Between The Lines

Budget continues progress in right-sizing LA govt

2012-02-10T14:35:00.003-06:00

Not a lot of surprises emerged in Gov. Bobby Jindal’s budget, but what ones did come from the specifying of details after months of general discussion were good to see, and brought Jindal nearer to his stated desire to see smaller, more efficient state government.

This one as a whole shows a small net spending decline despite small forecast increases in both the state general fund and federal funds, because of a roughly one-tenth decline in dedicated fund revenues. “One-time” monies total around $230 million, below the $377.5 million increase in the general fund revenue forecast between this budgeted and the fiscal year after, significant because of the House of Representatives rule that requires a two-thirds instead of simple majority vote to use such funds if they total higher than the forecasted change. (If this fails, the budget would cut from health care expenditures.)

As far what was known to be coming, the Jindal Administration will hope to breach the education special interests whose support of the current way of doing things continue to shortchange Louisiana’s children, but since that aggregate spending amount largely is cordoned off from politics, all Jindal could do was say no increase would come to that amount beyond that necessary by formula – appropriate as the state continues to shed students in its public school systems, even as reforms previously taken show some hope in reversing that. Jindal’s proposal to increase vastly parental choice is not budgeted in, but past data suggest it could drop spending levels and produce outcomes as least as good.

Also coming in as advertised but with a larger budgetary impact, retirement system reform that will reduce only marginally the unfunded accrued liability in the present but which certainly will reduce potential future such liabilities therefore will constitute an imperative part of the budget, not just for the $55 million savings it can provide this year but for the much higher future savings. Many compelling reasons exist for the reforms, and it’s no doubt fair that, as the state employees in question pay only 25 percent of their total retirement burden and contribute at a rate that puts Louisiana in the bottom third of states, that they repay the generosity of the taxpayers through this change.

Part of the generosity comes from health benefits offered relative to what gets paid in, and taxpayers’ burdens will be eased by Jindal Administration plans, as a part of the budget now formally announced, to find an administrator for the only health plan for state employees still run by the state. While the savings through efficiency would be $26.5 million on an annual basis (the change will happen halfway through the fiscal year, as the health plans operate on calendar years), taxpayers and ratepayers according to historical data should see savings into the future.

Some smaller items that previous signals from the Jindal Administration hinted might occur also got confirmed, such as the state’s exiting the absurdly inefficient ferry business in the greater New Orleans area and ending the conduit to a money sinkhole that has been tolls on the Crescent City Connection bridge. The items that did surprise show a continuing state commitment along these lines to move the state out of doing things that the private sector can do no worse than as well as and less expensively, and to move away from the use of institutions and towards community- and individual-based solutions to address needs.

Unfortunately, another small percentage reduction has come to medical providers paid through Medicaid. Small, but it’s on top of others in recent years and, hopefully, won’t reduce supply of those services significantly. One bright spot of these is a change to methodology that would serve the purpose of reducing resources into the state’s overbuilt nursing home sector, which will need many more years of population growth and of the elderly proportion of it in particular to get to a point where there will not be an oversupply of beds for those in actual need, when many can live better and more cheaply to the state in the community.

Pineville has begun to acquire the status of the center of Louisiana’s disability care directly by the state. The budget announced continuing plans to take behavioral health problem-solving out of a regimen of acute care episodes and into a continuum of care strategy, with Pineville’s Central State Hospital as the consolidated medical facility for those with intense support needs. Elsewhere, the budget encourages more integration of these disabled into the community with the necessary supports but performed by the nongovernment sector, to avoid past less effective and less efficient efforts. Pineville also retains its next-door Supports and Services Center for the developmentally disabled with intense supports needs.

But the other two remaining such centers (with several having been closed or converted away from residential facilities, and another becoming a group home), in Bossier City and Hammond will be transferred to private operators and even more emphasis placed on independent living for the developmentally disabled. Even as this will produce operational savings of $6.9 million (at a cost of a half to two-thirds what the state has paid), the budget also expands the number of waiver slots to enable home- and community-based care by 877, at an annual cost of $17.3 million.

But you can’t win them all in Pineville. Not actually new in the sense this came up last year in a different way, Jindal also proposes closing its J. Levy Dabadie Correctional Center and housing its 330 low-security inmates at the nearby Avoyelles Correctional Center (which would require some shuttling to local prisons that have excess capacity), and then attempting to sell and privatize that facility, noting its per inmate costs are a third higher than the rates paid at Louisiana’s two completely privatized prisons already. This, like the retirement changes, would require legislation beyond the budget.

Consolidation also would occur with substance abusers imprisoned at Forcht Wade Correctional Center in Keithville to be transferred to David Wade Correctional Center, which already administers this facility, in nearby Homer. Together, these changes in the Department of Corrections would save over $10 million this fiscal year, and they should have no negative effect on public safety – in the past couple of years, the state’s prison population has been edging down overall, but more quickly among those in state prisons, so the excess capacity is there.

Meanwhile, higher education will operate essentially at standstill (including the recent mid-year reduction) but more reliant upon its own resources, through its ability for systems and institutions to increase tuition. Potential savings to taxpayers get circumscribed somewhat because they will have to pay for some of the increase through the Tuition Opportunity Program for Students (which, regrettably, was not changed to make it more a true scholarship program that reduces attraction of marginal students that end up wasting higher education resources as well), but this philosophy heads the state in the right direction. With tuition rates in the bottom half of the state, it’s appropriate that students take more ownership of their educations and rely less on taxpayers to pay its total cost.

All of Jindal’s budgets have headed in the right direction, but this one picks up the pace. While the most monetary impact comes from the retirement plan changes (which, hopefully, can be expanded upon to include all state systems in the future, not just one), given the gravity of that it might actually prove less difficult to achieve than the changes to correctional facilities (this time, Jindal applied more pressure for passage by tying the plan change savings into the budget), which, like concerning retirement issues, got derailed last year by the Legislature despite their benefits exceeding their costs. Yet if it ends up taking a form similar to this, Jindal will have succeeded in lopping off 10 percent of general fund spending and over 15 percent of total spending from his first year in office (and reduced the full-time equivalent state government workforce by 15 percent, the first time it would be under 80,000 in many years).

While macroeconomic conditions thrust this upon the state drove this process, that Jindal did it with no significant reduction in service, both in terms of those being provided and in their quality, demonstrated a good grasp of what were essentially unnecessary services or level of service to stop providing and also the skill to make programmatic changes (such as with the implementation of Bayou Health) to wring more efficiency out of government. A few more years at these budgetary levels, and Louisiana just might end up with right-sized government.

Abolishing clemency powers unpardonable mistake

2012-02-09T07:50:00.004-06:00

No doubt prefiled HB 85 by Democrat state Rep. Austin Badon is more political jab than serious policy, but the issue deserves a nontrivial hearing.

This bill would amend the Constitution to abolish the governor’s authority to issue pardons and would retain only the automatic pardon provision for first-time perpetrators of nonviolent crimes and some violent offenses. This would make Louisiana unique as the only state not to grant some kind of executive clemency power for nearly all state crimes; currently in 41 states governors, many requiring the recommendation of a board (such as Louisiana), and in nine states an executive board may exercise sweeping pardon powers.

Companion legislation filed by Badon, HB 84, would excise the state’s Board of Pardons, the imprimatur of which is necessary for a request to go to the governor. It also wipes out the governor’s power to commute sentences and to grant reprieves, along with the Board’s role in that process.

The pardon power received national attention weeks ago when outgoing Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour issued a slew of them, some to convicted murderers serving life sentences, just as he exited office. Louisiana got in its own small bit of controversy when Republican Gov. Bobby Jindal appointed a pair of ex-legislators (one of whom can serve only for a year as he assumes a new elective office at the beginning of next year) to join another ex-legislator reappointed. This makes them a majority of the five-member voting board, with all drawing a combined $186,000 in annual salary.

It’s clear Badon wants to make the off-loading of ex-legislators into appointive jobs at full-time pay an issue by wanting to excise the Board of Pardons. If he was going to claim justice might get cheated by rogue governors and hold up Barbour as an example of pardoning gone amok, his bill could have made a narrower slice and left the ability for the Board to recommend and a governor to act upon commutations and reprieves. Since every voluntary clemency power gets wiped out by the bill, which no one argues Barbour nor apparently any other governor has questionably decided reprieves and commutations, it seems the Board is the target as indicated by wiping out even the less controversial forms of clemency.

That will not do in our system of justice. It’s appropriate for a broad range of clemency powers to exist as tools to mete out at informed discretion in order to accomplish, as Aristotle’s conception of distributive justice maintains, the treatment of equals equally and unequals unequally. If in the service of a sentence, or after its completion, an individual’s behavior is meritorious, or can serve society in a significant way (think Joseph Wladislaw), it’s a positive reflection on the quality of that society if those who have sufficiently repaid society may have the reward, or by its availability be induced to behave to seek it, that these may be conferred on deserving individuals.

If Badon wants to clip the wings of the Board, he should strip out the salaried aspect, although admittedly the panel serves a critical role that should require quite a bit of attention from its members, which may justify more remuneration than paying just for their expenses. But the power of clemency should remain, in the hands of the governor with the Board of Pardons’ capacity to recommend as a check on potential gubernatorial abuse. Badon needs to move past cheap political stunt if he wishes to make any meaningful input into the issue’s debate.

Desperately bad arguments against reform betray fear

2012-02-08T08:00:00.009-06:00

Maybe now we know why the Louisiana State Employees Retirement System’s investment return barely beat that of a risk-free 30-year U.S. Treasury bond over the past five years – because its top officers aren’t very good critical thinkers, as evidenced by the sloppy, if not illogical, arguments they try to make against reforms proposed for the state’s retirement system for most of its non-education employees. Or maybe this display of intellectual piffle shows they're just desperate to stop an erosion of their power and privilege.

Gov. Bobby Jindal has proposed altering regulations regarding LASERS, one of the four state (major) retirement funds and which is responsible for about a third of the unfunded accrued liability taxpayers must face (inflated in no small part by its failure in recent years to achieve its stated target of an 8.25 percent rate of return on its roughly $10 billion investment portfolio). These would have current employees pay 11 percent rather than 8 percent of their pay into retirement (the private sector average is 18 percent), and calculate the value of their defined benefit pensions (which few in the private sector offer any more) on the average of their (usually last) five years instead of three, and in addition for future employees raise the retirement age for most jobs from 55 to 67 (matching the regular retirement age for Social Security), and enroll them in a defined contribution systems that acts like an individual retirement account (which most private sector employees now offer).

Dim bulb #1 is LASERS Executive Director Cindy Rougeou, who complained that these kinds of changes ultimately would constitute a change of provisions that “would violate the constitutional restriction against impairing existing benefits.” She further declares that, because LASERS is the only state system about which these kinds of changes have been contemplated, that these changes are not comprehensive enough to merit adoption, and she promises “protracted litigation” over the matter.

As of this posting, LASERS had not deigned to issue on its website a copy of the letter to Jindal in which Rougeou’s sentiments had appeared, but perhaps the document would explain exactly which part of the Constitution is allegedly violated. The only sentence that even comes close to what she claims appears in it is found in Art. X Sec. 29, which reads, “the state shall guarantee benefits payable to a member or retiree or to his lawful beneficiary upon his death.” That’s a stretch to say that there is some blanket right of employees make a specific dollar amount claim for a generality, but let’s take at her word that this means for current employees when they retire the periodic monetary payout calculated under the present formula cannot be reduced.

But there’s nothing about Jindal’s proposal that does that. The three percent increase comes from current salary – it doesn’t cut benefits down the road at all. Nor does the calculation of the benefit level on five rather than three years – it shifts the baseline in an indeterminate way. The only proposal that could fit that interpretation would be to force employees to work as many as 12 extra years to draw full retirement, as that would imply the amount you would get at 55 is zero, which is lower than what currently would be drawn – except that this proposed change makes this voluntary for current employees. It’s a mystery to clear thinkers from where Rougoeu, who does not dispute that these alterations would pay down the UAL, draws this conclusion.

Perhaps it’s because she has a problem making logical concatenations, as shown by her argument about a “comprehensive” solution. By stating this as an objection to the changes, she implies that there is no benefit, and perhaps even harm done to paying down the UAL by their implementation without applying it to all systems. But isn’t something that addresses 35 percent of a problem better than not addressing the problem at all? So just because something beneficial is done to rectify a part of the problem and not all of it means it shouldn’t be done at all? How can Rougeou state this an as objection in any logical sense? If she didn’t mean that, then why even bring it up?

While lack of adequate argumentation from a top administrator living off taxpayers should evoke pity from observers, she merits scorn for the scorched earth tactic she threatens – using potentially millions of dollars of state employees’ and taxpayers’ money to litigate against the changes, which rest on that inadequate argumentation in the first place. Like a thug with a weapon protruding from under a coat, she chose those words to try to coerce policy-makers into abandoning these reforms.

Joining her in her lack of constitutional literacy is her subaltern LASERS associate director Trey Boudreaux. He amplified a statement of hers that insinuated Jindal personally was on a vendetta against LASERS employees, “picking on them because they have no voice.” The argument here appears to be that classified state employees, who comprise members of LASERS, constitutionally cannot run for office (except for the employee spot on the State Civil Service Commission), hold a party office, take part in party affairs including fundraising, work on behalf of a candidate including making donations, or make public expressions about policy. That is, relevant to this issue, these employees cannot formally organize to express an opinion publicly.

However, there’s a wonderful concept both in the state’s and U.S. Constitution that perhaps Rougeou and Boudreaux ought to inform themselves about that serves as the ultimate political voice of all eligible citizens, state employees included. It’s called voting, and if state employees wish to support or oppose these changes, they have a chance to evaluate candidates on the basis of actions and statements dealing with this issue, and vote accordingly. Better, nothing prevents them from privately telling officeholders and candidates this, and in a private setting telling any other eligible voters their feelings on the issue in the hopes of persuading them. Since it’s a pretty safe bet Rougeou and Boudreaux learned at some point that the state (despite the efforts of some) is a representative democracy, it’s just sheer stupidity on their part to claim LASERS members have no “voice” in all of this and thereby are targeted, if not unfairly treated.

You might think the brass would want to see their agency’s assets steered to solvency on behalf of taxpayers, but their loyalty seems to lie more with present and future retirees in trying to see that special interest has the maximum benefits for the least amount of contribution. It may be the current criticisms are a political strategy to create a firewall against the change that really scares them – the replacement of the defined benefit plan (which has been defended time and again by Rougeau, most recently here) with a defined contribution plan for new employees. As this would remove future assets from being under their control, to bureaucrats such as these this represents a loss of power and prestige. They figure if they can defeat these measures, or perhaps use them as a bargaining chip, they can forestall implementation of the change in philosophy in benefits administration – even as other states and local governments continue to make that change in accelerating numbers.

It would be one thing to try to argue against the changes because they wouldn’t lower the UAL and thereby relieve the burden on taxpayers – but they can’t – or that such changes create an unfair burden to state employees – next to impossible given the gravy train of compensation and benefits Louisiana state employees generally enjoy relative to their private sector counterparts in jobs requiring similar responsibilities and skills. But it’s another to argue so weakly, by forwarding irrelevancies, illogic, and straw men, as to raise legitimate doubts about the capabilities of these people to give taxpayers their money’s worth, or perhaps serving as a sign of desperation in their opposition indicating just how completely they have thrown in their lot against taxpayers.

Higher admission criteria will fail without other reforms

2012-02-07T10:30:00.004-06:00

The politics of demagoguery and putting of special interests first are coming home to roost for Louisiana as the day draws closer to the implementation of just one of many needed changes in its higher education delivery, in potentially setting the state up for failure. One hopes this serves as a wake-up call to implement needed others before the system takes a turn, reversing the small progress of the past few years, to even greater inefficiency and ineffectiveness.

Readers of this space have known that looming changes to admissions standards for baccalaureate-and-above institutions, beginning this fall and continuing through 2014, will reshape profoundly the landscape of higher education, forcing a significant shift in students and thereby resources from these institutions to community colleges. This will create more slack resources for the senior colleges although, theoretically, increased performance will come from the student body as a whole, as marginal students no longer would begin an academic career at a four-year university and have a better chance of degree completion.

Particularly affected will be the lowest performing universities, in terms of retention and graduation rates. During last year’s debate over the combining of Southern University New Orleans, the University of New Orleans, and Delgado Community College, this space pointed out the impending standards increase alone justified the effort.

As SUNO had the country’s lowest six-year graduation rate, UNO one of the lowest, both with many slack resources to begin with because of the ravages of Hurricane Katrina, and future freshmen classes further reduced by the change (in the case of SUNO, devastated: approximately seven of eight of its admittances from high school last year would not qualify under the new standards), it made perfect sense to create this University of Greater New Orleans, shift much of SUNO’s functioning to UNO, and give many of SUNO’s resources to Delgado, which presumably would face a large enrollment increase in this new environment. Instead, the politics of race and symbolism torpedoed the reform, and taxpayers now will foot the bill for empty classrooms, instructors without students, and bureaucracy bloated further by all the ancillary support costs that go along with educating for students not there.

More generally, as a result of the change, an overbuilt system of baccalaureate-and-above institutions only will become exacerbated. Even as overall cohort performance at each may improve, savings will be marginal overall and the actual per student cost will go up. Only through the same rejected specific idea in New Orleans, mergers and even closures of these institutions, will any significant savings accrue, and may even improve performance further. Yet again the outlook seems dim for actual achievement of this, yet again for political reasons with so many politicians and higher education employees more interested in retaining power and jobs than in system improvement.

And the overbuilt status applies not just to the top end of the spectrum. Louisiana has too many technical colleges as well, to the point that most parishes in the state have one or more of a public four-year university, a two-year college, or a technical school – numbering about six dozen campuses. In today’s era of modern travel and communications that assist efforts in receiving higher education, as well as the lengthening list of proprietary schools offering training, there’s no reason to have many of these schools, whose enrollments are lower than local high schools with some in cities whose entire populations may be two or three times the size of a high school’s. Without right-sizing Louisiana higher education, inducing real efficiency into higher education spending is like trying to empty a swimming pool with a cup.

