forgotston.com

In his column in Thursday’s Lake Charles newspaper, Jim Beam writes about the growing trend in our state government of hiring outside and particularly out-of-state consultants to do all the heavy thinking for us. ( See column here.)

Louisiana native political consultant James Carville once quipped that perhaps Louisiana should out-source it’s governing to Minnesota and in return Louisiana would do the cooking and entertaining for Minnesota.  Carville may have been joking, but it’s beginning to look more and more like the joke is on the taxpayers of Louisiana.

Replace leges

Of late, the legislators have begun to seek more and more outside (out-of-state) help to do their jobs. Instead of asking consultants for advice, perhaps they should actually do their jobs of representing us. That starts with asking us how we would like our money spent.  Who better to know that than those of us who earned in the first place.

If the leges continue their dependency on consultants, especially out-of-state ones, perhaps we should consider amending our constitution to abolish the lege and simply hire consultants to do their jobs.  Perhaps the leges will form a commission to hire some consultants to look at the feasibility of such a plan.

I’m tired of the people of Louisiana being insulted by the fact that, apparently, nobody who resides in our state is smart enough to tell our public officials what needs to be done to improve our state. If things are really that bad perhaps we need to consider Carville’s advice seriously.

C.B.

1 CB 8:00 am

Sign outside of Moret’s office

In an article in today’s Lafayette newspaper, our ethically-challenged head of economic development Stephen Moret responds to the charge that he is supporting out-of-state competition to an existing Louisiana business. ( See story here.)

Moret was caught with his pants down and further exposed himself.

Here’s a comment by Moret found in the story:

…[T]he offer to help Bruce Foods with a $1 million forgivable loan is “still on the table” and is “not on the same scale” as the ConAgra project. (Emphasis mine.)

Next we read:

Moret said he never saw Brown’s plans for a frozen sweet potato plant.

This begs a question: If Moret never saw the plans, how did he conclude that it was not on the “same scale” with the competitor’s plant?

Are all Harvard graduates, like Moret, clairvoyant?

C.B.

1 CB 12:00 pm

“Si” Brown President and CEO of Bruce Foods in Iberia Parish, an 80-year old LA company, appeared this morning on the Moon Griffon statewide radio show.   (Podcast of the radio show here.)

Brown claims that since 2003 he had plans to build a similar sweet potato processing plant in South Louisiana to the one proposed by ConAgra in North LA near Delhi.   The difference, according to Brown, is that he would have built the plant with incentives from the state at a cost of $8,000 per job ($1 Million) versus the one in North LA at a cost to the state of $104,000 per job ($37 Million).

The only reason Brown’s plant is not already operating is, among other things, our ethically-challenged head of economic development, Stephen Moret “changed the rules” on his company.

Brown also said he has been bogged-down in “red tape” and that the state’s economic development program is too complex, lacks transparency, there are too many state and local agencies involved plus politics.

Brown said he was “blind-sided” by the plans in North LA.   He said it was “not a level playing field” in LA for existing businesses.

Brown said now the state is paying a company to come to LA to compete with his company.

Brown was a member of Jindal’s economic development transition team where he said the consensus was that the state should help existing businesses before considering out-of-state businesses.   Apparently, the state’s economic development program is more efficient in paying businesses to come to LA than helping existing businesses expand.

Something is very wrong.

C.B.

1 CB 11:24 am