Melancon keeps alive, Cao snuffs political career

When the vote was called for H.R. 3962, a monstrous bill that will lower the quality of health care provision in America in exchange for higher premiums, higher taxes, and with incentives to bring under direct control of the government the sixth of the American economy it represents, two Louisiana representatives went into the chamber with their political careers on the line. One walked back out with it intact.

Rep. Charlie Melancon managed to get a pass from his mistress in the Democrat leadership to vote against the final version. The way it worked, the leadership lined up supporters with an eye towards letting those of their party in the most vulnerable electoral positions off the hook, with a hierarchical ranking. Since Melancon is not defending a district, but trying to knock off incumbent Sen. David Vitter, he probably had low priority and would be one of the first to be told to fall on his sword to venerate liberalism. Luckily for him, because 219 Democrats pledged or were ordered to support it and voted accordingly, with 218 needed to pass with a full chamber present, apparently enough slack existed for Melancon to have the leash taken off of him.

His bid for the Senate is a longshot, but he would have had absolutely no chance at winning it had the Democrat leadership not been able to round up a few extra bodies – including the newest member just narrowly elected from New York. Take him away, and that leaves one to spare – because one Republican only voted for the measure.

That was Rep. Anh “Joseph” Cao, and the move effectively ended his political career, at least as a Republican. It was top priority for the GOP to keep this mess from hurdling another obstacle, and while its leadership has cut a lot of slack for Cao in the knowledge he is a Republican representing one of the most Democrat districts in the country (courtesy of some hard work and former Rep. Bill Jefferson’s legal woes), this is one thing for which they would have been unable to give him a pass.

Expect GOP assistance to Cao to wane for next year’s election. At the very least, expect many potential small donors otherwise attracted to Cao’s great American success story and social conservatism not to open their wallets as a result for his reelection. His very slim chances of achieving this will get worse as a result, and the irony is this vote really will get him no political credit in the district as there are enough other things a black Democrat majority there can fault him on where this won’t compensate. If he voted to support this disaster by conscience, so be it; if he did so because of political calculation, that’s a really bad call.

Fortune has favored Melancon his entire federal office career, and he remains politically alive because of it on this occasion. Fortunate also in the dynamics that got him elected, Cao probably cannot make the same claim of political viability after this incident.

LA earmark procedures need changing, not elimination

In its deliberations, an interesting request came from Treasurer John Kennedy for the Commission on Streamlining Government to pursue: the end of earmarks as we know them. Kennedy argued that a Commission recommendation be to eliminate them completely, arguing they allowed too much wasteful spending. Opponents countered that this approach threw the baby out with the bathwater. What’s the correct policy here?

First, note that this is a statutory matter, not a constitutional one. This is because the Louisiana Constitution grants the Legislature power to make appropriations (Art. X Sec. 7(D)(1)). Thus, to alter the Legislature’s ability to make such appropriations, it would take just a statute to do so.

Second, this would affect the theoretical principal-agent relationship between the state and local governments. In theory, local governments are entirely creatures of the state, created and assigned to perform certain tasks (with a few dozen of these entities granted extra latitude in doing so through the use of home rule charters). Thus, to surrender the power to transfer money to a local government for a purpose the legislature finds desirable impedes its ability to act as the principal.

Third, a conceptual distinction needs making between one kind of agent, local government, and another, the so-called “nongovernmental organization” (NGO) which is an entity not connected to government, probably nonprofit in nature, but seen as a vehicle by which to carry out state policy. That differentiation relies upon another theoretical principle in intergovernmental relations, known as “subsidiarity.” This idea argues that governmental functions should be performed at the lowest possible level, regardless whether the administering level has the power to do so independently. There is some history of subsidiarity concerning federal-state relations in America, exemplified by the (vastly de-emphasized) 10th Amendment.

However, there are 50 separate political cultures concerning state-local relations, and Louisiana’s history is weak in the practice of subsidiarity. For example, the state provides extensive services in health care through its charity hospital system, and with the majority of funding in elementary and secondary education. Especially since the 1930s, this notion has not played as strong of a role in policy-making as it has in many other states.

Applying these principles, some measure of earmark reform is possible and desirable by the Legislature. It would be too restrictive to completely ban the practice. It does serve the principal-agent purpose, and if there are “abuses,” the means have been implemented, at least by legislative rules, to ensure transparency which would assist in the real solution to earmarks considered wasteful, voter recognition of this and use of elections to replace offending legislators. (Not that this couldn’t be strengthened; the standards need to become a matter of law and perhaps made stricter.)

