Louisiana Voice

Rank no longer its privileges.

Well, at least insofar as the ability of lawyers who happen to also be legislators and their heretofore privilege of getting cases delayed simply by virtue of their part time duties as legislators.

For more than a century now, lawyers who double as legislators have enjoyed invoking a 1912 law that allowed them to get an automatic continuance simply by filing ex parte motions for extensions with the presiding judge that a scheduled case interfered with their legislative duties, including attendance at committee meetings as well as legislative sessions themselves.

No more.

The Louisiana Supreme Court, in a 6-1 DECISION, has ruled the practice is unconstitutional, bringing Louisiana with states like Wisconsin, Oklahoma, Nevada, Alaska and Vermont which had earlier clamped down on the practice that plaintiffs in the case said has come under growing abuse by legislator/lawyers.

The state high court’s decision most likely didn’t sit well with Sen. ALAN SEABAUGH and his law partner, Michael Melerine, Shreveport Republicans. They were, after all, the reason the law was challenged by Shreveport attorneys Joe Gregorio and J. Cole Sartin who said their client was unreasonably delayed a 2019 lawsuit after being hit by the two legislators’ client in an auto accident.

Gregorio said, “So now if they want a continuance because of legislative duties, they have to ask for a continuance like anyone else would and have a hearing on whether it is justified or not.”

Supreme Court Associate Justice Jay McCallum, the only member to cast the minority vote and himself a former legislator, nevertheless called the conduct of Seabaugh and Melerine in the case “repugnant.”

Associate Justice Jeff Hughes, in writing the majority opinion, said, “The constitution does not permit legislators who are also attorneys unchecked authority to continue any deadline whatsoever for any reason simply by virtue of their status as a legislator especially when doing so may not be in the best interest of their own client.

“Denying a court the power to decide matters historically considered as falling exclusively within the bailiwick of the judicial branch subverts the power of the judiciary in violation of the separation of powers doctrine,” he added.

Ironically, the legislator passed a bill to expand that privilege during the regular session earlier this year. Gov. Jeff Landry, saying he was uncomfortable with the “unchecked” manner of legislative continuances, vetoed the bill.

That appears to have put him at odds with his hand-picked successor for attorney general, Liz Murrill, who defended the old law and who disagreed with the Supreme Court’s ruling. “We are disappointed in the outcome but respect that the court has the authority to make that decision,” she said.

Senate President Cameron Henry (R-Metairie) said he was concerned that the ruling will disrupt the schedule for legislator-lawyers in the upcoming special session that Landry has called to overhaul the state’s tax laws.

“I’m definitely concerned that it will create a problem for members,” he said.

Law and Order isn’t just the name of a popular, long-running NBC cop show. It is a catchy three-word campaign slogan employed by every candidate for judge, district attorney and higher, all the way to and including president of the United States.

It’s a subject that resonates with voters and politicians who want to get themselves elected had better be quick to jump on board lest they be labeled as weak on crime.

Clay Higgins is certainly no exception as evidence by those cheesey VIDEOS he made while still employed as a low-level public relations director o the St. Landry Sheriff’s Office long before he ever ran for office. Seeing him decked out in his S.W.A.T. digs, you’d be excused for thinking that he was a legitimate tough guy willing and able to take on the world’s crime element single-handedly. The truth is a bit different, according to an article published by MOTHER JONESon Friday that paints a slightly different picture of the CAJUN JOHN WAYNE wannabe. He even took on the NFL over the issue of players kneeling during the National Anthem.

But not everyone who supposedly represents law and order actually lives by that credo:

• In Iowa, a 15-year-old girl accompanied officer Alec Veatch on a ride-along and upon returning to the police station around 2 a.m. Veatch, 24, sexually assaulted her in the station interview room – on camera. His punishment was 14 days in jail.
• Another 15-year-old girl was sexually assaulted by Joseph Palmer, a police officer in York, Pennsylvania. He was sentenced to probation. At least six other Pennsylvania police officers were similarly given only probation for sexual abuse of minors.
• Closer to home, New Orleans police officer Rodney Vicknair, 53, convinced a 14-year-old girl who had been sexually assaulted to go with him to the hospital for a rape kit. Instead, Vicknair himself sexually assaulted her. He would ultimately die in prison and the city of New Orleans would be hit with a million-dollar payout to the victim.
• David Higgins, 44, was a school resource officer in Kansas when he impregnated a 15-year-old sophomore.
• A Washington Post investigation found that no fewer than 1,800 state and local law enforcement officers were charged with child sexual abuse from 2005 through 2022. Almost 40 percent of those actually convicted never served a day in jail.
• Marc Dody was a Troy, Missouri, police officer when he was charged with statutory rape of a 15-year-old girl and was given a six-year sentence. He served only two years before being released. Within three months of his 2020 release, he was charged with sexually abusing another child. He was convicted in 2023, sentenced and released again in May 2024.

