four years ago. (Appointment authority for the NLRA is in the hands of elected officials — local and state — who represent the north side of the city of Lafayette along with the Lafayette school superintendent and the Community Development Department.)
“There’s no chair, vice chair, no one in place, no one appointed at this time,” says Councilman Kenneth Boudreaux, who represents District 4 and has appointment authority. “I remember the hiccup was that they could create the authority but there was no funding available at that time.”
The levying of the 3 percent car rental tax would have to be approved by a public vote, which in turn must be approved through a City-Parish Council ordinance. Boudreaux says there’s been no talk among council members of writing an ordinance to authorize the public vote.
MAY 21 Gambit columnist Clancy DuBos writes about the Mother's Day shooting, and how the stages of shock and blame and healing mirror those traveled by the same city following Hurricane Katrina. The city will recover, just as it did following the storm, by reaching out to help the people injured most seriously by the event, DuBos writes. It's how we heal, he says.
MAY 21 Here's a post on the Advocate (but buried on a subpage, not on the front) that reports something Louisiana Voice reported some time ago: a top DOE official lives in Los Angeles and "commutes" to Baton Rouge. The positioning of the story caused a stir on Facebook Monday, with several posters asking if the Advocate was covering someone's hiney. Sentell's stories on DOE are notoriously soft, and this one is no different: don't expect any hard questions in here.
MAY 21 Here's another post from blogger Tom Aswell about the "course choice" program. He's already reported on kids being signed up without their consent or knowledge, and has more here: For example, he tells of a six-year-old who was signed up for high school Latin. He also digs a little deeper into the sister companies of the main one operating in Louisiana; all of them seem to have complaints against them. Stinky.
MAY 21 Given the 80 percent cut in higher ed funding since he's been in office, it's clear Gov. Jindal would rather give tax cuts to out of state companies than have a functioning system, blogger Dayne Sherman argues in this post. The cuts have been such a disaster, Sherman says, that it will take 30 years to fix what's been broken. He says he believes the aim is to shut down most of the schools before Jindal leaves in 2016.
MAY 21 Blogger CB Forgotston says there are too many elections in Louisiana, and they're costing us too much money. The proof is in the pudding: turnout for most of these nonsensical pollings gets worse and worse, CB opines, even as millions of dollars that could be spent on health care or higher ed go down the tubes. The legislature must take action to stem the tide of pointless elections, he says.
MAY 21 Here's an interesting investigative piece by WVUE on the retirement benefits of some Jefferson Parish public employees. According to the story, the taxpayers are paying 100 percent of the retirement contributions of employees who started work prior to a certain date in April 1986 -- and have done for more than 30 years. It costs the parish millions annually, and might not be legal, the story reports.
MAY 21 This post on Bayou Buzz provides insight from Louisiana's intrepid pollster, Bernie Pinsonat, on the winners and losers from this year's legislative session. But to hear Bernie tell it, there's almost nuttin but losers: Jindal, the Republican party, the Fiscal Hawks all get big goose eggs in his win column.
MAY 20 This post on The Lens takes a look at a huge (either $500K or $250K) bill that one NOLA charter now has for school lunches. The RSD says the charter group didn't fill out the proper paperwork for federal reimbursement, but the story details how the RSD didn't ensure the people running the charter had the proper training, despite requests from hapless charter employees trying to fill out forms. Either way, somebody's asleep at the wheel.
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