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(Editor’s note: The charges listed here and the narratives that go with them are provided by the police agencies that made the arrests. Guilt or innocence has not been determined in court.)

Morgan City and St. Mary authorities reported arrests on drug charges Tuesday.

Morgan City

Chief Chad M. Adams reported that the Morgan City Police Department responded to 48 calls for service over the last 24-hour reporting period and made these arrests:

--Damon Maurice Allen, 52, Park Street, Patterson, was arrested at 10:19 p.m. Tuesday on charges of possession of methamphetamine, possession of drug paraphernalia and obstruction of justice.

--Vilitris Benjamin Autin Gibbs, 30, Diane Drive, Morgan City, was arrested at 11:19 p.m. Tuesday as a fugitive from the Assumption Parish Sheriff’s Office.

--Renetta Hawkins, 60, Verdun Lane, Franklin, was arrested at 3:32 p.m. Monday on a charge of simple battery.

St. Mary

Sheriff Blaise Smith reported that over the last 24-hour reporting period, the Sheriff’s Office responded to 38 complaints and made these arrests:

--Thomas Christopher Thompson, 49, Berwick, was arrested at 2:52 p.m. Tuesday on a warrant alleging failure to appear on acharge of criminal neglect of family. Thompson was also named in two MCPD warrants alleging failure to appear. Bail was set at $7,892 for the St. Mary Parish warrant.

--Michael Wayne Gray Jr., 47, Franklin, was arrested at 8:52 a.m. Tuesday on charges of possession with intent to distribute Schedule IV drugs, possession with intent to distribute a Schedule I drug, possession of cocaine and improper lane usage.

Bail has not been set at this time.

Franklin

Chief Cedric Handy reported that the Franklin Police Department responded to eight complaints over the last 24-hour reporting period and made this arrest:

--Deondric Butler, 27, Ninth Street, Franklin, was arrested at 12:33 p.m. Tuesday on a warrant dated May 5 alleging unlawful posting of criminal activity for notoriety and publicity and two counts of aggravated battery.

Butler was booked, processed and held with no bond set at the time of press release.

DAY CAMP
Morgan City Recreation Department Summer Day Camp registration accepted for children ages 6 (by May 1) to 12 (will not turn 13 until after July 31). Cost: $200 per 2-week session. Sessions: 8 a.m.-5 p.m. Mondays-Fridays, June 12-23; June 26-July 7 (no camp July 4); and July 10-21. Must provide a birth certificate. Lunch provided. Registration forms at MCRD, 915 Everett St., 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. weekdays, closed 12:30-1:30 p.m. for lunch.

South Louisiana Community College will host its Spring 2023 Graduation Ceremony at 10 a.m. Thursday at Lafayette’s Cajundome.

Nearly 600 graduates will walk across the stage having earned an associate degree, technical diploma, certificate of technical studies or high school equivalency diploma.

These students from across Acadiana will be entering the workforce or transferring to regional universities to continue their educational journey.

The spring 2023 graduates represent a diverse group of students who have completed a range of programs offered by SLCC, including studies in business, information technology, technical studies, liberal arts and humanities, nursing and allied health, STEM, transportation, and energy, and adult basic education.

“Graduation is a significant milestone in our students’ lives, and it is an honor to celebrate their accomplishments with them,” says Dr. Vincent June, chancellor of SLCC. “We are incredibly proud of our graduates and the hard work they have put in to achieve this momentous occasion. We see graduation as a beginning, for our graduates, and for our community.”

The commencement will be emceed by SLCC Foundation Vice President Gregory Daigle, partner and financial advisor of Pinnacle Group. The graduates will be addressed by Blaise Zuschlag, executive vice [resident of Acadian Companies, and student speaker Timothy Stroud.

The public is invited to attend and also encouraged to visit the SLCC website to stream the ceremony online. Viewers can connect by visiting www.solacc.edu.
 

The fight between Louisiana and the federal government had been going on for 16 years when Congress passed “historic” legislation in May 1953 to “restore to the state land that was taken away from it by decisions of the Supreme Court.”

The land in question was beneath the Gulf of Mexico. Nobody much cared about it until the 1940s, when it began to dawn on folks that there was oil beneath that soggy bottom.

In fact, the U.S. government had no objection in 1938 when the state claimed everything out to the edge of the Continental Shelf — the shallow seabed that in some parts reaches a hundred miles or more from shore.

But it didn’t take long for the federal government to realize there were millions and millions of barrels of oil beneath the Gulf, meaning millions and millions of dollars in potential taxes. That’s why the feds went to the Supreme Court to claim that coastal waters belonged to the national government, not the state.

Louisiana argued it had always exercised “continuous, undisturbed, and unchallenged sovereignty” over the seabed. But the court agreed with the feds, touching off a decades-long legal fight, known generally as the Tidelands Dispute.

The Submerged Lands Act that was passed in May 1953 was supposed to undo what the courts had done.

It gave coastal states jurisdiction for three miles from their coastlines, but that raised as many issues as it solved. Nobody was sure about where to start measuring the three miles.

The New York Times predicted, correctly, that “because of the state’s extremely irregular shoreline, it may take … years to determine just where the three mile … boundary of the state actually lies.”

That was just about the time that Jack P. F. Gremillion was hand-picked by Earl Long to become attorney general. He stayed in office for 16 years and is probably best remembered for opposing desegregation and for the fact that his tenure ended with an indictment for fraud and conspiracy. A jury found him not guilty of those charges, but he was then convicted on five counts of lying to the grand jury that indicted him.  

Despite his other views and Long’s claim that “if you want to hide something from Jack Gremillion, put it in a law book,” Gremillion did serious battle over the tidelands. He put together an impressive team of legal scholars and they put together a series of lawsuits raising a list of constitutional issues — none of which were successful.
Gremillion tried another route. In 1956, he took his argument to the friendlier state, not federal, court, and got a restraining order to keep the federal government from leasing offshore land. Gremillion argued there was a conspiracy between the U.S. Department of Interior and oil companies “to usurp and illegally ‘grab’ lands and revenues belonging to the state.”

That finally led to an agreement between the state and federal governments to allow oil drilling, but to hold the lease money and taxes in escrow until a ruling by the Supreme Court on who owned the land. The court, once again, gave the federal government the land that it claimed, and, more importantly, gave it most of the money.
Louisiana finally won a small battle several years later over where the shoreline began, and with the declaration that coastal erosion did not also erode away state land. But there was still a money issue to solve, this one over how much of the interest from the money that had been put aside belonged to the state.

That legal battle dragged on for years more, often to the frustration of Billy Guste, the attorney general who picked up the battle.

In 1980, the court made a tangled ruling that Louisiana did own the money that had been held for it, but somehow did not own the interest on it.

That’s how things stood until one day when Gary Keyser, the assistant who led the tidelands fight during the Guste administration, came across a federal rule actually meant to deal with drilling on federal land in the western U.S. It provided that states should get a “fair and equitable” part of the proceeds from mineral production on public land.

Louisiana pounced on that with a new lawsuit that was settled out of court in 1986.

It gave the state $540 million in reparation for past federal action, and provided that Louisiana would get 27% of the annual revenue from a part of the Gulf outside the three-mile limit designated the “8(g) area,” referring to the part of the rule that gives some money to the states.

Since then, the state has invested the so-called 8(g) money in a Louisiana Education Quality Trust Fund that has provided hundreds of millions in grants to Louisiana schools.

It only took 50 years to get things more or less right.

You can contact Jim Bradshaw at jimbradshaw4321@gmail.com or P.O. Box 1121, Washington LA 70589.