But the more efficient resource allocation that will come from higher standards will serve only as someone trying to bail water out of the ocean considering the raft of counterproductive policies that will dampen the impact of the change – if not subvert it entirely. Lax qualifications for the Taylor Opportunity Program for Students continue to fund tuition for students scoring below the national average for high school seniors on the American College Test (if right about the average of all its takers), encouraging marginal and unmotivated students to enter college where they disproportionately drop out and thereby waste taxpayer monies. Recently reaffirmed by outside studying, duplicative governance structures continue to waste money and promote inefficient execution. Free tuition above 12 semester hours and later drop dates force colleges to hire more instructors and to have more classroom infrastructure in place than necessary.

However, the two biggest impediments, as yet unresolved, concern admittance policies and instruction at the community college level, and instruction issues and transfer policies relative to the baccalaureate institutions. The dirty secret of the new admissions policies is they still provide much opportunity for substandard students to enter the senior system.

Theoretically, the unprepared but motivated student will now head to a community college. After taking a sufficient number of hours there, which also serve to bring the student up to speed to face the rigors of upper-division coursework, the student transfers to a four-year institution. Money is saved and more associates and bachelors degrees are awarded because instruction at the lower level is done as effectively but more cheaply, and superior matching of capability to pedagogy and expectations better retains students to enable more to complete degrees.

This works as intended, however, only if the level of instruction at both levels occurs to provide quality education to these marginal students. By definition, they are marginal because they cannot perform up to a certain level of expectation and meet this standard without greater effort on both their parts and their instructors’. These kinds of students will appear because community colleges have been left as open admissions institutions, needing only a high school diploma or General Equivalency Degree for admittance. But the funding formula produces more money for institutions the greater number of students stay in school and graduate, while higher standards needed to get these students ready to move on do the opposite in making it more difficult for them to stay in school and graduate, absent greater commitment by students and a scholastic environment to encourage and facilitate that.

All of which creates the perverse incentive for schools instead not to motivate greater commitment but to lower standards and expectations in order to pump up retention and graduation rates on behalf of these marginal students. Many then get passed along to universities – in essence, the same students they would have gotten under the admission standards about to change, just a half, or one, or two years later. And, facing the same kind of funding formula, they also will feel pressure to lower standards because of these students. Unless procedures are put into place to prevent this temptation, this behavior would subvert entirely the entire purpose of higher admissions standards for four-year schools.

One thing that could help would be having minimal admissions standards at community colleges, which would signal the truly inadequate interested in post-secondary education to head to a technical school. Another might be not to allow automatic transfer from community colleges of students meeting the (low) transfer eligibility standards, but to require passing a test in the areas of the mandated English and mathematics general education requirement courses they must have taken to transfer. Setting the bar sufficiently high on that instrument would encourage standards maintenance at the community college level and resisting pressure by senior colleges to have to accept unprepared students and not drop standards also for the sake of their retention and completer statistics.

Absent these kinds of measures, my quarter-century in academia witnessing erosion of student capabilities and standards over that time as well as additional recent evidence of this from elsewhere in the state shows this not to be an unlikely scenario. Which goes to show that, left in isolation of larger systemic changes, while the increase of admissions standards will help and is welcome, it comes nowhere close to tackling at a necessary magnitude system inefficiency and the wasteful spending that results, if it will do so at all. Only by putting the interests of taxpayers and those committed to increased quality higher education provision in the state first, and giving them the tools to do so, can prevent this.

Landrieu needs to lead, not pose, on spending issues

2012-02-06T07:00:00.003-06:00

As noted in yesterday’s post, one challenge Louisiana must meet as it evolves towards a more effective and efficient indigent care system is dealing with mental health issues. This requires analysis and leadership rather than the posturing exemplified by New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu.

Part of mid-year budget corrections involves the state reducing funding for indigent mental health care. As Medicaid funds from federal sources few recipients for this service, states pick up the bulk of this, and Louisiana, with its aberrant charity hospital system, until recent years funneled the vast bulk of its spending on this to those institutions or to nursing homes. With cuts now necessary until the end of this budget cycle, these hospitals must absorb the bulk of them, including disproportionately those in the care of the indigent mentally ill.

This upset Landrieu, who asserted an issue looming large for his administration was crime, and he noted correctly that less servicing of the indigent mentally ill increases crime and its costs. He called these cuts therefore counterproductive and implored Gov. Bobby Jindal generally and the Louisiana State University System specifically to reconsider them.

We can perhaps put aside the fact that Landrieu did not address the actual reason why these cuts came, because of a state fiscal structure that leaves the state with surplus money for spending on low-priority items while higher-priority needs, almost all in the areas of health care and higher education, get squeezed. With almost $5.5 billion idling in funds produced by some 300 constitutional and statutory dedications, a significant portion of which never would get spent for their designated purposes, the state is awash in cash but unable to direct it to where needs are except by separate appropriations bills, until reform of this inflexible system occurs.

But Landrieu also demonstrated misdiagnosis of resources allocation in behavioral health policy, if not actually having contributed to the problem through inattentiveness. As it reforms its wasteful institution-based, money-follows-the- provider indigent health care system to one that is diversified where money follows the patient, maybe its most inefficient part has been in this policy area.

As with other states, when the deinstitutionalization paradigm took hold about 40 years ago, which argued many of mentally ill did not have to live in large, state-run mental hospitals, Louisiana cut them loose with few transitional elements in place, and likely went overboard in doing so. As a result, some who should not have been put into the community and cannot live reasonably ordered lives outside of hospitals were cast adrift, while others who could lead lives close to normally behaving began to rely voluntarily on charity hospitals and/or involuntarily on law enforcement for their care.

Both choices spend resources in this kind of care very inefficiently and cannot entirely address safety concerns of both the individual and of the public. Like other states, in recent years Louisiana has increased its attention to managing a continuum of care for these individuals, which in most instances proves much less expensive (older data estimate direct savings of at least 15 percent compared to institutional care) than providing acute care repeatedly or longer term care in less appropriate settings, such as having the mentally ill reside in nursing homes rather than less restrictive settings. This has been accomplished through increased emphasis on outreach programs and through the use of programs that encourage living in group settings in the community and with clients’ families in home environments.

Landrieu complained about cuts that affect acute care of mental illness. But these are areas that should be reduced anyway, in favor of home- and community-based solutions, along with the realization that it would be best for some people presently not in institutions to be placed newly or back into institutions. Rather than call only for restoration of funds for a leaky acute care system for dealing with mental illness, Landrieu at the very least needs to supplement his remarks, if not replace them, with a call to system reform that encourages transferring resources for this that presently go to charity hospitals or other intermediate care facilities towards home- and community-based care networking.

Instructively, Landrieu did not comment on a report that showed New Orleans had the second-highest rate of homeless, nor the significant discovery that its proportion of mentally ill homeless was about double the national average. In part, this is a result of the rush to deinstitutionalize and a fragmented care system concentrated too much on the extreme of acute care. With increased crime, this is another example of the indirect costs of a poorly-functioning behavioral health care system.

Obviously, we should want a state fiscal system that does well in priorities in spending, necessitating both constitutional and numerous statutory changes. However, within an area of policy also we need the most efficient and effective use of taxpayer dollars that can achieve the best outcomes. As a part of the entire overhaul of the state’s indigent health care system that will require removing most of the present charity hospitals and state developmental disability centers from state ownership, perhaps some of these can be converted to serve as facilities to handle a larger number of the mentally ill who, in their own best interests, need to be back in institutions.

Yet remaining resources do not need devoting to state institutions or to Louisiana’s notoriously over-bedded nursing home sector, in dealing with behavioral health issues. They would go further in serving more and in better ways those with mental health problems by steering them to home- and community-based services. As far as politicians go, Landrieu must learn not just to gripe about money, but to advocate the use of it more wisely and implement such solutions at the macro level of state fiscal policy and the micro level of specific policy. Had these kinds of programs been in place, he might have found the reduced amount of money the state has to offer to pay for these services would have been more than enough to provide more of them than it could prior to such reductions, and he’d have no letters to write.

Painful cuts point out need to dismantle charity system

2012-02-05T08:00:00.001-06:00

While mid-year budget corrections disrupt optimal planning, and Louisiana’s fiscal structure exacerbates the problem by shielding much, some low-priority areas, from reductions to force them upon very few and higher-priority areas of state government, the silver lining again is the opportunity for the exercise to accelerate beneficial reform – as one state legislator accidentally may have discovered.

To be implemented immediately, joining the rest of higher education and also other areas of health care provision, Louisiana’s charity hospital system for the remainder of the fiscal year will suffer cuts that officials predict will have a measurable impact on service provided to the indigent. These also will slice a few hundred jobs off of the state payroll.

State Rep. Joe Harrison seemed rather miffed that one such facility in his district, Houma’s Leonard J. Chabert Medical Center, would endure such belt-tightening, to the tune of 80 positions and $2.9 million less. He publicly announced he would investigate in the upcoming session to separate the facility from the Louisiana State University System that runs these hospitals and create its own independent district.

But Harrison’s proposed solution betrayed the wrong mentality that has led Louisiana to operate this inefficient, lower-quality system. He wants to rope in a nonprofit and another local public hospital and build on the hospital district of the latter. Of course, this moves in the opposite direction of the state’s policy dealing with indigent care, debuting only days ago with the start of the Bayou Health plan that will encourage the majority of Medicaid patients, through a variety of coverage plans administered by non-governmental entities, to use a wide variety of facilities for health care and not just charity hospitals.

Rather, with Chabert and most of the other hospitals currently in the system – exceptions being the medical centers in Shreveport and New Orleans, which would focus mainly on education – the state needs to come up with a divestment plan for these. As Bayou Health increases in scope, the existing hospitals like Chabert will experience reduced demand. It would be to the state’s advantage now to come up with a plan to sell off these assets so they can position themselves as soon as possible to make the transition away from being state-owned, which will also increase the remuneration it can receive for their sales to the private sector, nonprofit sector, or to local governments.

In the process, it also must pay attention to transitional matters as well, such as the fact that Medicaid coverage for behavioral health issues is scanty and therefore reducing access to other facilities for the indigent. It could build upon a model in Rapides Parish, where a smaller facility is getting built to service those needs specifically. Smaller state facilities in the areas where charity hospitals currently operate would make the transition out of state ownership, and placement in other areas too, could address this need.

Harrison and his colleagues need to work on this holistic solution, recognized by his colleague (and son of the man for whom the hospital in question is named) state Sen. Norby Chabert, who acknowledges that state hospitals have as a primary mission teaching and that the indigent may be better served in other ways. The introduction of Bayou Health only accelerates the necessary transformation that finally may put the anachronistic charity hospital system to rest. That the present reductions that the system must endure increases awareness of this reality makes them somewhat easier to take.

To offset inertia, right-sizing govt needs attention to detail

2012-02-02T10:00:00.003-06:00

As the state cues up more means to improve service and save money, this does not mean it can afford to abrogate its responsibility to present clear rationales for doing so, as the latest meeting of the State Civil Service Commission demonstrates.

In it, the CSC was given notice of four planned reorganizations that would shrink bureaucracy. In any situation where layoffs occur, the CSC must approve of the plan on the evidence that government must do so because of insufficient finances or that an alternative method, such as contracting, will save the state money, in order to prevent arbitrary discharges of employees from the state’s classified civil service. As a result, for next month’s meeting the agencies involved will have to present data to demonstrate savings with the likelihood of comparable or better service, which they indicate they can and will do.

Yet, given that opportunity for another change that did not involve contracting outside of government, one agency involved, the Department of Health and Hospitals, threw up a brick. It planned to eliminate over five dozen jobs dealing with information technology in New Orleans by, in essence, transferring the responsibility to the University of New Orleans. While it argued that data processing at UNO was done with greater expertise, the supporting documentation contained so many errors and was so convoluted that not a single member of the Commission was convinced, and some thought it would cost more.

DHH says it will be back next month with a more competent and convincing report, arguing the latest estimate shows savings of $7.5 million, but there’s little excuse for serving up such an incomplete effort in a state with a history of faith in government. Paradoxically, even though Louisiana has a reputation for disproportionate corruption among its officials, too many in the public resist addressing the disease rather than the symptom, that being government disproportionately large for doing the necessary tasks of government, tolerated because too many believe too strongly that government should redistribute the resources that some earn to favored others for reasons of politics and ideology. The bigger and more bloated government is, the more likely it gets conceived as an instrument to distribute resources among competing groups, instead of serving as an impartial referee to allow individuals to maximize the fruits of their own efforts.

The special interests created by this noxious attitude, such as overcompensated state employees, will fight tooth and nail against making a fairer system for the citizens. In pursuing this kind of reform, forces involved must be especially vigilant in making their cases to offset these revanchists – not just for the CSC but also because these contracts may need vetting by the Joint Legislative Committee on the Budget. Those interests part of the solution for more efficient government should hope the agencies involved make sure they have it together in the future.

Create cheap dental coverage to foster responsibility

2012-02-01T11:00:00.010-06:00

An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure even when government provides it on behalf of those who can’t or won’t do it themselves. But if government gets forced into provision on cost considerations, at the same time it need not take its typical tack of providing anywhere from half a pound to a ton of prevention when faced with a social welfare issue, as a review of Medicaid oral health policy shows.

This federal-state program guarantees dental care up to age 18, and after that age states may add care as they see fit. Louisiana provides it up to 21 and for expectant mothers. As for other Medicaid recipients in this state, they’re on their own resources. Unfortunately, this leads a vast number of those with dental problems to emergency rooms, where Medicaid will pay for palliative care but not for dental procedures often necessary to fix an underlying problem.

As a result, the problem only gets obliquely addressed, often necessitating more visits than if directly addressed, which ultimately would cost taxpayers less money. Over the past couple of years, the cost to the state has been around the $1.7 million mark, which if focused on curing the disease rather than treating the symptoms may have been half or less.

So it appears that Louisiana could save some money by adding dental procedures to the vast Medicaid menu, despite the fact that almost all of these conditions were caused by abdication of personal responsibility by the failure to spend a couple of minutes a day brushing teeth or whipping out some floss from time to time. If Medicaid policy ultimately forces taxpayers to foot the bill for this behavior one way or the other, then it should happen in the most efficient, convenient manner for taxpayers.

Note that this does not mean for the convenience of the recipients of this largesse. Most dental problems addressed in emergency rooms stem from tooth decay. Thus, Medicaid could reimburse dentists for extraction, which in most instances solves the problem and is least expensive, and patients for medicine afterwards. No great lengths to save the tooth, no prosthetics, certainly no gold caps, just whatever is cheapest for the taxpayer and adequate to stop the problem. The few other, more complicated situations also could be covered.

However, one thing that should not be covered is periodic teeth cleaning. Good oral hygiene obviates this with any great frequency, but, regardless, it is not a relatively expensive procedure. With an average cost of about two months of cell phone usage, many dentists are willing to work out very generous layaway payments of just a few dollars a month over many months to enable this. A little less current consumption and a little more of an eye to the long-term, and almost all Medicaid recipients can afford this on their own at least occasionally, if they choose to do so.

Creating a barebones, no-frills Medicaid dental coverage will save taxpayers' money over the current policy, will achieve better patient outcomes, and will encourage client personal responsibility by signalling that unless the recipients of this generosity think ahead and take control of their own health, an effective but unappealing solution awaits if they let themselves into a problem. Louisiana needs to investigate this alternative.

Mistaken ruling opts for convenience despite clear intent

2012-01-31T10:35:00.002-06:00

A perplexing and wrong-headed judicial decision temporarily has the state off the hook for committing at least $150 million in revenues, but hopefully an appeal will restore constitutional dignity to the matter.

As previously noted, at issue was the timing of the state’s having to pay back withdrawals from the Budget Stabilization Fund, which serves as a bank account for the state from which to make limited withdrawals in limited circumstances to help produce a balanced budget. As written, the state Constitution required, under the recent set of fiscal circumstances encountered by the state, that an amount taken from it in 2010 to have been paid back already (essentially, almost immediately), while a conflicting state law passed a year prior did not mandate this. The state accepted the law’s rendering for the pending budgetary year.

After the fiscal 2011 budget went into effect, interested parties sued to force immediate payback, citing that the Constitution takes precedence over conflicting state law. But they postponed the matter when the Legislature in 2011 offered up a Constitutional amendment that would write into the Constitution the statute’s interpretation. Last fall, that measure failed at the ballot box, and the suit resumed.

Yet 19^th District Judge Kay Bates took an expansive view to rule in favor of giving the statute precedence. She ruled that the statute wasn’t unconstitutional, buying the state’s argument that the Constitution did not spell out the timing of repayments into the Fund, despite the precise wording of Art. VII Sec. 10.3 that states “All revenues received in each fiscal year by the state … shall be deposited in the fund” (emphasis added). While there is no exact specification such as “deposited in the same fiscal year,” the intent seems clear, even as nobody appeared to foresee the situation in which the state found itself.

Further, by its placing the amendment on the ballot last year, the state admitted as much that this was the proper interpretation, signaling its understanding and presumed intent; otherwise, why go to the trouble of the amendment in the first place? The people did the same in their consideration and rejection of the language. So now, after defeat of its clarifying measure, the state suddenly decided there’s a different meaning to it.

In these kinds of rulings, judges should not substitute arguments of convenience, but, when any ambiguity exists at all, rely upon their best judgment as to what the people directly meant by that language, or by what their representatives the Legislature meant as an indirect interpretation of the people’s wishes. In this instance, by proposing the amendment legislators admitted they needed the language change to support their interpretation, and the people specifically rejected that formulation, implying they intended interpretation along the lines of the plaintiffs’ view. Why this unforced judicial error occurred is a mystery, but correction of it hopefully soon will occur.

Factless distortion campaign continues against plan deal

2012-01-30T13:25:00.002-06:00

Despite the fact that the obvious evidence shows contracting out all state health benefits administration in the first year alone would net as much as almost $300 million, and over $75 million each succeeding year, misinformation and conspiracy theories continue concerning this from vested interests against what appears to be a sound move by Louisiana.

The state is only one of two that has a significant amount of benefits administration, a little under 30 percent of its insured population, performed by the state. This occurs through the Office of Group Benefits, a part of the Division of Administration, the agency designed to assist the governor in running matters given to his responsibility under law.

While discussion about this has been going on for a year, with studies done demonstrating the savings, promises made by the Gov. Bobby Jindal Administration that contracting out this business, joining the plans covering all other state employees and retirees, would occur only if cost savings would occur as result of an actual contract being in place, and with the legally required oversight of the Legislature’s Joint Legislative Committee on the Budget producing consent, the next step has been taken in hiring a firm to work out whether such a contract with a private sector entity can be worked out.

