The gist: If the Bernhard Capital Partners/NextGEN proposal to take over operations of LUS has any council support at this point, it was hard to see it at Tuesday night’s council meeting. In an encore performance, this time before the whole council, NextGEN’s management team attempted to make the case for how a private company can do a better job than government running Lafayette’s 120-year-old municipal utility company.
Council to Robideaux: It’s time to state your intentions. Councilman Bruce Conque was insistent Mayor-President Joel Robideaux — who left the meeting long before it was over — state his position on the proposal and whether the effort to privatize LUS will be opened up to other potential suitors (Entergy and CLECO are both interested). Absent Robideaux’s willingness to put his own political capital behind this new direction for LUS’s future, Conque said the administration should move forward on hiring a top-notch director, one who should be attracted with a highly competitive salary.
Right now, LUS is run by an interim director, following the early retirement of longtime Director Terry Huval. Conque’s language was added to a resolution formalizing an agreement between the council and the administration that a new director not be named until the smoke clears on the idea of outside management of LUS.
William Theriot put a pressure cooker time limit on the deal. After NextGEN’s presentation — which Councilman Jared Bellard asked for but requested be abbreviated to less than 20 minutes from the LPUA version — Councilman William Theriot turned to City Attorney Paul Escott and directed him to draft a resolution that would effectively wash the council’s hands of the NextGEN proposal or any others like it for the time being. That resolution, also aimed at easing anxiety the NextGEN proposal has caused for LUS employees, will state that LUS is not for sale, for lease or open to any takeover of its operations and management.
While non-binding, the resolution would ice potential suitors with a clear statement of the council’s position on monetizing LUS. Council members have complained that public criticism has been trained on them, despite not initiating LCG’s flirtation with NextGEN.
Theriot, a staunch and vocal conservative, put his foot down to defend a government-owned monopoly. After months talking with “the owners and consumers of LUS,” he tells The Current he was ready to nip this deal in the bud.
“This is not what the people want,” he said. “Then why are we going through the motions?”
What happens now? We’ll know in two weeks where Theriot’s eight fellow council members really stand on NextGEN’s proposal. He only needs four more votes to effectively kill the deal.