(March 26)
State legislators should make clear to Gov. Jeff Landry and his unofficial adviser Shane Guidry that changes to the basic organizational set-up of New Orleans area levee boards are unwelcome.
And if Guidry is going to smear current and recent levee board commissioners as “scammers who are just out for themselves,” he should put up or shut up. To cast aspersions without any specifics is to commit calumny of the first degree.
By ordinary standards, the Southeast Louisiana Flood Protection Authority-East and its sister levee board, the Flood Protection Authority-West, are model agencies in terms of structure and oversight. Consolidated from 10 patronage-heavy, ineffective levee boards in the immediate wake of 2005’s Hurricane Katrina, the two regional flood protection authorities are designed to depoliticize the operations while stocking the board with people with relevant expertise, such as in hydrology or engineering.
The state’s citizens approved the new structure by an 81% vote, with 94% voting in favor in Orleans Parish. Board members are nominated by an independent committee created in concert with the aims of that statewide referendum. The board is supposed to hire the agency’s director, who by statute must have a “minimum of ten years senior executive experience in business, engineering or hydrology, or in the performance of public works functions, related to flood and drainage control.”
Landry, however, seems to have delegated de facto authority over the levee board that oversees flood protection on the Mississippi River’s east bank to Guidry, a New Orleans area businessman. In December, Guidry and his hand-picked board president, Roy Carubba, effectively ran off former director Kelli Chandler when she balked at Guidry’s plans to have levee board police fight crime in the surrounding neighborhoods instead of focusing entirely on protecting the city’s anti-flood infrastructure….. [The rest of this column is at this link.]