Many times, cops guilty of criminal activity AVOID JAIL TIME ALTOGETHER.

Slate was blunter and more to the point, calling sexual abuse of minors by cops THE QUIET EPIDEMIC OF PREDATORS IN UNIFORMS.

Nor is the abuse limited to cops.

• Tim Campbell, a Kentucky judge active in Republican politics, pleaded guilty in 2018 to 21 counts of rape, human trafficking, witness tampering, prostitution, unlawful transaction with a minor and sodomy. He received a 20-year sentence.
• In Luzerne County, Pennsylvania, two judges, Mark Ciavarella and Michael Conahan were caught up in the “kids for cash” scandal in which they literally sold as many as 2,400 juveniles into a pair of privately-run youth homes in exchange for nearly $3 million in kickbacks. Conahan was sentenced to more than 17 years in prison and Ciavarella received a 28-year sentence.

Accordingly, all those pronouncements of “law and order” by political candidates should be taken with a huge grain of salt.

Take Friday’s Mother Jones article about Higgins, for example.

The story noted that Higgins, who may be planning a U.S. Senate run in 2026 against incumbent Bill Cassidy, is a biking buddy of another “law and order” proponent, Leon Boudreaux, himself a former law enforcement officer convicted of a sex crime against a juvenile in New Mexico.

That story was also reported by a Lafayette TELEVISION STAION and the Lafayette DAILY ADVERTISER.

Then there is Jerod Prunty, another former cop buddy of Higgins, who was cited in the Mother Jones article. In 2019, he was arrested along with 19 others suspected of operating a sex-trafficking ring involving Chinese women who were reportedly forced to live in and perform sex acts at local massage parlors.

Still, Higgins puts on a public face of no-nonsense law and order, advocating severe punishment for offenders.

The ultimate irony? Higgins is expected to win reelection easily on November 5, making the constituents of his district (Louisiana’s 3rd Congressional District) as the collective butts of a cruel joke.

Clay Higgins, second from right, clasps hands with former constable Leon Boudreaux. (Mother Jones)

Kindred Vets, the biker club founded by Leon Boudreaux (center). Clay Higgins is at front left. (Mother Jones)

I should’ve known better. Any time I agree with anything The Hayride posts, I oughta wait and pull back the curtain to see what’s on the other side first.

This time I didn’t and one of LouisianaVoice’s longtime readers was quick to point out where I (and Michael Lunsford) were wrong in our (brief) bipartisan criticism of that $11.2 million allocation to New Orleans and Company.

Before I go any further, let me point out that newspapers traditionally carry a one- or two- sentence to front page errors somewhere inside the publication. I feel my readers are entitled to a little more in the way of an explanation when I’m wrong.

The gist of Lunsford’s story – and my all-too quick-endorsement of his argument – was that the Louisiana Legislature was reckless at worse or overly generous at best in “awarding” the $11.2 million to the New Orleans non-governmental agency that promotes tourism and special events for New Orleans.

Turns out, as reader Bill Hammack was quick to point out, it wasn’t a “gift” or a grant at all.

“The $11.2 m is a statutory dedication of .97 cents of hotel tax,” Hammack wrote. In other words, the state collects the tax on hotel occupancy and at the end of the year, sends New Orleans and Company the proceeds it has collected for the past year on the organization’s behalf.

“Every Convention and Visitor Bureau in the state receives that income in their respective parishes,” Hammack explained, much like the proposed tax Denham Springs citizens will vote on in November for hotel occupancy here, the revenue to be used to fund pay raises for fire fighters and police.

“New Orleans happens to be a larger amount because it has more hotel rooms and more visitors,” Hammack said. “I think it is entirely reasonable that we would use tax dollars paid by out-of-town visitors to fund marketing and promotion, rather than the tax dollars of locals.

