In March Gov. Bobby Jindal announced his plans to create a single Louisiana Housing Corporation to streamline the state’s disparate housing entities, including the Louisiana Housing Finance Agency. He proposed that the nonprofit LHC oversee all housing funds in the state, uniting almost 30 separate programs now managed by five organizations.
Monday the Senate passed Republican Sen. Neil Riser’s bill 36-1, sending it to the House. The legislation calls for an 11-member board with eight gubernatorial appointees to run the corporation.
To ensure a smooth transition for the consolidation, the LHFA would continue to exist through June 2012.
Apparently seeing the handwriting on the wall, the LHFA’s president, Milton Bailey, announced to his board April 13 that he did not want to be considered for re-election to the office of president. His resignation was effective immediately. At that time, the board voted to leave the office open for three months and then begin a search, according to spokesman Jeff DeGraff. In the interim, Vice-President Alesia Wilkins-Braxton is acting head of the agency.
Specifically, the legislation is designed to dismantle the LHFA, which, according to the Associated Press, was the subject of numerous complaints about bureaucracy and inefficient spending after the 2005 hurricanes.
The LHFA's chairman in the wake of those storms was Greg Gachassin of Lafayette. Gov. Kathleen Blanco appointed Gachassin to the board, through the Louisiana Mortgage Bankers Association, in January 2005. He was named interim chairman in February 2005 and served as chairman from April 2005 to April 2006, leaving the board in October 2007, according to LHFA's records. A couple of years later, Gachassin formed The Cartesian Company, which he describes as a real estate development and finance solutions company, specializing in development, project management, capital solutions and public-private partnerships. Read more about how Gachassin used his position on the state board and later the Lafayette Public Trust Finance Authority to orchestrate lucrative low-income housing deals for himself here. (State Rep. Rickey Hardy has asked the Louisiana Board of Ethics to investigate whether Gachassin's actions constitute a violation of the state's Ethics Code.)
Billions in federal and state dollars flow through many different agencies in Louisiana, including the LHFA, the Office of Community Development’s Disaster Recovery Unit, the Department of Health and Hospitals and the Department of Children and Family Services, along with many other programs that plan, fund and monitor home ownership, homelessness prevention, rental assistance, and even housing related child care.
“By supporting this legislation to create the Louisiana Housing Corporation, we will help developers better access capital and offer affordable housing options to Louisiana residents in need of safe homes for their families,” Jindal said. “We are long overdue in establishing a consolidated and focused strategy to coordinate our state housing programs, which will potentially save millions of taxpayer dollars while helping public and private housing agencies provide more effective services to our people.”
Louisiana has almost 30 housing-related programs managed across five different organizations, all with a shared purpose of providing safe and affordable housing. These agencies currently employ more than 300 people — more than 100 earning in excess of $60,000 a year — and this staff serves overlapping functions, Jindal contends. Creating a unified LHC will include the reductions of staffing needs and elimination of multiple boards, his office noted, while better identifying housing needs and developing policies and plans to meet those needs around the state.
In announcing the plan in March, House Speaker Jim Tucker said, “A statewide coordinated housing plan has been sorely needed for some time. Coordinating the myriad of housing programs and agencies across this state will help focus the state’s efforts in providing quality homeownership, rental and recovery initiatives.”
The corporation would oversee rental assistance, home ownership promotion programs, homeless prevention, housing-related child care and hurricane recovery dollars for rebuilding rental housing.
MAY 20 This post by blogger CB Forgotston draws parallels between Gov. Bobby Jindal and two individuals he probably doesn't want to be aligned with: President Obama and former governor Edwin Edwards. CB says Jindal's trying to jack up the debt ceiling (an Obama play, according to CB) and buy votes from GOP leges who normally wouldn't go for that (an Edwards play, CB says).
MAY 20 Here's a post in the Baptist Message from an alumnus of Louisiana College. The author, Larry Burgess, calls on the leadership of the private school to take care of some pressing problems. Physical plant issues are critical and unaddressed, some faculty make so little they need government health care, and there is an atmosphere that does not encourage honest discussion, he writes. It's time to get things back in order, he says.
MAY 20 This post in Gambit tells of a benefit concert scheduled to raise money for the 19 people shot during a Mother's Day second line on Frenchmen Street in NOLA. Among them was Gambit blogger Deb Cotton, who spoke frequently about violence in the city and reported on the city's second line culture. Gambit's foundation, along with other NOLA non-profits, also is selling t-shirts to raise money for the victims.
MAY 20 Blogger Robert Mann is critical of the personal interest some legislators take in their work here, sharing the comments one NOLA solon made in explaining his decision to vote against a bill that would require people to stop discriminating against female workers. His wife might lose some salary, so he was going to have to vote against the equal pay bill, Conrad Appel said. Appel and everyone who heard him should have been ashamed, but they weren't, and that's what is wrong in that building, Mann argues.
MAY 20 American Press columnist Jim Beam writes about the budget again here, urging kudos for the House and its efforts to try to fix the budget as opposed to passing on a flawed and messy rubber-stamped document as it usually does. The Senate already is poo-pooing the effort, but instead Senators should be trying to find a way to improve it as well, Beam argues. He also has some predictions in here from LABI and CABL.
MAY 20 Here's a link to the photo gallery from Tulane's graduation this past weekend. Dr. John and Allen Toussaint played together and received honorary degrees. The Dalai Lama was so entranced by their performance he got up from his seat and walked across the stage to stand next to them. He even participated in a second line with his own personal, saffron-colored umbrella. To the graduates, he urged them to think about creating a peaceful, hopeful life and society.
MAY 20 This Picayune story questions the rhetoric of NOLA officials who say the city, aside from having a "murder problem," is safe. The talking points generally are that the criminals are killing each other, but everything else is OK. The police chief there says that even Lafayette is more dangerous than NOLA. But crime experts interviewed here say that NOLA's numbers indicate one of two things: either people are so used to violence they don't report it, or somebody's "fudging the numbers."
MAY 20 The Advocate's Mark Ballard writes about some of the background maneuvering that took place during the development of budget alternatives in the Legislature. From Rep. Joel Robideaux being called a "tax and spend liberal" to robo-call influence, Ballard lets us in on some of the work that happens behind the scenes but usually doesn't make it into the Advocate's daily coverage of the session.
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I predict you are going to burn in hell !