A multi-year fight to form a new city out of an unincorporated suburban portion of southeastern East Baton Rouge Parish culminated last week with a Louisiana Supreme Court decision. Justices ruled in favor of the organizers working to incorporate the city of St. George. 

The court ruled against objections by East Baton Rouge officials, which had claimed the incorporation was “unreasonable,” that St. George couldn’t provide city services with a balanced budget and that the loss of tax revenues would hurt the city-parish. 

St. George organizers want to keep the area’s tax money within their own portion of the parish. The effort to incorporate sprouted from a desire to create a new breakaway school district more than a decade ago. 

To talk us through what led to this and where the city of St. George will go from here, we speak with Lara Nicholson, Baton Rouge city hall reporter for The Advocate/Times Picayune.

One of the most expensive parts of your water bill can be the sewage fees. That can be frustrating, especially when you don’t have a sewer.

That’s the case for our latest Utility Bill of the Month. Stephan Bisaha, reporter with the Gulf States Newsroom, went to a New Orleans community garden that has been fighting for years to fix their bills.

The Louisiana state legislature is considering multiple bills that would increase the number of political appointments the governor could make to various boards and commissions. The legislation would make an already-powerful governor even more powerful. One bill, if approved by voters, would let the governor appoint all state supreme court justices and would concurrently expand the state’s highest court by two seats, from seven to nine justices, making Louisiana’s supreme court among the largest state supreme courts in the nation. 

To explain what this legislation could do and what the chances are these proposals will survive the legislative process, we speak with Barry Erwin, president and CEO of Council for a Better Louisiana.

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Today’s episode of Louisiana Considered was hosted by Adam Vos. Our managing producer is Alana Schreiber; our contributing producers are Matt Bloom and Adam Vos; we receive production and technical support from Garrett Pittman and our assistant producer, Aubry Procell.

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