“Those promotional dollars provide a tremendous ROI (return on investment) for the state via additional sales tax revenue from all the other spending done by visitors…shopping, food, events, etc.”

Turns out Lunsford’s post, which I was too eager to endorse despite our bitter differences on his efforts to censor libraries, was somewhat reminiscent of a Baton Rouge radio station news director who, back in the 1970s, promoted a major investigative story he’d been developing and would be airing in a couple of hours.

When the time came, he broke the story of the “missing” I-10 exit ramps and the unaccounted millions of dollars that should have gone to constructing said ramps. He told his listeners (all half-dozen or so of them) in his best Ted Baxter voice that there was an exit 163 (Siegen Lane) and an exit 166 Highland Road, but no exits 164 or 165 and that he was hot on the trail to learning where the money for their construction went.

The poor guy wasn’t aware that the exit numbers corresponded to the mile markers along the interstate highways.

Lunsford (and I) had a valid point, I believe, about the exorbitant salaries paid the president and CEO of New Orleans and Company but we were both incorrect about the source of the $11.2 million.

I got egg on my face for jumping on the Lunsford bandwagon. Now the question is, will Lunsford admit his misrepresentation as well?

I hate to keep beating a dead horse, but there are only six days left in LouisianaVoice’s October fundraiser.

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There are rarities and there are rarities and it’s rare indeed that I agree with any of the positions espoused by one Michael Lunsford, the top dog at an outfit called Citizens for a New Louisiana.

I believe, for instance, that his multi-front campaign to impose his version of morality on public libraries across the state is at best a misguided attempt to protect children and at worst, an evil introduction to across-the-board censorship that only begins with book-banning with an end-game aimed at sending society reeling back to the days of Jim Crow and an erosion of human rights in general.

But as averse as I am to just about everything Citizens for a New Louisiana stands for (or against), I have to lend my unqualified endorsement of Lunsford’s most recent exposé: the waste of public funds lavished on certain non-government organizations (NGOs), particularly the $11.2 million doled out earlier this year by the Louisiana Legislature to an NGO named New Orleans. and Company, previously known as the New Orleans Convention and Visitor’s Bureau.

In the spirit of infrequent partisanship, I find myself agreeing with The Hayride’s post by Lunsford that was originally PUBLISHED by Citizens for a New Louisiana.

Forget for the moment Hayride writer M. Fulton Robicheaux’s story on State Sen. Jean-Paul Coussan’s candidacy for Public Service Commission in which he erroneously said that Coussan was seeking promotion from “one of thirty-five state senators to one of five public service commissioners” (there are 39 state senators).

Lunsford noted that with this year’s $11.2 million allocation, the legislature has shelled out $87.3 million for New Orleans and Company since 202 even though the organization currently has more than $100 million in assets.

Even more astonishing, Lunsford says, are the salaries of the principals of New Orleans and Company. As of 2022, the most recently available figures, its president and CEO, J. Stephen Perry, received an eye-popping $711,753 in salary, bonuses and retirement benefits. By comparison, the U.S. President receives $450,000 in salary and expenses. The Louisiana governor is paid a base salary of $130,000.

Former Speaker pro tempore of the Louisiana House of Representatives Walt Legier, III, succeeded Perry as CEO. In 2022, he was executive vice president and general counsel and his salary that year was $371,237, including benefits and bonuses.

Lunsford wrote that odd rules in reporting compensation, “an organization can shuffle money around in such a way as to make it appear that no public dollars were used for executive compensation,” allowing Stephens to list his compensation as zero in documents filed with the Louisiana Legislative Auditor’s office.

He also wrote that staff salaries increased at an annual rate of 24 percent, from $8.9 million in 2021 to almost $11 million in 2022, which coincidentally just happens to match the state’s contribution.

There’s no doubt that New Orleans and Company does a commendable job for tourism in New Orleans as evidenced by the successful luring of next year’s Super Bowl and the upcoming Taylor Swift concert.

But with 1,100 MEMBER COMPANIES, one would think the organization would be a bit more self-sustaining and less dependent upon state funding.

On that point, I have to wholeheartedly agree with Lunsford – especially with the state ANTICIPATING a $65 million short during the current fiscal year with projected deficits of $559 million, $614 million and $733 million the following three subsequent fiscal years.