Why does Landry want to screw up the levee boards?

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Shane Guidry, the governor's close adviser and self-styled Elon Musk of Louisiana, wants to "reform" how board members are chosen for the Southeast Louisiana Flood Protection Authorities, which are responsible for protecting the New Orleans metro area. His plans have just prompted four board members to resign in protest, charging that the east bank Flood Protection Authority no longer focuses on flood protection.

For his part, Guidry claims board members are "scammers." This makes me wonder whether he's a liar, a fool or both.

After Hurricane Katrina, voters approved a constitutional amendment with 81% of the vote statewide, 94% in Orleans Parish. That amendment led to the creation of the flood protection authorities and created a nominating process designed to minimize political influence while still giving governors the final decision....

My colleagues on it included Tom Jackson, a president of the American Society of Civil Engineers; Rick Luettich, chair of a National Academy of Sciences committee on coastal risk reduction; Ricardo Pineda, the chief engineer for California's levee system; Steve Estopinal, an engineer and college textbook author; Paul Kemp, one of Louisiana's most respected coastal scientists and a member of the state forensic team that investigated Katrina; Larry McKee, president of the Louisiana Council of Engineering Companies; and Dave Barnes, a meteorologist who pioneered storm surge modeling....

I would like Guidry to explain to the state and to the Legislature what scams we were engaged in, and how board members were "just out for themselves," as he also charged.

Last year, the nominating process yielded Norma Jean Mattei, another president of the American Society of Civil Engineers, but the governor rejected her without giving a reason. Perhaps he thought she might not defer to him as current board President Roy Carubba, who worked for Guidry in the past and apparently thinks he still does, clearly does.

Indeed, Guidry is not a member of the authority’s board but seems to be running it, since Carubba even asks his permission before talking to the media — and three of the four board members who resigned addressed their resignation letters to Guidry....

The proximate cause of Guidry's “reform” proposal is that Guidry and Carubba want police chief Joshua Rondeno serving as the east bank authority's regional director although he lacks qualifications required by law. Most board members have blocked this move.


Rondeno himself has said he "would rather stand alone on the governor’s side than stand with everyone who is going against his will.” In other words, Rondeno favors the governor's opinion over the opinion of engineers and flood experts.

That statement flies in the face of the constitutional amendment that formed the board in the first place. It alone should disqualify Rondeno not only from the regional director’s position but from any position with the authority. The whole point of the post-Katrina reform was to take politics out of flood protection as much as possible and put it in the hands of those with expertise.

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