Former House Speaker Chuck Kleckley, now a government affairs advisor at Adams & Reese in Baton Rouge, said this week that he thought his successor in the Legislature’s lower chamber is “doing a good job.” But Kleckley also added that sitting Speaker Taylor Barras, R-New Iberia, “has his work cut out for him.” Barras, the first speaker elected in modern times with the endorsement of a governor, has been under fire by newspaper editorials asking for a fresh start for the House. “I think probably every speaker back to the beginning of time has had some type of challenge,” Kleckley said in this week’s podcast of The LaPolitics Report. “I read the stuff about Taylor and removing him from the speaker’s office … But if you remove him, the whole deck gets reshuffled. You’re going to have new chairmen of the 16 standing committees, new vice chairmen of the 16 standing committees, a whole new Appropriations Committee.” Kleckley added, “When you factor all of that in, what guarantees that a new speaker will be any different? It’s a lot of noise. It’s unfortunate. That energy can be better spent resolving some of the problems the state has.”
—Gov. John Bel Edwards and the Natural Resources Department have finally put the finishing touches on their contract for legal services with former state Rep. Taylor Townsend. It’s good for up to $150,000. That includes $385 per hour for attorneys, $250 per hour for associate attorneys and $50 per hour for paralegals. (This is money that must be appropriated by the Legislature.) A Natchitoches attorney who has helped raise money for the governor, Townsend found himself thrust back into the limelight last year when he started handling coastal litigation for the Edwards administration that targeted the oil and gas industry. That’s around the same time Attorney General Jeff Landry refused to sign off on the first contract drafted for Townsend due to a variety of concerns. The new contract, effective through April 30, 2019, covers the same coastal subject areas.
—They said it: “Your phone is so old it took my text a week to reach you.” —Rep. Lance Harris, R-Alexandria, to Rep. Jim Morris, R-Oil City
Jeremy Alford publishes LaPolitics Weekly, a newsletter on Louisiana politics, at LaPolitics.com. Follow him on Twitter, or on Facebook. He can be reached at JJA@LaPolitics.com.