However, in regards to NGOs, the principal of subsidiarity would mandate that the state get out of that business. Since the NGOs are confined to local areas and perform functions assigned to local governments, those governments would be the appropriate ones by which to make such decisions. A statute limiting state earmarks to go only to local governments to perform tasks assigned to local government by Art. VI of the Constitution would be entirely appropriate, and should be pursued.

Democrats continue desperate tactics against Vitter

You can tell that Louisiana Democrats do not think much of their chances to defeat incumbent Sen. David Vitter when they continue to reinforce their only line of attack on him based on the strategy that he’s “evil.”

With the issues preferences of the Louisiana public solidly on his side (as well as his continuing to hold comfortable poll leads a year out from the election), Democrats have engaged in the age-old strategy of coming up with as many implausible accusations as possible and throwing them all at Vitter, desperately hoping some mud sticks that portrays him as some insensitive weirdo. The latest effort was a coordinated attempt to make Vitter appear, in the words of the Democrat operative, to “support a law that tells a rape victim that she does not have the right to defend herself.”

(It is shameful that Democrats took advantage of a woman with personal tragedy to try to score political points this way. More to the point, if Democrats continue this line of inquiry, they’re going have to agree upon how they regard Vitter’s temperament. Because he said he committed a “serious sin” and his phone number turned up on a list of calls received by an escort agency, although he never has confirmed this, it is suggested by his political opponents that he paid for sexual intercourse. So Democrats are hinting that the same guy who allegedly paid for sex also would countenance rape by an unwillingness to let women defend themselves from it? Doesn’t seem consistent if he’d go so far as to pay for it, implying he would not want to prevent rape – if he didn’t think so, why pay for it?. But trying to figure out how and why liberals think the way they do has baffled even the wisest, keenest, and best-informed observers for decades.)

Of course, as Vitter himself pointed out, opposing the amendment (that would set a precedent in the government’s ability to intervene in internal corporate relations) doesn’t prevent a defense against alleged crimes, and the amendment isn’t even necessary since the courts recently ruled in a universal way that in those kinds of cases they would be adjudicated in the U.S. courts regardless of whether they occurred on U.S. soil or whatever contractual arrangements apply. All the useless amendment really did was to prevent arbitration from being used in any legal circumstance for Defense Department contractors, increasing business for trial lawyers and costs ultimately to be paid by the American public. As Vitter also noted, even the Pres. Barack Obama Administration opposed the amendment initially, although after its successful passage has expressed neutrality about it. The empty amendment will have nothing to do with the ability of employees to seek judicial relief.

Stunts like this, creating an issue that doesn’t exist, to date seem the only trick in Democrats’ bag against Vitter. Perhaps the foreknowledge that a huge wave is building against their candidates in the 2010 elections is driving them to such longshot tactics. If this is the best they can do, a year from now Vitter will have cruised to an easy reelection.

Whining appointee proposes setting back LA ethics law

If there ever seemed to be a man unhappy in his voluntarily-accepted job, it is Frank Simoneaux, current chairman of Louisiana’s Board of Ethics. Proclaiming ethics administration has become “crippled”, dispassionate investigation reveals the only “crippling” threat comes from Simoneaux’s constant yawping in favor of interjecting more politics and favoritism and less professionalism into the process.

Naturally, Simoneaux complains, as he has for some time, about the changes brought a year ago to the functions of the commission he heads. Prior to his joining, the board’s powers were changed by removing its adjudication function, leaving only with the power to bring charges. Now administrative law judges decide, the products of which the law states must be accepted by the Board.

The advantages of such a system, considered best practice in the ethics administration literature, over the previous are legion and well-known: rather than have political appointees without any necessary legal training or following legal advice render decisions, randomly-chosen civil servants insulated from political forces with law degrees and specialized legal training in this area of law decide. It’s worth noting that, under the previous system, in no other place in Louisiana jurisprudence outside adjudication for civil servants did any one body have the power to be all of the prosecutor, judge, and jury.

How anybody could assert that the change could create such an inferior situation only can be explained by understanding the real motive behind it of the pursuit of power and privilege: bringing back some version of the previous situation would give more of that to appointees like Simoneaux. Wholesale revisions of the nature suggested by him clearly would not be in the public interest.

