With a low voter turnout, Livingtson, St. Helena and Tangipahoa Parish selected Attorney Jeff Oglesbee of Livingston as the 21st Judicial District Family Court Judge. Meanwhile, in Tangipahoa Parish, voters rejected a half-cent sales tax which would have funded a larger parish prison.
In the Division G Family Court Judge race, although Oglesbee, a conservative and devout Catholic, won his hometown parish with 67 percent, with moderate Democrat Lila Hogan taking Tangipahoa, her hometown, with 42 percent while Democrat Vanessa Williams won her hometown, St. Helena, with 45 percent.
Voter turnout was low for the Family Court judge race with approximately only 17.5 percent of qualified voters in Tangipahoa voting. In St. Helena, only 16.8 percent of qualified voters showed up to the polls and in Livingston, the lowest turnout, only 15.1 percent voted for Family Court Judge.
Ultimately Oglesbee’s strong lead in Livingtson Parish, which garnered 8,081 votes of the 13,064 votes cast, and his almost tie with Hogan in Tangipahoa, in which Hogan only won by 183 votes, pushed him as the clear frontrunner and winner of the family court judge race.
Furthermore, a new half-cent sales tax which would have facilitated expansion for the Tangipahoa Parish Prison was shot down by voters in the parish.
Parish voters turned the tax down by 55 percent, or 7,069 votes. Turnout for the sales tax was low as well with the unofficial turnout totaling roughly 17.3 percent.
With early voting alone, the sales tax won with 51 percent, or 1,507 votes.
Weeks before the election, Sheriff Daniel Edwards called the half-cent sales tax a “necessity” to fund the renovation and enlargement of the parish prison.
According to Edwards, the new jail would have been able to house parish and municipal prisoners and would have added sufficient space based on the anticipated population growth over the next 30 years.
Had the half-cent sales tax been approved, a parish jail fund would have been created, and it would have been maintained and administered by the jail, according to Edwards.
The city’s existing jail operates on a $6 million budget.
The fund would have repaid debt, which is essentially jail construction, funded jail operations and any remaining surplus would have been split between Tangipahoa Parish government and the sheriff’s office.
The jail was built in 1982 and has not had any additions made to it since 1990. There are approximately 526 beds in the prison, though the parish population has jumped from 85,754 in 1990 to 122,571 in 2013, an increase of 51.9 percent.
The sales tax would have increased the amount of beds in the jail taking the number from 330 to 856 beds, a net increase of 200 percent in the jail. Edwards said there would have been additional space for training, education and rehabilitation, designed to reduce recidivism.
However, voters did not reject the Tangipahoa Parish Library 2.81 millage which was just a renewal, not a new millage.
According to Library System Director Barry Bradford, the library runs off of a $3 million budget deriving from two property taxes, a 2.81 millage and a 3.0 millage. Each millage is active for a 10 year period.
Tangipahoa voters largely renewed the tax with 61 percent, or 7,836 votes, voting in favor of renewal.
Turnout was a bit lower for the renewal than the sales tax, totaling approximately 17.2 percent of qualified parish voters.