Louisiana Voice

Baton Rouge attorney Tim Hardy says that contrary to reports out of Shreveport, he has not “fired” the city as a client, nor does he represent the city on environmental matters.

It’s not uncommon for a client to fire his attorney, but for an attorney to fire his client?

Pretty rare, especially if that client is a fairly large municipality paying significant fees. For law firms putting a fair amount of emphasis on rainmaking (legal parlance for bringing in clients), it’s practically unprecedented.

But in the case of the City of Shreveport, LouisianaVoice was told that’s exactly what happened. Shreveport has been mired in decades-long battles with the Environmental Protection Agency over illegal sewerage discharges, but Hardy said his work with the city was not involved in matters concerning the consent decree over illegal discharges into the Red River.

TIM HARDY

“I will say this,” Hardy told LouisianaVoice, “there likely will be discussions going forward concerning my representation of the city in other matters. But I have not ‘fired’ the city, nor has there been any communication between me and the city regarding anything of that nature.”

A source close to the city informed LouisianaVoice on Saturday that Hardy had severed his relationship with the city and that the dispute was over the ongoing controversy surrounding the consent decree.

Having already paid a $650,000 fine to the EPA, while agreeing to the 146-page CONSENT DECREE entered into under the administration of former Mayor Cedric Glover in 2014, the city saw the cost of compliance mushroom from $350 million to $1 billion.

A year ago, Mayor Adrian Perkins appointed Burns and McDonnel/Bonton to oversee compliance and Hardy, a Shreveport native and a partner in the Baton Rouge law firm  BREAZEALE, SACHSE & WILSON was retained for legal representation in other matters, Hardy said.

The consent decree was entered into after the city was cited for violations of the Clean Water Act in the form of discharges of untreated sewage into the Red River, according to an online EPA POSTING of the settlement agreement.

The city also posted its own VERSION of the agreement.

A state AUDIT of the city for the year ended December 31, 2017 addressed the ongoing problems with wastewater problems experienced by the city:

“A consent decree, with the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ), relative to wastewater improvements in Shreveport was officially filed in early 2014. The consent decree will require the city to make various wastewater treatment plant and sanitary sewer infrastructure improvements in order to reduce sanitary sewer overflows in the sewer collection system and meet wastewater discharge permit requirements under wet weather conditions.

“To fund the sewer improvement program, the City Council approved rate increases over a 10-year period. The first of those increases went into effect October 1, 2013. A 15% increase in sewer rates went into effect January 1, 2017. The Water & Sewerage department continues to work with the EPA to make sure the project stays on schedule. With most of the Phase 1 projects completed the City has started on Phase 2 projects while laying the ground work for Phase 3. To help fund that work an additional $120 million of Water & Sewer revenue bonds were sold in 2017.

“The City continues to pay off General Obligation Bonds; the City will pay off all but the 2011 and 2014 GOB debt in the next 3 years. Increases in Water and Sewer rates will fund the additional debt required to complete the project required by the consent decree. With most revenues flat, continuing services at current levels will be a challenge without additional revenues.”

Sewage discharge apparently isn’t the only environmental issue facing the city. An online report by Epic Water Filters cited a laundry list of contaminants found in Shreveport’s drinking water.

But whatever the problem with the sewage discharge, the city apparently was not heeding the advice of its legal representation and a frustrated Hardy finally called it quits on Friday.

LouisianaVoice attempted to contact Hardy for a comment, emailing him on Saturday, asking that he call us but did not respond until Sunday. “I didn’t call you back because I didn’t know who you were,” he said, adding he had never read LouisianaVoice.

“The buck stops here.”

—Sign on the desk of Harry S Truman

“Leadership: Whatever happens, you’re responsible. If it doesn’t happen, you’re responsible.”

—Donald Trump tweet, November 8, 2013.

“I don’t take responsibility at all.”

—Donald Trump, at a press conference Friday during which he blamed Barack Obama for the lack of widespread access to testing for coronavirus.

Donald Trump proclaimed at a campaign rally in Wisconsin in November 2015 that, “THE AMERICAN DREAM IS DEAD.” Some areas of the nation, particularly in the south, would find it difficult to argue with that assertion.

