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William Hawthorn Lynch, Sr., known as Bill Lynch (April 16, 1929 – February 15, 2004), was an American journalist who served as the first Inspector General of the U.S. state of Louisiana, a position which involves investigations into corruption, misuse of state property, and governmental inefficiency.
A journalist is a person who collects, writes, or distributes news or other current information to the public. A journalist's work is called journalism. A journalist can work with general issues or specialize in certain issues. However, most journalists tend to specialize, and by cooperating with other journalists, produce journals that span many topics. For example, a sports journalist covers news within the world of sports, but this journalist may be a part of a newspaper that covers many different topics.
In the United States, a state is a constituent political entity, of which there are currently 50. Bound together in a political union, each state holds governmental jurisdiction over a separate and defined geographic territory and shares its sovereignty with the federal government. Due to this shared sovereignty, Americans are citizens both of the federal republic and of the state in which they reside. State citizenship and residency are flexible, and no government approval is required to move between states, except for persons restricted by certain types of court orders. Four states use the term commonwealth rather than state in their full official names.
Louisiana is a state in the Deep South region of the South Central United States. It is the 31st most extensive and the 25th most populous of the 50 United States. Louisiana is bordered by the state of Texas to the west, Arkansas to the north, Mississippi to the east, and the Gulf of Mexico to the south. A large part of its eastern boundary is demarcated by the Mississippi River. Louisiana is the only U.S. state with political subdivisions termed parishes, which are equivalent to counties. The state's capital is Baton Rouge, and its largest city is New Orleans.
Pennsylvania, officially the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, is a state located in the northeastern, Great Lakes and Mid-Atlantic regions of the United States. The Appalachian Mountains run through its middle. The Commonwealth is bordered by Delaware to the southeast, Maryland to the south, West Virginia to the southwest, Ohio to the west, Lake Erie and the Canadian province of Ontario to the northwest, New York to the north, and New Jersey to the east.
The City of New York, usually called either New York City (NYC) or simply New York (NY), is the most populous city in the United States. With an estimated 2018 population of 8,398,748 distributed over a land area of about 302.6 square miles (784 km2), New York is also the most densely populated major city in the United States. Located at the southern tip of the state of New York, the city is the center of the New York metropolitan area, the largest metropolitan area in the world by urban landmass and one of the world's most populous megacities, with an estimated 20,320,876 people in its 2017 Metropolitan Statistical Area and 23,876,155 residents in its Combined Statistical Area. A global power city, New York City has been described as the cultural, financial, and media capital of the world, and exerts a significant impact upon commerce, entertainment, research, technology, education, politics, tourism, art, fashion, and sports. The city's fast pace has inspired the term New York minute. Home to the headquarters of the United Nations, New York is an important center for international diplomacy.
Elizabeth is a town in Allen Parish, Louisiana, United States. The population was 532 at the 2010 census.
Journalist and inspector general
After his military service ended in 1953, Lynch returned to The Shreveport Times, where he became an assistant city editor and political reporter until 1965. At The Times, Lynch covered the 1959 saga of then GovernorEarl Kemp Long, the relationship with stripper Blaze Starr, and Long's commitment to the state mental hospital in Mandeville in St. Tammany Parish. He established the Shreveport Times bureau in Baton Rouge, from which he did most of his newspaper investigative work. In 1965, he launched a 14-year association with the since defunct New Orleans States-Item. He covered the destructive Hurricane Betsy, which struck the Gulf Coast and New Orleans area in 1965.[1]
Blaze Starr was an American stripper and burlesque star. Her vivacious presence and inventive use of stage props earned her the nickname "The Hottest Blaze in Burlesque". She was also known for her affair with Louisiana Governor Earl Kemp Long. Based on her memoir Blaze Starr! My Life as Told to Huey Perry, the 1989 film Blaze told the story of latter affair starring Paul Newman as Long and Lolita Davidovich as Starr, with Starr herself acting in a cameo role and as a consultant.
Mandeville is a small city in St. Tammany Parish, Louisiana, United States. The population was 11,560 at the 2010 census. Mandeville is located on the North Shore of Lake Pontchartrain, south of Interstate 12. It is across the lake from the city of New Orleans and its southshore suburbs. It is part of the New Orleans–Metairie–Kenner metropolitan area.
