There is an important story out of Louisiana that may seem like a just a local story, but it could also prove to have significance as the first victory in a necessary national movement to break up old political boundaries that harbor failed municipal governments.
After a long battle spanning more than a decade, a section of East Baton Rouge Parish has successfully seceded from the Baton Rouge city/county consolidated government. The new city of St. George, Louisiana has been born.
“A new City of St. George: How a major Louisiana Supreme Court ruling could change Baton Rouge”
The Louisiana Supreme Court ruled Friday to allow the City of St. George to move forward with plans to incorporate, a monumental decision for Baton Rouge and possibly the end to a decade-long battle over the creation of the new city.
The new City of St. George will include at least 86,000 residents across a 60-square-mile area in the southeast corner of East Baton Rouge Parish, making it one of the largest cities in the state — on par with Lake Charles and Kenner.
There are generally two hallmarks of failed cities – rampant crime and failed schools. Baton Rouge is renowned for both. The St. George movement didn’t even start out as an effort to form a new city, it was about trying to create a new school district independent of the dysfunctional Baton Rouge schools.
The St. George movement had preceded that election by a decade — it originally started as a push to create a separate, independent school district before evolving over the years into a full-fledged campaign for a new city.
There are bubbling municipal secession movements across the country, from Buckhead in Atlanta to Lost Creek in Austin as well as efforts by conservative counties to secede from blue states such as California. May the victory in Baton Rouge provide encouragement that the battle may be long, but it can be won.
Few people expect local government to be free of corruption and graft, but in exchange for an often-corrupt political machine, the expectation for local government had always been that it would effectively provide essential city services and maintain civil order. In the most recent Cut Jib Newsletter podcast, Michael Walsh, JJ Sefton, and CBD discussed the concept of “honest graft” as it applied to the Tammany Hall era of New York City. It was terribly corrupt, but it also provided policing and functioning schools, and it generally maintained civil order.
Unfortunately, Tammany-type Democrats in cities across America have been replaced by Pol Pot Democrats who seek to destroy the old order, embracing crime and lawlessness as tools in their vision of re-organizing society. Where working class residents were once the most important constituents, modern blue-city leaders have ditched the working class in favor of criminals and illegal aliens.
About a year ago I wrote a piece titled, When States & Municipalities Fail, Let’s Break Them Up [Buck Throckmorton – 6/19/2023] discussing how the bankruptcy of the city of Milwaukee, and the imminent bankruptcy of the state of Illinois present opportunities to dissolve those failed entities.
Milwaukee is a failed city that cannot pay its bills. Regrettably, the Republican-controlled legislature in Wisconsin is simply going to bail the city out, rather than letting it actually go bankrupt. Any bailout that keeps municipal services operating should also terminate the city as it is currently incorporated, because Milwaukee has proved it is not capable of self-governance.
Circling back to Milwaukee, I don’t know if it has neighborhoods that wish they could de-annex, but my experience is that in most any city, there are neighborhoods that were annexed against their will which wish to be free of the taxes and pathologies of the leftist municipal government that now holds control over them.
Here is an idea that is not originally mine, but it’s a good one. How about dissolving the failed state of Illinois and making it a territory? Or perhaps putting Chicago in federal receivership, making it similar to Guam as an unincorporated territory of the United States, and allowing the downstate counties to be annexed by neighboring states?
Boundaries and borders have always changed. Look at the video below to see how state boundaries have changed in this country since its birth. There is nothing sacrosanct about the current map that it must remain unchanged in perpetuity. In fact, it cannot stay unchanged. History tells us that. City boundaries are going to change. State borders are going to change. The ideal should be that they change in a peaceful manner.
Let Baton Rouge / St. George be the first of many dissolutions of political entities that are in need of a cartographical divorce.
Which city is next? How about Austin? It would be a prime candidate for partition/dissolution because it is currently engaged in an insurrection against the state of Texas, having declared itself a “sanctuary city” in order to protect the ghouls who are medically preying on children in the ongoing transgender social contagion. The City of Austin is in open rebellion against state law.
The Austin City Council approved a resolution making the city a sanctuary for transgender minors seeking sex reassignment treatments. Although the measure directly violates the state law that seeks to protect children by prohibiting hormonal and surgical gender transition interventions in minors.
The good news is that Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has given notice to the city.
While I am not an expert on municipal law, I would think that Austin’s open defiance of state law would empower the state of Texas to dissolve the city’s charter. Once the city is dissolved, the emancipated neighborhoods could then get a new opportunity to determine what municipality, new or existing, they wish to be a part of.
[buck.throckmorton at protonmail dot com]