There was room for pause Wednesday night when former Lafayette Parish School Board President Mark Babineaux, speaking during the board’s first regular meeting of the year, moved for his fellow board members to unanimously name Shelton Cobb as the 2012 president of the school board.
“This is significant ... I hope it’s in the spirit of getting along and unifying our efforts,” Cobb said after taking his seat in the president’s chair.
Though it’s common practice for governing bodies to name a new president or chairman by promoting the vice chairman or vice president, which Cobb served as last year, it was a welcome surprise for school board observers and other outside stakeholders to hear the suggestion of unanimity come from Babineaux.
Babineaux has joined board members Tommy Angelle, Greg Awbrey and Rae Trahan in consistently voting against the Gang of Five, a somewhat new majority on the board that comprises Cobb, Hunter Beasley, Tehmi Chassion, Mark Cockerham and Kermit Bouillion. (Worth noting: The Independent selected the Gang of Five as its Persons of the Year in 2011 for the group’s efforts to buck the status quo and central office to bring in the highly qualified Dr. Pat Cooper as the next superintendent of Lafayette Parish public schools.)
But immediately after the board cast its unanimous vote for Cobb, the often bitter cleft on the board returned. Beasley was named over Awbrey as the 2012 vice president of the school board by the same 5-4 vote that’s been surfacing at board meetings since the superintendent search unofficially began in May. The Gang of Five voted for Beasley, while Angelle, Awbrey, Babineaux and Trahan favored Awbrey.
The tensions between the two blocs on the board continued even after the meeting, when Awbrey — clearly not still sour from his loss — told The Daily Advertiser that “the vice president’s job is to keep the meeting moving and make sure that issues are resolved quickly, but that didn’t happen (Wednesday) night. Hopefully it happens in future meetings.”
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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