DOMINO EFFECT
by Stephanie Grace - Times-Picayune (excerpt)

From the beginning, something has bothered me about the Eddie Price saga. It wasn't that Mandeville's eminently obtuse mayor apparently has an unfortunate habit of driving his city SUV while impaired. Most people didn't find out about that until later.

It wasn't even that Price received Wal-Mart gift cards, a gun cabinet and other gifts from city employees that turned out to be paid for by the ostensibly charitable Citizen's Service Fund.

Even if you believe Price's explanation that he didn't know who really paid for the presents, you have to wonder: Why were city employees showering the mayor with gifts in the first place? Shouldn't that alone have set off alarm bells? That it didn't says a lot about the atmosphere at City Hall.

OK, maybe those city workers just like Price. More likely, in at least some cases, they felt pressured to pay tribute to their boss, at the risk of falling out of favor. According to the recent state legislative auditor's report detailing this and many other abuses, Police Chief Tom Buell bolstered the second explanation, explaining that he dipped into the fund for the mayor's gifts so that city employees would not be burdened with the cost. A professionally minded mayor would have recognized that dynamic and just said no. Not Price.

In fact, if someone wanted to study the mores of the good-old-boy politician, to figure out how to turn a government into a classic political machine, they'd do well to start with the audit.