Jefferson Parish politicians now masquerade as taxpayers' friend on ...

A welder puts the finishing touches on a catwalk at the Jefferson Performing Arts Center in November 2011. (Photo by Brett Duke / The Times-Picayune archive)

Rome may not have been built in a day, but if Jefferson Parish and J. Caldarera & Co. had been in charge, fans in the Coliseum would still be waiting for the first chariot race. They'd also need that free bread, because the building costs would have robbed them blind.

With a debacle of the magnitude of the Jefferson Performing Arts Center, it was probably only a matter of time before the parish political class donned its gladiatorial gear.

That happened this week when parish council members Chris Roberts and Elton Lagasse waded into Parish President John Young over what appeared to be a wholly created question about more funding. This, for a project so bloated and transparently a rip-off to every parish resident that the questions on this one should be asked in a different government venue than the council chambers.

The squabble over a resolution by Roberts asking the parish to not openly seek additional cash from the state legislature - a request Young insisted isn't being made at present - showcased some pretty dubious political grandstanding. That is because all of the politicians acting like responsible stewards of the public purse have, in the matter of the Arts Center,?put on?those costumes far too late.

Take Lagasse. It was he who told convicted former Chief Administrative Officer Tim Whitmer to cut Caldarera a $5.6 million check in 2009 - double what the parish's internal controls said it could certify, according to a scathing legislative auditor's report. But now Lagasse appears to have seen the light. On Wednesday, he complained about the project's perpetually increasing costs and glacial pace.

Lagasse may not have been the Arts Center's district councilman when the project was approved, but he spent 8 years in that seat blithely signing off on one multi-million change order after another. The same is true of Roberts, a council veteran who essentially did nothing as the project morphed from dubious to outrageous, but now presents himself as the taxpayers' paladin.

Young pushed back this week against his political foes, but the notion the former council member who had the same laissez faire attitude toward the monstrosity has now put on the green eyeshade to ensure the public gets something out of this extravagant waste is also hard to swallow.

These same elected officials should have pulled the plug and dynamited this boondoggle years ago. When what its original visionaries once labeled an "improbable dream" misses its 2-year construction estimate by half a decade, and sees its initial $26.6 million cost head north of $44.7 million with millions more requested, forensic accounting isn't necessary to prove the whole thing is a con.

But then, what is obvious to anyone cruising past the silvery pile rotting along Airline Highway as if seeking to join the architectural hue of the strip without ever actually acquiring the status of a legitimate business wasn't obvious to Jefferson Parish politicians. After all, Joe Caldarera, a Houdini on the bid and a tortoise on the job, had followed this precise path of cost overruns and construction delays with the John A. Alario Sr. Center on the West Bank and Zephyr Field before he ever got the Arts Center gig.

The slick, rich Wall Streeters who fund these things for government always include the fine print that says past performance is no guarantee of future results, so maybe, someday, people will pack the Arts Center's softly lit padded seats just as they do the sun-roasted bleachers just down the road for Saints training camp. But one wonders if the curtain on this deal should fall before it ever goes up.

Source: http://www.nola.com/opinions/index.ssf/2012/11/jefferson_parish_politicians_n.html

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