The contract has a base fee, but that increases as much as fivefold if the business gets bid out successfully, naturally enough as it requires more work on behalf of the agent. Yet announcing this arrangement has provided another opportunity for some derangement from transaction critics, often repeating the same discredited arguments or conjuring up impossible conspiracies.

James Lee, who is a state employee designated to represent employees of the Department of Transportation and Development and heads the OGB’s Policy and Planning Board, which advises OGB, ratcheted up the nonsense quotient when he claimed this step, made by those who actually administer OGB, was being done to rush the whole project through, hinting this was aided by the Jindal Administration because at least one of the governor’s appointees had failed to show up at any meeting since August (before which, unanimously, the Board expressed opposition to the contracting), thereby implying that some kind of marching orders had gone out to prevent a quorum that otherwise would permit the Board, which has no policy-making power, to investigate the matter further.

Setting aside for the moment that if even the three gubernatorial appointees – two of which were present and voted in June to oppose – somehow were ordered not to show up even though they have demonstrated full sympathy by that vote for criticizing a deal, and even with three vacancies on the Board (if this is accurate; its information seems dated as the state Senate appointee listed has left office), there’s still one member more than needed for a quorum if all 10 other members show up. In other words, other presumed advocates of Lee’s position haven’t shown up either. Why aren’t these people with self-interest in opposition in attending not there? Why do they get a pass from Lee in explaining his lack of getting a quorum together, and yet Jindal appointees get all the blame?

Lee also demonstrates he would be a poor musician, as he has no sense of time. Now more than a year in the making is said to rush through a decision? One which Lee continues saying, without a shred of proof and what objective analysis out there suggesting exactly the opposite, would create a situation where “active and retired employees of the state will see reduced benefits and the taxpayers will see increased costs.”

He is joined in this absolute blather by former state Sen. Butch Gautreaux, who sat on the Board until he was term-limited out of elective office and now represents an interest group publicly opposed to the transaction. Just as closed-minded as Lee, he repeats the unproven, and directly contradicted, assertion that the agency saves money. Indeed, OGB recently has been accused in court of bureaucratic incompetence in administering the plan in question that resulted in wasted taxpayer resources and aggravated state employees. And he also echoes a conspiratorial outlook, this time saying, using logic to which thinking people are unaccustomed, that reducing the bureaucratic size of OGB assists Jindal in bashing the Affordable Care and Patient Protection Act that will increase health care costs while reducing the quality of health care provision.

How long must we endure this pitiable display of defense of the current system? My guess is until the deal gets done, because all the evidence so far points to contracting as a good deal. When bluster, emotion, and distraction from the facts at hand are all they’ve got, don’t expect anything else from deal opponents.

Roemer adds another layer of hypocrisy to campaign

2012-01-29T10:00:00.001-06:00

In case you were wondering whether former Gov. Buddy Roemer, running for president under a banner-to-be-named later, has run out of hypocrisy during this campaign, in case you thought not, well, guess again.

Roemer, who got both his political and business careers started amid wealth and insider connections, has built a campaign railing against both. To demonstrate his fidelity to his born-again ideology, he refuses to accept donations higher than $100 to the effort – but when Republican voters showed they thought about as much of his conspiratorial mindset as they do black helicopters and the puerile class warfare worldview peddled by Pres. Barack Obama, Roemer began to sidle on up to an organization known as Americans Elect, funded secretively through many large donations from individuals who harbor leftist views.

After his thorough rejection in the New Hampshire primary, Roemer’s dalliance with the group, which states as its purpose to get a candidate onto the ballots of all 50 states and the District of Columbia selected by the public from choices it provides, became less restrained. Despite the fact that Roemer remains on the ballot in at least a couple of more states for the GOP nomination and plans to get on it and campaign in others, he now speaks of a simultaneous pursuit of the AE selection and, assuming he gets the nod from the organizers, victory in the Internet-based public polling.

Which adds just another layer of hypocrisy to a campaign already immersed in it. No other candidate has attempted such strategy, and even all of those who have dropped out of the battle have exited this year’s presidential election rather than chase nomination under another label. By contrast, Roemer seems more interested in staying in the limelight than any principled approach, trying to find the best suitor to keep the romance going because it’s more about him than the agenda.

Even when he has misgivings about the suitor. He asked the group’s leaders to make public the donors list, which they refused. Nonetheless, despite all of his rhetoric about the influence of big, obscure money damaging the political process, Roemer plans to continue trying to head the AE ticket, perhaps creating an artificial distinction in his mind that because the interest group would pay only for ballot access it means he’s not getting campaign aid from them, if he were to get its leaders and subsequent public endorsement.

As George Bernard Shaw notes, “The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.” But Shaw does not delve into the fact that “progress” conceptually exists only with correct diagnosis of the real world followed by change that depends upon that reality’s characteristics. Roemer’s problem is that the policy prescriptions of his agenda rest on assumptions fundamentally at odds with the real world.

Therefore, Roemer’s unreasonableness in agenda compels his continued quest either out of delusion or psychological imperative – to recapture former glory, to be felt relevant, to erase a negative record, or whatever. Not being Roemer, we can’t say what compulsion drives him, but we can say that his desire to keep going no matter what, even if it means being insincere to Republicans he asks to vote for him because flirts with another means to bring himself glory, shows a lack of principle.

Were Roemer trustworthy, he either would renounce any attempt win the AE nod or abandon his Republican quest. Or, he not cooperate with AE and highlight what it is, a big money attempt to influence an election, thereby refusing to play a useful idiot allowing those behind it to split support to assist Obama’s reelection. Instead, his action shows his winning is more important than honesty to voters, or perhaps even to himself. His action deviates from his argument that moneyed, special interests have too much control over politics in order to implement their particular agendas at the expense of a broader public interest. Again, the hypocrisy of his campaign thus starkly reveals itself.

Fortitude needed to complete needed retirement reforms

2012-01-26T00:00:00.004-06:00

There’s not much new to recommendations made by Gov. Bobby Jindal to reform Louisiana’s retirement benefits. All salutary ideas, in the past the Legislature had faltered in passing them into law as the state’s pension crisis became more acute. Thus, we may expect to hear the same tired and inadequate defenses supporting the present regime from special interests as previously, even as it is imperative for pro-reform forces to spread the truth about the situation and succeed in getting the provisions enacted.

Jindal argues, in legislation that will have to be filled Friday in order to meet the 45-day cutoff and advertising requirements of legislative rules, that most new entrants into any of the state’s four comprehensive retirement systems that they go to a modified defined benefit plan, reform the defined benefit plan under which most state employees and retirees now are covered so that retirement happens later to mirror changes in Social Security rules, base defined benefits on a five-year rather than three-year average, grant cost-of-living increases only when sufficient earning to cover them have occurred, increase employee contributions by three percent, allow existing employees under the defined benefit program to enter the new one, called a cash-balance plan, and merge the two largest plans.

Part of the program would address the burgeoning unfunded accrued liability, at $18.5 billion for those four statewide plans and which is required to be at zero across all programs by 2029, by increasing the retirement age, the contribution rate, and restricting cost-of-living increases. The remainder would simply slow its rate of growth by putting many new hires into the cash-balance plan, which would be invested by the existing systems with a guaranteed value of no less than the contributions from the employee, and is portable except that moving to a new job would forfeit the state’s contribution (generally about equal to the employee’s but in some case much higher) and investment earnings.

Switching from the defined contribution to the cash-balance scheme will ameliorate some complaints that the vagaries of investing might bring lower returns than with the payout from a defined benefit plan, if not actual losses, exacerbated by unfortunate market conditions at the time of contemplated retirement. These concerns are overblown, as even a very low-risk strategy still would create a decent retirement salary at even the lowest salary levels, and other incentives to produce a more efficient workforce get excised as well by this approach, but that promise should obviate perhaps the biggest complaint about previous reform attempts based upon defined contribution, although it will reduce the effectiveness of whittling down the UAL.

Still, the increased contribution rate, the five-year base on which to compute benefits, and the retirement age rise will draw the ire of interests claiming to represent state employees, including unions. We will hear many unfounded claims about how it is unfair to state employees, when in fact the data show Louisiana state employees generally enjoy a gravy train of compensation compared to private sector employees doing similar kinds and amounts of work in their jobs. It’s only just that they pay their fair share, and these bills help rebalance the favoritism presently shown to government workers over taxpayers and the citizenry.

While plenty of evidence exists to show that much more could be done in the way of merging systems, something is better than nothing, especially in preventing abuse and inferior decision-making. Opposition here will come from the systems getting merged, whose appointees to their governing boards will not like losing this perquisite, whether that merging likely will produce better gains and save expenses.

The fight will be fierce, but a more reform-minded, more conservative Legislature likely can succeed, with plenty of backing from Jindal, in getting beyond the baby steps of the past. Failing is not an option here, especially when implementation this upcoming fiscal year of these measures will save nearly a quarter of the $2 billion a year tab for paying down the UAL in just this upcoming year. Let’s hope Jindal and the rest have the stomach to see this through.

Strain governor pursuit possibility good for conservatives

2012-01-25T10:00:00.004-06:00

It’s never too early to think about this state’s highest office, and Agriculture Commissioner Mike Strain’s letting the cat out of the bag about his gubernatorial intentions for 2015 should come as welcome news for Louisiana conservatives.

As a legislator, Strain showed some conservative/reform credentials, averaging nearly 70 on the Louisiana Legislature Log index (where 100 is the maximum conservative/reform score) in his last term in office, capped with a 95 in his last term when he began to pursuit of his current job. In that office, he has upped the ante further with a dramatic reduction in his department’s size from its bloated condition under his predecessor, going from a budget of $102.7 million ($38.6 million from the state) with 829 employees in fiscal year 2008 to $78 million ($29.3 million from the state) with 644 employees in fiscal year 2012. He also has started to unwind some disastrous policy decisions from the past, such as with sugar mill boondoggles.

This real record of accomplishment gives Strain provable and consistent evidence that, not only has he governed more as a conservative than even Gov. Bobby Jindal, but also that he can be relied upon to do so in the future. Any potential Democrats aside, who may pretend to act as conservatives, as opponents, two other Republicans believed also to seek eventually the office cannot match this record.

Treasurer John Kennedy has talked a good game in some respects, peppering anybody who would listen with ideas about how to reduce the size of state government – some good, some sketchy, and even some entirely misinformed. The problem is, several years ago he talked a good game on behalf of liberalism when he veered left to try to win the 2004 U.S. Senate contest as a Democrat. This schizophrenia cost him in a retry in 2008, as enough voters, in a tough election year for Republicans which Kennedy by then had relabeled himself, could not be sure of his fidelity to limited government after hearing the opposite from him four years previous. Given that Strain has consistently articulated a moderate-to-strong conservative program, backed by legislative votes and actions in office, conservatives might feel better going with the guy who, while less demonstrative, has shown more genuine loyalty to conservatism.

While Lt. Gov. Jay Dardenne never offered unqualified support to liberalism, his long career in government, much in the Legislature, has given him numerous opportunities that he exercised to support liberal preferences. Given this record, too many conservatives suspiciously regard him as more likely to go whichever way the wind blows rather than pursue conservatism when the pressure is on. Strain, by contrast, offers a much steadier record of support of conservatism.

Strain’s job may be the least exalted of the executive branch elected officials, with the fewest resources inherent to it to launch towards higher office. But, so far, he has a story to tell that will sound great to conservatives. His going for it gives conservatives an excellent choice to replace Jindal.

Hypocrisy flows from LA teachers' union leaders

2012-01-24T10:30:00.005-06:00

Even though he’s one of the biggest blowhards in state politics, never say that Louisiana Federation of Teachers Pres. Steve Monaghan can’t go over the top on demand. And he did so again, in an address to the Baton Rouge Press Club, delivering a stunning lesson on what it is to witness a hypocrite.

Monaghan bleated that Gov. Bobby Jindal's recent education policy speech to the Louisiana Association of Business and Industry was uninformed and insulting to teachers. He classified Jindal’s rhetoric as demeaning and therefore it discouraged any engagement by “fair-minded” opposing interests in the determination of education policy.

Of course, engagement just for engagement’s sake never is a good idea but let’s assume there’s value in it, and also that Monaghan therefore himself would act and use rhetoric in a way consistent with fostering respect for all parties and their opinions. Yet if you counted on that, you’d be in for surprise.

Just as one recent and specific example, take his speech last year at his union’s convention. Referring to educational reformers in general but many times specifically to Jindal, in it he termed legislation last year backed by Jindal an “attack” on teachers and school employees, that his views on education threatened the “social fabric” of the state, and declared him “anti-public education.” He also claimed Jindal as “ideologically driven,” even though these criticisms he launches against Jindal and reformers are nothing but ideologically-determined without any supporting facts.

More generally, Monaghan is one of several talking heads of special interests who routinely ascribes sinister motives to anybody supporting anything to empower the concept of charter schools, as these nimrods at every opportunity float a conspiracy theory that reforms are here to allow some kind of private sector takeover – even though they well know all but a half-dozen charter schools in the state are run by government or nonprofit entities. He also routinely calls those with different views, as he did Jindal, “uninformed” and their ideas not “based on research” – even though he has been humiliated publicly by reference to facts and research that demonstrated the exact opposite of his ignorant ramblings. Nor does he often display any logic or accuracy in drawing comparisons in trying to make arguments or refute those of others.

Ironically, while accusing Jindal of being uninformed, he demonstrated his own ignorance concerning state law regarding state support for private school tuition for students in underperforming schools, when implying any expansion of this should require holding private schools in this program to the same accountability standards (which he previously has bitterly opposed) as public schools – which is current state law, did you know?

He seemed most put out about Jindal’s assertion that, absent some kind of immoral/illegal behavior on the job, teachers with tenure remain in the classroom. He seemed to think that pouting about that procedures were in place and that some teachers with tenure occasionally actually did get removed in and of itself refuted that argument.

But saying something was in place to do something doesn’t mean it works to fulfill its intended purpose. The latest annual statistics show that only 2.38 percent of tenured teachers in Louisiana were fired (remarkably, almost twice the rate of those in their probationary periods), which is a lower rate than deaths on the job. By contrast, the average national rate in private schools is nearly 10 percent, and in the private sector as a whole it’s over 20 percent. Surely such a low rate cannot be explained by the teaching profession (apparently, just like being in the classified civil service in Louisiana) disproportionately attracting such high quality workers – dismal educational achievement statistics refute that strained possibility in any event.

Some argue that incompetent teachers get forced out, thereby artificially lowering the very low rate of tenured discharges. However, aside from the fact that most stay in teaching (only about 8 percent left the profession nationally in the latest year statistics are available) some portion of the low 7.6 percent who moved to a different school do so voluntarily. Again, these mobility numbers are much lower than those of the private sector, indicating an ability to stay ensconced in a job. Given these figures, it’s hard not to conclude that Jindal – if using only slightly overblown rhetoric – is essentially correct, and yet Monaghan will not admit what everybody else perceives easily.

The fact is, if Monaghan is going to assert that opponents of his issue preferences express themselves with much too vitriol that creates unproductive exchanges, there’s no better person to know that because he has practiced it for so long. For years he and his ilk have accused those who have opposed their issue preferences of bad faith, leading conspiracies for private interests against the public interest, and of being malignly untutored in understanding education. Change their clothes and have them grow beards out, and with their attitudes they could pass for Iran’s mullahs. Just as these mandarins brook no compromise in expanding or protecting the power of their state, particular religion, and personal power, so do the likes of Monaghan in their quest to separate as much money from taxpayers for as little effort on behalf of their members as possible, bloviating to match, as they have proved time and time again.

You don’t reason with such shrill, closed-minded people. You do, as Jindal noted in his second inaugural address, tell them to get out of the way if they aren’t going to be part of the solution. And if they don’t, you have to run over them. Elections have consequences, and it’s the right of the minority produced by them to scream and holler all it wants and to obstruct at every turn. But it’s the height of hypocrisy to then accuse of the majority of being uncooperative and hostile when you’ve been nothing but that for years on end.

Politicized theory, assumptions negate report usefulness

2012-01-23T12:25:00.003-06:00

Apparently, Louisiana’s Secretary of Health and Hospitals Bruce Greenstein doesn’t suffer fools gladly nor has much tolerance for knaves, judging by his reaction to a report extolling the virtues of Medicaid spending in Louisiana.

The leftist Louisiana Budget Project, anticipating the negative publicity surrounding the huge increase in Medicaid spending Louisiana will be put on the hook for courtesy of Democrats’ Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (“Obamacare’), attempted an inoculation by claiming increased spending on the program that mainly serves the indigent constituted a positive economic stimulus, hence a cutback would cause economic contracture. In turn, Greenstein, whose department must grapple with the imposed additional costs and also is overseeing a dramatic reform of the system called “Bayou Health,” which promises to increase its efficiency, termed the conclusions “fallacy.”

Former newspaper political reporter Jan Moller, now heading the group, expressed disappointment that Greenstein did not directly address the report’s arguments. While the Secretary did so only obliquely, investigating the assumptions and selective use of information contained in it supports Greenstein’s statement.

Crippling its ability for use as a tool of policy analysis is that the report ignores basic laws of economics and the reality of Medicaid spending. It assumes that any kind of spending in any way produces a positive economic outcome relative to all other possible options. Thus, it facilely argues, decreases in Medicaid spending, caused by reductions in provider rates in response to greater demands for the services on a tight budget, have a negative economic impact compared to all alternative uses of the unspent funds (whether by government or retained by the people).

Any use of funds produces some economic activity; even flushing them down the toilet produces a tiny revenue boost for the water utility. But the study absurdly hangs its entire hat on use of funds rather than their best uses. And government-funded activity, because of the inherent and natural inefficiency in government operation, uses it poorly, which we can define both in terms of choices of use (as compared to alternative or leaving it in the hands of the people) and how it gets used. This is why government is best that governs the least, doing only those things that are so important and necessary that society can tolerate this very inefficient execution. For example, supporting armed forces is a very wasteful enterprise, but absolutely necessary as it otherwise would not be done and thereby threatens liberty.