Regardless, this does not mean that some review and perhaps tinkering at the margins may not have any value. Simoneaux recommends that the Legislature request the Louisiana State Law Institute to review the current law. Why not? By the time the request is made next year and the Institute accomplishes it, there will have been enough time to render initial judgments on the workability of the new system.

Also, as suggested by the more temperate Board member Scott Schneider, perhaps the board could have more input on interpretations, rather than utilizing cases with actual controversy concerning the law. Finally, maybe the board could be given an expanded appellate role. Instead of mandating that it sign off on any decision, if a majority of it contests a ruling made by the initial three-judge panel, three of the four remaining judges could be impaneled to review the initial ruling.
But acquiescing to Simoneaux’s power-aggrandizing demands does not serve the goal of better ethics enforcement. If he’s so upset about all of this, perhaps he should heed the advice of House Speaker Jim Tucker and resign the post he thinks is so worthless. His expressed attitude indicates he won’t be missed by those interested in high ethical standards.

Current education course will reward LA and its children

Louisiana is jumping into the fray for some helpful federal money for elementary and secondary education – no thanks to entrenched special interests which would rather protect their own interests than see improvement in education, and to others who have the wrong idea about quality education.

This week, the state invites public comment on its plan for the “Race to the Top” program which could provide as much as $250 million for intervention mostly in troubled schools, and some for underperforming schools. Part of the proposal calls for the potential expanded use of a successful tool used in the past, charter schools.

Of course, this irks the primary protectors of the current below-mediocre system, teachers’ unions, as the charter school concept allows for greater administrative freedom that makes it more difficult for inferior teachers not only to get continual pay raises, as has been the recent norm, but even to keep their jobs. Turning a school into a chartered one doesn’t always immediately bring results because better tools have to be used effectively and do not automatically improve matters, but the state’s track record with them has proven they do bring improvement beyond what the traditional model does.

This means representatives of unions, whose job is to siphon as much taxpayer money as possible to as many members that do as little work as possible, have to resort to disingenuous argumentation to try to criticize this strategy. Thus, you get one flack saying that charter schools generally fared worse than traditional public schools in the state’s most recent accountability report card, as a tactic to try to discourage use of them in the plan and in any other situation.

But this slyly tries to deflect from the truth. It is true that, when comparing all charter schools to all traditional schools, that traditional school scores on the state’s accountability system exceed those of charter schools.’ However, the reason why practically every charter school exists is because they were abysmal-performers taken over by the state for that reason then switched to charter status. When comparing progress of charter schools to traditional schools of the same kind, in fact (in New Orleans since most of the state’s charter schools are there) you see much greater improvement with the charter schools. No matter how much special interests try to deny or obfuscate it, charter schools have worked better than traditional schools in improving the worst-performing schools.

Yet putting greed ahead of children’s learning isn’t the only threat to the success of the proposal. With its recently-implemented “career” diploma that lowers rigor in the classroom, concerned observers wonder whether the state’s new “dummy diploma” will be used as a strike against the application, signaling the state lacks seriousness in its accountability efforts and favors making politicians look good by pumping up graduation rates at the expense of actual learning. This can be avoided by having the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education at its next meeting by requiring graduates under this diploma meet the same Graduate Exit Exam standards currently in place.

If BESE does this right thing and also ignores the background noise from defenders of the past struggling system, with its current accountability program Louisiana stands a great chance of getting rewarded for its progress and the steadfastness behind it. This will make many children in the state the biggest winners of all.

LA must investigate fund use for legality, efficiency's sake

The greater the reform, the more time and effort it will take, and one step in the process of overhauling Louisiana’s incredibly inefficient long-term health care system should begin with discovering the proper disposition of investment gains from a key health care account.

Last week, the former head of the state’s Office of Citizens with Developmental Disabilities Bruce Blaney, who now runs a nonprofit agency, called for an investigation into the disbursal of funds from the state’s Medicaid Trust Fund for the Elderly. The account holds funds for eventual disbursement to Medicaid providers, and the balances before being used are invested.

Blaney claims that these earnings, in the neighborhood of $50 million annually, should be apportioned so that two-thirds go for nursing home reimbursement and a third to reimbursement of home- and community-based providers. Instead, he asserts that it all may have gone to nursing homes, a violation of an agreement between the state and federal government that was providing funds. Not only does the former head of the overseeing department, Health and Hospitals, confirm this split, but written documentation of it exists, in the form of a letter signed by both state and federal officials.

