In her latest column, Business Report Editor Stephanie Riegel calls it “maddening, but not entirely unexpected,” that a handful of critics would decry the state’s recent announcement that Our Lady of the Lake will open an emergency room in north Baton Rouge at the site of the LSU Health North Urgent Center on Airline Highway.
“Some who were most vocal about the need for the facility are complaining,” Riegel writes. “Metro Councilwoman Chauna Banks, who created the #NBRNOW Blue Ribbon Commission earlier this year to push for increased access to health care in north Baton Rouge, told The Advocate, ‘The governor has no understanding or interest as it relates to north Baton Rouge. He felt this was a way to shut up the request of the people and the negative press.’ For good measure, she added that Edwards ‘obviously has zero respect or interest for’ the people in north Baton Rouge.”
Meanwhile, Riegel notes that Gary Chambers, who publishes a blog called The Rouge Collection, said in a post on his Facebook page that he’s “deeply concerned about an ER opening with a provider that’s (sic) leadership said earlier this year our community doesn’t need an ER.” Chambers went on to opine that, “This is what happens when white people who aren’t connected to a community make decisions about the community and black leaders are more loyal to the Democratic party than to their constituents,” Riegel points out.
“It’s interesting to see how Banks and Chambers, always quick to play the race card, are trying to twist this into a narrative that pits white against black, especially given that two of the governor’s allies in the Legislature—Ted James and Regina Barrow—are African-American legislators who championed the OLOL ER deal,” she writes. “But why let facts get in the way of a good story?”
What’s really at issue here, says Riegel, is that Banks and Chambers failed in their own effort earlier this year to bring an ER to the Howell Place development in north Baton Rouge.
“Their plan centered on working a deal between the state and the for-profit Texas company, Next Health, that owns the Champion Medical Center at Howell Place. But the state had no interest in engaging, for a variety of reasons,” she writes. “Now, Banks and Chambers are smarting that their deal didn’t get done, while someone else’s did, so they’re taking aim, ironically, at the first governor to show any interest whatsoever in north Baton Rouge in nearly a decade.”
Read the full column. Send your comments to editors@businessreport.com.