While Medicaid may serve a purpose, as noted in the link above it is both in an absolute sense run very inefficiently and also likewise in a relative sense to privately-funded (by insurance or out of pocket) health care provision. One of Greenstein’s tasks is to make Louisiana Medicaid more like a privately-funded operation precisely to save money while providing as good or better provision. Simultaneously, cutting of provider rates previously, and perhaps even into the future although much less likely, has served to force more efficiency onto them. Significantly, these past rate cuts to date have had almost no negative impact on the supply or quality of services, validating the theory that there had been slack in the system already.

In the larger theoretical sense, the LBP’s position on government spending resembles a debate over the manufacture of buggy whips at the beginning of the 20^th Century. LBP argues that government should continue to subsidize such an activity not only to continue to ensure there are plenty of them, but also that their manufacture should be done in a certain existing way (let’s say by hand rather than by machine) because it creates economic activity. Yet in that time period that item was becoming less and less useful, even if it could be done in a lower-cost way. Instead, funds could go to government activities that provide greater utility for society as a whole, and/or the necessity of taking more or not returning money to the citizenry becomes reduced. In the long run, the combination of those provides greater economic development than to throw money uncritically into a program.

In short, it’s stupidity writ large to disregard in a debate about the use of taxpayer resources whether the program in question is needed to the extent that it operates, whether that extent is as important as other activities or in allowing people to keep more of what they earn with both genuine needs and all forms of economic impact in mind, and whether superior alternatives to it should not supplement or supplant it, in favor of just trying to keep it sucking in as much money as possible. Stating the obvious without any context adds nothing to this debate, even as it may try to meet a political imperative of trying to justify an inferior policy decision (Obamacare). Thus, besides stating the obvious that any inputs relevant to an economic activity, no matter how inefficiently and how grossly they exceed any outputs, produces that economic activity, it is worthless as any guide for Louisiana policy-makers on fiscal issues.

Lawsuit compels more state exit of managing benefits

2012-01-22T11:30:00.001-06:00

As another compelling reason manifests for getting Louisiana out of the active management of health benefits for its employees and retirees, defense of the current inefficient system continues as the Gov. Bobby Jindal Administration gets ready to resume efforts at reform.

Months ago, the Administration proposed to take the book of business that it directly manages, a little less than a quarter of all enrollees, and do with it like it does to all other in the system, have a third-party manage it. In order to get access to that business, it’s estimated that an administrator would pay as much as over $200 million.

Compelling reasons exist for this, besides the one-time bonus. Analysis indicates it would save money both for ratepayers and taxpayers (roughly estimated as $21.2 million annually for the former and about $56.3 million for the latter) and reduce the size of government, joining the other 48 states that do not directly administer their benefits programs. None of these figures or facts (even after my repeated attempts to have Office of Group Benefits, or members of its Policy and Planning Board, which voted to oppose the change, produce any evidence to the contrary) is in dispute. Yet those connected to OGB both past and present and others interested in protecting government jobs continue to voice disapproval.

One such individual, former state Sen. Butch Gautreaux who when chairman of the Senate Insurance Committee (and therefore also a Board member) launched a public relations campaign trying to discourage the change (as OGB is run by the governor’s Division of Administration, the only official input from outside would come from the Joint Legislative Committee on the Budget’s ability to approve state contracts), after leaving office was hired by an interest group also against the change to continue lobbying against it. No doubt the arguments he relays to policy-makers continue to ignore the facts above and perhaps throws in the oft-quoted by opponents, but unverifiable statement that it’s a well-run state organization.

Well, maybe not any more. Last week a lawsuit was filed that alleged, through bureaucratic incompetence, OGB mistakenly overbilled employees, their families, and retirees in the Preferred Provider Organization plan that is the subject of the contemplated change. The cost to the state could end up several millions of dollars. And thus the thin case against reform now has reached threadbare status.

Originally, the Administration had hoped the PPO change would already have occurred at the beginning of 2012, but such was the ruckus from the apologists that it slowed things down enough to delay it, and the savings, until the beginning of next year, and pledged to restart the process early this year. This new revelation only reemphasizes the necessity of investigating the possibility and, if positive for the state, getting it done despite the uninformed caterwauling of vested interests wishing to keep their jobs, perquisites, or ideological imperatives fulfilled.

Ending LA juco open admissions better uses tax dollars

2012-01-19T09:35:00.003-06:00

To date, the slowly building wave of reform that steadily washes around Louisiana higher education certainly has lifted community and technical colleges. As baccalaureate-and-above institutions have experienced retrenchment, these have enjoyed rapid growth and state money that comes with it, courtesy of policy decisions. So these institutions should get out of their getting mode and into their giving mode when it comes to alterations they need to make in response to policy changes they may not find quite as appetizing as those before.

Joe May, president of the Louisiana Community and Technical College System, in a luncheon address complained that the higher education funding formula, which in so many other ways has come to favor those kinds of schools, does not when it comes to penalties it levies for non-completing students. Recent formulaic changes now deliver funds for schools for the number of course completers, not enrollees. The previous emphasis on getting people to sign up for classes created incentives for warm bodies to register, but not to finish coursework or, more importantly, degrees.

May noted that community colleges are open admissions – anybody with a high school diploma or General Equivalency Degree can enroll for their classes. This increases the chance that unprepared students do so, where as a term begins schools must budget for teachers and space according to this number. If a larger proportion of these students drop out of classes or their entire program for that semester, then the school ends up wasting money, such as by hiring teachers not necessary when the final numbers are in.

But there’s no reason community colleges need to be open admissions, if an associates’ degree is the goal. If a student desires some kind of certification or a class here or there for adding a specific kind of skill, these can continue in that mode. However, some kind of admissions standard (such as a minimum score on the American College Test) can be implemented for those who intend to complete a two-year degree, or who wish to transfer to another institution after collecting more than a minimal number of hours. This would screen out many who simply do not have the aptitude and/or genuine desire to pursue serious study at the collegiate level, preserving resources from being wasted on them.

This also would save taxpayers in another way. One perverse impact of the new funding formula would be to encourage these entities to lower standards, in order to keep as many students in class as possible. Already, baccalaureate-and-above state universities, which have unchallenging to partially demanding admissions criteria, find that dealing with transfers from community colleges can be a problem if the institutions from which these students come is not challenging, because in essence this transfers the “open access” problem to them – unprepared transfer students find themselves unable to succeed in a qualitatively more rigorous environment. (For example, recipients of associates’ degrees automatically are admitted to most baccalaureate programs, even if they could not otherwise meet admissions criteria.) So by creating minimal admissions standards at community colleges, universities also can use their resources more wisely by avoiding a similar problem not even of their own making.

Naturally, this would mean fewer students coming into state community colleges, meaning fewer dollars headed the way of these institutions. However, if funding will occur on the back end, especially to protect quality, why not more fully ensure at the front end the amount of funding? Unless community colleges are interested in lowering standards, knowing less money accepted up front but with much more assurance it actually will manifest should make for better budgeting and planning than doing this on the basis of hoping to get more money than you actually receive at the end and the experiencing unpleasant costs that may result (the alternative being deliberately not providing enough classes, which then would shut out students who would succeed, perhaps delaying if not denying them degree completion).

If keeping integrity intact, paying more now than later makes better sense for community colleges. Policy-makers should end the open access model for all such students not in a certificate program or who enroll for more than a minimal number of hours.

Jindal bold education plan mostly deserves enacting

2012-01-18T09:20:00.002-06:00

Gov. Bobby Jindal finally began to give some details on his proposed elementary and secondary education overhaul for Louisiana. They reveal a plan as bold as his initiative last year regarding higher education yet even more comprehensive, and also, as the other did, in need of some tweaking.

The most revolutionary change from the often-cautious Jindal consists of a dramatic expansion in the use of public money that could go to private schooling. In essence, it would make a large portion of students, because about 70 percent of all public schools in the state would have their students qualify, to receive money to attend a private school if that is their families’ wishes. Further, this money would be excised from the current pool that pays for public schools.

Jindal argues that this would not be a transfer of total per pupil cost for the public schools transferred to private schools, because private school tuition typically is substantially lower than the nearly $12,000 a year the typical school gets for the typical student from the state or local agencies. This actually could expand money available to public schools if they same overall dollar amount of aid or something near it is kept. However, the savings/additional revenues may be less than the Jindal Administration thinks, for not only is the generally lower private school tuition than public school per pupil payment because of greater efficiency, but also because most private schools have endowments or other forms of support that are relatively fixed. That is, as the number of pupils increase that they serve, the less per pupil the other support will pay for, meaning tuition must rise to compensate to maintain.

Jindal also presented excellent ideas regarding personnel and administration. He addressed empowering administrators acting on the basis of merit over politics such as politicians’ interference and seniority rules that bear no relationship to actual merit and would eliminate across-the-board pay increases. But one aspect regarding this, the role of tenure, needs refining.

He proposed that tenure be granted only after superior performance for five years, rather than the current regime where three years of non-failing in the job earned it. Yet this misses the point of tenure and it applicability to this level of education, misunderstanding that its very presence creates more problems than solutions by retaining it as a kind of reward.

By permitting it after meritorious service, this conceives lifetime tenure, or the right to be fired only after extremely subpar performance that goes beyond actual teaching quality with substantial due process rights retained, as a status to be obtained as a bonus allowing greater freedom of action in job performance. However, that greater freedom really is unnecessary at this level of education. In higher education, where this is no standard curriculum and research and community involvement components are expected among faculty members, which may delve into the political, tenure makes some sense as a protection against firing for reasons not related to cause. But, because teaching effectiveness at lower levels can be so easily measured, what is to be taught does not leave much room for freelancing, and there are no expected research or community service components relative to assessing job performance, tenure is unnecessary. Existing rules regarding non-tenured teachers, based on retention or discharge for cause based upon teaching effectiveness and professionalism, are more than adequate to protect all teachers.

The problem with having tenure as a reward is it could invite abuse, creating the incentive to get it only to be able to slack off eventually as it becomes more burdensome on administrators to fire a tenured teacher. The concept itself simply should not apply at this level of instruction and thereby remove this possibility.

Alter this part of the agenda, the entirety of which also includes making it easier for obtaining charter status, and reformers really are on to something. Whether even the majority of it, however, makes it into law is another matter. These are radical changes and plenty of resistance remains from special interests such as unions and local politicians, which will make for tough sledding in the Legislature. Still, even accomplishment of a portion of it cannot help but improve the lot of children and create greater economic growth potential in the state.

LA needs to excise wasteful, distortive ethanol laws

2012-01-17T00:00:00.001-06:00

While Louisiana, following the federal government, allowed its modest contribution to a boondoggle to expire, also like the federal government for real benefits to accrue it must stop indirect as well as direct support of wasteful corporate welfare.

At the end of 2011, Congress let ethanol subsidies expire. An eclectic coalition of conservatives, who correctly noted the economic inefficiency of subsidizing something with insufficient market demand when cheaper alternatives existed that had no worse externalities, and liberals, who found fault with another market distortion in how ethanol’s demand for foodstuffs jacked up those prices and skewed land use in what they thought were inferior environmentalist ways, built sufficient political power to discourage renewal.

The industry itself went along, but perhaps to deflect attention from a more insidious kind of market intervention: federal requirements of usage of ethanol that continue to increase that will have the same distorting effects that will cost consumers and taxpayers extra money. Louisiana tracked this national trend in a similar fashion, for both good and bad.

After its 2008 passage with a sunset date of this Jan. 1, the Legislature made no effort to renew the Advanced Biofuel Industry Development Initiative. This allowed the state’s Department of Agriculture to test and to award money for pilot projects to do research in the use of biofuels. Fortunately, economic reality intervened and it appears no money ever got appropriated to waste funds on this, which is better done by the private sector or by higher education researchers.

Unfortunately, other laws passed during Gov. Bobby Jindal’s first term continue threaten to siphon money for this kind of unproductive purpose. In 2010 came the Alternative Fuel Vehicle Revolving Loan Fund, which provides financial sops to local governments to have fleets of “clean fuel” vehicles, spurred by natural gas extractions from the Haynesville Shale, although no money has been appropriated yet to support this. But this past year, the state enacted provision of an indirect subsidy by requiring the Division of Administration to purchase these vehicles, although this may be waived.

And the biggest time bomb awaits, courtesy of the former Gov. Kathleen Blanco era. She pushed for R.S. 3:4674, which would mandate production of ethanol comprising at least two percent of fuel sales in the state if a substantial minimum (20 million gallons) got produced annually. In fact, when the law was passed in 2006, Blanco was stumping for subsidies to push the state there. Luckily, production has yet to pull the trigger but the threat remains of this wasteful mandate being thrust on consumers until it gets repealed.

(Related fallout from this bad incentive continues. Former agriculture commissioner Bob Odom suckered the state into one of its worst diversions of state dollars to narrow, trivial purposes by putting the state on the hook for two sugar mills, one of which would have had the capacity to hit the ethanol production trigger easily. Now the state struggles to ensure it won’t be on the hook for at least $75 million.)

As with the federal government, the structure remains in place that puts a potential floor on ethanol use. In the final analysis, payment to boost supply or regulating to induce demand equally distort the market in unproductive ways, passing on costs to the citizenry without compensating provable benefits. Part of the second-term Jindal agenda should reverse his acquiescence to these, as they lay in wait to cost people money unnecessarily as any over-reach in government regulation and over-activity does.

Paul win specter little reason to put off GOP caucuses

2012-01-16T09:25:00.003-06:00

At one time conceived to occur in a little over a week from now, then presumed they might happen just after Carnival, Louisiana’s Republican Party still has not chosen a date for its congressional district caucuses to determine delegates for the state convention that will meet Jun. 2. This inaction has spawned conspiracy theories both implausible and minor in impact that should make no real difference in deciding on a date.

According to state GOP rules, the six district meetings elect three delegates each to serve as national delegates. Officially uncommitted, at the state convention the body, comprised largely of delegates elected at the district level, will decide whether they can have pledged delegates sent to the national convention officially to a candidate. No constraint exists on selection to the state convention except that it occur prior to the meeting at the state level.

Difficult to take seriously is the notion that a delay comes at behest of Gov. Bobby Jindal, in some gambit to enhance his ability to secure some kind of national office. The thinking goes that the state is not that friendly for leading nominee candidate Mitt Romney, so the longer the caucuses are delayed that could select delegates hostile to Romney, the more time Romney has to build a lead in the national contest that can contribute to a self-fulfilling prophecy of the inevitability of his nomination.

But Jindal knows, because he did not commit to assist Romney early (instead, declaring support for and backing that up with actual aid in favor of Texas Gov. Rick Perry) and Louisiana is not a swing state, that, at best, he has a very outside chance to get Romney’s assent to serve as his vice presidential running mate. Others, such as former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty and Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida have conservative credentials similar to Jindal’s but bring much more electoral value to a Romney-led ticket. It seems highly unlikely that Jindal would go to such lengths where, at best, long odds would become only slightly shorter, or, which seems even less likely, that Jindal is not astute enough politically to understand this and so takes on this scheme out of misjudgment.

Nor does the idea that all this effort would go towards trying to obtain an even less valuable prize, a high-level appointment in a Romney Administration, make any sense. Jindal may be valuable for such a job without his having to expend so much effort, and he should know that tradeoff. Why should Jindal create potential enemies at home, where he may harbor future electoral ambitions past his current term limitation, over such a small prize he might get without anything more than stumping for Romney, over less than one percent of delegates needed for the nomination? In all likelihood, anybody floating this idea does so not because there’s truth to it, but to draw attention to themselves or satisfy their own political ambitions.

The corollary to this is that delay not so much serves Romney against all others but that it disserves his competitor Rep. Ron Paul. The libertarian polarizes the Republican electorate so that his nomination would cause at least as many Republicans to vote against him in the general election who otherwise would support any major alternative as would vote for him. This discomfits many Republicans, including apparently state party leaders, who grasp the fact that current data viewed in historical perspective shows that Pres. Barack Obama is a one-term president with any other major candidate but Paul as the opposition.

Because of the strong reactions he evokes, Paul has been able to build a committed campaign organization, although with some of questionable commitment to the Republican Party. In fact, Paul’s initial promising results have been in no insignificant part to non-Republican support, if not benefitting from a deliberate strategy by Democrats to vote for Paul where they can to sow chaos in the Republican process.

But that can’t happen in Louisiana because of the closed primary system for presidential preference delegate selection. The state lets parties select who may participate, and state GOP rules limit that to those registered as Republicans as of last Dec. 15. So, unless there has been some very long-term planning going on, it would be difficult to pack deliberately the district meetings with enough infiltrators and/or true believers who otherwise act as Republicans to make a difference in favor of Paul, by getting a disproportionate number of national convention delegates and state convention counterparts in his favor selected, whereupon at the state convention the latter would be enough in number to vote to allow the former to commit three months later.

Still, disproportionate influence of Paul supporters at the district level could happen because of the superior organization. Whether that represents any real concern that favors delay, however, is another matter. It’s hard to imagine that, at best, such an effort would net more than one additional national delegate per district, if enough state delegates even could be selected to allow commitment later. The state party alone could more that mitigate these extras by its executive committee being able to pick five delegates to the national convention, and the national committeeman, committeewoman, and state party chairman also serving in this capacity, none of whom might be expected to support Paul. In other words, Paul gains would be so insignificant even with a concerted effort that it’s little to worry about in the national picture.

The Jindal hypothesis has next-to-no credibility, and even if the stop Paul thesis might seem plausible, given what little impact Paul would have via Louisiana in his national ambitions it hardly matters, so if that’s a fear driving state party elites, they needn’t worry. Why not cue up the caucuses before the Mar. 24 preference primary to bring Louisiana slightly more influence and attention in the process?

Struggle, need for power clouds Caldwell suit approach

2012-01-15T10:05:00.001-06:00

While trying to parse the correct policy concerning the state’s liability for payment of service and when to lawyers is like deciding who to root for when, as recently occurred, two of the most despised teams in college football leave us with a Hobson’s choice for having a national champion, it’s easy to misdiagnose without understanding the dynamics behind it all.

At issue is how legal fees are paid for judgment on BP’s liability for the oil spill disaster of 2010. While many individual plaintiffs active and part of a class action are involved, so is the state. Recently, federal district Judge Carl Barbier ordered a contingency arrangement where, of the total damages, six percent is held out for legal compensation for private plaintiffs, and four percent for governments.

The Gov. Bobby Jindal Administration signaled agreement with the arrangement, but not Atty. Gen. Buddy Caldwell’s office. He prefers a billing arrangement where hours worked are submitted for compensation, and other governments also have criticized it. (They also argue it’s illegal, even though the practice is common.) This dispute has lead to an appeal on the ruling to occur later this month.

