good news for the gulf oyster industry

The FDA backs off its oyster processing regulations.

the jack of all trades

First, Irvin Mayfield magically transforms from musician to librarian, becoming the chairman of the board of the New Orleans Public Library system just because he has a personal interest in the library system and not necessarily the academic credentials to operate a library system. And now he is on a short list to become the operating manager of the Municipal Auditorium?

I don’t get it – everyone gives him accolades aplenty, but if one reads between the lines all one sees is a power-tripper who’s only qualification is he’s personally connected to C. Ray Nagin.

As Mayor Ray Nagin on Monday proudly unveiled a proposal to transform the shuttered Municipal Auditorium into a cutting-edge performance and production complex showcasing the music of New Orleans, there was no reaction to the ambitious plan from City Council members, who must sign off on the deal.

It was unclear whether the council was silent because members spent the day reviewing the mayor’s proposed 2010 operating budget, or whether they were simply still grappling with the complexity of the $80 million auditorium makeover Nagin envisions.

While all seven council members gathered at City Hall for their initial hearing on the spending plan, in which they must make up a $68 million shortfall, Nagin held a news conference about a mile away where he described the vision for the city-owned auditorium as an “incredible concept.” Welcomed by a brass brand, the mayor said the iconic structure in Louis Armstrong Park, swamped by Hurricane Katrina, has languished long enough.

Asked if it is realistic to get the issue before the council by January, as the developers hope, Nagin said, “anything’s feasible.” “You know, it’s just a matter of will,” he said, as he announced that he had selected developer Stewart Juneau, the lone bidder, to head up the proposed redevelopment. “We need to get this going. The building is just sitting and the longer it sits, the more issues that arise there.”

Juneau, who has teamed with another staunch Nagin supporter, musician Irvin Mayfield, is seeking a 50-year lease from City Hall, which would require a vote of the council. No council members attended the announcement, which took place at Dooky Chase’s restaurant. Council members could not be reached for comment later.

Nagin, who will leave office in May, said he has not spoken “specifically” with council members about the project, but said they are “aware of the concept,” which he outlined in his final State of the City address in May.

It’s worth remembering that a lack of council support scuttled another high-profile initiative Nagin announced in that speech — a plan to purchase the downtown Chevron complex as a new home for City Hall. That deal failed on a 4-3 vote after council members opposed to the idea said neither they nor members of the public had been sufficiently briefed on the plan or had a chance to offer meaningful input.

Juneau’s auditorium plan calls for the revamped facility to combine traditional stages with digital production facilities, a merchandise distribution center, a culinary school, a jazz museum and offices for nonprofit and commercial start-ups in entertainment-related fields.

The plan relies heavily on as-yet uncommitted FEMA money, plus historic preservation tax credits to finance a massive interior renovation. The developers also want to use state tax credits for music and film investment to lure tenants in advance of an anticipated December 2011 reopening.

Juneau’s development team, which responded to a request for proposals issued by Nagin’s administration in September, also includes restaurateur Leah Chase, Voodoo Experience festival producer Steve Rehage and a handful of music-industry executives who have expressed, in writing, their desire to set up shop in the revamped space. “With this kind of cooperation and this kind of partnership,” Nagin said, “I can’t imagine them (council members) not supporting this.”

At this point, the only certain opposition to the auditorium plan appears to be from Leo Watermeier, the longtime leader of the Friends of Armstrong Park group and an outspoken critic of Nagin’s other plans for the park. On Monday, Watermeier questioned the fairness of the public bid process for the project and said it was an attempt “to turn over a valuable public asset to the mayor’s friends.”

“The bid specs were designed so one group could submit them. The other developers soon realized the bid was already cooked,” he said. Watermeier said the Municipal Auditorium should be restored to its original use, adding that he and neighbors he said he represents are “skeptical that a large commercial enterprise belongs in the park.” “There’s nothing but vacant land in this city, so if this is such a good idea, why not build it on vacant land elsewhere?” he added.

