Mark Ballard

A last-minute challenge has stalled broadband installation in a poor northeastern Louisiana community that Gov. John Bel Edwards (D-LA) used as a backdrop for the July 25 launch of 67 grants to extend high-speed Internet to underserved rural communities. The effort to quash the successful bid for East Carroll Parish claims that about two-thirds of the homes set to get internet access are already being served. It’s just one of 26 complaints statewide that threaten to delay the delivery of high-speed Internet to about 400,000 people in rural Louisiana.

For those who still hold that Baton Rouge (LA) has missed the hyperpartisan political culture that defines Washington these days, a brief vignette from a recent Louisiana Public Service Commission meeting might prove enlightening. PSC Commissioner Foster Campbell, a Bossier Parish populist who carried the Democratic banner in the last Senate race, asked the regulatory panel to go on record supporting net neutrality, just like 22 other states have done. PSC Commissioner Mike Francis, who once chaired the Republican Party, asked the identity of the 22.