However, the current overseer of the fund insists that the agreement lapsed with the end of Gov. Mike Foster’s second term. But unless the letter specifically states this, that seems an incredulous interpretation. Blaney has asked the Legislature to look into this, arguing that perhaps $200 million or more was misallocated over the past several years as a result of this. At the very least, something like the Legislative Audit Advisory Council needs to investigate this before the end of the year.

Bolstering Blaney’s claim is that lobbying by the nursing home industry in 2003 tried to get a constitutional amendment adopted that would have dedicated all funds to the industry’s reimbursements. Why would this be necessary unless it was generally understood that the division as described in the letter was in place?

But if Legislature does not act, or it does and finds the facts do support Blaney’s view and it then does not provide redress, then those supporting the integrity of the agreement need to go further and bring suit against the state. Perhaps knowledge of this may focus the Legislature, which has a notorious bias on favor of institutionalizing care of the resource-poor elderly and of the disabled.

That bias is indicated already in many ways, such as by the extremely favorable funding formula that, years ago, was costing the state almost $100 million extra a year according to the Legislative Auditor (and which could be much higher now) which rather than changing, the Legislature subsequently put into law. Also, the Legislature has tolerated giving the industry $20 million a year for empty beds.

Some recent favorable signs have been coming that the Gov. Bobby Jindal Administration, facing huge potential future budget deficits in part caused by Medicaid spending, is ready to stop the gravy train for institutions in the area of long-term care. It needs to add this resource to its efforts to increase efficient use of taxpayer dollars in this policy area, a move that likely will improve care and quality of life for program clients.

Despite legal ambiguity, added Census question needed

While it might appear that the issue of whether the 2010 Census should count separately undocumented persons is something that just came up, in fact it is a perennial issue of long history that often is not well understood. Clarity is required to assess the reasonableness of this requirement and therefore how to proceed on the issue.

Despite Sen. David Vitter’s recent taking up of this cause, it’s been around a long time and others of his colleagues have been there before. As far back as prior to the 1980 census it had become part of the public policy debate. In 1988, members of Congress wanted to pass legislation requiring a separate count on all forms (since the middle of the 20th century only the “long form” included the question, which is sent to a smaller portion of households). They also threatened to file suit, but neither went anywhere. A number of academic studies came out in the 1990s and this decade estimating the impact of illegal immigrants on apportionment. In 2006, Sen. Conrad Burns raised the issue but was rebuffed. A number of stories early in this year appeared about it.

Why Vitter and others came to start offering amendments to bills that would deny funding for Census activities at such a late stage in the game, when they might have been more effective months ago and prevented Democrat counterparts such as Louisiana’s Mary Landrieu from using as an excuse the process was too far along and would cost millions of more dollars, is a mystery. Also complicating his fight is that in all likelihood it is unconstitutional. Some argue in the context of what the earliest Congress is believed to have understood that created the operating rules for the Census could be interpreted to mean only citizens could be counted, but it is a bit convoluted of an argument. The Fourteenth Amendment seems particularly damaging to that cause, when it pretty directly mandates that all “persons” be counted.

Nevertheless, having some kind of separate question even on the short form would be beneficial. If opponents do sue over the constitutionality of the undifferentiated count and actually succeed, the data would be already in the correct format to do, or redo, Congressional reapportionment. However, such an outcome seems unlikely given on the U.S. Supreme Court the four justices who are strict constructionists – Chief Justice John Roberts, and Associate Justices Samuel Alito, Antonin Scalia, and Clarence Thomas – would be hard pressed to take such an activist interpretation of the document and all they would need is one more vote from more liberal judges some of whom secretly politically probably prefer the effort to fail.

Were that the case, only a constitutional amendment would suffice. Yet that could come prior to 2020, and the data would stand ready to fit. And for the future, a law such as that proposed two decades ago should be put into place so data could be ready for changes that could trigger and intra-Census reapportionment.

It will cost money to redo, but Democrats have blown hundreds of times the figure this year alone on spending that serves no real purpose and/or does not solve public policy problems. This relatively small amount accomplishes something far greater, ensuring that a cherished feature of our system of government reflect correctly intentions behind its founding, whether updated. Opposition to it therefore remains quizzical, and makes one wonder whether opponents like Landrieu believe in maintaining the system’s integrity.

Many misunderstand place, purpose of streamline panel

So, Louisiana’s Commission on Streamlining Government is actually beginning to compile recommendations, which legally are due by Dec. 15. To understand what this will mean for public policy going forward over the next nine months, we must understand the purpose of its existence.