Nagin dismissed suggestions that Juneau, who has openly discussed his ideas for the auditorium for more than a year, had any advantage. “I talked to Stewart a while back, but I’ve talked to other developers who are out there about this particular concept and tried to get people to give me some ideas about what we could do with this building,” Nagin said. “I don’t know if they have a running start because they sure have a lot of work to do going forward.”

Juneau, a local real estate maven who turned the former Maison Blanche building on Canal Street into the Ritz-Carlton hotel, said he is preparing to launch a six-week community outreach program to get feedback from citizens.

“This is a conceptual plan and conceptual plans mean exactly that,” Juneau said. “It means it’s a living and breathing organism. It will grow, it will change.” Juneau, who said he plans to stage a “festival-style” public event in early December, said he and his team members are “capable and open to listening and modifying the plan that we have.”

Nagin said Juneau’s proposal offers the opportunity to transform Armstrong Park into “the premier cultural and music complex in America and probably in the world.” Nagin said he will continue to suggest “good ideas” like the auditorium development.

“Now, hopefully the council will buy into it,” he said. “But that’s up to us. It depends upon what the people say — whether they like this type of initiative or not.”

and the background on this story

New Orleans library chairman Irvin Mayfield has aggressively replaced system’s leadership
By David Hammer, The Times-Picayune
December 17, 2008, 8:18PM
TED JACKSON / THE TIMES-PICAYUNELibrary CEO Rita Trigs and Irvin Mayfield talk about the agenda for the opening of the Lakeview library branch.

When the New Orleans Public Library released its 25-year, $650 million master plan in the spring, nationwide praise rolled in for board Chairman Irvin Mayfield Jr.

The renowned jazz trumpeter, brash and 30 years old, heralded a fundamental push for change at a library system decimated by Hurricane Katrina. Everyone from the New York Times to Billboard magazine to The Times-Picayune pointed to Mayfield as just the man who could overcome both the system’s pre-storm neglect and the damage inflicted by Katrina.

But while nobody doubts that Mayfield is a passionate ambassador for his hometown and its library, his moves as board leader — at least so far — have only added to the tumult in the system.

Often outside the public eye, Mayfield and other board members have cleaned house aggressively — overly so, in the eyes of critics. The four top-ranking librarians and the director of a library support foundation all left as Mayfield, a Grammy nominee whose main gig is directing the New Orleans Jazz Orchestra, conducted a major realignment that made a former mayoral aide who isn’t a professional librarian the system’s top administrator. For now, the support foundation is being directed on an interim basis by a volunteer, Ronald Markham, who is also the chief executive of Mayfield’s orchestra and a childhood buddy.

Some departed librarians, as well as close observers of the board’s affairs, see the shakeup as a power play by a musician-cum-political figure who wants to micromanage a sprawling library operation from a board seat.

See the current administrators

‘Signs of disarray’

In a recent article, the Library Journal, a national trade publication, bemoaned “signs of disarray” and a “loss of institutional memory” in the New Orleans library changes.

Elizabeth Bedikian, a former ranking member of the library staff who left the institution in 2004 — two years before Mayor Ray Nagin named Mayfield to the board — said the governing body has driven away the very people it needs to rebuild.

“These are people who came back after Katrina and led the charge and worked very hard, ” she said. “In my day, the board didn’t run the show: The library director did.”

No apologies

But Mayfield and Rica Trigs, 36, a former aide to Mayor Marc Morial now serving as the library’s chief administrator, make no apologies for shaking up the institution. Both contend the system was plagued by underperformers. They said there was a need to break from traditional civil service methods, promoting lower-level employees over their bosses.

“Whenever someone in city government has the audacity to be great, people say, ‘What’s wrong with these guys?’ ” Mayfield said.

Mayfield and Trigs openly disdain the city’s civil service system as too limiting, with Mayfield acknowledging that if he had his way, the entire library leadership would consist of unclassified, at-will employees.

They also talk of creating new expectations and a sense of accountability.

“We’re hiring people who are qualified and know how to work for the public, ” Trigs said. “For so long we haven’t had that. . . . We can’t be passive. So, we’re working hard on staff development and core competency.”

