Before he was elected to House District 104 in the Mandeville area, and long before Hurricane Francine sent his legislative team scrambling to serve constituents and local government officials, freshman state Rep. Jay Gallé was a meteorologist for 13 years, including eight on WDSU-TV in New Orleans.
While it’s no longer his job to inform the public about the weather via television, Gallé has been able to put his experience to work as the new chair of the House Select Committee on Homeland Security. As Francine approached the coast, for example, he attended Unified Command Group meetings and acted as the eyes and ears of his lower chamber colleagues.
As a Louisiana weatherman, the most memorable hurricane Gallé covered from a news desk was Isaac, which notably made two separate landfalls in Louisiana in August 2012. Isaac was only a Category 1 storm, but it was also slow. Really slow. There were moments Isaac barely moved at all, allowing the hurricane to deposit 10 to 20 inches of rain over a large swath of southeast Louisiana.
“This thing has stopped,” Gallé recalls thinking to himself at the time. “It took Lake Pontchartrain and dumped it into LaPlace.”
Across Memorial Hall, another new political personality is chairing the Senate Select Committee on Homeland Security. With only 21 months in office, Sen. Caleb Kleinpeter brings a military background to the position, like Gallé. They’re both former Marines.
Kleinpeter says Hurricane Francine pulled their chairmanships to the forefront, but before the storm the pair likewise worked together on a variety of issues that never made it into public view. They are often on text chains together about potential emergencies, most of which they choose not to share. No one wants to needlessly worry people.
“Once I feel like it’s time, then I share it with [Senate President Cameron Henry], and I ask him if he wants to forward it to the members,” Kleinpeter says. “For [early warnings about Francine], he said, ‘Yeah, let’s go ahead and send it out.’”
The House and Senate select committees both have the same mission, which is to “study and review homeland security issues and make recommendations” to safeguard against natural disasters and terrorist attacks. Funding for and coordination of local and state agencies fall under the oversight of the committees, too.
Both Gallé and Kleinpeter say they’ve worked hard to serve as resources for State Climatologist Jay Grymes and Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness Director Jacques Thibodeaux, who are the top folks Gov. Jeff Landry leans on during weather emergencies.
The relationship being developed between the chairs and GOHSEP is an important one, since the two men work closely with the agency on funding needs, which of course go well beyond storm prep and response.
Looking beyond hurricane season, Gallé says two pressing needs involve making sure GOHSEP has what it needs to mitigate threats from cyberattacks and drones—and that will take money, either in the form of appropriations or grants.
“They have our ear, so they can kind of sell us a little bit,” Gallé says.
Kleinpeter says the recent school shooting in Georgia has also caught the attention of the select committees. The shooting has led lawmakers to consider how schools can be better protected. He says AI gun detection technology possibly could be deployed at schools and high-crime areas to warn law enforcement of threats.
“You go into any airport or courthouse or anything like that, you get searched,” Kleinpeter says. “But our kids are just sitting ducks over there.”
Back on the House side, committee members are planning a two-day hearing focused on the state’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Gallé laments the “detrimental effect” on small businesses, referencing closures and restrictions that were meant to slow the spread of the virus.
“So let’s go over and review and decide what didn’t work, what do we not want to do again, and what do we do in lieu of those things that didn’t work as we move forward,” Gallé says.
For now, however, with Francine already a memory, recovery will be the focus, according to Gallé and Kleinpeter—as well as keeping a wary eye out for the next possible storm.