Some have invested too much importance in it. For example, the idea factory member Treasurer John Kennedy has become on it would make one think he’s running for governor in 2011 with this gig as a means of floating trial balloons for the future. This is not a bad thing, but it’s not realistic either to think the CSG was formed solely and only to ferret out novel, never-before-seen and creative ways of making state government more efficient.

At the same time, others have dismissed it without understanding its true importance. Those who say it is an exercise in hot air that seeks to substitute rhetoric for action (or to excuse inaction) in a sense also have misunderstood it by assuming its political value is diversionary. In fact, it is intended to be a complementary political tactic to build support for some inevitable proposals and in the process perhaps find some genuinely new approaches that can be added to that agenda.

This is why observing the role played by the Gov. Bobby Jindal Administration in its unfolding is vital to comprehending its impact. Those testifying on the Administration’s behalf just didn’t wake up after the Commission formed and suddenly started to brainstorm on efficiency in their corners of government. The ideas they are pitching have been on the minds of Jindal and/or his key subordinates for some time, many of which challenge the existing bureaucratic system and special and political interests that support it.

Thus, the primary purpose of the Commission is to provide additional legitimacy to these propositions. Many Jindal would be bringing forward for consideration in next year’s legislative session regardless of whether such a body ever had existed. But with it in place, by getting its imprimatur on as many of the things it has discussed as possible, it makes it that more difficult for opponents to battle the forthcoming Jindal agenda. The bonus would be any new ideas Jindal likes being revealed in the process of deliberations, which he can add to that agenda.

Therefore, the valid way to understand the existence and purpose of the Commission is it’s there to increase political support for Jindal’s ideas that would be introduced next year regardless of its existence, maybe to find him new ones to add, and perhaps leading to the discard of some that the process may reveal face too much opposition. Of secondary importance is its place as an incubator of truly unknown stuff. None of this is a bad thing; airing out and vetting all these ideas contributes to the debate around the broader question for which the commission was formed.

As a result, its final decisions as far as recommendations are important only insofar as they reflect a rough estimate of political support for them. Some that get rejected nevertheless will appear in Jindal-sponsored bills next year, while others accepted will not be supported by Jindal and therefore are likely to go nowhere during the next session. Again, knowing that it is an instrument to aid certain ideas of efficiency primarily and secondarily serves as a blank slate for any such idea truly realizes its place and impact in Louisiana public policy-making in the near future.

Budget imperative finally threatens nursing home bonus

It took a budget crisis, not any rational reassessment, to get Louisiana at least to consider getting on the right track in regards to long-term institutional health care. Regardless of the motive, the inefficient use of taxpayer dollars biased in favor of institutions finally looks like it is going to come under review, and actually be eliminated.

The looming 2010-11 fiscal year budget deficit, as part of the Commission on Streamlining Government exercise, much of which is being caused by the state’s largest expenditure of long-term care costs for the indigent and disabled, has prompted the state’s Department of Health and Hospitals to propose the single largest, by far, cut in spending with a $232 million reduction in reimbursements for hospitals and nursing homes in care – a position long advocated in this space. It would be an across-the-board rollback of rates to the 2006-07 levels, as Louisiana in ineligible to change eligibility standards due to its acceptance of federal money courtesy of the federal spending bill passed earlier this year.

Hospitals were nonplussed at their share of over $100 million to endure, and they may have a point. With Louisiana’s stubborn insistence on maintaining charity hospitals – whose days may be numbered if Washington Democrats succeed in cramming down an unwilling public’s throat any current budget-busting, quality-harming plans that will lead to nationalization of health care – many nongovernmental hospitals will be able to shunt Medicaid patients to these, so the state will not save much at all. This should be evaluated more closely by the Commission when it makes its recommendations by Dec. 15.

But the reduction in regards to nursing homes is very welcome, appropriate, and long overdue. For decades the industry has received special funding privileges, writing into law things such as a case-mix methodology that was costing the state five years ago almost $100 million needlessly according to the Legislative Auditor, and $20 million a year funding for empty beds. Therefore, its estimated $100 million cut merely eliminates this unfair advantage.

Louisiana Nursing Home Association executive director Joe Donchess threatens that such a move would decrease the quality of care. This is empty posturing to deflect attention from the real, and desirable, outcome. Federal and state regulations will not permit care to go below a certain level (and, according to the federal government, the majority of home already operate at a low level) or the facility loses its license. Instead, what will happen is a reversal of the wastefulness that has plagued Louisiana taxpayers for so long – the overcapacity of the industry finally will be wrung out of the system.

