Behind the committee table ready to testify is a balding Cajun hell-bent on nickel-and-diming the state for every levee, floodgate and canal lock its coffers can support. He’s an old-school Democrat, mais cher; a staple of the time-honored courthouse gang that carries on breathlessly in French over endless cups of Community Coffee.
Reggie Dupre even tells the Senate Finance Committee that he was coastally aware before “coastal was even cool,” which is true. He was the Senate’s first real coastal floor leader under former Gov. Mike Foster, strapping life preservers on his portly frame during speeches about land loss. Today, the senator from Terrebonne Parish does the same for Gov. Kathleen Blanco, only without the orange jacket and in a slimmer form, having shed several suit sizes thanks to a recent gastric bypass surgery.
Like he has done every year since being elected in 1996, Dupre is pushing a set of bills during the ongoing session that chips dollars off of existing sources to bankroll projects aimed at saving the coast. One creates the Louisiana Coastal Protection and Restoration Financing Corporation, which would allow the state to borrow about $500,000 immediately against an expected increase in oil-and-gas royalties from the federal government. The other measure would dedicate millions to a special account for coastal activities, possibly taking some cash away from roads. “I know all of that sounds like a lot of money,” Dupre tells the committee with a smile, “but remember that the (state’s coastal master plan) is $50 or $60 billion.”
Directly across from Dupre in the committee room sits a glaring Sen. Joe McPherson, a profoundly mustached Dem from Rapides Parish ready to pounce with his Mayberry twang. A successful businessman back home in Woodworth, McPherson is a stickler for numbers. He also has a military presence he isn’t afraid to use. Lately, though, McPherson has been bearing down on Dupre’s funding proposals—the money, not the concept—arguing North Louisiana isn’t getting a fair shake. “You always take the cream off the top for coastal restoration,” he barks at Dupre. “You should be able to build a wall around Montegut with all the money you got. You’re not giving up.”
The issues that have traditionally set lawmakers from the piney woods of North Louisiana against those from the swamps and bayous of the South amount to an ancient political rivalry—Protestants in the North, Catholics in the South, conservatives, liberals, urban, rural and so on. Entire chapters of history books have been dedicated to the multifaceted union, but it tends to play out differently for each generation. In the wake of the 2005 hurricane season, the debate has manifested itself in matters of coastal restoration, construction and insurance relief, especially during this regular session and particularly from lawmakers.
Baton Rouge, however, has traditionally stayed clear of these territorial battles and remained somewhat geographically ambiguous, sitting “on the Mississippi River where South Louisiana fades into the northern region and where Interstate 10 brings the western and eastern portions of the state together,” according to LSU’s political department chairman Wayne Parent in his study of Louisiana politics, Inside the Carnival. But now there’s a growing beef between Red Stick and the Crescent City, a longtime and courteous rivalry that is beginning to bloom.
In recent weeks, for instance, New Orleans lawmakers were quick to amend legislation that would have moved the Louisiana Boxing Commission to Baton Rouge. Members of the Orleans delegation have also gone on the defense over a pending, non-binding resolution—with no legal authority—that would merely request the LSU School of Medicine be relocated to the Capital City.
The 19th Judicial District in Baton Rouge, already a hub for legal matters, continues to be burdened with additional responsibilities—one proposal expected to pass this session would give the district full jurisdiction over compensation cases involving the wrongly convicted—but any new chatter about relocating the state Supreme Court to Baton Rouge, alongside all other forms government, has been squashed by Big Easy lawmakers.
The changes—possible and real—facing Baton Rouge have even taken local officials by surprise, especially for those who thought the power shift would come more gradually. “Certainly, we knew we would have more presence statewide over time,” says Metro Councilman Darrell Ourso, a Republican. “But there was never an organized agenda where we set out to make this happen. A lot of it is still happening on its own because of the hurricanes and the increase in people who settled here.”
Albert L. Samuels, a political science professor at Southern University in Baton Rouge, says the battles the Capital City lost this session will likely be repeated in the future as the city pulls legislative seats away from New Orleans after the next U.S. Census survey. “New Orleans cannot continue to justify the number of seats they have in the Legislature, not with all their constituents living in Baton Rouge,” he says. “All of what’s happening is inevitable. And whoever is elected to the next Legislature will be huge because they’ll be the ones redrawing the districts.” But it will take time for that to happen, Samuels adds.
For now, the main regional divide in the Legislature continues to be defined by coastal lawmakers hustling to grab more restoration money as their northern counterparts fight for scraps from the policy table. The most recent development in this evolving grudge match came earlier this month when a group of North Louisiana senators hijacked a state-administered fund specifically for coastal restoration projects and broadened it to include funding for their own dwindling farmlands and prairies.
Sen. Robert J. Barham, a Republican from Oak Ridge, a small Morehouse Parish village boasting only a few hundred residents, lobbied the upper chamber heavily to amend the legislation, arguing that a recent federal study found the loss of forests and farmland to urban development in North Louisiana far exceeds the loss from coastal erosion—by as many as 2,000 acres each year. It’s a developing theme that northern lawmakers will likely bring up again as more money is needed for coastal protections. “I’m worried we might get tunnel vision,” Barham says. “We have some other real losses, too, outside of the coastal zone in this state.”
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