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Ida Boutte
of New Orleans has been honored by the nonprofit National Association of Investors Corp. (NAIC), which gave Boutte its O'Hara Award for outstanding volunteerism and dedication to teaching others about investing. Boutte, a director of the Louisiana/Mississippi chapter of the NAIC, helped to form many local investment education programs for adults and youth.

Harry Connick Jr.
recently established a scholarship fund at the Tulane University Law School to honor his parents. Harry Connick Sr. and the late Anita Connick both graduated from the program in the 1960s; the elder Connick was New Orleans' longtime district attorney, and Anita Connick was one of the city's first female judges.

Lt. Gov.-elect Mitch Landrieu
helped the world-famous Zagat Survey publish its first guide indicating restaurants and clubs that are disability-accessible. The Zagat 2004 New Orleans Restaurant and Nightlife Guide is the first Zagat publication to include disability-accessible symbols for venues. Landrieu helped arrange for Zagat to work on it with the Advocacy Center of Louisiana.

Martin Marino and Libby Moran,
Jefferson Parish School Board members, may be sick of colleague Julie Quinn's persistent questions about the school system's sabbatical policy -- but their effort to silence her smacks of free-speech restriction. The two proposed to ban "broad, unfocused questioning" about that issue -- a poor substitute both for learning how to function as a board and for transparency in government.