Tenants moving into Southdowns Village

Four tenants are moving into Southdowns Village as part of an art and design section of the Perkins Road shopping center. Interior design firm Interiors 2, architectural hardware retailer The Front Door, Jeannie Frey Rhodes Photography and a second location for Ann Connelly Fine Art are scheduled to open in the center over the next few months, says Sage Roberts, a spokeswoman for Donnie Jarreau Companies, which is redeveloping Southdowns Village. The businesses will be spread over two buildings in the back of the shopping center. "They'll have the ability to share ideas and materials," Roberts says. "That should create a lot of energy and ambiance."--Timothy Boone

LaPolitics by John Maginnis: Pay raise plagues Jindal

Gov. Bobby Jindal was back in The New York Times this week, with a picture, but for all the wrong reasons. The toxic pay raise controversy enveloping him has gone national, and his political world has changed. Within days, Jindal went from being a legitimate vice-presidential prospect to having his character questioned in his first crisis of public confidence, without his having done a thing. Meanwhile, pay raise-supporting legislators, who thought the worst was over, are now seeing recall movements popping up around them. So far, drives are directed at three freshmen representatives, including Rep. Franklin Foil of Baton Rouge, and Speaker of the House Jim Tucker. All of the recall targets are Republicans. Even as Jindal seeks to maintain an effective relationship with the Legislature, his badgering, blaming and labeling them as threats to reform only strain any good will he gains by not vetoing their raise. Overall, this has turned into a no-win situation for the governor and everyone else touched by it, except for talk-show hosts and bloggers.

—State Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-Baton Rouge, is the only sure challenger to Congressman Don Cazayoux, and he hopes to keep it that way, at least on the GOP side. Now that former Republican candidate Laurinda Calongne has ruled out another try, the big questions hanging over the July 9-11 qualifying period surround Woody Jenkins, who could run again in the GOP primary, and Rep. Michael Jackson, a Baton Rouge Democrat who could file as an independent. Cassidy is concentrating on raising money and appears to be having success, judging from the list of hosts for his fundraiser Thursday night. They included many of the business and professional elite who were missing from Jenkins' campaign finance reports.

—Tucker, the most vocal proponent of the raise, now faces a recall drive aimed at gathering signatures of one-third of the 23,286 registered voters in District 86 within the next six months. According to a poll commissioned by John Roberts III, the leader of a recall petition, 59% of district voters are ready to sign. Despite poll results, drive organizers can expect resistance on Tucker's home turf, where the legislator has been unopposed since his first special election in 2001.

John Maginnis publishes LaPolitics Weekly at Lapolitics.com.

Top 100 nominees sought

Business Report is asking local, privately owned companies to submit information to qualify for our annual Top 100 Private Companies list to be published July 15. We rank companies by gross revenue. Based on past numbers, companies with less than $12 million in revenue are unlikely to make the Top 100 list. For more information, e-mail jbayhi@businessreport.com.

B.R. school reform group to hold final public meeting

Yes We Can! Baton Rouge, a grassroots organization that seeks to improve public schools, will hold its final community meeting at 5:30 p.m. Tuesday at the First United Methodist Church downtown. The meeting is designed to get ideas on ways to make city schools better. The suggestions that come from the meetings will be combined into one reform program that will be presented to the school board this fall. More than 2,500 people have participated in Yes We Can! meetings since they started in February.

ExxonMobil 'flaring' no cause for alarm

ExxonMobil Chemical Plant on Scenic Highway has advised its neighbors might see "flaring" today due to an unplanned unit shutdown, but not to be alarmed. "This is not an emergency situation and personnel are in the process of working to return the unit to normal operations," company spokeswoman Deedra Moe says. "Flaring is a safe, approved method to burn off virtually all of the hydrocarbons that cannot be processed during a unit shutdown, slowdown or restart."

After-tax incomes, spending show big gains

The millions of economic stimulus payments gave a massive jolt to household finances in May, sending after-tax incomes up by the largest amount in 33 years. The payments helped boost consumer spending by the largest amount in six months. The Commerce Department reported that disposable incomes, the amount left after paying taxes, surged by 5.7% last month. It was the biggest increase since May 1975, reflecting $48.1 billion in rebate payments made last month. The surge in incomes helped boost consumer spending by 0.8%, the biggest gain since last November. Economists are worried the boost from the stimulus checks will be only temporary, and the risks of the economy falling into a deep recession will increase once the checks are spent. A separate survey of consumer confidence released today gave support to those concerns. The University of Michigan Index of Consumer Sentiment dropped to 56.4 in June, the lowest reading in 28 years and a stark reflection of all the problems facing the economy at the moment.

ESPN analyst predicts Tigers-Longhorns bowl clash

The college football season is two months away from kickoff, but ESPN.com analyst Mark Schlabach already is making bowl predictions. Once again, Ohio State is pegged to face an SEC team in the BCS Championship Game. After losing to Florida in 2007 and LSU in 2008, he predicts the Buckeyes will face Georgia in Miami. Schlabach also predicts LSU will face Texas in the Cotton Bowl in what would be a rematch of the 2003 game. Schlabach predicts Auburn will represent the SEC in the Sugar Bowl against Texas Tech. For a look at all the bowl predictions, click here. Schlabach also has updated his preseason top 25; LSU checks in at No. 12. Click here for the poll.

News roundup: Black America survey results released; famed Mississippi lawyer sentenced to federal prison; U.S. cotton crop at lowest level in 20 years

Detailed snapshot: The results of one of the largest-ever surveys of black Americans are in. The Radio One/Yankelovich survey of more than 3,400 people ranging in age from 13 to 74 cautions found while blacks have a strong group identity, they should not be seen as a monolithic group--for example 44% of those polled say they liked to be described as "African American" while 42% preferred the term "black”. The survey found that the average black household had three members, and half of all families were being raised by a single parent. To view the whole study, click here. Scruggs was featured in movie: Famed anti-tobacco lawyer Richard "Dickie" Scruggs is headed to prison for five years for conspiring to bribe a judge after being sentenced today in a Mississippi federal court. He was also fined $250,000. Scruggs gained fame in the 1990s by using a corporate insider against tobacco companies in lawsuits that resulted in a $206 billion settlement. That case was portrayed in the 1999 film The Insider. Scruggs was indicted in November along with his son and a law partner after the FBI secretly recorded conversations about a plan to bribe a state court judge.Not high cotton: U.S. cotton acreage dropped by 30% in the past year, reaching its lowest level in 20 years. But a report from Rabobank Food & Agribusiness Research and Advisory says the long-term outlook for the crop is favorable because major growers such as India and China are shifting cotton acreage to food production. That will cause prices to rise and get more American farmers growing the crop. "This ailing patient, the U.S. cotton sector, shows every sign of a great recovery -- it just may need at least another year to recuperate," says Michael Whitehead, who wrote the report. Cotton acreage dropped by 35% in the Delta region, which includes Louisiana, Mississippi, Arkansas, Tennessee and Missouri.