A School Board Says No to Big Oil, and Alarms Sound in Business-Friendly Louisiana
“The vote has also revived a vexing, and defining, Louisiana question about the deference a perennially impoverished state must show to big business. ‘We’ve allowed the oil and gas industry to hijack our democracy,’ said Russel L. Honoré, a retired Army lieutenant general who earned acclaim for leading the military response to Hurricane Katrina, and who had urged the East Baton Rouge Parish school board to reject the exemptions. ‘The industry will brag about it all the time, how well we’re doing in terms of business development. Well, if we’re doing so well, why are we the second-poorest state?’”