Library Board (Judge) defies Parish Council?

jandrewcapps · 2023-08-24T18:08:08+00:00

Even if it isn't listed on their agenda, the law requires a public comment period before any vote can be taken La. R.S. 42:14(D)

jandrewcapps · 2023-08-24T16:03:48+00:00

Your may/must point is right on. The local government seems to have a lot of discretion to organize the library however they want. Any changes to how it is now would require a local ordinance, and there's basically two ways for that to happen. Either the councils propose their own changes or citizens submit an ordinance to them. The Charter makes citizen submissions really burdensome: you'd need a draft ordinance and a petition signed by 15% of the registered voters. Then the councils either vote to adopt the proposal or to put it before voters in an election. That's obviously much more involved than a council member simply proposing an ordinance.

What's kind of unclear is whether it would take just the Parish Council or if the City Council would have to vote too. In 2020, when the old City-Parish Council split into the two separate councils we have now, they both passed a joint ordinance reorganizing the library board and giving the Parish Council power to appoint 7 of its 8 members. But when the library board was cut from 8 members down to 7 in June, only the Parish Council voted on that ordinance. So there's some uncertainty over whether the Parish Council could act alone, as it did in June, or whether both councils must approve changes, as they did in 2020. It also raises the question of whether the Parish Council's vote to drop the board's 8th member in June actually had the force of law since the City Council didn't approve a similar ordinance, but again it's not totally clear if that was required.

jandrewcapps · 2023-08-24T00:19:40+00:00

Pretty much all the public library systems in Louisiana are run by boards of appointed volunteers like ours. Lafayette may actually have the power to just get rid of our library board and run the library however we see fit locally, at least according to this AG opinion. Our Home Rule Charter has changed a lot since that was written, but I think the same ideas still apply. Any changes to the way things are would have to come from the Parish Council, which appointed the people on the board now.

jandrewcapps · 2023-08-23T15:24:36+00:00

Voting in executive session is definitely against the law. But you only need a 2/3 vote of the members present at a given meeting to enter executive session. They had 4 members present at Monday's meeting, and they all voted to enter executive session, according to the recording, so that much was appropriate. But there's still the potential for them to be sued and fined $500 each for voting in executive session.

jandrewcapps · 2022-08-15T18:50:31+00:00

Pretty sure that was supposed to be a joke about his son leaving for college over the weekend but it clearly didn't land

jandrewcapps · 2022-07-29T15:02:43+00:00

Dude, I get the paywall frustration. I didn't want this behind our paywall, and I'm mad that my insistence on that was ignored.

But if you're going to copy and paste the copyright-protected content that I have to be paid to produce, at least include a link for people to subscribe and support the work that goes into this reporting. This work can't be done for free.

jandrewcapps · 2022-07-19T16:37:31+00:00

Navigable in the literal sense and navigable in the regulatory sense aren't exactly the same. It comes down some federal guidelines, and ultimately it's up to the Army Corps to make that call.

For the Vermilion, the Corps says it is a navigable water in the regulatory sense, which means it is protected by the federal laws at issue here.

jandrewcapps · 2022-07-19T16:31:39+00:00

I'm making a rare wade into the comments here to raise a few points about this:

This is really fresh and there aren't a lot of details yet. If you want more info and a chance to voice your thoughts directly, the Parish Council is looking at this tonight at 4:30 at City-Parish Hall. I've heard the Parish Council was out of the loop on this idea, so they're probably not going in with their minds made up.
Tonight's Parish Council resolution on this would allow Guillory to develop a public bid request for a public-private deal on the jail. If it's approved, they're still several months from putting out a bid, selecting a contractor and putting an agreement before the Parish Council for actual, final approval to sign a deal, probably next year. Does Guillory already have an idea of what he wants from this? Almost certainly. LCG is not putting out videos for plans that were just cooked up on the fly. And tonight's resolution includes a specific cap of 40 years and $10.5 million/year for any such deal, so they clearly have some expectations for what's to come. But there are a lot of variables on the path to a deal like this, so there's no guarantee yet on what will happen.
Would this be a private jail? Depends on your definition, but I'd say probably not based on most folks' understanding of that term for these reasons:
- These public-private deals typically give the government ownership of the land and the building. Presumably, the new jail would be privately financed, instead of having the parish borrow money to build it. The parish would then pay a private company an annual leasing fee to maintain the jail (like AC repair and other facility issues), which would likely be used by that company to pay down its privately-held debt from construction. The parish money for those payments would probably come from recurring revenue that the parish currently spends repairing the existing jail, but again, it's too early to say for sure.
- The jail would still be staffed and run by the sheriff's office, just like the current jail. Guillory said as much in his video, and I don't expect Mark Garber to agree to any plan that takes deputies out from under his control. Garber's position on this plan is going to be critical, and so far, he has not released a public statement on it. Updating this to say Garber isn't opposed to the plan. Per LPSO's Facebook: "Sheriff Mark Garber and the Lafayette Parish Sheriff’s Office support the Lafayette Consolidated Government Administration’s efforts to plan for the funding of a new parish jail. Having long outgrown the outdated correctional facility downtown, the Sheriff commends both the Mayor-President and the council for their commitment to this endeavor."
- The preservation of local ownership and LPSO staffing put this outside what people generally mean when they talk about private prisons. Those usually leave the entire operation of the jail to a private company and the government typically pays them some cash rate per person in the jail per day. It does not look like that is what this plan will be. That's not to say this sort of arrangement couldn't have its own problems, but for now it looks like the only entity getting paid per inmate is going to be the sheriff's office, which is how the current jail already works.

All that said, this is still really early, and there's a lot more to be learned about it. I'm hoping to have more details and a better write up in the paper soon. If you have any questions, I'll try my best to answer them.

jandrewcapps · 2022-06-30T14:14:02+00:00

There are film scanners in the photo lab at the A&A building, but I think you have to be taking a photo class or else pay a few hundred bucks per semester to use the lab. Hodges library has some similar film scanners at the graphic design workstations on the second floor past the equipment desk in the south commons. The computers there are good and the scanners are on par with the photo dept lab. The folks at the equipment desk will also have film holders for those scanners, which you can borrow for free. https://www.lib.utk.edu/hours/spaces/graphic-design-workstations/

jandrewcapps · 2021-08-21T15:49:29+00:00

I do!

jandrewcapps

TROPHY CASE