Less analytical minds see this dispute (which Caldwell’s office actually implies is overblown) as a conundrum because it’s assumed – without any evidence – that paying by billable time would involve reduced costs to the state, allowing it to keep more of the eventual award, yet Jindal is not considered an ally of trial lawyers (although some do pony up campaign cash for him). But surface analysis does not uncover the real currents underlying the issue that allow for proper consideration of the optimal solution.

Keep in mind that the matter concerns not if but how much, when, and who pays and to whom those rendering legal service get compensated. Most interesting to note is less than two years ago Caldwell seemed to have a completely opposite view on the issue, advocating exactly what he criticizes Jindal for doing now. In the waning days of the 2010 legislative session, he hawked for a bill that would award contingency contracts, which although is not identical to the current ruling essentially mimics it. He argued that billing by time could not produce the best legal representation (for its part, the Jindal Administration remained neutral, saying on the spill matter it would not oppose this arrangement, but that this specific action did not imply any blanket endorsement of the contingency fee concept).

Why the sudden switch in positions by the attorney general? Because under the ruling, Caldwell basically loses control over the money and power associated with the case. His office retains most power under his idea because it has the ability to choose who gets involved and therefore who will reimbursed, and for how much. Best of all from his perspective, he has no fiscal constraints; if he enters into contracts, he simply bills the state and its general fund. There’s less incentive for cost control and money has to be paid up front.

By contrast, the order decentralizes the process. Private lawyers, some with some kind of connection to the Jindal Administration, many without any, set their own hours without any state liability attached to that, participate without any state government assent, and would be paid only after they secure payment from the defendant, without any current taxpayer dollars flowing to them. Caldwell, who has no fiscal responsibility on the matter anyway but who wants power over it, gets cut out almost completely.

That’s why he’s against the arrangement, because he is unable to use the situation for his own political purposes. This is not to say his office couldn’t do a good job with it, but that one method puts much of the authority in his hands, and the other puts most of it in Jindal’s. On balance, he can’t demonstrate his alternative would do a better job for the state (and in fact previously argued theoretically against it), so the Jindal approach, which conceptually makes more sense in that he, not Caldwell, ultimately has the fiduciary responsibility to pay, and that payment is not taken out of current services, seems superior.

Tell all the lawyer jokes you like:

Q: If you see a one-armed lawyer hanging in a tree, what should you do?

A: Wave ….

Q: If you’re driving and see a lawyer on a bicycle, should you hit him?

A: No, it’s probably your bicycle ….

(insert your own joke here)

But this matter deserves serious and thoughtful analysis that, when considered, supports the Jindal Administration’s approach on it, which hopefully the appellate court will reaffirm.

Committee top spots tilted to conservatives, reformers

2012-01-11T20:45:00.001-06:00

Permanent standing committee chairmen-designates are out for the Louisiana Legislature, and with it perhaps some skewed regional news but good news for the conservative, reform agenda.

In the Senate, the partisan breakdown, 11 from the GOP of the 17, was fairly proportional to their presence in the chamber as a whole. But regional differences titled north and southeast. North Louisiana (and especially Ouachita Parish, with two) hit it big with seven chairmen, a part of the state with only about a fifth of the state’s population. And the 2010 census revealed that while the New Orleans Metropolitan Statistical Area had about a quarter of the state’s population and got about that many of the chairmanships, the Northshore picked up three spots and the River Parishes picked up another, so including Pres. Republican John Alario, half of the 18 meaningful positions of power are held by individuals within 50 miles of Orleans Parish.

The real shutout occurred with the Baton Rouge MSA where, despite comprising one-sixth of the state’s population, only one chairwomanship got scored there, and the remaining one was out yonder west. Demographics and partisanship had something to do with these skewed results, but also experience and, particularly in the case of the Baton Rouge area, compatibility with the Gov. Bobby Jindal agenda.

Most notably, that consideration removed Democrat state Sen. Ben Nevers from his previous Education leadership. Also interestingly, Republican state Sen. Bob Kostelka got shunted away from heading up again Senate and Governmental Affairs, perhaps after some criticism of his outspokenness and stubbornness during redistricting last year. Yet looking at the lineup, Alario (with, he asserts, the Jindal Adminstration’s input), almost perfectly rank-ordered, from most to least important, assignments where conservative Republicans (also supportive of Jindal’s agenda) got the most powerful committees and liberal Democrats the least. There even was room for a spot of rehabilitation, where a minor top committee job went to Jindal antagonist state Sen. Robert Adley, after being denied one last term, perhaps as he now is the longest-serving in the chamber.

Across the way, Republican Speaker Chuck Kleckley followed the same rank-ordering strategy, likewise sloughing off Democrats to heading the least important committees even as Republicans only have none of the 16 top jobs. No hard feelings existed for state Rep. Joel Robideaux, former speaker pro-tem who had wanted the speaker’s job and had to give up the other job in a quest for partisan balance (while both are considered the chamber’s only full-time positions and are paid as such, the pro-tem spot has little real power), who got the plum Ways and Means position. Also crucial to reform agendas, state Rep. Steve Carter will head up Education, while state Rep. Kevin Pearson will oversee Retirement, both reliable conservative, reformist Republicans who already have sponsored several excellent bills in these areas.

In the House panels, the regional situation here is the mirror of the Senate’s in the north, with only two spots allocated, while the Baton Rouge MSA does much better, the New Orleans MSA and Northshore about the same, and central and western Louisiana with Acadiana get more numbers relative to the Senate. Thus, when combining the two chambers, this leaves north Louisiana and the Northshore a little better than demographics would suggest, Baton Rouge, and Acadiana a little worse, and everywhere else about congruent.

If anything, the Republican majority bent over backwards to dole out leadership spots compared to the Democrats when they ran things in the Senate four years ago (Republicans were in the numerical minority in the House, but had the speakership then, producing a balance in chairmanships about the same as the incoming lineup). But when it comes to the distribution of power, especially in terms of whose agenda is best served, clearly conservatism and reform instincts are favored – a first in the Legislature’s history.

Bossier City tax hike punishes citizens for govt mistakes

2012-01-11T08:10:00.003-06:00

If you're a Bossier City property owner or renter, happy New Year: anybody who read this space was warned. And, as a consequence of their past blundering, Bossier City lawmakers last year made it official: they’re raising taxes on the citizenry this year to make it pay for their mistakes.

In 2010, elected officials moaned and complained about how refusal to renew what was listed on the books as a 6 mill property tax would imperil funding of public safety services. That was their immature way of threatening voters to keep the gravy train rolling, instead of making sensible decisions they long resisted such as selling unneeded and underperforming real estate like the CenturyLink Center and Cyber Innovation Center. Even at a loss, the combination of curtailing the money these lost each year would more than have filled any budgetary gap by removal of the tax.

Voting down the renewal might have been the device to get it through those small brains with the giant egos that sit on the Bossier City Council and in the mayor’s office that they could no longer retain their venture capitalist attitude with the people’s money.

But, more disturbingly, when they put up the renewal, they did so at the full 6 mills, not the 4.86 being levied as a result of trepidation at rolling rates forward as a result increased valuations. This signaled they would use an affirmative vote as political permission to roll rates forward in the future.

And thus, when enough scared, gullible, and lackadaisically-informed people went along with the city’s desire for the renewal, it set the stage for this year’s 1.14 mill increase. The inevitability of hiking taxes for Bossier City residents emanated from past spending errors that now increasingly stress the city’s finances. A review of recent developments concerning these shows why:

Cyber Innovation Center. ($35 million) The least costly of these mistakes, because Bossier Parish and state taxpayers subsidized two-thirds of the building of this high-tech office building, what part of it actually leased mainly is with federal government clients that came here because of the Barksdale Air Force Base presence – which begs the question of why Bossier City should act as landlord and lose money in the process instead of selling to the federal government. And now the mandarins in charge are throwing good money after bad by using taxpayer dollars to investigate an expansion of the money-losing enterprise.

CenturyLink Center. ($56.5 million) The new name not only does not change the old problems here, but occurred simultaneously with the low point of its existence. Not only did the Arena Football 2 Bossier-Shreveport Battle Wings fold up and head out of town last year, but they were followed by the original anchor tenant, the Bossier-Shreveport Mudbugs of the Central Hockey League, disbanded. Now with no tenants entailing the loss of roughly 50 dates annually (a few of these can be made up with other users, but not as many and likely bringing smaller revenues each), what have been relatively small operating losses on an average annual basis look to widen into much bigger gaps on the order of the size of the interest expense to pay off the debt still outstanding on it. (But at least it’s a great place with its substantial and now more than ever sparsely used parking lots for use in training public safety officers on how to drive skillfully.)

Louisiana Boardwalk garage. ($21 million) The foreclosed outdoor retail mall staggers on, with its sagging sales and occupancy trickling fewer dollars to tax coffers, meaning, contrary to the sunshine being blown up the public’s skirts in desperate city public relations moves, it will be decades, if ever, that the city recoups the money it shelled out to build the garage. (Funny how the city did not publicize a largely negative Wall Street Journal article about the complex that came out about the time of its lame reassurances.) At least the other white elephants can be sold at a loss; the garage is useless without the mall so if the enterprise ever goes belly-up and completely closes, this becomes an absolute liability to the city.

At least the blind mice that run the city have found the harsh light of reality too penetrating to ignore. Last year, it announced the hundreds of thousands of dollars a year that is spent on supplementing the Boardwalk’s security with Bossier City patrol officers on premises would be yanked in order to save money. Whether that will bring more unease to the public about shopping there remains to be seen.

Of course, we have to recognize that these elected officials have about the same attention span to real issues as a dog spotting a squirrel does when it comes to their big-government-knows-best philosophy of government corralling the next big thing to trigger economic development. Around 15 years ago we heard about how the arena would trigger a boom in development around it; instead, all it’s spawned is litigation. Then it was growth by selling more stuff via the Boardwalk, which largely served to beggar local business. Then the CIC was supposed to attract 10,000 private sector jobs in cybersecurity; let me know if the total ever hits triple digits.

Last year, city leaders banked on an entertainment complex that has gone nowhere. Most recently, there’s the hope that establishing the city’s fourth casino, set to open in about a year, actually might not drive one of its other three out of business. Nothing changes when you put in office economic illiterates who care more about looking like big fishes in a small pond, attracted to baubles like monkeys to shiny objects, than in serving the people through wise stewardship of their tax dollars. So they come back for more bucks as a result.

But when you do feel the hand of Bossier City government reaching into and grabbing more from your pocket, just consider that we did it to ourselves. Only one person ran against any of the present incompetents elected to the City Council last time, and the equally policy-defective Mayor Lo Walker drew only a single, undistinguished opponent. Every member of the Council has been there for at least two of these three bad decisions. As a result of too much apathy, Bossier Citians are getting the bad government that they deserve.

Partisan left calls Jindal partisan for calling them out

2012-01-10T10:55:00.005-06:00

It’s always fascinating to observe how the left, imprisoned by its false assumptions about how the world works, views the events that invalidate its worldview. Members of the mainstream media and Louisiana Democrats provide a perfect prism by which to investigate this phenomenon in their parsing of Republican Gov. Bobby Jindal’s brief second inauguration remarks.

About the only prospective issue raised by Jindal in an otherwise image-laden, retrospective campaign concerned elementary and secondary education, reinforced by his backing of various candidates to the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education who said the same or did not appear to oppose it. And it turned out to be about the only issue of which Jindal spoke in his address, saying “In America, you do not have a right to have everything your neighbor has, you do not have a right to a big house or a fancy car, and you do not have a right to redistribute your neighbor’s wealth. But I would suggest this. I would suggest that we long ago decided that every kid does have a right to a quality education from an excellent teacher. And by getting a good education, kids then do have an opportunity to pursue their dreams.”

Also, he stated that the “key to reforming education here in Louisiana is not massive spending and tax increases. Throwing more money at the problem has proven to be a failure ... All we need to do is muster the courage to change our ways and to abandon old, tired methods that failed generations of our children. Anyone who stands in the way of providing real opportunities to all our kids must now stand down. Anyone who stands in the way of giving all our parents and all our children more choices when it comes to education must stand down.”

Having presented the correct diagnosis of the situation, the response from the liberal peanut gallery in the Legislature, simulating that of a brick wall getting talked to, came right on cue. One Democrat, state Rep. Robert Johnson said he hoped whatever Jindal would put forward on the issue would include pay raises for teachers in order to get their pay close to the national average, seemingly blissfully unaware that the average salary in the state at $49,006 for the most recent figure, while the figure of a few months earlier was only a few dollars below the southern regional average, higher than most in the region (which is skewed higher by the inclusion of border states Maryland and Delaware in its computation; Louisiana’s is fourth highest otherwise). For its cost of living, Louisiana pumps more than enough into salaries yet, as Jindal noted, throwing disproportionately more money at teachers has not solved the problem of educational underperformance.

Another, state Sen. Yvonne Dorsey-Colomb, who in her case appeared to have elections returns bounce off her consciousness unregistered, wistfully that the education agenda proposed by the governor should be inclusive and all officials should have a say in change for value-added sake. But, as Jindal identified, inclusiveness, if that means diluting or obviating reforms that expand choice for families in education options, this “inclusiveness” merely circles back to those old, tired methods that have failed again and again. To follow Johnson’s and Dorsey’s wishes constitutes standing at the schoolhouse door, not standing down in deliberate obstruction of increased choice and improvement.

Or, rephrasing for Jindal what another chief executive from his opponents’ party once said, “I won,” and adding to that another erstwhile comment, adjusted for geography, “We’re responding to the [Louisianan] people. The [Louisianan] people didn’t listen to [Democrats] too well during the election.” The debate is over, Jindal confirmed, and observed that policy-makers may choose either to continue to be part of the problem, or contribute to becoming part of the solution.

This kind of rhetoric some of the liberal chattering classes found objectionable. Columnist Stephanie Grace said Jindal “wants to steer the reform drive into more ideologically divisive territory” in order to serve higher political ambitions. Her fellow traveler Jarvis DeBerry accused Jindal’s words of “ideological rigidity” and “the implication that he won't be partisan in pushing reform must have provoked laughter across the state,” which he also attributes to that same motivation.

But the only laughter evoked from these opinion writers’ statements comes from seeing the transparent lack of sophistication in their thinking and arguments. Among many on the left, how come it is that any disagreement with it and promotion of alternative policy preferences is called “divisive?” And why is it so that when liberals can amass voting majorities for their policy preferences we hear no offers from any of them to practice “inclusiveness,” only getting that when they have lost the battle of ideas? Instead, as when Jindal points out that history and facts that show liberalism as an ideology is on the wrong side of this issue, instead of reevaluating their ideas and accepting his leadership on it, they react in a partisan way, ascribing partisan intent to him because they assume he reacts as they do in a partisan manner in this instance.

At least some get reality. Michelle Millhollon and Will Sentell, the former especially no fan of Jindal’s, in reporting about the speech accurately captured its meaning: an attempt to unify by trying to dismantle structural barriers, those in place because of a lack of total commitment to putting children’s educational attainment ahead of special interests and ideological goals, that prevent the possibility of achievement for all children. It is neither partisan nor wrong to view the world as it is, want a better outcome, and strive for appropriate solutions. Calling out the impediments to that realization, as Jindal did, serves the greater good in this instance.

Jindal gambles lying down with dog doesn't bring fleas

2012-01-09T09:00:00.004-06:00

Thus as Gov. Bobby Jindal’s second term in office begins today, a little prior to his swearing in will come the Legislature’s organizational sessions, where expected to be named Senate President after his swearing in for a second term, state Sen. John Alario, represents a gamble by Jindal.

About to begin his fifth decade being visited on the state, Alario has gone from a populist, liberal Democrat who could tax and spend with the best of them, to a more circumspect moderate (according to his Louisiana Legislature Log voting record) Republican. His chameleon political nature at once simultaneously makes him suspicious and desired to lead the Senate on behalf of the governor, who signaled his acceptance of Alario’s taking the chamber’s top position.

In previous stints as a liberal Democrat House speaker, Alario proved effective in promoting a populist agenda.

Now Republican Jindal must bet that he can contain Alario 2.0, ensuring that he uses his legislative, procedural, and parliamentary skills so that they serve the Jindal conservative and reform agenda and not the opposite. To make an unflattering, perhaps unfair (although not to some) comparison with U.S. foreign policy objectives concerning authoritarian leaders during the period Alario first entered the House, he may be a thug that doesn’t share many of our values, but, conservatives and reformers have to hope, he’s our thug.

That Jindal would make the leap of faith presents another indicator that he looks to take on a bolder agenda. Despite the slight proportional GOP advantage in the Senate compared to the House, questions persist about the reliability of a few senators for a conservative and reformist agenda (including a couple of recent switchers of party like Alario). Further, some items on the Jindal program, as yet to be specifically rendered, may depend upon two-thirds voting majorities, where Alario’s connections over the many years (a third of the members of the Senate served with him in the House as well) might prove valuable in picking up some votes from Senate Democrats, all of whom with prior legislative office have demonstrated in past voting fairly rigid adherence to liberalism and populism.

Therefore, if pursuing an agenda that reaches farther that his mostly-cautious moves on his first term, Jindal needs Alario’s abilities to get what he wants. Conservatives and reformers skeptical of Alario’s core beliefs, with his long record to validate their argument, hope for their agendas that by lying down with a dog, they don’t catch fleas.

Time seems right for bolder Jindal policy-making

2012-01-08T11:40:00.007-06:00

Will Gov. Bobby Jindal in a second term shed caution in his agenda and throw deep? Indications are that there’s no better time to do and, if he doesn’t go for it this time with conditions such as they are, he never will.

Jindal’s first term demonstrated him as the most conservative in the state’s history and as its greatest reformer. Of course, the baseline does not offer any more than a couple of other governors right of center because they too fully accepted the populist premise of big government doing more than it needed, while several past governors only acted as reformers in the sense that they wished to make government more honest, not less intrusive. What distinguishes Jindal to date is he is the first to reject explicitly the populist persuasion and seek to remove government from areas in which it does not belong and/or where it cannot work as efficiently as alternatives can.

But, Jindal has governed as a cautious reformer.

