Dec. 20, 2005
 
BAYHAM ON POLITICS: A New Orleans City Hall Profile in Courage
 
By Mike Bayham
 
South Louisiana (Special to HNN) -- A book any aspiring politician should read is “Profiles in Courage,” the 1957 Pulitzer Prize winning chronicle that John F. Kennedy is credited with writing.
 
“Profiles in Courage” presents great moments in American political history where U.S. Senators acted against the wishes of their constituents for the good of the country, often with disastrous electoral consequences for the statesmen.
 
There has been very little admirable about New Orleans City Hall in many years, as its politics have often been mired in corruption and racial exploitation, but as of last week, Councilwoman Cynthia Hedge-Morrell distinguished herself in an action worthy of inclusion in a New Orleans version of “Profiles,” if such an understandably thin tome is ever published.
 
One of the ugliest and most illogical policies of city government was its residency restriction on the New Orleans Police Department.
 
The battles over the policy have been particularly bitter, yet the combatants on both sides have had one thing in common, as they danced around the heart of the matter by focusing their arguments on peripheral tenets such as whether cops should live in the city they protect or if New Orleans should put at a premium having the best people available on its police force regardless where they call home.
 
The real debate over the issue is simply race, since the residency restriction has been more of an impediment for white officers than black cops. Delving into any other factor aside race is pointless, since it ignores the city's main source of political tension and factionalism.
 
Ending the rule has been a challenge since the council for many years has been composed of only three reformers (Jackie Clarkson, Jay Batt, and Oliver Thomas) pitted against four machine pols (Eddie Sapir, Renee Pratt, Marlin Gusman, and Cynthia Willard-Lewis).
 
However, Gusman's mid-term departure has muddled things.
 
In the middle is the gentlelady from District D, Mrs. Morrell, Gusman's successor and whose election had little to do with a political machine and everything to do with a successful residency challenge against a state representative who was assured of victory had his name made the ballot.
 
The consequences of the residency rule have become most evident since Katrina, with documented cases of NOPD officers fleeing the city or worse yet looting those they were supposed to be protecting. The New Orleans Police Department has suffered a personnel shortage for quite some time, yet the quickest solution to this problem went nowhere fast because of racial politics.
 
Reports that the NOPD was down to less than 30 percent of its manpower leaked out through government sources before they were sanitized by City Hall and the media. One would think that the city's council would have gotten beyond pre-Katrina politics by repealing such a counterproductive law.
 
Mass pillaging, arson in the heart of the CBD, emergency vehicles being carjacked, hoodlums shooting at rescue teams trying to save stranded victims and engineers attempting to save what was left of the city were daily occurrences immediately after Katrina, yet the obtuse council still voted 4-2 to postpone consideration of scrapping the residency requirement.
 
Over the past few weeks, we've all heard the fury unleashed by the Times-Picayune and New Orleans civic leaders over the legislature's failure to adopt a levee consolidation bill, yet there was no outrage expressed by the "city fathers" over the city council's blatantly racist act. The spineless silence of these silk-stocking latter-day reformers have contributed to the sad state of city affairs.
 
Thankfully, the scales fell from the eyes of one city council member who had previously voted to maintain the restriction and ended up casting the deciding vote to suspend the residency rule for three years. Though not abolished, its placement on the shelf is likely a permanent fate.
 
For her troubles, Mrs. Morrell can expect to be the target of the harshest vitriol by so-called men of the cloth who fan the flames of racial disharmony just like their white rural counterparts did back in the 1890s.
 
Hopefully many of Mrs. Morrell's constituents who return to the city will also undergo a change of heart about the residency rule and whether it matters if the person protecting your family or rescuing you from a flooded home is black or white.
 
But if Councilwoman Morrell were to lose office because of her change of stance, then she could at a minimum take some solace in having made a greater contribution towards improving the quality of life and public safety in that one vote than many machine politicians have accomplished in their unfortunately long careers.
 
Mike Bayham is editor of StBernardPost.com, an e-paper that covers St. Bernard Parish. He can be contacted at mikebayham@yahoo.com.