Metro Councilman Chander Loupe says he’s received about 100 suggestions on ways to reduce wasteful spending in the city-parish budget since he began soliciting ideas three weeks ago—so many he has yet to find time to review them all. “I’ve gotten tons of them: pretty much something on every department in city government, from abuses of city vehicle use to fraudulent overtime, and everything in between,” Loupe says, adding he’ll release the suggestions to the public once he’s read all of them. “They’ve already gotten the attention of someone at city hall, because the Baton Rouge firefighters union just submitted a public records request to see them,” he says.
The councilman says nearly all the savings suggestions were submitted to his office anonymously, but he suspects many came from within city hall. “A lot of these indicate they’re from current city-parish employees. I don’t know how else they would know some of this stuff,” Loupe says.
Loupe says suggestions continue to trickle in at his office, though he asked city-parish employees and residents to submit their ideas by Jan. 28, two weeks after he first issued a press release asking for ideas to slash unnecessary spending. —Steve Sanoski
