Louisiana
New Orleans voters will get a chance Saturday to weigh in on efforts to tighten oversight at the New Orleans Public Belt Railroad, a once-obscure agency that was thrust into the spotlight as a result of misconduct by its top administrator. A City Charter amendment on the ballot would shrink the railroad commission from 16 members serving 16-year terms to nine members with four-year terms, plus the mayor. It would also allow people who live outside New Orleans to serve.
Voters agreed Saturday to renew a 4-cent sales tax on cigarettes and to dedicate an annual stream of tobacco settlement money to the state’s free college tuition program called TOPS. Lawmakers connected the two to get around a veto from Gov. Bobby Jindal, who opposed the tax renewal but pressed hard for the TOPS funding ballot initiative.
The person listed as vice-chair of a committee formed to recall Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal says her husband - the committee’s chair - put her name on the application without permission. Joyce DeCarlo Ceasar says she wants nothing to do with the recall effort initiated by her husband Wednesday.
When asked, state officials indicated that the petitions had already been distributed listing the chair and vice chair, despite Mrs. Ceasar’s objections.
It seems there is the potential for a high profile recall campaign in Louisiana against Governor Bobby Jindal:
It looks as though the citizens of Louisiana are going to try and use a recall petition on Democratic Senator Mary Landrieu. The right to recall an elected official is something Citizens in Charge Foundation supports. There aren’t usually as many high profile stories in the world of recall, but every now and then a prominent official is subjected to recall, this will be interesting to watch.
Voters should have a chance next year to put into the constitution what they told legislators last year: “Don’t vote yourselves a pay raise during your current term in office.” The House on Monday unanimously approved Senate Bill 67 by state Sen. Joe McPherson, D-Woodworth, which requires that any raise granted to state officials and the Public Service Commission won’t go into effect during that four-year term. Raises would not go into effect until a new set of legislators or statewide officials are elected.
Rep. Greg Cromer, R-Slidell, said the state should not be meddling with school board affairs. Instead, he said, voters should determine locally whether they want to limit terms on their school board.
Article XIII
§1. Amendments
(A) Procedure. An amendment to this constitution may be proposed by
joint resolution at any regular session of the legislature, but the resolution
shall be prefiled, at least ten days before the beginning of the session, in
accordance with the rules of the house in which introduced. An
amendment to this constitution may be proposed at any extraordinary
session of the legislature if it is within the objects of the call of the session
and is introduced in the first five calendar days thereof. If two-thirds of the
You have no statewide Initiative & Referendum rights. Parishes enjoy a local Initiative process.
Poll:
See the results of a poll on support for statewide initiative & referendum here.
Progressive reformers, who were never a major force in Louisiana
politics, failed to pass a statewide initiative and referendum amendment,
but they did succeed in passing laws providing for municipal I&R (1912)
and for recall of statewide elected officers (1914).
Paul Jacob, President of Citizens in Charge, an organization working to preserve and expand initiative and referendum rights, addressed Colorado transparency in his Common Sense column today. I have copied it, with permission, below.
Opaque Transparency
The 32-year-old Jefferson Parish resident who filed a recall petition last week against Gov. Bobby Jindal said today he will drop the effort now that the governor has vetoed the legislative pay raise bill.
Ryan Fournier, 32, is a Republican who voted for Jindal but was dismayed by the governor’s refusal, until Monday, to stop lawmakers from more than doubling their pay.
“I think we ought to throw in the towel as far as a recall,” Fournier said this morning.