One of the best examples we could give of why it was a good idea to elect a Republican mayor in Baton Rouge showed up yesterday…

Baton Rouge Mayor-President Sid Edwards wants to cut taxes and give police a raise by taking money from the public library system.

Edwards said the library has a “budget surplus” from “years of overtaxation of citizens.”

The city-parish 2025 budget indicates that the library system ended 2023 with a fund balance of just over $116 million. That year, the library took in more than $62 million and spent just over $56 million.

“I guess I could have chosen a lot of things, you know? I just looked at the surplus,” Mayor-President Sid Edwards said.

Edwards’ plan would require a public vote to shift the money.

“We’re not out to hurt libraries, matter of fact, we have a commitment to have the best-funded libraries in the state of Louisiana,” Edwards said.

Under his proposal, a city-parish millage would drop from 11.1 mills to 9.8 mills, which Edwards says would be the largest tax cut in two decades. The plan would also raise the average pay of Baton Rouge police officers from $40,900 to $58,000.

Additional funding will also be allocated for “improvements to economic development and critical infrastructure,” and each councilmember will also receive funding for their district for special projects, according to a press release from Edwards’ office.

“Careful consideration has been made to ensure that we will maintain the best publicly-funded library system in the state,” the press release quoted Edwards as saying. “I am looking forward to working with the EBR Metro Council to better prioritize how the city-parish spends valuable taxpayer money.”

The library system people threw a fit over that, saying they won’t have any money if the millage were to drop…

Mary Stein, the assistant director at the East Baton Rouge Parish Library, disproved of the plan.

“People think that the money we have put aside in fund balance is a surplus, that is incorrect. the money we have put aside in surplus is next year’s entire budget,” Stein said. “It’s the money we’ve collected over time to fund the Baker renovation, the Zachary renovation.”

Last year, taxpayers funded the library system to the tune of $62 million. Their budget, which is not what you’d call lean, is $56 million.

And the library system themselves are suggesting the millage get cut. They want to hold the line at 10.5 mills rather than 9.8, which apparently would keep them running a surplus without having to do any proper fiscal management.

Meanwhile, the Baton Rouge Police Department is grossly understaffed, horribly underpaid, hemorrhaging officers and fairly incapable of controlling the streets of the city, particularly in neighborhoods run by the gangs former mayor Sharon Broome didn’t want to admit existed.

This is an absolute classic case of what you get when you let privileged white leftists run things. They’ll waste money on superfluous things, like a library system which is essentially a jobs program for progressive cat-ladies and a petri dish for radical social experimentation, as we’ve seen time and again with all the LGBTQ propaganda (gay porn books, drag queen story hours) and other things libraries across the country have subjected the public to. Meanwhile, the effort to insure that the government has a proper monopoly on violence on the city’s streets goes unattended.

And when that monopoly is shattered, and society’s worst elements take to pillage and slaughter, what good are the libraries?

Not taking care of the basics of government is what causes urban ruin. But what the Left realized is that urban ruin actually works politically, because the more middle class voters you run off, the less of a risk you run of ever losing an election to a Republican.

Well, that project of weaponized governmental failure worked for a good long time in Baton Rouge. Until it didn’t. Eventually, Democrat base voters simply lose interest and decide they don’t really want to win anymore, and then a Republican does get elected.

It’s important, in such situations, to make it count. That’s what Edwards is trying to do.

And when Mary Stein says they can’t fix the roof at the Baker library for $6 million, it’s a really good indication that nobody has to take her seriously. There is a Republican majority on the Metro Council. You’d think they’d give Edwards what he’s asking for.