Word: roemer
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...have put more people to death since 1977 than Louisiana. Monroe was convicted of murdering Lenora Collins in her bed one steamy summer night in 1977. Despite a lack of physical evidence and a jailhouse suggestion by a man in Michigan that he committed the crime, Louisiana Governor Buddy Roemer has not acted on the recommendation of his pardon board that the sentence be commuted to life in prison. Instead, Roemer will wait to see if the courts get him off the hook before he makes a final decision. It will be a final decision. With the death penalty, guilty...
Whatever his personal beliefs, Governor Roemer will make that decision in a political framework. Beyond grappling with the haunting question "Did he do it?," the Governor will, inescapably, weigh the political fallout either way he goes. Once again, a capital case and a person's fate will be determined by a politician with a partisan agenda. In 1984 North Carolina Governor James Hunt was waging a fierce battle for the U.S. Senate seat held by Jesse Helms. Meanwhile, another political battle was raging. Velma Barfield, a matronly grandmother convicted of murdering her fiance while under the influence of drugs...
Besides better fiscal management, Roemer is offering something else that Louisiana is not used to: relentless honesty in government. He has created his own muckraking department, hiring veteran Times-Picayune Investigative Reporter Bill Lynch to serve as Louisiana's first inspector general. Lynch received enough reports of improprieties to prompt the Governor to replace all members of both the racing and the real estate commissions. Says Lynch, who is expanding his staff from twelve to 35: "If I had known as a reporter what I learned my first three days here, I could have won five Pulitzer Prizes." Louisiana residents...
...Roemer has hardly escaped criticism. Labor and education leaders alike call him unapproachable. He has irritated teachers by suggesting that they face periodic competency reviews and surrender their system of lifelong tenure. Proposed cuts of $50 million in the state's much admired charity hospital system have caused anxiety and protest in some localities...
...Roemer has had his own moments of embarrassment -- as when he was caught appointing the son of a key state senator custodian of notarial records in New Orleans, a part-time sinecure that paid its last beneficiary $105,000. Well, said the Governor when asked about this venture in old-fashioned patronage, he would move to do away with that cushy job. Ed Hardin, president of Louisiana's Common Cause, feels Roemer is much too autocratic and tends to act without enough research. Says Hardin: "He's assembled power that makes Huey Long look like a piker...