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FRANKLIN — The latest COVID-19 surge, which has hit St. Mary Parish people hard, may also be standing between the parish and a major employer.
A company considering St. Mary for a $14 million expansion, with the potential to hire 250 people, is now waiting to see how COVID-19 will run its course in St. Mary, said parish Economic Development Director Evan Boudreaux on Thursday.
The company, which Boudreaux didn’t name, hasn’t ruled out a move to St. Mary. But “they definitely made us aware that it was an area of concern,” Boudreaux said.
At Wednesday’s St. Mary Parish Council meeting, President David Hanagriff announced that he plans no additional mask mandates against the latest COVID surge, urged people to get vaccinated and said both are matters of personal choice.
Boudreaux agrees. And, eight months into the job, says he hopes people will take the parish’s economic future into account when they make their choice.
“The concern for me, one, is economic opportunity,” Boudreaux said. “One thing businesses look for is quality of life. If it looks like a community is shot through with COVID, they’re not going to go for us.”
Boudreaux’s description comes close to matching the picture painted by Office of Public Health statistics.
On July 23, Gov. John Bel Edwards said at a news conference that since the easily transmitted and highly virulent Delta COVID variant arrived, Louisiana has become the state where the disease is spreading most quickly.
One measure is the incidence rate, a seven-day average of active cases per 100,000 residents. An incidence of 100 is a source of concern, Edwards said. Louisiana’s rate was at 175.
For the week ending July 21, St. Mary’s incidence was over 500, up by half since the previous week. The percentage of St. Mary COVID tests returning positive results was at 16.2%, up by a third since the week ending July 14.
The first wave of COVID pushed parish unemployment to 14% last spring. The jobless rate was at 8.8% in June 2021.
The early COVID waves closed some small businesses here. Others are being launched as signs of recovery emerge, especially in east St. Mary. But another COVID wave threatens those businesses, Boudreaux said.
Federal COVID aid has brought tens of millions into the parish: a $300-$600 weekly unemployment enhancement, direct stimulus payments and at least $80 million in forgivable Paycheck Protection Program loans.
Boudreaux, who worked as a congressional staff member before succeeding Frank Fink at Economic Development, believes Congress is unlikely to pass another big stimulus bill.
“Instead of letting the state or federal government take control, we can take control ourselves …,” Boudreaux said.
“When people make their decisions [about vaccination] for themselves, they should think about what those choices mean.”

A couple of weeks have gone by since former Gov. Edwin Edwards was laid to rest. It’s been a week since Republican legislators used a provision in the Edwards-era state constitution to conduct a veto session.
Taken together, those two events mark a change in the only spectator sport that can compete with Saints and LSU football: Louisiana politics.
Louisiana’s political landscape seems destined to look less and less like a homegrown product and more like just another battlefield in the national clash of ideologies.
Everyone in Louisiana probably has an Edwin Edwards story. Here’s mine, and it may illustrate the point:
It was spring 1991, and I’d only recently moved to Louisiana. Edwards was kicking off his fifth and final campaign for governor. So I was sent to a big barn of a dance club someplace in St. Martin Parish to cover the event.
The Edwards appearance was part of a meeting of evangelical Christians.
Nationally, conservative Christians already were a big Republican constituency by then. Having heard a bit about the Democratic former governor’s love of craps and reputation for womanizing, I thought, “Geez. This crowd will eat him alive.”
But when Edwards took the stage, he didn’t give a speech. He delivered a sermon.
Edwards marched back and forth on the stage and called down the Holy Spirit, and the crowd responded with amens and hallelujahs.
It was the first inkling that the unique nature of Louisiana politics hadn’t died with Huey Long.
Edwards was the fourth former governor to die in two years. The others were Buddy Roemer, Mike Foster and Kathleen Blanco..
They represent a time when the governor’s agenda, whoever he or she might be, was the ground on which political battles played out.
It was always a Louisiana agenda, based on some need or idea that arose in Louisiana.
That’s one of those unique features of Louisiana politics. State government wasn’t about Republican vs. Democrat, right vs. left or conservative vs. liberal.
Political leaders were categorized as either for or against the governor, sometimes a governor who was out of power.
Again, Edwards may be the clearest example.
In a long-ago interview, former state Rep. Odon Bacque talked to me about what it was like to serve in the Legislature during his single term 1988-92.
Edwards was out of office, awaiting his comeback. Roemer was on the fourth floor during that time.
But legislators could feel the very real presence of Edwards when they convened each spring, Bacque said.
As Edwards was being eulogized, legislative leaders were preparing to go into the first veto session since the creation of the 1974 Louisiana Constitution that Edwards championed.
Several bills vetoed by current Gov. John Bel Edwards were taken up in the session.
The most contentious items in the days leading to the session were vetoes of bills removing the permit requirement for those who would carry concealed firearms and preventing transgender women from competing in girls and women’s sports.
We can agree or disagree with the legislation or the vetoes. Eventually, all the override attempts failed.
But the permit-less carry and transgender bills were an attempt to bring Louisiana in line with a national conservative agenda.
They didn’t bubble up from within Louisiana the way Edwin Edwards’ tax system changes in the 1970s, Roemer’s restructuring of charity hospital governance in the 1980s or Blanco’s push for school reform in the 2000s did.
Our only living former governor, Republican Bobby Jindal, is arguably the recent governor most closely associated with a national ideology.
That’s not to say the change is bad. Louisiana is a conservative state, and GOP legislators stepped up on behalf of a conservative agenda.
But it’s a different way of doing things. And it’s here.
Bill Decker is managing editor of The Daily Review.

