Louisiana Voice

(Of course, Granny was a little more graphic with her language)

Be that as it may, Jeff Landry, Louisiana’s attention-starved excuse for an attorney general, is at it again.

Before diving too deeply into this story, it might be fair to ask:

• Has he ever won one of these silly lawsuits?
• Does he think perhaps Louisiana would be better served if he did something like, oh say, rooting out public corruption and human trafficking?

Our publicity hound in residence, while ignoring sexual harassment in his office, obviously has his eye on the 2023 governor’s race and is doing everything in his power to ensure that he is the choice of the State Republican Party to wrest the office from the Democrats.

Landry, who has a QUESTIONABLE PAST as a deputy sheriff in St. Martin Parish is quick with the lawsuit trigger finger but REFUSED to sign onto a letter that dozens of other state attorneys general sent to the U.S. Department of Justice condemning the right-wing insurrectionist attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6. His refusal, of course, was because he was INSTRUMENTAL in the attack.

And when it came down to protecting his office from transparency, he was pretty damn quick to file a LAWSUIT against a reporter for the Baton Rouge Advocate who had committed the mortal sin of submitting a public records request. That lawsuit, like so many others filed by this nitwit, was unsuccessful. There’s yet to be an accounting of how much taxpayer dollars he wasted on that frivolous lawsuit.

It wasn’t the first time Landry has RESISTED RELEASING public records – and lost.

Landry also got smacked down in another COURTROOM BATTLE against Gov. John Bel Edwards’s emergency declaration as the COVID-19 pandemic was spiking and before that, he lost a case in St. Martin Parish when he challenged actions by local and state election officials from accepting private, nonprofit funds to help them run elections during the pandemic.

Those last two defeats prompted a New Orleans attorney to observe that Landry “clearly has no grasp of the law” and that me may well “be as dumb as he appears.” And that attorney has no dog in any of those hunts nor does he intend to run for attorney general.

Then there is that MURKY STORY about a firm owned by Landry importing Mexican workers with the assistance of a felon who had broken federal immigration laws. Landry, of course, is quite outspoken in his opposition to illegal immigration.

Landry even went on a TWITTER RANT that was riddled with incorrect information and which generated tons of ridicule for the state’s top lawyer and which earned him the title of “the stupidest lawyer in the United States” – definitely not the kind of publicity a potential candidate for governor should want.

But I digress. Back to his latest quest of tilting at windmills.

He has joined with 20 other Repugnantcan attorneys general in challenging a section of the American Rescue Plan that was designed to discourage states and local governments from using federal stimulus funds to offset local and state tax revenue and reducing taxes accordingly – in other words, using stimulus funding as an excuse to reduce taxes.

That was a favorite trick of the Jindal administration: to use one-time funds to pay for recurring expenses. Jan Moller of The Daily Dime news service explains that the plan includes a clause the provides that “States that cut taxes and try to backfill the lost revenue with stimulus dollars will have to repay part of their federal allotment.”

Moreover, Moller pointed out, the Washington Post pointed out that the funds “drew bipartisan support from mayors, county leaders and governors, even though Republicans in Congress blasted it as wasteful spending — and falsely contended that it only benefited Democratic-led states. But states cannot use the money to address their rising pension costs, nor can they appear to take the dollars and then cut taxes, essentially tapping Washington’s help to make up for any lost revenue either directly or indirectly.”

That stipulation is nothing new, really. Back in the 1970s, there was something called the Public Service Employment Program where the feds funded public service jobs to not only help people getting these jobs, but the governments for which they worked, as well – temporarily. For example, it funded many police officers and other city workers in small towns.

A primary clause in all these contracts with local governments was the Maintenance of Effort clause, according to one of our readers who spent his entire career in the fiscal part of state government. Maintenance of Effort essentially said the feds would provide money to hire additional people. State and local governmental entities were absolutely not to reduce existing funding or replace existing employees with this money or the people hired.

Needless to say, cutting taxes because they were getting this money was a clear violation of the clause. This was a provision even the most fiscally conservative Repugnantcan should have loved because it made perfect sense, particularly since the money was temporary.

Maintenance of Effort is a basic principle that prevents the kind of stunts Jindal (and he was not the first nor the last) repeatedly pulled to “balance” the budget – supplanting general fund for recurring expenses with non-recurring dollars. The repeal of the Stelly Plan simply because we had surpluses (surpluses are not a bad thing unless you are an idiot like Jindal and Landry) is another example of mucking up the works for political reasons by ignoring the consequences any fool could see coming down the road and listening instead to people like Grover Norquist.

Bottom line: Our brilliant Attorney General is again taking action that will work to exactly no one’s advantage. This is not rocket science, but it is just complicated enough that most people won’t bother to try to understand it and will only think he is standing up for some B.S. protection of state sovereignty.

The question is: does he even understand that? Given his past performance, it’s highly doubtful. But just in case, here’s a possible solution: if you don’t like the stipulation put on the federal bucks, you can always just refuse the money. See how the 4 million citizens of Loozianer would like that.