St. Tammany Parish is a parish located in the U.S. state of Louisiana. As of the 2010 census, the population was 233,740, making it the fifth-most populous parish in Louisiana. The parish seat is Covington. The parish was founded in 1810.
From 1979 to 1988, he worked at the Baton Rouge bureau of the New Orleans Times-Picayune, during which time his investigations into the third term of Governor Edwin Edwards led to Edwards' indictment in 1984 on federal charges dealing with the licensure of hospitals and nursing homes. Edwards and his brother, Marion Edwards, were acquitted in a second trial after a hung jury developed in the first case.[1]
Edwin Washington Edwards is an American politician and member of the Democratic Party who served as the U.S. Representative for Louisiana's 7th congressional district from 1965 to 1972 and as the 50th Governor of Louisiana for four terms, twice as many elected terms as any other Louisiana chief executive. He served a total of 16 years in office, the sixth-longest serving gubernatorial tenure in post-Constitutional U.S. history at 5,784 days.
A hung jury or deadlocked jury is a judicial jury that cannot agree upon a verdict after extended deliberation and is unable to reach the required unanimity or supermajority.
In April 1988, Governor Buddy Roemer, under executive order, named Lynch to the newly established position of inspector general because, in Roemer's words, Lynch had "honor, honesty and a knowledge of government. He was the inspector general of the press corps. He called it like he saw it. He wasn't in anybody's pocket. He cared about Louisiana and wanted to make it a better place."[1] Lynch remained Inspector General until his death.[2]
Charles Elson "Buddy" Roemer III is an American politician, investor, and banker who served as the 52nd Governor of Louisiana from 1988 to 1992, and as a member of the United States House of Representatives from 1981 to 1988.
Death and legacy
Lynch died in Baton Rouge at the age of seventy-four after hospitalization from complications related to heart disease. Upon his death, then Governor Kathleen Babineaux Blanco termed Lynch "one of our state's legendary journalists and a talented man of great character who helped make a stronger Louisiana. ... He relentlessly aimed his journalistic light into the dark places of Louisiana politics. ... As inspector general, he continued his crusade to clean up our political system by exposing wasteful spending and corruption. He leaves behind a legacy of integrity, devotion, and courage."[1]
Jack Wardlaw, who headed the capital bureaus of both The States-Item and The Times-Picayune, said that Lynch, whom he had known for more than twenty years, "carried his reputation for honesty and integrity with him from reporting and into the inspector general's office."[1]
In the second Edwards administration, the legislature passed the so-called "Lynch Law", which allowed courts to assess punitive damages in libel cases, but the measure was repealed during the term of Republican Governor David C. Treen. When Edwards returned for his fourth term as governor in 1992, he retained Lynch as inspector general as a concession to Roemer, whose support he drew in the 1991 gubernatorial general election with David Duke, the former Ku Klux Klansman who was the nominal Republican candidate that year.[1]
However, Edwards believed that the office of inspector general constituted a duplication of services provided by the Louisiana State Police, attorney general, and local district attorneys. He therefore stripped Lynch of much of his power. No longer could the inspector general investigate colleges and universities; at the time Lynch had been conducting probes into various activities involving Nicholls State University in Thibodaux, Northwestern State University in Natchitoches, and LSU and the historically blackSouthern University in Baton Rouge. Lynch was allowed to continue to investigate the governor—something of a challenge that Edwards set forward—but could not investigate any of the six other statewide officials.[3] Subsequent governors set their own priorities for the inspector general's office.
Lynch was twice honored by the Alliance for Good Government in New Orleans and by the New Orleans Press Club.[1] In 2005, he was posthumously inducted into the Louisiana Political Museum and Hall of Fame in Winnfield.[4][5] Lynch's colleague Jack Wardlaw was inducted into the hall of fame a year earlier in 2004.
Lynch had two sons, Bill Lynch, Jr. (born 1962), of Baton Rouge and Jonathan D. Lynch (born 1968) of Flowery Branch, Georgia.[1][6]
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