Louisiana could receive billions of dollars in new federal infrastructure spending despite a disagreement over the plan between the state’s two U.S. senators.
U.S. Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., was a lead negotiator in the roughly $1 trillion “Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act” proposal that reached bipartisan agreement Wednesday evening. The plan includes $550 billion in new spending on top of reauthorizing existing federal infrastructure programs at their highest funding levels.
“Louisiana has been impacted more than any other state by flooding and natural disasters these past few years. In addition to billions for roads and bridges, it includes $47 billion dollars to address resiliency and protect communities,” he said.
“This is the largest investment in roads, bridges, broadband, and our coastline in the history of our state,” Cassidy added.
The legislation isn’t a done deal, though it passed a key milestone when 67 senators voted in favor of a procedural measure to advance the bill toward floor debate; 60 senators are needed for final passage.
U.S. Sen. John Kennedy, also a Louisiana Republican, voted against the bill along with 31 GOP colleagues. Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, voiced the dissenting view, saying the full text has not been released and that the trillion-dollar spending package will only add to current “inflationary pressures and mounting federal debt.”
“Housing, food, gasoline and electricity are all becoming more expensive in large part because the federal government keeps spending more money than it has,” Lee said.
Despite concerns over what will appear in the finalized version of the Democratic-led bill, Cassidy said he received commitments for billions of dollars for Louisiana infrastructure projects.
“It would fund more than $6 billion for Louisiana’s roads and highways,” he said, adding that the state’s 1,634 bridges and over 3,411 miles of highway in “poor condition.”
“Commute times are up 9.3 percent since 2011 and bad roads result in an average cost to drivers of $667 per year,” he said.
Another $6 billion will purportedly fund state highway improvements and $371 million will go to Louisiana’s Clean Water State Revolving Fund program and Drinking Water State Revolving Fund, which includes $53 million for Lake Pontchartrain.
Funding for the state’s airports and streamlined permitting processes are included, as are grants for erosion, flooding and habitat restoration along Louisiana’s coastal shorelines.

September 15, 1979 — July 28, 2021
A loving son, brother, uncle and friend, Chad David Felterman was raised in Patterson, where he graduated from Patterson High School as Valedictorian of the class of 1997. He then moved to Baton Rouge to attend Louisiana State University, where he received three degrees, his Bachelor’s degree of Science in 2002 and his Bachelor’s degree of Civil Law and Juris Doctor and passing the Bar Exam in 2005. He then went on to receive his Master’s degree in Business Administration.
The eldest of three children born to Danny and Linda Felterman, Chad had a love for life and wanted to spend every moment with his family and friends. He was affectionately called ChaCha by his niece, nephews, and godchildren, whom he simply adored and loved spending time with.
He began his career with the Louisiana Department of Public Safety and Corrections on August 13, 2007, where he was currently employed as a budget director. Some of his favorite pastimes included fishing, going to the camp, Mardi Gras, casino trips and hanging out with family and friends.
Chad passed away at the age of 41 on Wednesday, July 28, 2021, surrounded in love by his family at Ochsner Baton Rouge Hospital from complications of Covid-19 pneumonia. He will be deeply missed by all who were fortunate to have known him in life.
His memory will forever live in the hearts of his parents, Danny Felterman and Linda Barr Felterman; his sister, Katie F. Schexnayder and her husband Ian; his brother, Tyler Felterman and his wife Dayna; his paternal grandfather, Fulton C. Felterman; niece and godchild; Riley Kay Felterman; nephew, Eli James Schexnayder; nephew and godchild, Hudson Daniel Schexnayder; godchildren, Addison Boudreaux and Anthony Prima; his beloved Golden Labradoodle, Ellie; as well as numerous, aunts, uncles, cousins, and friends.
He was preceded in death by his paternal grandmother, Sylvia Folse Felterman; his maternal grandparents, Harold Macon Barr Sr. and Ida Rebecca Mills Barr; and three uncles, David J. Felterman, Jon M. Felterman, and Harold M. Barr Jr.
Funeral services will be held Saturday, July 31, 2021, at St. Joseph Catholic Church in Patterson during an 11:30 a.m. Mass of Christian Burial, which will be live streamed on Ibert’s Mortuary’s YouTube Channel via www.iberts.com. Following the Mass, Chad will be laid to rest in St. Joseph Cemetery. Monsignor J. Douglas Courville, JCL will be the Celebrant for the Mass and conduct the services. Serving as pallbearers will be Ben Felterman, John Darce, Billy Boyles, Will Kornegay, Austin Clancy, Eric Loewen, Denis Ricou, and Patrick Wilkerson, with Nicholas Boudreaux as honorary pallbearer. The family requests visiting hours be observed Saturday at Ibert’s Mortuary in Patterson from 9:00 a.m. until dismissal time of 11:00 a.m.
Family and friends may view the obituary online by visiting www.iberts.com and are encouraged to share their condolences, cherished memories, love, and support for the family.
Arrangements have been entrusted to Ibert’s Mortuary, Inc., 1111 Lia Street, Patterson, LA 70392, (985) 395-7873.