Panel discusses home rule benefits

• By KORAN ADDO
• Advocate Westside bureau
• Published: Nov 22, 2009 - Page: 4B

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NEW ROADS — Around Baton Rouge and across southeast Louisiana, parishes that progress most rapidly are those with an executive at the top prioritizing parishwide needs, said State Sen. Rob Marionneaux, D-Grosse Tete.

Marionneaux delivered this  assessment during a community forum in Pointe Coupee Parish Thursday night in which parish presidents and parish council members from Pointe Coupee’s neighboring parishes spoke about the benefits of moving from a police jury form of government toward a parish president and parish council alignment.

Calling the forum a “monumental event when talking about ways to improve,” the senator said he personally witnessed positive results when West Baton Rouge and Iberville parishes moved away from police jury rule in the late 1990s.

West Baton Rouge Parish President Riley “Peewee” Berthelot echoed what the senator said, and added that parish and municipal governments are like businesses and need to be treated as such.

“If you have half a million dollars to spend on roads, you have to find where the needs are. Find the worst roads,” Berthelot said. “With a police jury, everybody wants a piece of that half a million. Jurors all want their little piece (for their districts).”

If Pointe Coupee Parish were to make the switch, Berthelot said, the public needs to be mindful that problems won’t disappear but rather competing personalities would remain, potentially causing friction in the operation of the new form of government.

Iberville Parish President Mitch Ourso also spoke about the need to have a chief executive officer running a parish government.
Ourso likened Iberville Parish’s 13 former police jurors to  “13 little kings.”

Ourso further stated that the most efficient way to run government is to have the checks and balances that go along with having a legislative branch working in concert with an executive branch, something Pointe Coupee Parish currently lacks, he said.

If a switch were to be made, Ourso urged parish leaders to seek out the home rule charters — a type of parish constitution — from surrounding parishes and borrow what Pointe Coupee leaders like and disregard what they don’t like from among those documents.

“Make a gumbo out of it,” Ourso advised. “Come up with a document and bring it to a vote of the people. Let them decide.”
Livingston Parish President Mike Grimmer told the gathering that every parish government needs one person at the top to act as a salesman for the parish.

“We’re the fastest-growing parish, we’ve got a great school system and I go out every day and market my parish,” Grimmer said. “We do it because we love it. You’ve got to get a person who loves Pointe Coupee at heart. Someone has to take the lead and be accountable to (the public.)

“How accountable is a person in another district? Who stands up for the entire parish?” Grimmer asked rhetorically about a police jury form of government.

If Pointe Coupee Parish were to explore moving toward a new governing system, Marionneaux said, the public would need to collect enough signatures representing 10 percent of the electorate to put the issue on the ballot, or the Police Jury could appoint a seven- to 11-member commission to draft a home rule charter within 18 months of members’ appointments.