In an interview in the Feb. 9 issue of The Independent ["Downloading Durel"], City-parish President Joey Durel compared the operation of city-parish government with his pet-shop business. Civil government is not a business.
A business uses funds voluntarily invested and offers goods and/or services that the public can choose to buy or refuse to buy. No business can force anyone to unwillingly invest in that business. No business can force anyone to unwillingly assume the risks of that business. No business can force anyone to unwillingly buy goods or services. No business can force anyone to bail it out if it loses money.
A civil government can't lose money because a civil government always has the taxpayers to bail it out. For this reason a civil government will take risks with the taxpayers' money that a business would never take with its own, or with its stockholders' money.
The city-parish wants to take a risk that Cox and BellSouth are unwilling to take because the city-parish has the taxpayers to bail them out, and Cox and BellSouth don't.
The thing that the city-parish president said that bothered me the most is (in reference to the plan for the city-owned utility to spend in excess of $100 million to run fiber optics to every address in the city): "I can't imagine how anybody that truly understands this could be against it." He doesn't understand why any taxpayer would be opposed to being forced to take on this risk, or why anyone other than Cox or BellSouth would be opposed to the city-parish, with its power of coercive force, entering into competition against entities with no such power.
I find it very difficult to believe that the city-parish president was ever in private business for himself. I find it very difficult to believe that he was ever anything but a politician.