[UPDATE: In court Tuesday, City-Parish President Joey Durel, through attorney Pat Ottinger, agreed not to seat new Lafayette Housing Authority board members until Judge Ed Rubin decides whether three of the commissioners were properly removed by Durel. After the City-Parish Council upheld Durel's dismissal of the commissioners, they filed suit in state district court and are asking for a new hearing before the council. Rubin did not hear any arguments Tuesday; he said he would review video of the September council meeting before making a decision. He is expected to rule this week.]
Fifteenth Judicial District Judge Ed Rubin, who Friday ordered City-Parish President Joey Durel and members of the Lafayette council to appear in court Tuesday at 10:30 a.m. for a possible contempt of court hearing, rescinded the order Monday.
Rubin initially set a hearing for Durel to explain why he should not be held in contempt of court for his appointment of six new members to the Lafayette Housing Authority’s board of commissioners while three dismissed members appeal their removal. Rubin, however, apparently changed his mind at about 11 a.m. Monday, releasing Durel and the council members of their obligation to show up in court today (he continued the hearing but did not set a date). Durel made the appointments last Thursday, Oct. 7, after Rubin denied a temporary restraining order that would have prevented him from naming a new board.
The three dismissed members, removed for what Durel called neglect of duty and lack of outrage over a 2009 audit's troublesome findings, are in Rubin’s court today. Joe Dennis, John Freeman and Leon Simmons are asking the judge to give them a second hearing before the council. They contend they were removed before they had a chance to review the 2009 audit, which raised serious questions about how the agency conducts its business and led to a federal investigation, but they have yet to explain why the board of commisisoners has not formally reviewed an audit since at least 2005. Audits over the past several years show a pattern of repeated troublesome findings that point to gross mismanagement of federal funds, lack of oversight of several departments and violations of state bid laws.
After the 2009 audit revealed severe problems with a federal housing program, five case managers were fired by the board Aug. 13. During that meeting, not one board member asked to review the audit, which had been in the LHA's possession and on the state Legislative Auditor's website for more than a month.
MAY 24 Blogger Robert Mann posts this entry about the Baton Rouge Chamber's recent report on Louisiana's higher education system. It's critical to economic development, and yet our system is facing a "funding crisis" with no way to resolve it, the report says. The Chamber says control of tuition and fees must be returned to the higher ed governing boards.
MAY 24 Here's a NBC33 story about Tyrann Mathieu. He has signed with the Arizona Cardinals, inking a $3 million, four-year deal. He gets a signing bonus of $265K, but gets another, larger bonus if he doesn't get cut from the team for doing drugs. The deal reportedly includes mandatory tests and meetings for the player.
MAY 24 Jarvis DeBerry posts here about the redonkulus rhetoric that would have us believe NOLA is a safe city with a murder problem. Maybe the city's crime stats don't compare with its murder stats because you can't manipulate a murder, he says: a dead body's a dead body. It just doesn't make sense, he says, and his readers agree: a poll asks if they believe the city is safe, and more than 90 percent say no.
MAY 24 Jindal administration officials announced Thursday that the privatization of public health care is going to cost a lot more than they budgeted for, the Advocate reports here. "I'm so surprised," said no one. Anywhere. The cost they're projecting now is more than $1 billion - a lot more than the $626 million budgeted for it. And, it's more than it cost the state to operate those hospitals. So why are we doing this again?
MAY 24 Blogger CB Forgotston ridicules the recent PR campaign by the state GOP in the wake of a legislative auditor's request to both major parties. The GOP (apparently unaware that the Dems got the same request) started yammering about being targeted because it had "killed" a tax increase. CB finds that laughable, but it's also pretty funny that the GOP was comparing this episode to the IRS scandal (Because the President has so much to do with our state auditor. Right?).
MAY 24 Politico details some recent fund-raising efforts by Sen. David Vitter, which have raised the question of his future political plans. This time, it is a $5,000 per head "bayou weekend" that includes "Cajun cooking" and an all-caps "alligator hunt," the story reports. Funds raised go to a super PAC that can spend money to support Vitter in federal or state races, the story points out.
MAY 24 The pink building on Royal in the quarter was sold at a sheriff's sale Thursday, this Picayune story reports. An injunction that would have halted the sale wasn't enforced because the family failed to post a $150,000 bond, the story reports. So the owner of the mortgages on the building bought it, for nearly $7 million. Now the feuding family will have to negotiate with that company to get a lease on the building that has housed their business for close to 60 years.
MAY 23 This post in Louisiana Voice tells us about a bill by a Winnsboro lege that would require all public high school students to take at least one Course Choice online class in order to graduate. (What?) Blogger Tom Aswell says it's a monument to "waste and corruption," especially in light of the problems he's exposed with the program in recent weeks. Idaho had a similar program, but voters removed it by a 2-1 margin, Aswell says.
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