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Friday, February 07, 2014

Bobby's levee boards

I hope y'all enjoyed the great and glorious era of politically independent levee boards.  Almost made it, what.. seven, eight years?
The call by Jindal for more nominees in place of those he dislikes raises legal questions that were left unanswered by the first-time incursion of a politician into the process, Lapeyre said.

What happens if the governor vetoes a qualified nominee? Is the committee required to find  nominees the governor likes?

State law says sitting members continue to serve until they are replaced, which  raises the possibility of standoff:  Could the board repeatedly send the same rejected nominee to the governor?

Lapeyre said he still isn’t certain what the law allows, or what his committee will decide to do.

 “Do we even have an obligation to meet and send up new nominations? I’m not certain if that’s clear in the law,” Lapeyre told The Lens. “Can we just send the same person we think is the most qualified back to the governor even if he rejects them?  I don’t know the answer to that, either.”

In fact, Lapeyre isn’t sure his committee would even agree to consider the governor’s request until after it meets, something that won’t happen until Feb. 25 at the earliest.

Yet if the committee decides not to send new nominees to Jindal — even those he has already rejected — the governor might claim the right of another unilateral appointment under the time-limit portion of the law.
 

1 comment:

Clay said...

Nick Altiero, who represented Tulane University’s School of Science and Engineering on the committee, said, “We’re being put in a position, in my opinion, to send up inferior candidates, and I don’t think I was put on this committee to put up inferior candidates.”

That's the killer quote, I think.