Morrell
to Defend House Seat
THE TIMES PICAYUNE
From staff reports
J.P. Morrell has announced his intention to seek his first
full term as state House representative for the 97th District.
Morrell, a Democrat, says he is eager to continue participating
in the wave of policy reforms the Legislature began after Hurricane
Katrina, particularly in the session that ended June 28.
"Although we did get a lot of work done this session,
there's still a lot of new things left on the plate," he
said.
The New Orleans native, 28, won his first legislative seat
last year, when he was elected to fill the spot vacated by
his father, Arthur Morrell, when he was elected New Orleans
Criminal District court clerk in June 2006. Morrell so far
is uncontested in his re-election bid. The primary is Oct.
20.
Morrell is a partner at Morrell & Morrell LLC and has
served as an Orleans Parish public defender. He sits on the
board of directors for DesireNOLA and the New Orleans Center
for the Creative Arts.
In June, Morrell wrote a successful bill to eliminate the
10 percent surcharge added to homeowner and business insurance
policies under the Louisiana Citizens Property Insurance Corp.
in parishes where it holds a majority of the policies. Affordable
homeowner's insurance, he says, remains his top issue. Other
platform issues include ethics reform, rebuilding the city's
public education system and reforming the criminal justice
system.
The 97th District spans Gentilly, parts of the Upper 9th Ward,
Bywater and Faubourg Marigny.
Morrell is unmarried and lives in Gentilly. He is a 2004 graduate
of the Tulane University School of Law.
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NEW ORLEANS CITY BUSINESS
By Deon Roberts, Online Editor
“What’s in your wallet?” is Capital One’s slogan.
It could easily be the slogan for Blueprint Louisiana, a movement
to increase transparency in state government, among other reforms.
But some lawmakers aren’t too keen on us knowing more about
their financials. More on that later.
Blueprint Louisiana’s first goal is to “adopt the nation’s
best ethics laws.” Their plans call for (1) legislative financial
disclosure, (2) enhanced lobbyist regulation, (3) transparency
in state funding of local projects and (4) increased funding
for ethics oversight.
Louisiana desperately needs ethics reform, according to Blueprint
Louisiana, which is made of concerned business and community
leaders and citizens.
“Louisiana’s history of public corruption continues to harm
our image around the country,” it says on Blueprint’s Web site.
“National rankings highlight the real weaknesses in our governmental
ethics laws, inhibiting prospects for greater investment and
economic growth.”
The Blueprint folks are right. Louisiana has a terrible image
nationally when it comes to crooked politics, even though there
are other states with just as many, if not more, bad-intentioned
elected officials.
Some members of the Louisiana Legislature aren’t too sure
about all of this increased transparency.
For one, some legislators don’t want to be required to be
more transparent if the same is not required of other state
elected officials. That concern was what kept lawmakers from
supporting reforms being pushed by LA Ethics 1, a different
coalition of Louisiana groups trying to make Louisiana “a national
model for governmental ethics laws and enforcement over the
next two to three years.”
“If we’re talking about ethics reform, I’m completely for
that for all elected officials,” said state Rep. J.P. Morrell,
D-New Orleans.
Morrell has a good point. Members of the Legislature should
not be the only elected officials required to become more transparent.
It should be required of every elected official in every parish,
no matter if they’re an appeals court judge, a member of the
Public Service Commission, a sheriff, an assessor, a coroner,
a school board member, a justice of the peace, a constable
or a council member.
State Rep. Juan LaFonta, D-New Orleans, worries that too much
transparency will dissuade people from running for public office.
He’s undecided on more transparency.
“Every nook and cranny of your personal life is under a microscope,”
he said. “If you get to the point that it is completely transparent,
no one’s going to run for public office.”
Hmm … Maybe that’s why it’s called “public office” instead
of “private office.” Those who have nothing to hide should
not be worried about transparency.
See the entire story - Click Here
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Tensions mount in debate over N.O. District Attorney
Jordan's job
NEW ORLEANS CITY BUSINESS
By Richard A. Webster
New Orleans District Attorney Eddie Jordan entered the City
Council chambers July 18 to answer for his recent dismissal
of two high-profile homicide cases.
In the weeks leading up to his appearance, a biracial coalition
of citizens came together and demanded improvements to his
office
Public sentiment appeared to be running heavily against the
man once celebrated for convicting former Louisiana Gov. Edwin
Edwards on corruption charges. Mayor C. Ray Nagin stopped just
short of calling for his resignation while the Louisiana Supreme
Court agreed to review the DA's performance.
But Jordan emerged empowered two hours later with the biracial
coalition in tatters. A largely African-American audience rallied
to Jordan's defense against what they claimed was an attempt
by white politicians to take down the city's first black DA.
Restless members of the crowd called Councilwoman Shelley
Midura the "leader of the KKK" and "lynch lady" when
she asked Jordan to resign.
When the hearing closed, the once-embattled Jordan had united
with the strong and vocal backing of the African-American audience.
Men and women shook his hand and embraced Jordan as a hero
while the three white Council members, Midura, Arnie Fielkow
and Stacey Head, quietly filtered out of the chambers.
"I'm not a fan of Eddie Jordan but what we have here
playing out before us is another racist attempt to reverse
the historic verdict that says blacks are the majority of the
electoral base and therefore blacks are going to hold most
of the elected offices," said Malcom Suber, director of
the People's Hurricane Relief Fund and a longtime community
activist.
Jordan declined to be interviewed for this story as did every
member of the City Council except Midura.
'Immense' reaction
Racial tensions have long plagued New Orleans and clouded
job performance issues.
The most recent firestorm started when Jordan's office dismissed
two high-profile murder cases in the span of a month - one
involving the slaying of five teenagers in Central City and
the other the murder of Dinerral Shavers, well-known drummer
for the Hot 8 Brass Band.
