Governor’s office comes to parish to hear from constituents

Members of Governor John Bel Edwards’ Office of Constituent Services visited the Evangeline Parish Police Jury meeting room Thursday as part of a new initiative called Constituent Services on the Go.
“We go out into the communities and offer services face-to-face to constituents that we do on an everyday basis in the capitol,” said Director of Constituent Services Kim LaCour. “We are able to assist constituents with state agencies to see that complaints are looked into and resolved as best as possible.”
LaCour, along with Keandria Henry, began visiting each of the 64 parishes in August. “Next year we’re planning on going to north Louisiana,” said LaCour. “By the end of next year, we will have visited all 64 parishes.”
The initiative is designed to take concerns from constituents around the state and relay those concerns to state offices so that solutions can be found. LaCour expressed some of the main issues that keep coming up throughout the state.
“We have a lot of issues dealing with transportation,” LaCour said. “It’s Department of Transportation issues with state funds, and sometimes people may be confused whether a road is a state road, a parish road, or a city road. We are able to get assistance for people who have complaints about state roads.”
“We also hear issues about Veterans’ Affairs and things that the state can offer to better assist our veterans,” LaCour continued. “That is very important to us, so we are always making sure that those concerns get back to the office for us to discuss ways to better serve our veterans.”
Another big issue to come up consistently is flooding especially following the flood of 2016. “A lot of those constituents are dealing with Restore Louisiana at this time,” LaCour said. “We’re trying to get them through the process because it sometimes can be lengthy because it has a lot of federal restrictions that the governor has written to Congress about and tried to get lessened. It may not help with this particular round of flooding, but hopefully in the future, it will lessen the headache that homeowners have to go through to back in their homes.”
According to LaCour, the initiative is geared to letting people “know that the governor is committed to hearing the voices of his constituents.” She concluded, “That’s why he has directed us to go to each parish with the intention that people will come and voice their concerns and know they will be taken seriously and that we will try to have resolutions for them.”