This is my new year's resolution:
When my mother-in-law begins to yell and shout
Through the window I would like to throw her out.
But I resolve not to do it, here is why:
I'm afraid of hitting someone passing by.
Spike Jones, “Happy New Year”
Ah, New Year! The natural extension of the holiday season that began six weeks ago with Thanksgiving and the harbinger of the bacchanal called Mardi Gras. And, of course, the season of resolutions.
It has become almost expected that each of us make resolutions he has no real intention of keeping. Quit smoking? Check. Diet and lose 20 pounds by swimsuit season? Check. Thrice-weekly trips to the gym? Check. Buy the Brooklyn Bridge from a guy on the corner? About as likely.
But for public officials around the northshore, it’s also a time to look ahead to some other lively fiestas and make some serious decision-making and goal setting. If only because they are in the public eye, their resolutions may be more likely to be made manifest. But then again, they also have to work with a bunch of others – each with his or her own agenda – to make them a reality.
A thorough round of requests was sent to legislators and select local officials a week before 2009 came to an end, asking them to highlight some of their resolutions for the coming year.
The first to respond was state Sen. Julie Quinn (R- Dist. 6), whose lofty ambition for 2010 is “to eliminate fraud and corruption in public office.” That could take more than a year, depending on how one defines “corruption.”
State ethics reforms in the 2008 Regular Session of the Legislature attempted to make transparent all financial involvements of state officials and lobbyists, in addition to putting some light on local governments, as well. But it seems to remain the purview of the media and citizen-based non-profit watchdog groups to find and expose public corruption, as has been the case in Mandeville and, more recently, Jefferson Parish Government.
I've got a new year’s resolution
I think I know what I've gotta do
I've got a new year’s resolution getttin’ over you
I've got some old friends I think I'm losing
I've got some new ones that I'm not talking to
But all of my new year’s resolutions are getting old to you
Graham Colton, “New Year’s Resolution.”
Covington Mayor Candace Watkins, with only one year left in her second term as the city’s chief executive, has perhaps more management-oriented goals for 2010:
“I resolve to improve communication at all levels with (and between) staff and (the City) Council,” the mayor wrote in an email. “I also resolve to get myself out of the weeds and focus on higher-level projects and objectives. (Not easy when you have an open door policy and a ‘hands-on’ attitude.)”
Indeed not easy, and indeed she does – have a hands-on attitude, that is. Arguably the most accessible mayor of the northshore’s four biggest cities, Watkins has shown she’s unafraid of bucking her own City Council or other public officials, very publicly butting heads on occasion with Council Chairman Matt Faust, Sheriff Jack Strain and Parish President Kevin Davis. It might have been easier for her to capitulate on occasion, but Watkins doesn’t settle for the path of least resistance. She also returns phone calls and answers emails faster than just about anyone in local government.
“All I want to do
Is just finish what we started
Let’s turn over a new leaf
And let’s make promises we can keep
And call it a new year’s resolution”
Otis Redding, “New Year’s Resolution.”
Parish President Kevin Davis has very specific goals for 2010, under a broader umbrella:
“My resolutions, as St. Tammany Parish President, are to continue working with a balanced budget, and to provide the best services possible to the citizens of St. Tammany Parish,” Davis responded.
St. Tammany’s second Parish President ever (the first, Bruce Unangst, served in the 1970s before a referendum returns the parish to a Police Jury system), Davis has distinguished himself as a leader and aggressive doer, particularly in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in 2005, while halfway through his second term. He doesn’t dither, he just does things.
Starting the penultimate year of his third and final term, Davis lists numerous priority projects – most of them bearing his hallmark brand of “infrastructure”: Constructing major drainage improvements as funded by the Louisiana Recovery Authority, developing levee protection in Eastern St. Tammany, and working to tap federal stimulus money for road projects top the Parish President’s “to do” list for 2010.
But he also hangs his hat on some other signature efforts based in culture, tourism and education, including the completion of a fishing pier built from the remains of the old Twin Spans, progress on the University Square project in Lacombe, and planning the celebration of St. Tammany’s bicentennial.
It's mostly snakes handing out contracts
Trying to see where I at
Innovations on the Dilated, Lootpack format
We freak the physics, break emcees on contact
Madlib don't lack, we'll be waiting for that payback
You better get hittin”, your soul when I drop my compound on contact
All that played out [stuff] will have you knocked out in the first round
Cuz too many frauds walking around
Lootpack, “New Year’s Resolution”
State Sen. Jack Donahue (R-Dist. 11), also lists infrastructure projects high on his list of resolutions for 2010.
“Our delegation has established an excellent working relationship with (the state Department of Transportation and Development) and we have monthly meetings with the (DOTD) District 62 staff,” Donahue wrote. “At those meetings we review all the projects in our districts and monitor their progress. The meetings have been very successful and have resulted in road work getting done in our area that would not have occurred without our meetings.”
But Donahue also hearkens quickly to his signature project, the Commission on Streamlining State Government he helped create last year, which submitted its report to the Legislature early this month. “My focus this coming legislative session will be mostly budget related,” Donahue said. “I will be sponsoring a package of bills to cut the size of state government as well as its budget.”
Commission meetings, ongoing since summer, have not been without contention. Determining where state government is duplicative and wasteful is not only laborious, it’s inherently political. Conflicting agendas and simply differing opinions among members – notably state Treasurer John Kennedy – have grabbed headlines and made noise. But the real clang-clang-clang of this trolley will come when the Legislature convenes to consider where and how to trim the fat – while trying to decide what, exactly, is fat and what is muscle.
And so we're told this is the golden age
And gold is the reason for the wars we wage
Though I want to be with you
Be with you night and day
Nothing changes
On New Year's Day
U2, “New Year’s Day”
State Rep. Kevin Pearson (R-Dist. 76), approaches his 2010 resolutions with an economic eye and a voice that is decidedly … well… resolute.
“A ‘resolution’ would imply that the course of action has not yet been decided,” Pearson wrote. “There are inefficient areas in state government and I would resolve to expose these disparities and correct them.”
At the same time, however, Pearson said citizens need to know they are in a much better place than our neighboring states. “I resolve to let the citizens know that we are a much better state than the media portrays...”
Pearson also said he wants to “encourage entrepreneurs to operate in ‘competitive markets’ to satisfy consumer needs and continue creating a reactive workforce to meet the needs of Louisiana’s corporations and those that choose to locate in this great state.”
Tall orders, all of them. Correcting decades of inequality in state government will require more than just one year, and overpowering media-driven perceptions… well… that could be like tilting at windmills. But, as they say, it’s gotta be done.
No matter who resolves to do what, there is only one certainty: Things will change in 2010. How much and whether for good or ill is hard to say this January. Pessimists aver that it can’t get much worse, but isn’t that just tempting fate? The proof will be in next year’s figgie pudding, when the first year of the decade – or last year, depending on your interpretation of the calendar – comes to a close. Until then, resolve onward.