‘She’s just plain smart’

Mayfield, who called Trigs “my partner in crime” at the recent opening of one temporary library, sees no problem with his top aide’s lack of library science training. The recently promoted staffer has a master’s degree in urban studies and has drawn praise for her command of federal aid programs and recovery policies.

“She’s just plain smart, and after Katrina, she was the only one who knew where anything was, ” said Helen Kohlman, a board member for 27 years.

While library patrons may hear little of it, internal turmoil has marked the library system since Katrina heavily damaged or destroyed eight of 13 branches.

The shakeups began in the fall of 2006 when Nagin replaced board member Tania Tetlow, a high-profile advocate for the system, with Mayfield, already a member of the library foundation’s board.

A quick ascension

At Mayfield’s first board meeting, an interim director for the library, Geraldine Harris, announced her resignation. Mayfield immediately became board chairman, something system veterans had never seen.

As the board launched a nationwide search for a new director in early 2007, the system’s personnel director, Sam Stoute, left to work for the Fire Department, leaving a vacancy that has yet to be filled. In the fall of 2007, the board suspended and then fired business manager Monna Mathieu, citing poor performance. Mathieu unsuccessfully challenged her removal in a civil service appeal, and couldn’t be reached for comment for this report.

Her old position has remained unfilled, resulting, library veterans say, in a pileup of unpaid bills that has undone relations with several vendors. One computer supplier, Benecom Technologies of New Orleans, pulled its business when the library took nine months to pay $17,000 in invoices.

Feeling marginalized

There were expectations for a smoother leadership era when, in July 2007, the board hired as the library’s new director Donna Schremser, an acclaimed library executive from Alabama with rich experience in building facilities. “We’re very excited, ” said Trigs, coordinator of administration at the time. “She comes highly recommended.”

But soon it became clear to Schremser that she was being marginalized, left out of key decisions. In March, the board named Trigs to the new position of chief operating officer.

The board followed that change with a decision in June to create a new leadership team headed jointly by the COO, Trigs, and the director, Schremser. The shared leadership structure had no precedent in U.S. public libraries, according to the Urban Libraries Council.

In that same meeting, the board also promoted a pair of midlevel librarians over the heads of three higher-ranking ones: Linda Marshall Hill, Elisabeth Konrad and Jim Mitchell.

While Schremser initially followed orders in delivering news of the board-mandated staff shakeup to other ranking librarians, some of those affected balked, saying the new arrangement was unworkable. The top civil service librarians — three bureau chiefs with a combined 57 years in the city library system — all left in July and August.

First to go was Hill, who was widely acclaimed for her 23 years in the system and her management of the main library downtown after Katrina. She declined a position on the new executive team, taking early retirement when two subordinates were promoted over her peers.

“The executive leadership team is an end-run around the library administration, ” Hill said. “When I saw my two fellow bureau chiefs excluded, I just couldn’t live with it.”

A few days after Hill’s resignation, Mitchell, a bureau chief and interim branch manager, quit rather than take a demotion. And in August, Konrad, a bureau chief with 28 years of experience who served as head of systems, was confronted with performance and personal issues and decided to take early retirement.

On Sept. 18, Schremser was gone, too, a mere year after the board hired her with fanfare.

Director goes

Mayfield now says Schremser was “out to lunch, ” missed portions of important board meetings, couldn’t produce director’s reports and needed Trigs to do everything, including coordinating rebuilding plans.

“If I could do it over again, I would have chosen nobody and promoted from within, ” said Mayfield, who said he was relieved to turn over daily control of the library to Trigs.

Schremser denies the performance charges, and Hill and Konrad argue that the head librarian was set up to fail. Hill said that “from the start, Rica was Irvin’s go-to person” and that “I never saw Irvin in Donna’s office except for maybe two times, and one was to inform her that they’d made Rica the COO.”

For example, in June, just before restructuring the leadership, Mayfield and Trigs went to the Miami-Dade Public Library to learn about best practices. They acknowledge they didn’t tell Schremser and the other top librarians about the publicly financed trip until they returned.