Of 50 American counties where the “American Dream” is said to be dead, 36 (72 percent) are located in the Deep South, according to 24/7 Wall Street, the survey company that tracks statistics on poverty, obesity, health, corruption, and myriad other subjects.

Three of those are in Louisiana, including Orleans Parish, rated the sixth most hopeless place to live in the U.S., East Baton Rouge Parish (44^th worst), and East Carroll Parish 35^th worst).

But Louisiana fared well compared to Mississippi with 13 counties, Georgia with seven, and North Carolina with five. Combined, the three states accounted for half of American counties where hopes of a better life have been all but extinguished by crushing poverty, unemployment and lagging earnings.

To identify the counties where the American dream is dead, 24/7 Wall Street reviewed the effect on household income earned in adulthood for every year of childhood spent in nearly 3,000 U.S. counties and county equivalents.

Population figures, poverty rates, educational attainment, income inequality for each county came from the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2018 American Community Survey and are 5-year averages.

“The American Dream is the idea that through sacrifice and hard work, a person from any background can attain success — typically characterized by upward economic mobility,” the report said. “While millions of Americans are a living testimony that the American Dream is still alive, there are parts of the country that tell a very different story.

“Conceptually, the American Dream is based on the assumption that success depends on one’s choices. However, broader conditions related to the community and environment — particularly during one’s childhood — can also play a considerable role.

A 26-year-old who grew up in a low-income household in one of these counties earns an annual income of anywhere from $201 to $484 less for each year of childhood spent there than the national income per capita among 26-year-olds. Depending on how many years and the average annual loss, this can amount to thousands of dollars in lost income every year.

Statistically, the worst county in America was Oglala Lakota County, South Dakota where the average annual income loss per year of childhood residence was $484, where per capita household income was $13,647, where the poverty was a staggering 49.3 percent the unemployment rate for December 2019 was 10.0 percent.

Orleans Parish, by comparison, had an average income loss per year of $276, a per capita household income of $31,246, a poverty rate of 24.6 percent and an unemployment rate of 4.8 percent.

For East Baton Rouge Parish, the average annual income loss per year was $203 while the per capita household income was $35,064. The EBR poverty rate is 18.3 percent and the unemployment rate in December was 4.4 percent.

It’s uncertain how East Carroll Parish ranked 35^th worst in the country to Orleans Parish’s 6^th worst ranking. The only statistic that was worse than Orleans was the average income loss per year of childhood residence ($210). Otherwise, the house per capita income of $18,062, the 48.6 percent poverty rate and the 11.7 percent unemployment rate were all considerably worse than Orleans.

East Carroll also is one of the worst, statistically speaking, for the percentage of children living with single parents (73.3 percent, compared the national share of 33.0 percent).

Mississippi counties and their rankings included Grenada County (31^st worst), Washington County (28^th), Oktibbeha County (26^th), Bolivar County (25^th), Sunflower County (24^th), Tallahatchie County (22^nd), Hinds County (17^th), Leflore County (16^th), Claiborne County (13^th), Tunica County (10^th), and Humphreys County (9^th worst).

“I really believe I’d run in there, even if I didn’t have a weapon.”

—Donald Trump, describing how he would take heroic action if he was on the scene of a school mass shooting.

“I don’t want to use the B-word. If what the airline industry says is true, then Congress really will have little choice to act or face a significant extinction moment for the airline industry.”

—Trump administration official, on March 12, apparently not realizing that bailout of the airline industry, hurt by the coronavirus spread (with apologies to Kris Kristofferson), is just another word for socialism.

 “At a time when we need to be moving away from fossil fuels, federal resources should be going to renewables and efficiency, not propping up drilling. This is socialism for the fossil fuel industry.”

—Michael Gerrard, of the Columbia University Law School, on March 12, on Donald Trump’s desire to bail out oil and gas producers from falling oil prices.

“If you do it for some, then how could you not do it for everyone?”

—Heritage Foundation visiting fellow and informal economic adviser to the 2016 Trump campaign, on March 12, in noting a broader bailout would be tantamount to more widespread socialism.