Wednesday, September 8, 2010
Written by Walter Pierce
Is the downtown club a menace, or is there something sinister going on here?
Something’s not sitting right with downtown nightclub Karma facing a two-year revocation of its liquor license. Yanking a bar’s liquor license is like carting off the incinerator from a crematorium — it puts it out of business. The Lafayette City-Parish Council, exercising its parliamentary prerogative to not exercise its authority, tabled last week a vote on whether to uphold an administrative ruling that Karma’s license should be revoked due to a series of incidents over the spring and summer involving arrests by police — mainly breaking up fights in the parking lot.
Wednesday, September 1, 2010
Written by Walter Pierce
With neither gridlock nor gridiron, the charter commission is off to a dull start.
The Lafayette Charter Commission got back to work Monday after a two-week hiatus necessitated by City-Parish Council budget hearings. Although the meeting took place after this issue of The Independent went to press, and commissioners were scheduled to vote on whether to put a council term-extension proposal before voters by next spring, I can safely say it was mostly another dull but necessary affair — dull because the better part of the first three months of the nine-month process is given over to pedestrian presentations from department heads and other officials delineating the functions and processes of Lafayette Consolidated Government; necessary because, insomuch as the consolidated government beat is mine, understanding the complexities and nuances of the institution is vital. I didn’t know that I didn’t know much about LCG until this commission got going.
Wednesday, August 25, 2010
Written by Walter Pierce
Rep. Rickey Hardy should be applauded for helping blow the lid on the LHA.
Our ongoing coverage, including in today’s issue, of the mess at the Lafayette Housing Authority — the lack of oversight, the evidently egregious abuse of federal funding — has generated more traffic in the comment section of our website, almost all of it righteous indignation, than any story we’ve produced since I began working here a year and a half ago. It’s a story that will evolve in the coming weeks as accountability gets its proper traction, and as Leslie Turk continues to squeeze this over-ripened fruit. And it’s a story that should tickle our collective outrage bone.
Wednesday, August 18, 2010
Written by Walter Pierce
UL Lafayette is planning for the future by preparing for the worst.
Charitably, let’s think of tomorrow’s public policy forum in Baton Rouge hosted by the League of Women Voters as the end of the beginning of higher education in Louisiana, rather than the beginning of the end. At the table will be the presidents of the LSU, UL and Southern University systems as well as the head of the state’s community and technical college system. They’ll be there to discuss the long-term effects of the 2010 budget cuts, which followed a similarly painful round of cuts in 2009 and will almost surely precede more cuts next year. Higher ed and health care have become a sort of rainy day fund that lawmakers use via funding reductions to help balance the budget. But for the grace of the stimulus act, those cuts would have undoubtedly been more severe this year.
Wednesday, August 11, 2010
Written by Walter Pierce
Lafayette voters could be asked to extend the current terms of some of
our elected officials.
If you like your representative on the City-Parish Council, or if you like City-Parish President Joey Durel — double the pleasure if you like both — you’ll be pleased by what the Lafayette Charter Commission has asked LCG’s legal department for an opinion on: Can the current terms of the CPC and Durel be extended by one year?
MAY 20 This post by blogger CB Forgotston draws parallels between Gov. Bobby Jindal and two individuals he probably doesn't want to be aligned with: President Obama and former governor Edwin Edwards. CB says Jindal's trying to jack up the debt ceiling (an Obama play, according to CB) and buy votes from GOP leges who normally wouldn't go for that (an Edwards play, CB says).
MAY 20 Here's a post in the Baptist Message from an alumnus of Louisiana College. The author, Larry Burgess, calls on the leadership of the private school to take care of some pressing problems. Physical plant issues are critical and unaddressed, some faculty make so little they need government health care, and there is an atmosphere that does not encourage honest discussion, he writes. It's time to get things back in order, he says.
MAY 20 This post in Gambit tells of a benefit concert scheduled to raise money for the 19 people shot during a Mother's Day second line on Frenchmen Street in NOLA. Among them was Gambit blogger Deb Cotton, who spoke frequently about violence in the city and reported on the city's second line culture. Gambit's foundation, along with other NOLA non-profits, also is selling t-shirts to raise money for the victims.
MAY 20 Blogger Robert Mann is critical of the personal interest some legislators take in their work here, sharing the comments one NOLA solon made in explaining his decision to vote against a bill that would require people to stop discriminating against female workers. His wife might lose some salary, so he was going to have to vote against the equal pay bill, Conrad Appel said. Appel and everyone who heard him should have been ashamed, but they weren't, and that's what is wrong in that building, Mann argues.
MAY 20 American Press columnist Jim Beam writes about the budget again here, urging kudos for the House and its efforts to try to fix the budget as opposed to passing on a flawed and messy rubber-stamped document as it usually does. The Senate already is poo-pooing the effort, but instead Senators should be trying to find a way to improve it as well, Beam argues. He also has some predictions in here from LABI and CABL.
MAY 20 Here's a link to the photo gallery from Tulane's graduation this past weekend. Dr. John and Allen Toussaint played together and received honorary degrees. The Dalai Lama was so entranced by their performance he got up from his seat and walked across the stage to stand next to them. He even participated in a second line with his own personal, saffron-colored umbrella. To the graduates, he urged them to think about creating a peaceful, hopeful life and society.
MAY 20 This Picayune story questions the rhetoric of NOLA officials who say the city, aside from having a "murder problem," is safe. The talking points generally are that the criminals are killing each other, but everything else is OK. The police chief there says that even Lafayette is more dangerous than NOLA. But crime experts interviewed here say that NOLA's numbers indicate one of two things: either people are so used to violence they don't report it, or somebody's "fudging the numbers."
MAY 20 The Advocate's Mark Ballard writes about some of the background maneuvering that took place during the development of budget alternatives in the Legislature. From Rep. Joel Robideaux being called a "tax and spend liberal" to robo-call influence, Ballard lets us in on some of the work that happens behind the scenes but usually doesn't make it into the Advocate's daily coverage of the session.
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