Sid Edwards' library proposal keeps morphing.
In a news release Tuesday, Edwards rebranded his proposal as "Revive EBR," a plan that would rededicate the library's revenue stream for mental health and community services, drainage and road improvements and blight fixes in addition to raises for police officers.
Notably, the news release doesn't even explicitly mention police raises, which were the centerpiece when he first presented the idea earlier this month.
Edwards also said that if the plan does not pass, the city-parish will have to lay off 600-700 employees, around 15% of its workforce.
These changes seem to signal that Edwards and his staff found that the initial version of the plan was not well received. In addition to the throngs of library supporters who showed up to last week's Metro Council meeting to make their hisses heard, the plan has drawn fire from some outside the city, including those who might otherwise be considered Edwards' allies.
"It looks like the powers that be on the third floor want to double down on the idea of taking a dedicated parish millage for their own interests in Baton Rouge," Central Mayor Wade Evans wrote on Facebook last week. "I will not support stripping dedicated funding to prop up grossly inefficient departments of parish government. So much for real solutions."
Edwards also pushed back Tuesday on the narrative that the proposal had pitted cops versus libraries. But it was his administration that created that exact narrative when he touted it as a way to raise police pay.
The other parts — now centered in Revive EBR — were barely afterthoughts in the first rollout.Â
It's tempting, with Edwards, to fall back on football coach analogies. So here's one. Everybody knows a good football coach makes halftime adjustments depending on what's working and what's not. These are not halftime adjustments. It looks like Edwards is chucking the game-plan after the first three plays.
More importantly, running the city-parish is not a football game. Sudden rebrands and revisions of the proposal are not encouraging signs when he is asking East Baton Rouge voters to approve his proposal to take money away from one entity well known for fiscal prudence — the library — and give it to another with a less sterling reputation — city-parish government.
Let's not forget, that if voters approve Edwards' plan, the city-parish will assume control of approximately $92 million that taxpayers paid for libraries and the library has saved for big projects. More than $52 million of that would go to pay off city-parish debt.
What all of this signals to me is that Edwards, for all his winning on the sidelines, is still getting used to navigating politics in a large and complicated place like East Baton Rouge Parish.
And to be fair, he inherited a dysfunctional situation. The city-parish does have a yawning budget gap created by the formation of St. George. Edwards deserves some credit for taking big swings.
But as I have previously argued, his plan for library taxes is the wrong move. Maybe he and the rest of city government should tighten their belts, learn to pay as you go and save for big expenses. You know, like the library has done for the past 30 years.Â