At Schremser’s annual review, Mayfield said he confronted her, but didn’t force her out. He recalled the conversation he and Kohlman had with Schremser:

“I asked her, ‘Do you think this is working out?’ She said, ‘No.’ I asked her, ‘Do you think the taxpayer deserves more?’ She said, ‘Yes.’ I asked her, ‘Do you think it’s time to part ways?’ She said, ‘Yes.’ That’s what I was hoping she’d say, quietly to myself.”

Schremser remembers it differently. She said Mayfield threatened to fire her if she didn’t resign.

She said the board used her as a tool to run off the passed-over bureau chiefs, Mitchell and Konrad. Then it was her turn.

“In the end, I got canned, too . . . no, I ‘got resigned, ‘ ” said Schremser, who has since taken a lower-level job with Jefferson Parish, as a provisional children’s librarian.

The day after Schremser resigned, Ron Biava, director of the New Orleans Public Library Foundation, the nonprofit that supports the library, followed suit. Biava will say only that he had “differences of opinion” with the board.

Mayfield, who personally raises cash and awareness for the library through special concerts, blasted Biava for failing to capitalize on post-Katrina good will in raising money. Biava told the library board he could raise $3.5 million, Mayfield says, but pulled in only $250,000.

Biava disputes those figures, but won’t elaborate. The foundation last filed a tax-exempt IRS return in 2006, when Biava served as a consultant instead of as director. That year, the foundation reported raising $1.1 million.

The decision-making process isn’t the easiest one for the public to follow. For instance, board members said the idea of promoting lower-ranking librarians over their bosses came from consultants. But Trigs has refused to release the consultants’ report because it wasn’t paid for with public money.

And it took a month of repeated requests and a threat of legal action to get the library board and the city attorney’s office to turn over minutes of the March and June board meetings. Trigs said the June minutes weren’t even transcribed until the newspaper asked for them.

Those minutes, as it turns out, don’t even say how board members voted. That’s because, Mayfield said, the votes were unanimous — like every single vote since he took over as chairman.

While Mayfield downplays his control, it’s clear who’s in charge. Some board members decline to give interviews without Mayfield’s approval. Kohlman says such deference is appropriate.

“He’s very good, he watches what he’s doing, ” she said. “Have you ever thought maybe he is a strong leader and what he’s proposing makes sense? Is that possible?”

Nagin is pleased enough with the “energetic” Mayfield that he recently named him to the New Orleans Redevelopment Authority board. But the mayor recently said he’d like to see Mayfield “get more of those libraries renovated and those new concepts going.”

Filling key leadership posts has also proved a slow process. Mayfield and Trigs concede the absence of a business manager and personnel director has caused problems. They say a search is under way for a new director for the support foundation, and Trigs said a new accountant will help with business management.

But it could be six months before a search even begins for a new library director, Trigs said. Mayfield is noncommittal, saying he still prefers to promote from within. That isn’t surprising to some of the duo’s critics, who note that the lack of a director leaves more power in the board’s hands.

The City Charter requires that the board have a professional, trained librarian “in charge of the libraries and other facilities under the (board’s) jurisdiction.” Failing a charter change, the board must replace Schremser — though no timeline is specified by law.

Mayfield says any new chief librarian would still share control with Trigs. Critics wonder, after the events of the past year, who would want the job.

“I think they would have a hard time getting a director because of what happened to me, ” Schremser said.

Rising Tide sponsors a FREE blogging 101 class

Thursday, November 12, from 6:30 PM to 8:30 PM, Rising Tide is getting its first beginning blogging class on at the Bridge Lounge, located at 1201 Magazine Street. A few us will be showing longtime readers and commenters how we ended up doing this thing and how you can, too, ’cause there are some astute people out there that we know have a lot to say, but might find the details daunting. We will be there to answer all your questions and to set you up right then and there with your own blog. Laptops are welcome. Registration is free.

You read that right. It is free.

Mark your calendars, let us know if you will be attending and ask us anything you want to know in the comments as well – we will cover it at the Bridge Lounge on November 12.

