Baton Rouge Business Report: Broome is making the case for St. George

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BR Business Report: Broome is making the case for St. George

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When the Metro Council voted in early September not to put Mayor Sharon Weston Broome’s proposed 5-mill property tax for road improvements on the November ballot, those who voted against the measure said they’d been inundated with calls from constituents overwhelmingly opposed to the plan.

That may be true. But there’s more to it than that.

The bloc that killed Broome’s Better Transportation and Roads proposal represents a segment of East Baton Rouge Parish that has come to wholly distrust, if not despise, Broome and everything about her administration.

Just nine months after her narrow election, Broome has become as unpopular in parts of the parish as Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton rolled into one—not that the southeast Baton Rouge/St. George crowd was ever really with the mayor. But now, they’re resolutely against her, and the fact that the councilmembers who represent them wouldn’t even allow voters to decide for themselves about the tax proposal shows just how deep the sentiment runs.

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In part, it is Broome’s own doing. The vote against her tax wasn’t just about the merits of the plan, which was a good one and included badly needed road improvements, new sidewalks, bike lanes and a smart traffic control system. Rather, it reflected the lack of confidence many have in her administration because of the way she has handled the various controversies that have defined her first nine months in office. Among them:

Her refusal to speak out against the Council on Aging and its embattled executive director, Tasha Clark-Amar, after state auditors confirmed the agency engaged in unethical and possibly illegal campaign activity last year to help pass a dedicated millage. Though Broome had nothing to do with that election, she remained silent after a coalition of black elected officials tried to turn the flap into a racial issue, which it wasn’t.

Her hiring of Troy Bell to be the city’s first African-American chief administrative officer, who was forced to resign after just five days on the job for lying on his résumé. Bell had been tapped for the post after a months-long search yet somehow her administration failed to check his references or do any due diligence.

The questionable contracts her administration awarded under the BRAVE violence elimination program—most notably to community activist/agitator Arthur “Silky Slim” Reed. He scandalized Baton Rouge in late July, when he said at a Metro Council meeting that the sniper killing last summer of several law enforcement officers was justified.

There are other issues, too, that have undercut the administration’s credibility and competence.

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