What happens in the boardroom

The last time we saw Jeff Arnold he was finishing out his term in the legislature while hatching this harebrained scheme to create his own parish by Brexiting Algiers and the West Bank of Jefferson Parish.  Thankfully for a lot of people, Jeff's Wanklandia Parish failed in committee. It wasn't the best news for Arnold, though, since his other gig as a VP of "Governmental Affairs" at FNBC bank was quickly coming to an unhappy end as well.

But don't worry too much about Jeff. There's always someone who can use a good lobbyist with state level experience. One such someone is the Association of Louisiana Electric Cooperatives who scooped up Arnold in 2018.  What are electric cooperatives?  Well here is an Advocate article we noticed today that explains it in a few paragraphs. 

Rural co-ops were begun during the New Deal after shareholder-owned utilities refused to extend service into rural areas. The federal government in the 1930s established a way that the users of the electricity would own the utility.

Eleven rural cooperatives provide power to about a million customers in Louisiana at rates that reimburse expenses without including a profit. Investor-owned utilities, like Entergy Corp., make and sell electricity, charging their customers their expenses plus a profit.

That doesn't sound so bad. Co-ops aren't technically public utilities but they are meant to operate in the spirit of the collective interest. Plus they are overseen by the Public Service Commission in case they ever get out of line.  So, really, they shouldn't need a corporate lobbyist like Jeff Arnold around to defend them unless... oh... wait... 

After discovering that some of the mostly part-time co-op board members were making high salaries and taking lavish trips, the PSC with unusual unanimity for such a fractious board clamped down with an April 2019 order that dictated term limits for board members, determined what constituted a quorum for making decisions, and other restrictions.

So the PSC did have to step in and correct the co-op boards for abusing the trust placed in them by the public.  And that is why the co-ops pay Jeff Arnold the big bucks.  It is so he can advise them when they to court to get off the hook.

The co-ops never argued that the PSC has no right to regulate. But that regulation, under state law, involves only rates charged and services rendered, such as the cost of buying and transmitting electricity, as well as dictating where that power can be sold, Arnold said.

“What the regulators did with their order was reach into the board room and basically tell a private corporation how to govern itself,” Arnold said. “The boardroom is the property of the owners and they choose how many board members, and say what the terms of their jobs are.”

The co-ops are intended to provide an essential public service for its communal owners. They aren't intended to enrich any private entity or individual. But, what happens in the boardroom stays in the boardroom, I guess.  Anyway, the judge ruled in favor of the privateers.

That's great news for them and for Arnold because bigger things are on the horizon. Earlier this week, we learned that the state is considering ways the co-ops can get into the broadband business through the use of federal grant funds. Now that the court has ruled in favor of the grifting board members, it looks like some folks might want to start browsing Tripadvisor again.  Just make sure they stay in the boardroom when they do.

"The Union must and shall be preserved"

The dream of Wanklandia is now Jeff Arnold's lost cause.

Algiers' push to break away from New Orleans was halted by a Louisiana Senate committee Thursday (June 4). House Bills 235 and 744 were deferred by the Committee on Local and Municipal Affairs

Amusingly, that is exactly how he is treating it.

As the longest-serving House member, he scored the support of his colleagues the second time around in the 2015 session. But on Thursday (June 4), a Senate committee blocked the framework for the West Bank community to incorporate, dealing a fatal blow to the dean of the House in his final term.

"The fact of the matter is we are viewed differently by the general electorate. We have to do things to draw attention to Algiers,'' Arnold said after the vote. "We are not the French Quarter. We are not the lakefront.

"We are a bedroom community, with small businesses, a few medium ones, that wants what everybody else has. We don't garner the attention of the city as the other communities do.''

I wouldn't necessarily disagree with the suggestion that the not-so-heavily touristed corners of town get neglected. But it's hard to see how Algiers is any special case in this regard compared to, say, East New Orleans. Heck, even Lakeview feels like they don't get enough attention. They're wrong about that, of course, but at least they don't want to run off and be their own redundant city-within-a-city over some potholes.

Meanwhile. in Baton Rouge.

The anti-St. George group Better Together said Thursday it believes the Registrar of Voters Office was off by as many as 239 signatures in validating the initial 18,000 signatures submitted on a petition to create a new city.

St. George organizers, hoping to secure a vote, turned in their first round of signatures on a petition with the goal of collecting support from 25 percent of registered voters in the proposed city.

The Registrar’s Office announced at the end of March that it had finished validating the more than 18,000 names that were turned in and found that only 15,156 were valid — creating a shortfall of about 2,700 names.

Better Together is suggesting the gap should be larger, closer to 2,900 names, based on its own review of the registrar’s work so far.

What.. is that still going on? St. George is likely to fail just like the City of Algiers did. But it's hard to escape the general atmosphere of devolution all of this evokes. Why not just go the whole nine and scrap the State of Louisiana in favor of 4 million independent sovereign citizens?  Maybe that will allow each of to accept our own Medicaid expansion .

Wanklandia Lives

Huh. Jeff Arnold's goofball Algiers secession bill made it out of committee.