Go to the Rising Tide link here and reply to the post to register

new online petition to save gulf oysters

Share it liberally

a facebook page dedicated to save the gulf coast oyster industry from overregulation

Save the Gulf Coast oyster industry

please sign the petition to save gulf coast oysters

and spread the site around liberally

thanks!

don’t tread on our oysters

Beginning in 2011, the FDA wants to sterilize oysters harvested between March and November because of the threat of vibrio vulnificus. If not treated, an outright oyster ban will be imposed. This would seriously impact the oyster industry in this state. It wouldn’t affect oyster consumption so much within Louisiana but it would kill the interstate trade of oysters, especially since 60% of our oysters are shipped elsewhere. Not to mention, when oysters are shucked, they are still alive when consumed raw – any notion of altering the oyster via a sterilization process would kill it and render the taste inferior. This is serious stuff, something must be done to prevent this from ever happening…

UPDATE: You can contact the White House and the FDA directly to register your objection

The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20500
Please include your e-mail address
http://www.whitehouse.gov/contact
Phone Numbers
Comments: 202-456-1111
Switchboard: 202-456-1414
FAX: 202-456-2461
TTY/TDD
Comments: 202-456-6213
Visitors Office: 202-456-2121

Food and Drug Administration
10903 New Hampshire Ave
Silver Spring, MD 20993-0002
1-888-463-6332
Industry: industry@fda.gov
Consumers: consumer@fda.gov

Louisiana blasts FDA plan to limit oyster production
By Chris Kirkham, The Times-Picayune
October 27, 2009, 7:22PM

At the small warehouse tucked away in the back side of the French Quarter, the shuckers at P&J Oyster Co. have arrived before daybreak for 133 years.

Their in-shell and shucked oysters have been on the menus of generations of restaurateurs, from oysters on the halfshell at Acme Oyster House and Casemento’s to the seafood gumbo at Dickie Brennan’s Steakhouse.

In less than two years, the tradition could become obsolete for seven months out of the year, based on newly announced oyster guidelines from the Food and Drug Administration.

In an effort to reduce cases of a rare, but potentially fatal, bacterial illness contracted from raw oysters, the FDA announced new rules this month that will require any oyster served from April through October to undergo a sterilization process before it can be sold in restaurants or on the market.

The rule will essentially eliminate raw oysters — at least as Louisianans know them — from restaurant menus for seven months of the year. Even oysters that will eventually be cooked during those months would have to go through the same cleansing process before being added to any dish, a move some say would undermine the culinary integrity of some of New Orleans’ most famous delicacies.

“It’s not only going to include raw oysters. You can’t fry oysters for a po-boy, you can’t put oysters in a gumbo and you can’t charbroil oysters unless they’re post-harvest processed,” said Tommy Cvitanovich, owner of Drago’s restaurant, a mainstay for oysters in the metro area. “That’s ludicrous.”

New FDA regulations that could begin in 2011 would require that oysters, from March to November, go through an intense sanitation process before they could be served in restaurants or on the open market. The effects in Louisiana — and nationwide — will be tremendous, from oyster-loving consumers down to seafood dealers and fishers, industry representatives and state government officials say. Louisiana is by far the largest oyster-producing state in the country, responsible for more than a third of the oysters brought to market nationwide.

The vast majority of those oysters are sold out of state.

“You talk about an economic impact that keeps going and going,” said Al Sunseri, the general manager of P&J, which has operated at Rampart and Toulouse streets since 1876. “You’ll have a number of people that count of the Gulf states during those months that will no longer be able to provide product to their customers.”

Local industry representatives and state health officials are highly critical of the FDA plan, with one oyster processor, Mike Voisin, equating the new guidelines to a “nuclear bomb” on the industry.

Alan Levine, secretary of the Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals, said in a statement Tuesday that his agency has worked with the oyster industry for years to do biological tests and implement new guidelines requiring refrigeration of oysters less than five hours after they are harvested.

“What is particularly interesting is while the FDA seems focused on domestic oyster production, there is wide evidence that imported seafood is a far greater health threat, and there seems to be little movement by the FDA to get their arms around that problem,” Levine said in the statement.