In the Central City case, Jordan said his office could not
find the witness and dismissed all five murder counts against
the accused Michael Anderson.
Just hours later, the New Orleans Police Department produced
the witness, which shocked and enraged public reaction against
Jordan.
State Rep. J.P. Morrell, D-New Orleans, said the reaction
from his constituents was immediate and immense.
"I got almost as many calls about the DA as I did about
Road Home, and that's the No. 1 thing I do all day," Morrell
said. "The public reached its breaking point and as a
whole agreed there were immediate problems in the DA's office
that had to be addressed. And everyone agreed whether it was
the black community, the white community or the Hispanic community."
Two days after the DA dismissed the charges against Anderson,
Midura sent an open letter to Jordan.
"After the events of the last 48 hours, which have eroded
the public's confidence in your ability to carry out the responsibilities
of the district attorney, I am asking that you resign from
office," Midura wrote.
The letter went off like a bomb in the black community and
at that moment, everything changed, said state Rep. Cedric
Richmond, D- New Orleans. The focus immediately shifted from
Jordan's performance to an attempt by a white politician to
force a black DA to resign.
Many in the black community remain disenchanted with Jordan,
but they would rather his fate be decided by an election as
opposed to being forced out by "Uptown" political
pressure, Richmond said.
"The letter helped Jordan tremendously because it rallied
the public around him, created outrage and ignited the racial
component," said Richmond. "If a recall isn't dead
in the water, it's been made that much more difficult because
she's created so much public support for him."
Richmond and Morrell shared the outrage sparked by Midura's
letter when they went before the City Council and criticized
Jordan's performance.
The audience responded by calling Richmond and Morrell "ignorant."
Suber said the conduct of the two black representatives was "appalling" and
they are "clearly out of touch with the black community."
Double standard
Why does the African-American community, which takes the brunt
of violent crime, support a man accused of mismanaging the
DA's office and failing to prosecute suspected killers?
It all has to do with the double standard of history, said
Rosana Cruz, co-director of Safe Streets, a community-based
organization dedicated to criminal justice reform.
There were 14 wrongful convictions under former District Attorney
Harry Connick, which resulted in millions of dollars in lawsuits
and created a financial burden on the DA's office to this day.
And yet white politicians never demanded Connick's resignation,
Cruz said.
"There's no amnesia going on here," she said. "In
the African- American communities, Connick's offenses are seen
as far more egregious than Jordan's."
Baty Landis, co-director of Silence is Violence, said the
older generation in the black community is unwilling to ask
for Jordan's resignation because they fought to ensure their
people had a voice in politics decades earlier. They now view
the Jordan controversy as an extension of the same battle.
"That fight is less necessary now but it still directs
a lot of the rhetoric," Landis said. "Unfortunately,
if it occurs that Eddie Jordan is protected by his race, then
the cost of that is going to be the lives of many young black
men."
Silence is Violence initially called for Jordan's removal
from office but backed off after he announced several improvements,
including transferring all homicide cases to the Violent Offenders
Unit with the most experienced prosecutors.
Landis still believes Jordan is "disastrously ineffective" and
the city would be better off with a new DA. But she said her
group doesn't want to expend energy and resources over the
next 12 months solely on Jordan's removal.
Just as she disagrees with those who blindly back Jordan because
of his race, Landis said she won't discontinue efforts to improve
the DA's office just because of Jordan's presence.
"We want to make it clear we don't care about Jordan
either way. Our focus is on the victims and their families," Landis
said. "Things have gotten so ugly in terms of the racial
dynamic and we've seen how it hijacked Shelley Midura's message
and overwhelmed what she was trying to accomplish. We need
a message of hope."
Midura attacked
Midura said she knew her call for Jordan's resignation could
stir racial tensions, but the viciousness took her by surprise.
The first-term Council member voted for Jordan, championed
the creation of an oversight agency to protect against abuses
of police power and has been a vocal critic of jailing low-level
offenders.
She said it's strange to be tagged as the "leader of
the KKK" and the "lynch lady."
Midura said it's pointless to tell people she's not a racist,
and the only way she can prove it is through actions. She said
she is frustrated some Jordan backers managed to move the discussion
away from his performance and to the issue of race.
"Every time our community faces some kind of challenge,
the racial tensions we've had over the years, that deep racial
wound, opens up again and it starts to bleed," Midura
said. "But if we use race as the basis for judging someone,
they will always get off the hook and never be held accountable."
Midura said she will not back down from her call for Jordan's
resignation until people champion Jordan as a great DA instead
of accusing her of being a racist mastermind.
"If his performance continues as it has been, that will
speak louder than anything I can say," Midura said. "Either
it will improve by additional outside pressure or it won't,
and perhaps the rest of the community will recognize the stakes
and realize they need to hold him accountable."
Lost in the racial controversy are the victims and their families
waiting for justice.
Nikita Shavers' brother, Dinerral, was shot in the back of
the head while driving with his wife and two sons in the 2200
block of Dumaine Street Dec. 28.
Within the hour, the popular drummer of the Hot 8 Brass Band
and music teacher at Rabouin High School was dead.
On June 29, Jordan's office dismissed charges against the
alleged assailant, 18-year-old David Bonds, because of a witness
refusing to testify.
Nikita Shavers refuses to be pulled into the racial controversy.
The only thing that matters, she said, is Jordan's performance.
"This has nothing to do with race. I don't care if Jordan
resigns or gets fired as long as the office improves. My No.
1 concern is the welfare of my brother's case as well as all
of the victims who have been forgotten," Shavers said. "As
long as they do a better job of securing witnesses, indicting
cases and getting convictions, I don't care who's in there."
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