East Baton Rouge Parish will perhaps be home to two of the five most populated cities in Louisiana … maybe. There’s Baton Rouge, of course, the second-largest city behind New Orleans. After the Oct. 12 elections, St. George, with some 85,000 residents, could be No. 5, if the results of the election stand up the impending lawsuits.
Regardless of the current vitriol surrounding the incorporation, what’s fascinating about the entire St. George affair is what drove this passion quest for independence, writes Business Report Executive Editor JR Ball in his new column.
No doubt, the incorporation movement began out of a desire to launch an independent school district and the demand from north Baton Rouge state legislators, like then-state Sen. Sharon Weston Broome, to first create a city. But honestly, this whole affair stopped being about schools the day Broome was sworn into office as mayor of Baton Rouge and president of East Baton Rouge Parish. Not because she is black, but because she’s fiscally pretty far left on the political spectrum. There’s nothing wrong with that—unless you’re fiscally pretty far right.
Many in our community—especially the more zealous opponents of St. George—want to entirely frame the issue around race. But St. George is as much about an increasingly frustrated middle class and a widening political ideology divide as anything else, Ball writes.
This divide is evident on the Metro Council, which doesn’t get much done. Like the cities and parish each member represents, the council is fractured. Not along racial lines—though a superficial look might appear that way—but along an ideological left-right split.
Those who cast a vote favoring the incorporation of St. George did so because having a progressive mayor-president and a city that dominates the public-dollar spending is out of step with their view of government. Read Ball’s full column, which includes what he sees as a turning point in Baton Rouge politics and discusses factors driving the parish’s political divide deeper.
