Carencro City Manager Lloyd Rochon, who vied for the District 3 City-Parish Council seat four years ago and has long vowed not to let Brandon Shelvin walk back into office, qualified for the post Thursday afternoon. Shelvin ran first in the field of five in the 2007 primary, and Rochon received 15 percent of the vote, losing a runoff spot to Shawn Wilson, who got 18 percent.
Wilson was defeated by Shelvin, who garnered 57 percent of the vote in the general election.
Saying he wants the opportunity to help move District 3 forward and will run on his credentials, Rochon also believes Shelvin’s character will be an issue this time around. “People know [Shelvin] now, and they also know me. So they have a clear choice,” Rochon says.
“When people elect a person as a council member, they put their sacred trust in that individual,” Rochon continues. “And when a person betrays that trust, they should be replaced. That’s what I’m trying to do.”
Rochon, who retired from the U.S. Air Force after 22 years, has a long history of government involvement. He was director of federal programs for Lafayette Parish and was the first and only person to serve as clerk of the Lafayette Parish Council, later taking over as clerk of the Lafayette City-Parish Council after consolidation.
Whether having an opponent in the campaign will force Shelvin to answer troubling questions about his judgment, ethics and truthfulness remains to be seen. Read the long, sordid history of the first-term District 3 councilman's legal woes here.
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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I admire Rochon for standing up to Shelvin. District 3 deserves far better than the status quo. Rochon clearly is a leader, and that is what the people of Lafayette deserve.