[420 Girl]

The Lafourche Parish Council last week soundly defeated a resolution encouraging random drug testing of school employees.

That's good.

What isn't so good is that Councilman Lindel Toups has promised to revive the proposal and make it even broader.

The intentions behind Toups' idea is laudable. We don't want users of illegal drugs educating our children. But interference in the education process -- even through well-meaning resolutions -- isn't a proper activity for the Parish Council, which has more-important issues on its legislative plate.

The parish School Board, the state Board of Elementary and Secondary Education and the state Legislature can see to the educational needs of our children, including the requirements placed on our educators.

But Toups' defeat didn't deter his efforts. If anything, it seems to have emboldened him.

He said at the Nov. 11 meeting that he plans to return to the council with a plan to require drug testing of everyone who receives public money in the form of welfare, Social Security or disability.

At least one other council member -- Phillip Gouaux -- has said he will support the latest idea, saying that it is fine because it doesn't single out any particular group.

Again, the desire to rid our communities of illegal drugs is admirable. But that is simply not a legitimate funcion of the Parish Council.

This is not the first time Toups' legislative goals have run afoul of common sense.

Over the objections of law-enforcement professionals, the council in 2007 passed an ordinance Toups sponsored that outlawed saggy pants. To this date, there has been no citation issued for the defense because, as the council was warned before it passed the ordinance, it is unconstitutional and unenforceable.

That also is the case with this most-recent measure. The council can't demand drug testing of people who receive money from the federal government. So it has no business spending the public's time on this issue.

Toups said the school-employee proposal was simply an effort to express support for a drug-testing initiative in the Louisiana Legislature. Perhaps there is a similar federal rule being debated for recipients of public money.

The fact, though, is that there are real problems -- flooding, drainage, housing, planning, coastal restoration -- that are competing for the attention of the council and other local entities.

The Parish Council doesn't have the extra time needed to attack issues that clearly lie outside its realm of influence.

We hope Toups will turn his creative energies from matters that are best addressed by other levels of government to those that directly affect the people he represents and come under the authority of the body on which he serves.

He clearly has good intentions. But governance is more about the ability to get things done than the expression of good intentions -- which are fine in limited supply. He has used up more than his share.

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