This is why it has gotten favorable treatment for so long, because industry executives believed they could keep building and the state always would cover the number of beds with patients. But a decade ago when the state (under legal duress) began shifting dollars to home- and community-based care, the industry got caught short yet successfully lobbied policymakers to continue to cushion it. So promising about this suggestion is the practical impact of a rate cut will be to force facilities to cut costs by closing space or even entire homes where the market unsubsidized by government can’t sustain the excess empty beds.

Farcically, Donchess suggested cuts instead should be made in the home- and community-care system – which already have faced cuts which are eliminating roughly 30 percent of service. This has been done according to a resource allocation model that tries to match actual need with resources provided – a model as of yet not applied to nursing homes where application of the model would probably lead to many residents (many willingly) exiting them in favor of home- or community-based care. This tactic probably would be better than just making the cuts across the board: apply the RAM to the nursing home population first, then base reimbursement reductions on who would remain. This more realistically would match actual need to resources.

There is no other reduction than this in all of state government that promises as large savings, perhaps a fifth of the entire deficit, and also would constitute as efficient a use of taxpayer dollars. Particularly encouraging is that DHH would not have suggested this unless the Gov. Bobby Jindal Administration seriously was considering pursuing this solution. Even if the Commission wimps out and does not recommend this, the groundwork is set for Jindal to propose this as part of next year’s budget. Now more than ever, common sense must prevail with adoption of this proposal into the budget.

Superintendents prefer to protect interests, not educate

As if more confirmation was needed, that Louisiana’s school superintendents are complaining about a legal change regarding school financing once again demonstrates they seem more interested in acquiring power and privilege for their agencies than in educating children.

A recent change of law now directs a proportion of locally-generated operating funds to charter schools in any of Louisiana’s 69 local school districts, away from the district. Previously, only state funds that would have gone to the district were shunted away. Of course, this has perturbed a number of these districts’ superintendent who are complaining that they now aren’t getting money for students their traditional schools aren’t educating.

If that appears somewhat farcical, get a load of the comments made by the president of the Louisiana Association of School Superintendents, one of their own: “It’s kind of like the Boston Tea Party all over again,” said Gary Jones, superintendent of schools in Rapides Parish. “It’s taxation without representation.”

That remark leaves no doubt that Jones, if he came from the teaching ranks, never was a history or government teacher. Citizens do have representation in this matter – they voted for state legislators and the governor who made the decisions to change the law. Further, since the people’s representatives did approve of the matter, to argue there is a lack of representation suggests that the locus of the thing lacking representation in the mind of Jones is not the people, but the school districts themselves.

But Jones and the other complaining superintendents seem to forget the Louisiana Constitution in all of this. Art. VIII Sec. 1 says it is the Legislature that is to “provide for the education of the people of the state and shall establish and maintain a public educational system.” Also, Art. VIII Sec. 10 states that “parish and city school board systems … are recognized, subject to control and supervision by the State Board of Elementary and Secondary Education and the power of the legislature to enact laws affecting them.”

In other words, these districts act as agents to the state for the purposes of education. Further, any money they receive as a result of lawful revenue-producing actions by the Legislature or its agents the districts is the people’s money, not theirs. All the people care about is that education occurs; there is no mandated way that money must be apportioned among state agencies in order for it to occur beyond what the Constitution says about the matter, which is that it’s ultimately in the hands of the Legislature.

This explains why the argument about the impermissibility of charter schools getting dollars raised by a local government even when rejected as charter schools by that local government also fails. Most charter schools exist today (outside of the Recovery School District) because the state had to approve them after they were rejected at the local level – rejected usually precisely because the local districts saw them as threats to them and other special interests like unions rather than evaluated them as a different kind of and perhaps better agent besides traditional public schools to help educate children. Again, education is a state, not local, responsibility so if the state’s agent overrides a local decision where so empowered, it should have the right to redirect dollars attendant to the decision addressing the function in question.

Understand the basic dynamic going on here: districts do not like charter schools because they know these are more committed to providing quality education than are they, who put too much emphasis on keeping cozy relations with special interests like unions and in maintaining the existing bureaucratic and political structures and power relations. Their arguments on this issue merely reflect this attitude and in the end remind us of as a consequence of the actions stemming from such mindsets why public education in Louisiana remains, in both absolute and comparative senses, insufficient and subpar.