For example, he has led the state in the direction that most have taken, in reforming Medicaid by turning aspects of its administration over to the private sector to induce better quality and more efficient care. That’s reform, but only cautiously so because at the same time he has not reduced much the commitment the state has to its unique populist charity hospital system as devices first and foremost to serve the indigent. For example, he allowed building of a more grandiose such hospital in New Orleans when a smaller version could have served a primary mission of medical education. And rather than remove the state completely from the long-term care hospital business in Alexandria, he has permitted the state to embark on a new building program there, unlike his response to a similar situation in Baton Rouge. Bold reform would exit the state from owning hospitals except for medical education, perhaps leaving only one each in New Orleans and Shreveport.

So his track record suggests reform would continue, but without breaking out from the incremental, low-risk category. Yet, especially in the area of education, Jindal’s rhetoric leading up to his second inauguration indicates a more far-reaching, higher-risk agenda. If we judge actions more demonstrative than words, are his current public statements just hot air?

Three reasons lend credence to thinking that he’ll practice what he preaches. First, in the similar situation four years ago, Jindal followed through. He said to anybody who cared to listen he would introduce ethics reforms, he then did, and eventually he put enough political muscle behind them to accomplish much. Granted, they ended up more as an extra base hit than grand slam and represented an easy target to mash, but he did what he said he would. If he telegraphed four years ago, we can expect he does the same now.

Second, his next reelection possibility in the state, if any, comes in eight years. He cannot run for reelection and the chances of him running for any political office in the state other than governor are about zero. Bigger changes mean bigger risk that may bring bigger failure and/or create more enemies, but eight years is plenty of time to work through negative externalities generated by a bold agenda. Now, as opposed to the previous four years, he may be willing to take this chance.

Third, his political opponents’ own rhetoric shows they are on the ropes and desperate to prevent what they fear to be unstoppable. For example, note what one of the most regressive forces in Louisiana politics, the head of the Louisiana Federation of Teachers Steve Monaghan has to say, regarding Jindal’s past specific and future broad plans about elementary and secondary education: “He's always been very smart about the language …. They aren't ‘vouchers.’ They are ‘opportunity scholarships.’ He's talking about ‘choice for parents’ when really it's choice for private schools.”

When a political hack begins to claim policy battles are being determined by “language” and then piles on with (in his facile rendering of “choice”) inaccurate examples, it’s a sure sign that articulator is on the losing side of a battle of ideas, because he is so wedded to an inferior notion that he cannot bear discarding it despite real-world results, so an alternative explanation bearing little resemblance to reality must be found. The same comes from another Jindal adversary, the leader of House of Representative Democrats John Bel Edwards when he asserts Republican Jindal talks in clichés and “I hope we can get beyond these platitudes of doing more with less. That’s a bunch of hogwash.”

The narrative Edwards desperately wants to propagate is that government must take more from those who earn rather than diet through reducing government spending that makes people take more responsibility for their own actions, or by reducing the preferential resources enjoyed by certain interests inside and outside of state government that comprise his constituencies and reinforce his worldview. In this fashion, he seeks to avoid the truth that his viewpoint loses in the marketplace of ideas through using terms about his opposition that attempt to trivialize their winning points. And when this is the best your opponents can do, you must realize the time is ripe to move aggressively with policy promoting fundamental change according to your superior ideas.

Thus, we can expect a less-cautious reformer in Jindal during his second term, more willing to go for broke and, in the process, revealing a more conservative, more reformist Jindal than witnessed the past four years. This might satiate many in the chorus of conservative critics of Jindal’s who argue incorrectly that he has not governed as a conservative when in reality he has not governed perfectly conservatively on all issues and/or on ones they care about. Whether he does, by trying Jindal makes the state no worse off, and by succeeding it becomes much better off than if he continued in the mode of his first term.

Roemer has chance to confirm thesis or continue delusion

2012-01-05T10:20:00.002-06:00

Clueless at 66 Hanover Street, Manchester, NH now has his chance. With the exit of one major candidate from the Republican nomination process for the presidency, and another saying he’ll skip the upcoming New Hampshire primary, where the first committed delegates will be awarded, former Louisiana Gov. Buddy Roemer finally can make that leap into the public consciousness, break out of the pack, and get his well-deserved attention as a serious candidate for the nation’s highest office.

Not. To be a serious contender, one needs a serious message, which Roemer never has had. He blames his poor showing on the bogeyman of “big money” and shadowy fat cats, financiers (which has been his occupation until recently) who control things with their bucks while he specifically rejects such input with his self-imposed limitation to receive contributions of $100 or less. The conspiratorial outlook, which has more in common with “trilateralism” of the last century and screeds against Jewish bankers of a century ago than with today’s reality, earned him a last place finish in the Iowa non-binding caucuses (behind a candidate already withdrawn, no less).

And that’s what has kept Roemer as a nonentity in the contest so far; the problem is not some cabal of wealth, the media (which, due to his microscopic polling numbers, keeps refusing to invite him to debates that he obsessively believes would permit liberation his message to turn the unaware into adoring throngs), and establishment party figures, but it is Roemer himself and his message. When a Gallup poll last month tell us, regarding “the biggest threat to the country in the future,” 64 percent said “big government” against just 26 percent for “big business” and 8 percent for “big labor” (the numbers were exactly the same for independents, and even Democrats were more likely to worry about big government than big business 48-44), you know anybody would says he agrees with the “Occupy” movement is on the wrong side of the issue.

(Additionally, part of the Roemer thesis that powerful, moneyed interests control too much of affairs stems from his incredulity that a former member of Congress and governor such as himself gets so little attention, with his cosmology ordaining that only the presence of these interests can prevent such a superbly qualified and knowledgeable individual arguing against them from getting much more support. In fact, Roemer himself, echoing some cynics’ assessments of his rubber-band-snapping failed term as Louisiana governor, seemed entirely unaware about the political process regarding Iowa’s caucuses, as this comical exchange shows.)

And if the candidate and his message weren’t enough to repel thoughtful support, his hypocrisy can turn even more people off. Despite Roemer’s campaign donation ceiling pledge, he said he would accept endorsement by the Americans Elect group, accepting huge sums of money from it. It also turns out that he is the only candidate to date that has applied for matching funds from the federal government for the relatively small sum of donations he has received to this point. So let’s get this straight, he’s against “big money” in politics and government, yet he’s willing to accept a public subsidy of his campaign using taxpayer dollars, and, if that doesn’t work out, will seek to have large donors support getting his name on many state ballots and campaigning on his behalf? Does this not make a banker railing against a specter of big money controlling all lose what little credibility he had already?

Yet Roemer can prove he’s been right all along. He has lived in New Hampshire for months, spent hundreds of thousands of dollars there in media outreach, taken up space in their bookstores, and talked to anybody who will listen to him. If elitist interests truly have suppressed his message, this is one place he can overcome that with a demonstration of significant backing in the electorate, especially now that the field has winnowed. If his message truly is correct and resonates, he should expect to do as well as the skipping Rick Perry or somebody who hardly has campaigned there at all like Rick Santorum.

But if he fails at put-up time, then he ought to recognize it’s shut-up time, at least in the sense that he blames everything except himself and his message for his lack of popularity. If he wants to keep going, fine, but delusion in someone competing for the highest office in the land does not commend oneself to voters.

Perry reassessment shapes LA, Jindal near-term futures

2012-01-04T09:35:00.000-06:00

As Texas Gov. Rick Perry returns to his home state to contemplate the future of his presidential campaign – meaning its end almost is certain – this affects Gov. Bobby Jindal’s and Louisiana’s immediate political future.

Almost at the start of Perry’s bid, coming only (even if it seems like ages) five months ago, Jindal enthusiastically announced his support for Perry and matched that with energetic campaigning on his behalf. Some observers believed he came across more effectively than did Perry in that role, and they turned up the volume and frequency of those kinds of comments as Perry, who started out fast, began shedding support.

Had Perry kept blossoming all the way to the nomination, Jindal may have become the leading possibility for Perry to tab as his vice presidential running mate.

While Jindal’s performance on the hustings does not discourage talk of his securing such a nod from the eventual nominee, removal of Perry from the field certainly diminishes his chances. Realistically, only former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, former Sen. Rick Santorum, and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, have any chance of victory with Romney now the favorite after the results of yesterday’s Iowa caucuses.

Romney would be highly unlikely to choose Jindal. While this ticketing idea got some discussion right after the 2008 election (there’s still a Facebook page devoted to this topic), Jindal’s declaration for Perry moved him down the list. And if Romney would look for a conservative from a competitive state to ally with, more likely it would be an endorser of his, former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, or a rising star from an ethnic group larger n number, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio.

Santorum or Gingrich have been considered more consistently principled (although the latter perhaps steady on some issue preferences not aligned with conservatism) than Romney so Jindal’s conservatism would not be a crucial factor for his selection, although his gubernatorial background could help. While not the leading candidate for each, he would be in the top tier, but if Romney is 50/50 to win now, they each are 25/75.

Jindal’s going all in with Perry and losing the hand means, at least for the next few months, in Louisiana “aginner” populist conservatives, increasingly strident (and diminishing in number) liberals, the adversarial media, and legislators in the minority will have him to kick around. Without travelling around on the stump for Perry, that will save a small amount of taxpayer dollars (almost all of Jindal’s travels out of state expenditures for these purposes either his campaign funds or Perry’s picked up) and have his attention less diverted – which may spell trouble for his political opponents. An undistracted Jindal had fairly successful legislative agendas in 2008 and 2009, but then the oil spill disaster of 2010 and his campaigning for reelection in 2011 brought about smaller and more incrementally-achieved agendas. (Already his program seems trending towards more and bigger.)

It’s possible that Jindal might reemerge in the summer as a surrogate campaigner for the eventual nominee, after the session. But if he does without being on the ticket, chances become high he leaves office in 2015 and set to return as a presidential candidate in 2016 (if somehow the beleaguered Pres. Barack Obama wins reelection this year) or in 2020 (after sitting out a few years from elective office, although maybe serving in the Cabinet) or in 2024 (if failing in a 2016 campaign, and perhaps after winning a third and nonconsecutive term as governor).

So the whimpering away of Perry’s bid brings a more experienced Jindal back with uncompromising force to state politics. While the minority might regard this as bad news, the majority properly sees this as positive.

Changes needed to stop misallocation to higher education

2012-01-03T10:30:00.004-06:00

Concerning mid-year budget reductions, higher education (because of a lack of political courage) in Louisiana once again will bear the brunt of these. And while structural changes to Louisiana’s rigid fiscal structure would provide a better matching of funds to priorities, changes in higher education policy also can provide for more efficiency in delivery, both in Louisiana and for the country as a whole, while sensitizing its consumers and governments to make better choices as well.

Within existing policy parameters, Gov. Bobby Jindal and the Legislature have improved the condition of higher education by laws that entice more efficient delivery. The permutations of the GRAD Act have assisted that tie present resources in to future performance, so long as the concept gets enforced. However, these policy-makers whiffed on structural questions, such as failing to merge next-door lagging institutions and duplicative governing boards, as well as on more procedural matters such as continued wasteful tuition subsidization.

Desirable are these changes, but they still only would have a limited impact of inducing better resource use and allocation because of the nature of higher education policy in America, governed largely by national law.
Current financing policy causes perhaps the single most pernicious problem that prevents optimal resource use, disconnecting the incentive for wise stewardship of funds received by removing financial responsibility from both accepter of funds, higher education, and lender of it, ultimately the federal government.

Of the lending that occurs for students to pay for college, most either comes directly from the federal government, or through private lenders with the money lent out guaranteed by the federal government. This means neither party has any natural cost-control incentives applying. For universities, this tuition money comes risk-free (with one exception, in that an institution may get yanked from participation if the subsequent default rate is too high, but the requirements are such that this becomes a disincentive only for proprietary schools) so they have no incentive to graduate students from programs that lead to employment adequate to cover the loans, or even for them to graduate at all. For the federal government, it simply issues more debt or hits up taxpayers to cover defaults.

Louisiana compounds the problem through its Taylor Opportunity Program for Scholars, which pays tuition weighed to public universities’ charges if a student performs at a mediocre level in high school studies, for families that can claim a Louisiana residence. It ends up having the same effect of risk-free money banked immediately by the university with the perverse incentives of steering enrollees to less demanding curricula and engaging in less rigorous instruction in order to keep as many in school as possible to collect, and with state government there to pick up the slack. At least the state could reduce these problems by making TOPS a true scholarship program by raising its standards considerably, encouraging only the likelier achievers to attend and not providing incentives for marginal performers that are less likely to use that education to gain commensurate employment, if they even earn a degree. Another approach, having failed to make it into law in the past, would convert TOPS into a loan forgiveness program instead, but that then brings up the same disconnection problem as in federal lending because of the minimal standards.

The problem, then, is to provide incentives for schools to provide instruction and programs rigorous enough to provide candidates for gainful employment upon graduation. That means not just emphasis on degrees where there is a real market for those graduates, but also for the more general kinds of majors a commitment to quality; you can have that political science major, but structured and taught in a way that demands a high degree of critical thinking and comprehensive knowledge in the subject area. If done that way, then maybe entities other than government, law schools (they producing too many lawyers for market demand, also assisted by the loan disconnection), and political organizations might be interested in these liberal arts graduates, such as financial institutions hiring them to analyze foreign investment risks.

One excellent suggestion argues for making institutions responsible, after a certain number of years from a borrower attending school full-time, for unpaid loan balances. This would cause schools to respond more nimbly to promoting programs demanded in the market, increase rigor in studies (no matter how gaudy a transcript, employers will not hire or retain people who do not seem able or prove capable in doing the job), and make them more selective in admissions. All increase the chances of successful payback and avoidance of schools picking up the tab.

Another points out that higher education spends too many resources on peripheral, if at all needed, functions relative to its education mission. For example, significant resources go to enhancing “diversity” because college degrees have developed into certificates of competency for employers, since legally hiring cannot depend upon a test of intelligence, and a degree substitutes. But since standardized testing tends to produce distributions short in some ethnic groups and long in others, universities legally may try to compensate through spending on achieving “diversity,” artificially boosting expenses. Making taking ethnicity illegal or unconstitutional in admissions decision would reduce pressure to retain such efforts when times of fiscal stress demand better use of money.

There’s not much Louisiana alone can do except through TOPS reform explained above and other marginal things, such as bumping up the cap on tuition at 12 hours to 15 and moving up drop dates in order to discourage students from overloading on classes with the intention of paring their weakest performance, wasting instructor resources and blocking other higher-achieving students from taking classes that if unable to might delay degree completion. The real reforms would have to come at the federal level, meaning while state policy-makers tackle what they can, Louisiana’s congressional delegation needs to get to work in changing the requisite federal laws.

The higher education establishment can be expected to oppose all of these because they will reduce the number of students in the system, especially at the baccalaureate-and-above level, wreaking havoc in a system already overbuilt, as these upset structures and attitudes incongruent with producing rigor and quality. But taxpayers deserve to have what is confiscated from them spent most wisely, and the citizenry needs not to have resources sucked into unproductive uses. Regardless of the inferior fiscal structure of the state, such changes would improve higher education delivery and the state’s ability to fund properly genuine priorities.

Despite charter school success, ignorant elites still resist

2012-01-02T09:25:00.001-06:00

Lost in the disappointment of trying to fulfill another mid-year budget shortfall in Louisiana was good news about progress in Louisiana’s education – but coupled with another reminder about how the upcoming changeover in Board of Elementary and Secondary Education with cooperation from the Legislature still is necessary to combat the revanchist attitudes present in the state’s education establishment.

Late last year, the state had to address yet another shortfall in revenues and higher expenses when it took its annual look at how the budget matched to reality. The Constitution requires this review and corrective action in spending cuts to comport to its balanced budget imperative. As has become typical in the past several years, education expenditures were more than budgeted because enrollments in public schools appeared higher than predicted months ago.

But, interestingly, perhaps public schools attracting more students away from private schools caused the underestimation, as one of the members of the panel responsible for reviewing actual vs. budgeted numbers suggested, with the presence of better-performing charter schools the cause.

The numbers may bear this out: from the February, 2011 to October, 2011 estimates, as a whole public school enrollment in the state (excluding special schools) increased from 658,347 to 665,390, or 1.07 percent, while charter school enrollments went from 38,216 to 42,766, an increase of 12.17 percent, even though the number of charter schools remained the same at 97.

Data on private school enrollments are published, district-by-district, only months after the fact so there are none to compare at this point, but it seems unlikely that the large growth in charter school attendance has come entirely at the expense of traditional schools, whose rate of increase correlates to the state’s natural population growth in the child age cohort. These money woes then represent the product of Louisiana’s success in restoring families’ confidence in the ability of public schools to deliver quality education through escalating use of charter schools.

Unfortunately, way too many policy-makers put special interests that benefit from the historically underserving regime – teachers’ unions, education administrators, school boards, and ideologue politicians – ahead of children’s quality education and oppose the very idea of charter schools, often displaying shocking ignorance in the process. One such recent example came from the City of Baker’s School Board when they turned down an applicant to run a school to address failing schools in primary education. The district itself is performing so poorly that the state put it on its “academic watch” list and it ranked second lowest in the state

Yet when the time came for discussion and the vote, most board members framed the decision along the lines of how the district would lose control of the money that would be allocated to such a school – if they even had the faintest idea of what the issue was about. Board member Elaine Davis stupidly said, “I was elected to support public education,” seemingly oblivious to the fact that charter schools are public schools, with almost all in the state run by a university of nonprofit agency. When the only board member who voted for allowing the chartering, Doris Alexander, pointed out that things needed to be changed because quality education was “not happening” and “it would be good for our students to have a choice,” Board President Dana Carpenter replied, “It makes me cringe when board members say things like that when we have principals and teachers in attendance,” showing her true allegiances.

Fortunately state law allows BESE to overrule these decisions – and it is indicative that nearly every school that has gotten chartered in the state has had to go this route, with almost all rejected initially at the district level (BESE itself reject typically more than half of appellants as well). It’s this kind of resistance, exemplified by the attitudes displayed by the majority of the Baker board, which has held back educational achievement in Louisiana. It also serves as an object lesson for the entering BESE members and new Legislature that they need to continue supporting reform measures such as increasing availability of charter alternatives to allow progression to educational achievement far removed from the acquiescence to mediocrity, or worse, of the past.

