Political Horizons for July 5, 2009

• By MARK BALLARD
• Advocate Capitol News Bureau
• Published: Jul 5, 2009 - Page: 7B

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This is how sausage is made at the Louisiana Legislature. Consider the successful effort to create some protection for witnesses in criminal cases. Such a program seems a timely idea given last weekend’s murder of Shelva Glasper, of Baton Rouge, the third witness found dead in a trial set to begin in September.

Not a single lawmaker voted against House Bill 33. But it almost died, a victim of political posturing.

HB33 was rescued — albeit in a much weaker form — literally at the last minute, by robbing money from district attorneys and indigent defense counsel in New Orleans. Gov. Bobby Jindal signed the Witness Protection Services Act into law Friday.

After being sworn in as the district sttorney for East Baton Rouge Parish in January, Hillar Moore III was immediately confronted with the killing of two witnesses in trials his office was prosecuting. He approached his friend, state Rep. Bodi White, R-Central, before the legislative session began in April with an idea of adopting for Louisiana, a state-level witness protection program like those working so well in other states.

This would not be like the federal handling of “Goodfella” Henry Hill, who in return for court testimony against fellow mobsters, got to live under a new name in some secret Southwestern state suburb complaining about the quality of the tomato sauce and pasta.

Moore’s idea is considerably more down market. He is looking to move the most-endangered witnesses in the most-critical cases out of their neighborhoods, put them up in a motel, perhaps, until they get settled or at least until the trial is over.

White points out the drug gangs that fuel much of the violence in Baton Rouge, New Orleans and Shreveport, have “enforcers” on staff who target witnesses.

At the same time, and unbeknownst to White, state Rep. Walt Leger III, D-New Orleans, was studying witness protection models that different states use. He recommended structuring Louisiana’s program like the one in Massachusetts.

Leger and White joined forces — a Democrat and a Republican, one an über-Jindalista, the other, not so much.

HB33, which Leger drafted, spells out how a newly-created Louisiana Witness Protection Services Board would take applications by prosecutors across the state and decide which cases would receive how much state witness protection support. White said the hope is that once the state has a program running, then the federal government would contribute money to allow for more witnesses to take part.

They wanted about $500,000 to set up the organization and to start protecting some witnesses. White arranged for moving $250,000 from a pool of unused money in a not-very successful plan to attract insurance companies to do business in Louisiana.

The Senate and the House, meanwhile, were bickering over how best to address the $1.3 billion dip in state revenue.

Jindal contends Louisiana should follow the strategy set by national Republican Party operatives and dramatically cut spending on state services, such as public colleges and health care for the needy. His supporters in the House succeeded in blocking debate on any other possible idea to balance spending with revenue.