Gov. Jeff Landry made clear Friday that he is still distancing himself from New Orleans Mayor Helena Moreno and other city leaders after a grand jury in the city indicted Attorney General Liz Murrill last month.
“She’s always free to have a discussion with my staff.” Landry told host Jim Engster on WRKF’s Talk Louisiana. “I’m not going to be speaking to them personally until this investigation is done, until I know who did what, what happened and why it happened in the way that it transpired. No one believes that this grand jury just, on its own, took up this matter.”
Tensions have been high between state and city leaders. During the legislative session earlier this year, Landry helped push a law merging the city’s criminal clerk of court office into its civil clerk of court, preventing Calvin Duncan from taking office as criminal clerk after an overwhelming election win. City leaders argued that created a new, vacant position and moved to appoint their own interim clerk and call for a special election, a move later overturned by the state Supreme Court…