To defeat school reform, opponents try false portrayal

2011-12-29T11:25:00.012-06:00

You could accuse supporters of the educational establishment in Louisiana, invested in a one-size-fits-all, command-and-control monopoly of secondary and elementary education in the state because it serves the needs of special interests comprised of politicians, unions, education bureaucrats and liberal ideologues, of just not getting it. You could argue that the massive repudiation for their failed ideas suffered at the ballot box this past election cycle they refuse to acknowledge. But that would sell at least some of them short as they try to stave off defeat by other means.

One such example comes from an opinion piece circulated to major newspapers across the state, dutifully reproduced by outlets. In it, the communications director of the leftist Louisiana Progress presents the group’s strategy to cope with forthcoming policy changes that threatens its worldview and that of its ideological fellow-travelers – by using straw men and distortions to attempt to create a consensus rejecting expansion of the very ideas that haltingly have begun turning around the system.

Several of its assertions present problems in coming to an honest appraisal about education policy in the state.
The author declares, “For most of the past decade the policy debate over improving public education has centered on accountability and testing, not on student learning or growth.” This demonstrates an obvious misunderstanding to the point one must wonder whether it is designed to mislead intentionally: accountability and testing have been built precisely on the idea that it improves student learning, by ensuring the proper system is in place to foster that learning, and then to be able to gauge accurately the level and change in that learning. In trying to separate the two, the author creates an entirely false dichotomy.

But the author immediately gathers more straw and gets to work, by writing, “In this debate, teachers are often seen as part of the problem, not part of the solution.” No serious reformer displays this attitude. Policy advocates wishing to improve delivery of education rightfully recognize the current system allows substandard teaching to continue, if not flourish. This regime fails to ensure that teachers not knowledgeable in their subject areas are ejected from the system in a timely fashion, refuses to reward quality in teaching by linking pay to performance, hinders the ability to provide an appropriate learning environment, and allows special interest politics to intrude on personnel decisions. Indeed, reformers see capable teachers as perhaps the biggest part of the solution, and argue they should be given the tools and incentives to succeed, wherein the current system mediocrity and politicized agendas all too often get enforced.

The author’s apparent blindness to this truth next produces this fantasy passage: “What is missing in the discussion is public school reform that looks at the way schools are organized, teachers are trained and compensated and the way decisions are made at schools, school boards and the state.” Reform efforts over the past decade have done nothing but concentrate on all of these areas: introducing charter school opportunities, limited voucher programs, increased welcoming of alternative certification pathways, and advocating merit pay, improved discipline, and a host of reforms aimed at school boards, which regrettably met defeat at the hands of the very interests for which the author shills.

Thus, the author issues a complete fabrication when he claims, “But, we focus all the energy on a narrow view of accountability.” And then to close he delivers his pièce de résistance in wondering whether hope for the better “will bear fruit unless we watch, understand and act to promote the health of our schools?” This begs the question about whether the author is more interested in the “health” of schools or that of children’s intellect, but, as demonstrated above, recent reform measures built around accountability, such as allowing schools to pursue charter status if they fail consistently, because they focus on achievement promoting children’s intellectual health inevitably link to having well-functioning schools, as the latter serves as the precondition for the former.

Remaining consistent to the piece’s theme, this ending represents one last inappropriate attempt to divorce current and advocated reform efforts from the idea of quality education. It also displays either a shocking ignorance concerning education policy or deliberate diversion from reality to try to build a case for ideas supported by the education establishment and its special interest allies that have underserved Louisiana’s students for decades. These opponents of increasingly successful reform measures cannot wish them away by creating illusion about them for the purpose of making their discredited agenda look less ineffective.

Jindal late start presidential nomination a pipe dream

2011-12-28T00:00:00.001-06:00

At the perceptive The Hayride, the case already has been made as to why Gov. Bobby Jindal politically would not work as a last minute entry into the Republican presidential sweepstakes. This space has discussed why, from the standpoint of Jindal’s personal situation and presumed career goals, he would never enter the 2012 contest for the top spot, although perhaps for the vice presidency. Amid some continuing chatter about how the GOP could use another candidate with Jindal’s name being mentioned, the numerical case against Jindal, or anybody else jumping in at such a late date, needs making.

There are just two ways to win the Republican convention, having a majority of delegates pledged prior to the first ballot or, if no candidate receives that majority, by obtaining an absolute majority of delegates in any subsequent ballot. Any late entrant simply cannot fulfill the former requirement because, by the time of the Iowa caucuses, qualification for well over a quarter of delegates that would be pledged by various states and territories would be over.

And this assumes that in several states using a caucus type of selection that these delegates forgo instructions requiring pledging, which account at this writing for more than an eighth of delegates to be picked, from states whose filing dates have been passed. Add them in and over a third of all delegates could be pledged before a late entrant could begin to pick up delegates. Nobody is going to swoop in and have enough voters available to swoon over his candidacy and simultaneously prevent from winning a frontrunner with many delegates pledged already to win the nomination in this fashion.

The other way, hoping for a brokered convention that would allow a unifying figure to be handed the nomination is, to be charitable, the longest of long shots. Yes, there are scenarios that don’t strain credulity that could produce an open convention, but recent history (every major party convention has been closed – a majority pledged by rule or word before their convening – since 1952) strongly militates against this possibility with advent of the era where most delegates get selected by preference primaries – especially since many states and territories will be able to use the unit rule (winner-take-all for delegates selected). And it’s been since 1932 that a non-first ballot winner of the office emerged.

At this point in his personal life, Jindal has little desire to disrupt his family situation and little reason to take such a huge gamble with the tremendous resource commitment involved. He’s already strongly aligned himself with Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s candidacy and whose political moves at the state’s helm not only do not lend them to position oneself for an immediate tack to higher office, you could argue they might work the opposite. And the numbers and odds simply are incredibly against him or anybody else taking the plunge at this late date.

If conservatives dissatisfied with the current crop of GOP contenders feel such a need to hope against hope that some more ideal candidate presents himself for consideration with any chance of winning, at least they should strike Jindal from their lists.

LA state worker compensation issues still need fixing

2011-12-27T09:00:00.013-06:00

With publication of the federal government’s 2012 pay tables comes a reminder about how much remains to be done in Louisiana concerning streamlining, right-sizing, and improving efficiency in the state’s bureaucracy.

On the positive side of the ledger, at least the state is not following the federal government example of Pres. Barack Obama’s policy that puts more emphasis on growing government than in setting up an environment for success in expanding private sector job opportunities and wage levels. Despite a couple of cost-of-living pay freezes for federal employees, their wage growth continues at a higher rate than that of the private sector, just not increasing as much as it had previously. Other forms of compensation remain more generous than ever compared to the private sector, and these civil servants know it, decreasing their low voluntary turnover rates even further that are much below that of the private sector’s.

At least in Louisiana, which, unlike the federal government, must live within means as it cannot use debt for operating budgets except in extraordinary circumstances, the Gov. Bobby Jindal Administration with the Legislature’s cooperation has started state government on a healthier diet.

By the close of fiscal year 2011, the state’s full-time employee headcount had dropped 11 percent from the last few months of his predecessor’s administration to just over 80,000, and most state employees had not received a (cost-of-living disguised as a “merit” increase) raise the previous year or will this upcoming fiscal year. Further, the state is taking baby steps with the chance that they will become adult-sized in the future in reforming the system to make it more efficient.

Still, it’s clear much work lies ahead to create a Louisiana civil service appropriate to the state’s resources, the claims made on the state’s taxpayers, and in creating best use of the people’s money. Private sector pay rates from 2006 have gained 2.1, 3.9, 1.6, 1.2, and 1.2 percent while rates of change for pay of all state employees have increased in the five prior fiscal years respectively 3.3, 9.7, 3.5, 2.9, and 0.5 percent – only with the pay freeze have state employees not seen substantially higher increases than workers in the private sector.

While defenders of the current system will claim higher increases are justified because public sector pay in the state is lower than it should be relative to the private sector that assertion rests on largely useless and self-serving studies. And when looking at all aspects of compensation, including health and retirement benefits, and comparing this to the private sector, Louisiana state employees clearly enjoy a gravy train. Therefore, bringing salary under control is just one aspect of reforming the system.

Gallantly, such an attempt came this past session to slow down the state’s mushrooming unfunded accrued liability in its retirement accounts (now over $18 billion, which will soon cost the state over $1 billion to fund in order to wipe it out by the constitutionally-mandated year of 2029) by making employees pay their fair share of funding for their retirement benefits. Two years previously, legislation would have switched new employees into defined contributions plans away from the current over-generous defined benefit regime. Politics as usual focused on state employees rather than the citizenry derailed both reforms. Even the Jindal Administration is running into resistance as it tries to bring the administrative costs of health benefits under control with increased efficiency.

Hopefully, the State Civil Service Commission and Jindal can work together to continue pay plan reforms that slow the rate of increase in pay from its artificially-high levels of the past, by tying performance more closely to pay, without inducing pay raise freezes. The CSC also can move to make for more realistic evaluation of employees (currently, almost none are involuntarily separated for subpar work). Also, the revival and this time passage of the legislation to create a prudent retirement plan needs to occur, and Jindal needs to stay the course in making the administration of health benefits more efficient. Only in carrying through with these actions can the imbalance favoring bureaucracy over Louisiana’s citizens be rectified.

Numbers suggest LA Democrat decline hard to reverse

2011-12-26T10:30:00.003-06:00

As actually has occurred now for several decades, partisan dealignment nationally continues with no letup as the two majors parties lose affiliates while those who claim none increase in numbers. Louisiana’s history in this regard illustrates the evolving political culture and trends of the state that differ from the national scene.

Of the 49 states that observe voter registration, four-sevenths require some affirmation of partisan status. And of those 28 states, in 25 Democrat registrations have declined since 2008 and in three-quarters of them Republican registrations have followed the same course. Meanwhile, those not affiliated (often called “independents” but legally in Louisiana known as “no party” registrants) have gone down in only 10.

The last year of the quadrennial election cycle typically has the highest number of registrants while the midterm has the lowest, with a slight increase in the third year such as 2011, so the drop partly is a result of that cyclical dynamic.

Still, the comparison of changes across the three categories clearly shows the dealignment effect. And when investigated at the micro level as with a single state, it also can tells about its changing electoral conditions.

As in Louisiana, where over the past eleven years some tremendous changes have happened. In 2000, at a shade over 950,000, white Democrats comprised well over half of all Democrats, over half of all white voters, more than white Republicans and no party voters combined, and not many fewer than all non-Democrats combined. Add the nearly 800,000 black Democrats, and even a decade ago Democrats constituted a powerful political force although more at the state and local level, as some displayed a dual partisanship that led them to vote regularly for Republicans for national offices.

The latest figures at the end of November of this year paint a much different picture. The number of white voters statewide has increased slightly, while black voters’ numbers have gone up about 10 percent. But the proportion of Democrats has fallen nearly 14 percent in the interim, or nearly 225,000. It would have fallen more without that increase in black registrants, although the majority of the additional entrants did not choose to register as Democrats, as the number of white Democrats has plunged about 29 percent or nearly 275,000.

No and other party registrants have increased around 190,000 or 39 percent since, but Republicans also have benefitted, boosting their numbers 27 percent or close to 164,000. That the combined figure of these two greatly exceeds the total loss by Democrats suggests disproportionately new entrants shy away from Democrats and switching that favors all but Democrats.

A review of annual changes confirms this supposition. White Democrats have lost more than one percent of their numbers every year, with the worst being over a seven percent plunge in 2010. By contrast, Democrats as a whole actually gained registrations twice over that span on the strength of black increases, mysteriously in 2003 and a hearty better than four percent jump in 2008 in response to the historic candidacy of Pres. Barack Obama, while Republicans increased in all but 2002 and 2006 with very small declines then, and with other and no party registrants decreasing only in 2010.

Republicans proved the exception to the midterm drop off in 2010 with a gain of over one percent, and in 2008 gained nearly five percent while, despite this typically being the year of largest changes upwards, no and other party registrant totals barely went higher, Democrats increased just over one percent on the strength of Obama’s candidacy, as white Democrats were off a steep four percent. The apparent deviance of these results is explained by this being the period of closed primaries in federal elections, where those who had been voting for Republicans in blanket primaries now could not, and had to switch their affiliations accordingly. These numbers reinforce the mistake Republican state officeholders made in not only allowing the system to revert back beginning next year, but in championing it, in terms of party-building.

So, in contrast to most states, Louisiana has not experienced unimpeded dealignment but has combined it with realignment away from Democrats towards Republicans. Further, this realignment has occurred markedly and in a discontinuous fashion only in concern with sub-national offices, while the gradual realignment concerning national elections matches the trend of the past fifty years. Why that acceleration occurred stems from the retreat of the populist persuasion, as the contradictions of it have become increasingly more difficult to hide in an era of wider information dissemination that has made more easily linkable the ideology and the issues of national politics with those at the state level.

Expect Louisiana to continue to buck the trend of dealignment dominance, at the national level largely a consequence of legal and social forces empowering candidates at the expense of parties, because candidates already have enjoyed such an advantage historically in the state. Whereas change promotes identification with candidates nationally, in Louisiana the factors bringing congruence of belief to partisanship only now are coming into prominence, to the GOP’s advantage. Unless or until Democrats at the state level differentiate themselves from the national party towards the ideological center, or the national party joins them in that effort, dealignment and realignment will pick away at them until their registrant numbers adhere to their actual voting strength as the state’s minority party.

LA chooses wisely to reward performance, not credentials

2011-12-22T11:50:00.007-06:00

Wisely, Louisiana continues to shift its philosophy in delivery of elementary and secondary education from assumed ability to actual performance by its abjuring to reimburse districts for teachers certified under a national standard.

Over a decade ago, R.S. 17:426.1 made obligatory the provision of a $5,000 annual bonus for teachers that picked up a certification, using their own resources, from the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards. It required the expense of local school boards but invited state reimbursement, subject to appropriation. Until fiscal year 2010-11, that was forthcoming.

But as the state’s budget tightened, Gov. Bobby Jindal and Legislature decided not to fund the stipend, thereby passing the cost on to local school districts.

Now the Jindal Administration has announced it plans permanently not to budget for reimbursement because of policy reasons. This deemphasizing also signals the law will be allowed to sunset for new entrants, scheduled now for the beginning of fiscal year 2013-14.

While this has launched uninformed handwringing (for example, editorialists complaining it was the state’s fault that nobody gets the stipend and is discouraging new applicants, even though all who qualify in fact are receiving it from local districts and the sunset date is what is driving the decrease in numbers attempting), it’s a step in the right direction because it shifts rewards away from mere credentialing to measurable results. It matters little whether one receives training and even excels at it; what counts is what product emerges from the performing of the job. Money therefore is spent better on incentives geared towards performance, such as merit pay, than in demonstrating theoretical mastery of craft.

Only during Jindal’s term has education focused at the micro level of the act of teaching and what it accomplishes for students, and state money finds a far more appropriate use there. For too long, the state has assumed credentialing alone denotes performance, instead of measuring real outputs. Unfortunately, those already enjoying the stipend would suffer an unfair cut in salary if the program was stricken legally, so local taxpayers should remain on the hook for an expense of no demonstrated value. But letting the sunset occur while and attrition slowly reduces local costs and the state concentrating funding efforts on performance here on out is the smartest thing policy-makers can do.

Election administration needs more efficiency, not money

2011-12-21T10:10:00.005-06:00

Sec. of State Tom Schedler whines about how his office will need more money to conduct elections before the first half of next year is out. Instead, he needs to become proactive and start lobbying policy-makers to change Louisiana’s election code to reduce inefficiency and waste in the conduct of elections.

After having asserted that he foresaw a deficit in the operations of his department approaching a half million dollars for the rest of fiscal year 2011-12, Schedler further was disconcerted to learn that recent mid-year shortfalls meant $1.5 million was getting chopped from his budget, or less than two percent of the total. Since elections must go on, by all indications some time before Jun. 30 the sum of those totals must find its way back into the Department of State’s coffers. It must pay in total almost all expenses for elections with federal and/or state candidates and/or issues on them, half of many others, and a portion of most of the remainder. It also pays half of expenses regarding equipment storage sites, equipment, and drayage, and also pays portions of local elections full-time personnel as well as that for commissioners and their training.

But whether the money currently spent on elections should be is another matter. There are several statutory and procedural changes that could be made that would reduce the cost of elections in Louisiana without compromising the quality of their administration:

1. Reduce the number of hours the polls are open on election day. Tied for the longest hours open in the country at 14, this is becoming increasingly obsolete as early voting takes hold. By maintaining the current pay levels for commissioners and those in charge, fewer hours makes it more attractive to perform a job that historically has attracted sufficient numbers with difficulty. This entails fewer commissioners needing training and thus lower costs.

2. Reduce the number of commissioners and machines needed at the polls. Again, early voting acceptance is creating more superfluous the number of machines and commissioners needed, which are tied together in state law. Especially in need of change is the special exemption in Orleans Parish that requires an extra commissioner per precinct; it should be made the same as all other parishes, particularly as it is not even the largest in population any more.

3. Consolidate precinct voting locations. Already allowed under Louisiana law, this is another desirable change driven by the imperative of increased early voting, which again would reduce the number of commissioners needed. Where geography allows for it, this should supercede the archaic system of one set of commissioners tied to one precinct (or even to one portion of names to a precinct), reducing wait times and/or the amount of commissioners needed with more efficient processing and less idle time. Consolidation also would reduce voter confusion in knowing where to physically present oneself and in location rental costs.

4. Eliminate voter registration cards. Louisiana already requires picture identification from a state government source produced by a prospective voter except under special circumstances. As other states have done, it could require only picture identification from a state government source in order to vote and, for those without a driver’s license or special identification card, issue others for free. Besides the supplies and printing expense elimination, which probably would more than compensate for the increased costs of the Department of Public Safety of issuing marginally more cards, this probably would decrease costs of compliance and verification at the registration end. A strategy employed by some is to flood offices with as many registrations as possible to get many votes as possible subsequently cast for favored candidates, whether the registrations are legal. With this check on elections integrity in place, this would discourage those efforts to some degree, meaning fewer resources devoted to these administrative tasks.

5. Along the lines above, a law prohibiting paying contractors per registration card submitted also would reduce ineligible registrations from clogging the system.

6. Make exclusive online posting of notices. Besides allowing voters without registration cards to look up what and where their precincts are, it eliminates the expensive publishing in journals of record of election dates and candidates and/or items.