Robert Barham, secretary of the state Department of Wildlife and Fisheries, added in a joint statement, “The effect of the proposed ban would greatly impact the Gulf Coast oyster industry and threaten thousands of jobs here in Louisiana and all along the coast.”

The vibrio vulnificus disease, the target of the FDA initiative, affects about 30 individuals per year nationwide who eat raw oysters from Gulf Coast. About half of those who get the disease, which invades the bloodstream and can cause a severe fever and skin lesions, eventually die.

But those most at risk from vibrio are people who already have immune system disorders, such as AIDS, cancer, kidney disease, diabetes or alcohol abuse.

The oyster industry and FDA have been working for more than a decade to inform consumers who are most susceptible to the disease. But this month the FDA changed course, instead announcing that the industry would have to institute the new technology by 2011 to eliminate any risk from the disease during the months of April through October.

“We no longer believe that measures which reduce the hazard, but fall well short of eliminating it, such as improvements in refrigeration, are sufficient to meet the purpose of the regulation, given the severity of the hazard,” Michael Taylor, a senior adviser to FDA Commissioner Margaret Hamburg, told an industry group earlier this month.

The primary complaint from industry is that the infrastructure is simply not in place to comply with the FDA’s 2011 timetable.

The months of April through October, identified as the time of risk for the vibrio vulnificus disease, make up about 60 percent of the state’s oyster production, based on average harvests over the past 10 years. But the technology needed to comply, known as post-harvest processing, can currently handle only about 10 percent of the total production during those months.

The result could be oysters priced twice, even three times as much as they are now, according to industry estimates.

“The oyster community is made up of mom-and-pop operations that are not capital-intensive,” said Voisin, the owner of Motivatit Seafoods in Houma, who owns one of the three plants currently equipped to sterilize oysters under the upcoming FDA guidelines. “It would create a huge need for capital investment, at a time when huge capital investments into mom and pops are not being made.”

While there are sterilization processes that would allow consumers to still eat oysters from the shell, the technology in some cases actually would pry open the oyster itself. So the freshly shucked oysters at taverns across the city, dredged from the reefs less than a day earlier, would disappear for most of the year.

‘We produce one-third of the oysters in the whole country, and 4 million people in Louisiana can’t eat them all,’ says John Tesvich, a local oyster processor.C.J. Casamento, the owner of Casamento’s restaurant on Magazine Street, said many chefs have tried the sterilized oysters in the past but have stopped because the flavor isn’t the same. His restaurant is already closed from June through August, but the guidelines would cut into one of his peak seasons: Jazz Fest. “People who come down here to eat raw oysters wouldn’t be coming down here to eat these things,” Casamento said of the sterilized oysters. “If they try to implement this, it will destroy all the raw oyster restaurants in the city.”

Because the guidelines have only recently been announced, it’s possible that the state could issue separate guidelines for oysters sold within Louisiana. FDA controls interstate commerce, but not business within individual states.

But the demand for Louisiana oysters nationwide would still put a crimp on the state’s industry, which employs more than 3,500 residents and is worth more than $300 million.

“Most of our oysters go out of state,” said John Tesvich, an oyster processor who owns one of the other plants capable of processing sterilized oysters. “We produce one-third of the oysters in the whole country, and 4 million people in Louisiana can’t eat them all.”

vitter’s on a roll

First the non-reply to Justice Bardwell’s denial of a marriage license to an interracial couple

and now this no vote of the sexual orientation hate crimes legislation tucked inside an Afghan war appropriations bill.

What a conundrum that must have been for poor Vitter: despite that, he chose stomping on human rights over warmongering…how Christian is that?

Senate expands hate crime law; Landrieu, Vitter on opposite sides
By The Associated Press
October 22, 2009, 8:51PM

Physical attacks on people based on their sexual orientation will join the list of federal hate crimes in a major expansion of the civil rights-era law Congress approved Thursday and sent to President Barack Obama.

A priority of Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., that had been on the congressional agenda for a decade, the measure expands current law to include crimes based on gender, sexual orientation, gender identity or disability. The measure is named for Matthew Shepard, the gay Wyoming college student murdered 11 years ago.

