LRA foundation won’t dissolve yet

• By ALLEN M. JOHNSON JR.
• Advocate New Orleans bureau
• Published: Dec 19, 2008 - Page: 18A - UPDATED: 12:05 a.m.

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NEW ORLEANS — Baton Rouge and New Orleans business leaders met Thursday to consider dissolving a rare private foundation they developed after Hurricane Katrina, but discovered — breaking up is hard to do.

“I’m ready to get ‘married’ — Baton Rouge and New Orleans as a region,” said Ron Foreman, a founding member of the LRA Support Foundation, a nonprofit group established to assist the state-run Louisiana Recovery Authority.

After expressions of public duty, personal respect and some gentle joshing, the foundation’s board of directors voted to keep the private nonprofit in existence until early next year — and disclosure of a final audit on how they spent the last of nearly $12 million in privately raised funds for the state’s recovery.

“I don’t want to run away from any portion of our responsibility to the public,” said Foundation Chairman John P. Laborde, a retired CEO of Tidewater Inc.

Formed in November 2005, before federal disaster aid began arriving, the private nonprofit organization — adapted state open meetings laws to show transparency — and raised private funds to bring major planning consultants to Louisiana, including the Price-Waterhouse Coopers team that recommended transforming the state’s charity hospital system.

John M. Spain, executive vice president of the Baton Rouge Area Foundation — whose own works closely with the Foundation — said the nonprofit had $472,723.50 remaining.

Of that amount, $261,000 is dedicated for various charitable hurricane recovery projects — and a lawsuit on behalf of the New Orleans Development Authority — which the foundation hopes will ultimately reach the Louisiana Supreme Court for clarification of two state constitutional amendments passed in 2005.

The foundation is the chief funding source for Louisiana Speaks, the proselytizer of community and home planning projects statewide, at about $200,000 a year.

“With all due respect, we think our time is coming to a close,” Spain told the foundation’s board. “We are pretty much out of money and we don’t have any additional projects.”

Federal help has finally arrived, too.

“I got a feeling it is time for us to go out of business,” Foreman said. “We started this process a long time ago to see how we would work together — New Orleans and Baton Rouge.”

Forman said he did not want to dissolve the foundation without finding another formal mechanism for continuing to improve relations between the two cities, which have not always been on the best terms.

Spain agreed relations have improved. “The money is not the most important issue here,” Spain said, but added: “We don’t to waste your time.”