Still has to pass in the legislature, which probably won't happen. (But then those people are pretty crazy.)  Then it has to pass a statewide ballot.  Then they have to get some signatures on a petition.  And then they have to have a local election.  So that's a lot of stuff that needs to happen but just passing it out of committee seems pretty wacky.

Arnold said Algiers would not be withdrawing but reincorporating. Algiers, Carrollton and Jefferson were separate cities until the 1870s, when the Legislature dissolved them without a vote of the people and made them part of New Orleans, he said.

Arnold said some residents are still angry about that.

Huge if true. That's some pretty intensely maintained institutional resentment they've got going over there. Who in Algiers even remembers that far back?  Maybe Jackie Clarkson. 

Yes well good luck paying for your ferries now

We might have to slap the tolls back on the bridge.  Or maybe start requiring visas.

Algiers could become its own city again under a measure proposed by state Rep. Jeff Arnold for the 2015 session of the Louisiana Legislature. He envisions a community led by a mayor-council form of government, with the current New Orleans mayor and council transitioning to a parish president-parish council entity.

The driving force behind the measure, he said, is the same as when he introduced the idea a decade ago: a lack of attention from New Orleans officials. "If we had a government in Algiers, it would better serve people in Algiers. We will still be in New Orleans. You'll still be a New Orleanian,'' Arnold said. "But if you have a street problem, you'd go to the Algiers courthouse as opposed to going to City Hall.'

Of course it's a stupid idea. But that probably means it's got a chance. 

President of Wanklandia

Jeff Arnold is going to need a job soon.  This seems pretty good to him, I guess.

State Rep. Jeff Arnold plans to end his tenure in the Legislature this year by pushing a bill that would have Algiers and West Jefferson secede from Orleans and Jefferson parishes.

Early indications, however, are that the West Bank lawmaker may have difficulty finding many people who want to go along with the idea.

Arnold, a term-limited Democrat who has represented Algiers for almost a dozen years, envisions a 65th parish that would stretch from Algiers to Grand Isle, powered by an offshore and marine services-based economy and a population large enough to qualify it as one of the top six parishes in the state.

"A political murder victim"

According to State Legislators, Mayor Landrieu's police millage hike failed last year as an act of political retribution. 

State Sen. J.P. Morrell, who supports the tax increase, blames the failure on political spite. “There was a hit out on Mitch Landrieu bills, and unfortunately, that bill got caught in the crossfire,” Morrell, D-New Orleans, said Monday.

Morrell did not comment on whether the police protection bill was "hit" with baseball bats but he did go on to call it was paraphrased by this reporter as having called it a "murder victim."

Morrell characterized last year’s tax increase bill as a political murder victim. He said a lot of the mayor’s legislative packaged died, and he is uncertain why.

“There was a lot of politics afoot,” he said.

Morrell said it is clear more money is needed, especially for the Police Department. He said the department needs competitive wages in order to recruit officers.

(State Rep. Jeff) Arnold, leery of a past library tax under a previous administration, said he wants to see the budget numbers. He recalled when the city wanted a library tax increase. Once the increase passed, he said, the city added in the extra dollars and pulled out pre-existing money it was spending on libraries, making the tax hike a wash for the library’s budget.

This year’s legislation, House Bill 111, includes language that the additional revenues “shall not displace, replace or supplant funding by the city of New Orleans for fire and police protection for calendar year 2013.”

Arnold should understand the difference between dedicated millage funding and annual appropriations from the city's general fund which can be pulled back at any time. Moving from the latter to the former makes a big difference as far as ensuring a predictable annual budget is concerned regardless of whether the city decides to supplement that in any given year with discretionary funds. 

From NOPD's perspective, it's thoughtful of Arnold to try and ensure that this ends up being a net gain for their total budget but it's not correct to say the overall effect would be "a wash" if the millage passes.

Another one jumps off the #OneTeam

State Rep. Jeff Arnold endorses Bagneris.

Arnold said his relationship with the mayor started to break down during the 2013 regular session over legislation regarding firefighter pensions and local judgeships.

“You drew a line in the sand, Mitch, not me,” said Arnold. “With Mitch, it’s, ‘If you’re not 100 percent with me, you’re 100 percent against me.’ I don’t see anything he has done for Algiers. I didn’t even see an image of Algiers in his (commercials). Right now Michael Bagneris is sounding a whole lot better to me.”

Arnold is actually the latest in a string of local players who have declared their disenchantment with the Mayor.  Most notably BOLD and OPDEC have endorsed Bagneris while the Independent Women's Organization has split its endorsement.  Stephanie Grace went so far last week as to say the cumulative effect of these endorsements is to make President Obama's endorsement of Mitch "probably a wash." That seems like a stretch to me.  Grace writes,

This, of course, goes to what’s shaping up as a major theme of the election. There’s no question that Landrieu has battled with not only the Obama administration, but with the city’s firefighters over the pension, its judges over the size of the bench and the prospect of a new courthouse, and so on. He’s ticked people off; they’re now going public. The question remains: Do average voters care? And even if they do, which side are they likely to take?

All signs point to, no, they do not care.  They might care if candidate Bagneris was running a campaign about issues that connected with their concerns... a campaign about anything at all would be a good start.  But as long as the only thing he has going for him are political insiders who are pissed off at the so-called "productive asshole" he's not going anywhere.