JR Ball: Baton Rouge embracing the spirit of independence

For the better part of three-plus years, the dominant political battle in East Baton Rouge Parish has been the fight over the proposed city of St. George, writes Business Report Executive Editor J.R. Ball in his latest column.
“Ardent architects of this suburban hamlet in the southeast corner of our parish want: 1) a yet-to-be-detailed break from the Baton Rouge public school system, and 2) a largely privatized semi-break from a consolidated government struggling to satisfy both Baton Rouge and the parish it surrounds,” Ball writes.

Ball says the pushback—coming largely from Baton Rouge-dwelling Democrats, progressive community groups and anyone with a vested interest in keeping every available dollar flowing into city-parish coffers—is that losing unincorporated taxpaying turf would prove a crippling financial blow to what’s left of the parishwide school system, it is an affront to the city-parish economies of scale, and it’s little more than a stay-at-home version of Republican white flight.
“Nothing new here,” Ball writes.

But then there was this “boom goes the dynamite” moment, Ball says, that changed the game.
“During the embarrassment that was the July 19 Metro Council meeting: The head of the Baton Rouge NAACP declaring his group and others want to split our city-parish government in two—one for the city of Baton Rouge; the other, for the parish of East Baton Rouge,” Ball writes.
Ball says that now white, conservative suburbanites in St. George and black, liberal urbanites in Baton Rouge share the same vision quest: Separation from one another.

“Unity through division.” Ball writes. “That’s so Baton Rouge.”

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