Loaded and Coded
Beware those who would bestow ‘fiscal responsibility’ on local government.

At first blush it sounds like the simplest of concepts. Ensure expenses don’t exceed income.

Let’s Face It
It’s time to elevate the discourse at theind.com.
By: Walter Pierce

Wednesday, November 16, 2011

Outgoing District 6 Councilman Sam Doré lost badly on Oct. 22. He couldn’t be more thrilled.  By Walter Pierce

It seemed last Tuesday on the patio at Legends on Bertrand Drive as City-Parish Councilman Sam Doré endorsed District 6 hopeful Jared Doise, that Doré wasn’t so much passing the baton to the candidate he hopes will succeed him on the council as he was tossing a hot potato to the nearest shmuck. I don’t mean that Doise is a shmuck...

Wednesday, October 12, 2011

But in unincorporated Lafayette Parish, almost anything goes.

I saw the plans last week for the garbage transfer station being built on Sunbeam Lane in north Lafayette. As the crow flies it’s not far from my house near Four Corners, and as facilities that deal with garbage go, it will be a nice one — an enclosed building surrounded by trees and landscaping in which trash trucks pull in and dump their cargo into 18-wheelers, which then make the trek to the landfill. It’s an efficient, economical means of transferring waste. And a necessary one. Like it or not we generate a lot of garbage. Too much, really.

Wednesday, October 5, 2011

But it doesn’t always speak clearly; sometimes it insinuates.

The numbers demanded a double take. An incumbent lugging nearly two years’ of bad headlines is rolling in the dough. His competitor, a decades-long civil servant with 22 years in the U.S. Air Force under his belt, is scraping by. I can’t remember which campaign-finance report on the Ethics Board’s website was more compelling — the handsome sum raised by Councilman Brandon Shelvin in one of Lafayette’s poorest districts, or Carencro City Manager Lloyd Rochon lending his campaign four times more than it had taken in. Where Shelvin had generated more than $20,000 in contributions and had better than $15K in the bank, Rochon had less than $250 to spend after a single $500 contribution and $2,000 personal loan.