To assure its passage after years of frustrated efforts, Democratic supporters attached the measure to a must-pass $680 billion defense policy bill the Senate approved 68-29. The House passed the defense bill earlier this month.

Many Republicans, normally staunch supporters of defense bills, voted against the bill because of the hate crimes provision. All the no votes were Republicans except for Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Wis., who supported the hate crimes provision but opposes what he says is the open-ended military commitment in Afghanistan.

“The inclusion of the controversial language of the hate crimes legislation, which is unrelated to our national defense, is deeply troubling, ” said Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala.

mary_landrieu.JPGThe Times-PicayuneSen. Mary Landrieu: The legislation takes ‘an important step to stamping out senseless violence motivated by prejudice.’

Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La., voted yes, while Sen. David Vitter, R-La., opposed the legislation.

Landrieu said Congress “took an important step to stamping out senseless violence motivated by prejudice.”

“Violent crime based on race, religion, gender and sexual orientation is one of the great ills facing American society and can often destroy the very fabric that holds our communities together, ” Landrieu said. “In passing this bill, we have provided law enforcement offices with the tools and resources to help victims receive the justice they deserve.”

Vitter didn’t immediately explain his no vote, but he and other Republicans have said the violent crimes covered by the hate crimes law extension are already serious crimes and don’t need a special designation.

Vitter Sept. 29.JPGThe Times-PicayuneSen. David Vitter has said the violent crimes covered by the hate crimes law extension are already serious crimes and don’t need a special designation.

Hate crimes law enacted after the assassination of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968 centered on crimes based on race, color, religion or national origin.

The expansion has long been sought by civil rights and gay rights groups. Conservatives have opposed it, arguing that it creates a special class of victims. They also have been concerned that it could silence clergymen or others opposed to homosexuality on religious or philosophical grounds.

Joe Solmonese, president of the Human Rights Campaign, the nation’s largest gay rights group, hailed the bill as “our nation’s first major piece of civil rights legislation for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people. Too many in our community have been devastated by hate violence.”

About 45 states have hate crimes statutes, and the bill would not change current practices where hate crimes are generally investigated and prosecuted by state and local officials.

But it does broaden the narrow range of actions — such as attending school or voting — that can trigger federal involvement and allows the federal government to step in if the Justice Department certifies that a state is unwilling or unable to follow through on an alleged hate crime.

The measure also provides federal grants to help state and local governments prosecute hate crimes and pays for programs to combat hate crimes committed by juveniles.

“As we learned in the civil rights era, sometimes communities need assistance and resources from the federal government when they have to confront the most emotional and dangerous kinds of crimes, ” said Sen. Michael Bennet, D-Colo.

The bill also creates a federal crime to penalize attacks against U.S. service members on account of their service.

Attorney General Eric Holder said nearly 80,000 hate crime cases have been reported to the FBI since he first testified before Congress in support of a hate crimes bill 11 years ago. “It has been one of my highest personal priorities to ensure that this legislation finally becomes law,” he said.

The FBI says more than half of reported hate crimes are motivated by racial bias. Next most frequent are crimes based on religious bias, at around 18 percent, and sexual orientation, at 16 percent.

At the urging of Republicans, the bill was changed to strengthen free speech protections to assure that a religious leader or any other person cannot be prosecuted on the basis of his or her speech, beliefs or association.

“Nothing in this legislation diminishes an American’s freedom of religion, freedom of speech or press or the freedom to assemble, ” said Sen. Ben Cardin, D-Md. “Let me be clear. The Matthew Shepard Hate Crimes Prevention Act targets acts, not speech.”

That didn’t convince Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., who said the bill was a “dangerous step” toward thought crimes. He asked whether the bill would “serve as a warning to people not to speak out too loudly about their religious views.”

Tony Perkins, a former member of the Louisiana House of Representatives who is president of the conservative Family Research Council, said the measure was “part of a radical social agenda that could ultimately silence Christians and use the force of government to marginalize anyone whose faith is at odds with homosexuality.”