Is Consolidation To Blame? – Wingin’ It Wednesday

This week on "Wingin' It Wednesday", panelist Carol Ross, Mike Stagg, and Warren Caudle joined "Nathan and Bernie in the Morning" to discuss whether consolidation is truly the best form of government for the city of Lafayette and Lafayette Parish.

Here's what the panel had to say:

1. A recent budget crisis in Lafayette Parish has many questioning consolidation as a form of government. Your thoughts?

Carol Ross started us off:

In terms of the charter they need some major revisions. In my opinion they need to redraw those council districts so that 5 are city only and the full 9 member council can still decide on parish wide issues.
Areas of annexation should be clarified also so that we don’t have these fights going forward.
The other thing I would change is the designation from parish president to parish manager and designate one more person as mayor. A CEO of the city. Every municipality has a mayor except the city of Lafayette. It’s crazy.

Warren Caudle posited:

This thing is totally flawed, totally screwed up from the start.
The real thing about the budget that’s flawed is that — and I don’t know how we got in this situation, but in every other situation the federal budget gets taken care of first, then state, then local. Here in Lafayette we somehow or another think the cities are not part of the parish.
What they need to do is — every sales tax should be allocated so that part of it goes to the parish, because everything is parish.

 

Mike Stagg concluded:

Consolidation came up 3 or 4 years ago. We were lied to about the finances of the city-parish government.
The results are that we have a model that I don’t think anybody trusts, and for Mr. Durel to come up with this tweak idea… well he had 11 years.
It will be up to the next city - parish president to fix this, because he has no credibility.

To listen to the full audio from our Wingin' It panelists, click the play button below:

Now it’s your turn to tell us what you think about today’s Wingin’ It Wednesday topics. Who got it right, who got it wrong, and who was way off? Let us know in the comment section.