7. Have fewer elections. While efforts in the last several years have pared several municipal-only dates to just one, special elections continue to plague the calendar. Those for legislative spots or, even less efficiently, local offices, keep cropping up. Legislation dictate that any vacancies in offices, where state law or local ordinance already does not do this, either be filled temporarily by a governing authority or waited upon until the next date available on the election calendar.

With all of these implemented, possibly the state could have saved the $2 million or so this year Schedler thinks will be needed although obviously it’s too late for any of this to work now. But their implementation could lower future expenses, and the next legislative session, with 2013 featuring the fewest elections in the quadrennial cycle, would present the optimal opportunity to make these changes in law. Schedler needs to help himself and the taxpayer out by stumping for them.

Attempt to subvert fund likely to fail, but without consequences

2011-12-20T10:35:00.007-06:00

Prosperity in Louisiana has forced austerity, in a sense, putting the state on the hook for a rash action of a couple of years back, but that same prosperity might end up saving the state from the consequences of that decision.

Voters wisely rejected this past fall’s Amendment 4, which would have loosened up requirements on use of money in the state’s Budget Stabilization Fund. Under narrowly-defined circumstances defining its use the BSF acts as a savings account. It gets deposits from a variety of constitutionally-defined sources, which is where the state got into trouble in budgeting for the 2010-11 fiscal year.

One source of funds is when severance tax revenues, most of which is from oil and gas extraction, exceed a statutorily-defined figure of $850 million.

Up to that amount, the state may use that money in any way except for that some goes back to the parishes from which extracted. Past that limit, the state must deposit excess funds into the BSF, unless the BSF is greater than four percent of previous total state revenues.

When the BSF was created, policy-makers did not really envision as scenario where the state would decline in overall revenues from state sources and have high severance tax receipts. Thus, a claim on “excess” mineral revenues never would be made in a year of budgetary stress that might include removing (legally, up to a third) of money from the BSF. But with the emergence of the Haynesville Shale discovery and rapidly escalating oil prices, combined with the economic recession and tepid, almost insignificant recovery, created precisely this situation.

So, as a stopgap measure, policy-makers passed a law trying to delay “excess” revenue payment into the BSF to a fiscal year after withdrawal from the BSF, by waiving the necessity as long as revenue declines year-over-year continued. The problem was that contradicted the Constitution, at the time pointed out by some but who eventually acquiesced. However, it did not escape the notice of others legally inclined, and drew a lawsuit that was suspended until an attempted constitutional fix, Amendment 4, could be passed.

It didn’t, and the lawsuit is back on. The defeat still stings some, who incorrectly argue as far as the BSF it means that “it doesn't matter how much it rained, we would never be able to use it.” It’s only the certain set of circumstances at the time that prevents its usage, and a necessary set that makes government less likely to live beyond its means. As gas and oil revenues are volatile, the restriction seems prudent.

The Constitution seems pretty clear on the subject, so the plaintiffs should win and put the state in a $150 million hole. Whether than occurs in the 2012-13 fiscal year depends upon the alacrity of the plaintiffs (who don’t seem to be in a big rush), the courts, and the state’s desire to drag things out by appeal. This may prevent the necessity of payment that next year and push into the next, when the fiscal picture may be brighter – and turn the $150 million into an interest-free loan of two years or more duration, saving the state money there.

Yet the problem may solve itself. Mostly in the area of gas, the boom has occurred because of advancement in technology that allows horizontal drilling. Louisiana law exempts for 24 months or well cost recovery, whichever comes first, proceeds from wells drilled this way that comprises most of the newly-producing wells. This means that of almost all of the recent tax exemptions in this area – about $250 million in the prior two years – much will get captured in future years (some decline in production will not be there for taxation). This will blast mineral revenues much higher, so high in fact that the four percent cap on the BSF will be hit (it’s around $800 million now) and thus these funds may get utilized by the state, to pay off the judgment and for other purposes.

So this probably will not turn out to be a crisis, and the integrity of the BSF will be preserved. Understanding this reinforces the wisdom of keeping the BSF unaltered from its present state.

Dardenne again whines about not spending more

2011-12-19T12:25:00.002-06:00

It's the unfortunate nature of government to always want more of the people's resources, usually the amounts demanded inversely related to the actual usefulness of the matter to be funded. Lt. Gov. Jay Dardenne regrettably demonstrates his acquiescence to this trait with his latest lament about how he can't get enough money to spend.

Dardenne has complained before about how the state does not dedicate all of the 0.03 percent sales tax it rakes off does not get used completely for the department he nominally heads, Culture, Recreation, and Tourism. He fingers as the worst culprit using those proceeds to subsidize special athletic events. Now he has a solution -- reaching into taxpayers' wallets.

He proposes establishing a fund for financing of these events, paid for by possibly diverting more of the proceeds from the sales tax or, worse, perhaps some kind of increase. Even if the tactic only was to divert, this locks away money that is needed for more pressing concerns and would compound the bad problem of too many dedications, too little discretion in the state's budgeting.

Prudent financial management dictates that you don't establish a permanent allocation for a episodic and unpredictable purpose. And there's nothing wrong with taking the money out of Dardenne's budget. All that means is fewer jet-setting trips and ad campaigns that do little to suck more visitors to the state, and especially pales in comparison to the many more pressing needs of the state.

Dardenne, like many politicians, seems to think that doing more with more is what denotes good service to the governed. That's completely backwards; doing less with less is what truly serves the people, allowing them to keep this hard-earned resources. He needs to understand this lesson.

New candidate illustrates dishonesty of Roemer's bid

2011-12-18T08:40:00.003-06:00

There’s the honest way to go about running for president, and then there’s former Gov. Buddy Roemer’s way, illustrated by another announced contender’s proclamations about his anticipated campaign.

Former Salt Lake City Mayor Rocky Anderson recently declared his candidacy for the nation’s highest office through the vehicle of a new political party, mouthing the same conspiracy theories about moneyed interests controlling America, and in doing so trumped Roemer’s on credibility in three ways. First, Anderson, although like Roemer personally wealthy, made his fortune the old-fashioned way of liberals, as a trial lawyer, not through the system that Roemer used to supplement his family’s wealth and now criticizes. Second, he’s been a hardcore, fringe leftist his entire political career, not shifting views as has Roemer.

But, third and most relevant to the current election cycle and the issue on which Roemer has asserted purifies him relative to other candidates, Anderson also says he’ll accept no campaign donation over $100 and actually means it by running for this new party.

By contrast, Roemer has indicated that if he fails to win the Republican nomination (he may fail to win even a single delegate), he’ll pursue actively winning the endorsement of the Americans Elect group. The organization plans to have a nationwide referendum on candidates it selects, with the winner among them receiving potentially tens of millions of dollars in campaign assistance along with general election ballot access in many states.

By accepting any such endorsement, much less attempting to get it, Roemer proves himself a hypocrite on the donation/”big money” issue. A founding member gave over a million dollars to get the group started, and, as it legally may keep its donors names and amounts secret, there’s no public knowledge of how many and who they are who gave sums over and well in excess of $100. There’s no moral distinction between using large donations given to you directly and indirectly, which will be the case if Roemer succeeds in getting ratified. At least a Republican nomination would be by an organization regulated by the states that spends on behalf of a candidate, whose donors must be made public (and who can give much more than $100), and whose assistance would constitute just a tiny portion of its nominee’s total spending, while Roemer hopes to get aid from a private, unregulated organization whose assistance would constitute the vast bulk of expenditures for his campaign.

Roemer has claimed he’s against shadowy, big money interests playing a major role in supporting a campaign. Yet he invites that through his solicitation of the Americans Elect coronation. It’s just another example of the lack of credibility that Roemer has as a candidate when his actions past and present are contrasted with his message, making him seem more a candidate of convenience than conviction

Election market suggests LA judicial spots priced right

2011-12-15T07:20:00.003-06:00

Who’s gotten the biggest pay raises in Louisiana among its class of employees over the past 11 years? Statewide elected officials have gotten a small increase, and so have legislators, if you count their per diems, but it isn’t either. Not even state classified employees, until the last two or three years (depending on what your job was) did get hikes of four percent annually in most cases. Don’t even consider unclassified employees, the majority of whom work in higher education and have seen little in the way of any salary increase in this century.

No, it’s judges, whose salaries have about doubled over that time span, although they did not get anything in the past year. And now the body, largely represented by members of the judiciary or those of the profession whose members comprise it, lawyers, charged with recommendations on this matter thinks there should be another hike over the next two years, although it graciously wants to hold their size to about, in aggregate, half of the typical rate of the past.

The Judicial Compensation Commission, whose recommendation needs legislative approval for anything to happen, argues that Louisiana’s elected state judges are falling behind their comrades in other similar states. One of its judicial members decries that salaries are so low it discourages people to serve in these posts, as “They can't afford to be judges” on the current salary.

Which qualifies, if not wins, as the whopper of the year coming from a state elected official. Gaining election to judgeships in Louisiana, even of the local kind, is considered like winning the lottery until legally-forced retirement. This is because you set your own schedule, have the legal community fawn about you, don’t have to deal with clients or employers, and have a job virtually for life at a salary higher than many lawyers make anyway. This is why, whenever an incumbent steps down, there’s a mad rush to get elected, with large monies spent on campaigns (legally, by organizations on behalf of a candidate instead of the candidate). And once elected, short of some disastrous ethical breach, either the Louisiana Supreme Court or Senate will not have you removed, nor will you even be opposed for reelection (if so on occasion, not seriously) much less lose any such bid (with the very rare exception).

In fact, demand so much exceeds supply for these posts that probably salaries could be cut in half and there still would be a land rush on for any open seat, such are the perquisites of it. Don’t be fooled: these positions are highly sought after at any salary level. As such, any justification that salaries need improving to attract takers, much less talented ones is reduced singly to the mere consideration of whether it pays a living wage. And, yes, at pushing 150 G’s annually, it does.

Also failing as an argument supporting the raise is the comparison with other states. Just because they have higher rates doesn’t mean their judges aren’t overpaid as well. This is not to say that judges do not work hard and perform a necessary job usually well. But neither is it to say they are underpaid and deserve a raise. Note also that nobody is holding a gun to their heads to do it, so any judge dissatisfied at not getting a raise is free to resign or to not run for reelection. Oddly enough, I don’t think there would be any takers for that at any time in the future even if salaries were frozen until the 22^nd Century.

Judicial pay increases at current pay levels are a luxury affordable only in flush times. For the foreseeable future, that does not describe Louisiana’s fiscal environment. The Legislature needs to stow this request for better times.

Response to challenge LA higher education improvement

2011-12-14T11:05:00.007-06:00

The Louisiana Board of Regents made the right call in holding Louisiana State University – Eunice accountable for its decisions, but the episode demonstrates the perils the policy-makers and educators face in trying to improve delivery of higher education.

School and LSU system officials petitioned the Regents to exempt LSU-E from meeting requirements voluntarily entered into by the college in order to get increased state funding and higher tuition rates. While almost every requirement was met, one fell distinctly short, and administrators asked that, under the agreement’s “extraordinary circumstances” clause, for next year the failure not abrogate its chances to receive at least a portion of almost 25 percent of projected funding. They argued that budget cuts, in part causing larger class sizes that theoretically would have a negative impact on the problem area, retention, and a general slow economic climate justified the request.

The Regents refused, rightly noting that all institutions were on the record knowing that state budgetary tightness did not constitute an excuse and that LSU-E had been told that, if in doubt, to lower its projections of retention.

Apparently that was not done at the behest of LSU System President John Lombardi, perhaps because he thought aggressive goals met would reduce pressure on the school from being moved out of the LSU System, as it is just one of two that are not under the Louisiana Community and Technical College System, designed to administer two-year colleges like LSU-E.

But none of this is new information. In its annual report on the agreement last spring, LSU-E noted the retention problem and cited the excuses. Not that these seem completely compelling: average class size barely increased from a little under 22 to a little over 24, and economic harder times tend to increase the number of people going to college typically. In fact, that historical observation might have been at the heart of the retention problem. As community colleges in Louisiana are open admissions, more marginal students may have been enrolling, increasing the proportion overall that washed out.

The Regents did say they would set up a contingency fund of perhaps three-quarters of the lost state funding if LSU-E could show improvement, fair enough considering the school met its other goals. Such a response also begins to address, but not entirely, the perverse incentive inherent to the nature of the use of retention as a standard: the pressure to fail to demand excellence in the classroom.

Simply, in order to meet retention goals, meaning students stay at that school, and when combined with a goal of increasing timely graduation rates, the path of least resistance is not to insist on rigor in teaching. Don’t ask much of students to get good grades and to pass, and more of them will stay in school and graduate, making retention and graduation statistics look better.

Most instructors instinctively recoil from passing along students that they can tell through their performances clearly do not deserve to pass or to get any but the lowest passing grades. However, at the same time many disincentives exist both internally and externally to seek and encourage excellence through establishing and implementing demanding standards in the assignment of grades. Internally, it means more work for instructors (the more you ask of students, the more you must put into it such as in preparation and grading demands). Externally, students with lower grades tend to complain more to administrators (and more often than ever these days, given the grade inflation they have enjoyed before in their educational careers), who then feel compelled to investigate the matter to ensure it’s the standards and not the methods triggering the restiveness. Nobody likes these headaches that can be reduced or avoided simply by not asking much from students.

In an environment where lower salaries, almost no increases in it over the past decade, and other inequities are perceived by faculty members, it’s easy to adopt the attitude of (as I have been told) “give yourself a raise, work less.” And subtle pressure may extend from administrators to adopt lower standards in order to meet standards. Neither attitude promotes excellence in the classroom by discouraging the use of high standards both as a motivational tool to achieve more learning and as an intrinsic reward itself.

The LSU-E response on this account should prove interesting. Will instructors back off and/or administrators push for mediocrity, in order to increase retention? The greatest policy change that lies ahead for the ambitious reconstruction of Louisiana public higher education will be to increase rigor that improves outcomes while preventing failure to achieve this through deleterious gamesmanship, unintentional or otherwise.

Rates set ignoring risk bad for LA consumers, investors

2011-12-13T08:55:00.010-06:00

My friend Public Service Commissioner Foster Campbell pitched an idea to members of the press concerning electric utility rates in Louisiana. Here’s why in the long run it would be injurious to both Louisiana ratepayers and (some of whom are also) investors.

Campbell mused that the average rate of return allowed by the PSC, the five-member board that sets these rates in Louisiana, at 10 percent allowed too great of a return to providers. He thought more like 8 percent would do, but, of more interest, he thought then pegging that rate of return on equity (even with the state’s current average being in line with regional and national averages) to other investments’ rates of return would do a better job of producing what he considered a reasonable rate of return for utilities, with the implication that today’s allowed rates were too high.

(As a side note, the figures he quoted as comparison benchmarks – 1 percent return on a certificate of deposit and 3.5 percent on a mortgage – if that’s what he gets, he’s got some pretty sweet deals. The average 30-year rate on a mortgage yesterday was 3.96 percent, while the average 1-year CD earned 0.75 percent.)

But this view ignores the reality that risk differs among instruments, and, relative to each other, varies over time. For example, CD rates are based upon instruments that are considered even closer to being risk free (despite the presidency of Barack Obama), treasury paper. As these are essentially risk-free, their basic risk does not vary (their rates thus reflecting only the time value of money). However, mortgage rates do vary in risk over time, creating larger and smaller spreads between the 30-year T-bond and 30 year fixed mortgage rates.

As of yesterday, the spread between the average mortgage and T-bond was 0.914 percent. But earlier this year at its beginning, it averaged 0.478 percent. But when Obama took office, the spread was nearly 2.65 percent. In the beginning of 2007, it was around 1.42 percent. In the beginning of 2000, it averaged about 1.6 percent. Ten years earlier, it was at 1 percent. But at the start of 1983, it averaged about 3 percent.

Simply, because the relative risk of mortgages varies independently from Treasury-backed instruments, tying the two together makes little sense. Even trying to create bands around rates, where spreads could fluctuate, largely is futile because sometimes the spreads have represented very large portions of the actual rates (for example, in early 2009 the spread was almost half of the mortgage rate, and almost as large as the Treasury rate, while earlier this year it was less than a quarter of the Treasury rate and a fifth of the mortgage rate). And mortgages are considered among the safer instruments; equities such as utilities, even if having lower relative volatility compared to other equities, are much riskier still with wider swings in risk relative to other much less risky investments.

Campbell’s scheme could cause imposition of rates of return, when relative low-risk instruments are in periods of lower risk relative to equities, to be so artificially low that they cause providers to cut back on maintenance, service, and expansion, inconveniencing customers and retarding economic growth, and hurt the return of investors, few of whom are wealthy and some of whom may also be customers. It also could backfire, in that in periods of low relative risk of equities to fixed-income, utilities might get “excess” returns.

The current regulatory regime that has analysts prepare for commissioners their best guess about what profit a utility would earn in a competitive market seems more than adequate to take into account complex factors that a simple formula cannot. That Louisiana rates appear on par with others demonstrates no “excess” profits exist in the system. Campbell’s flawed idea is an inferior solution looking for a nonexistent problem.

Media finally conceding wisdom of Jindal berm strategy

2011-12-12T10:30:00.003-06:00

One wonders why it took the mainstream media so long to realize what readers of this space knew well over a year ago, that the leveraging opportunities of Gov. Bobby Jindal’s decision to build sand berms as a defense against potentially polluting oil made the decision wise.

When the Macondo well explosion erupted to begin emptying oil into the Gulf of Mexico off Louisiana’s coast, one of the parties involved, explorer and producer BP, asserted it would pay for all damages. Assured of a funding stream at no cost to taxpayers, the Jindal Administration began an ambitious plan to build sand berms to catch any oil that might threaten ecologically-sensitive areas.

As a bonus, the choice had real value added for it could be designed in a way for the berms to double as barrier islands to aid in coastal preservation and restoration; in other words, at no cost to Louisiana, hundreds of millions of dollars could go years ahead of schedule for improving the coastline, saving even more by stopping any deterioration faster. Regrettably, at a time when these considerations should not have mattered, because it was conservative Republican Jindal taking the lead, the plan baselessly caught flak from partisan and ideological opponents.

Even after the rectitude of the decision increasingly was becoming clear, the Democrat Pres. Barack Obama Administration continued a rearguard action to try to discredit it, despite that fact that, disregarding the enormous spillover benefits no less, expectancy theory before taking it showed the decision’s benefits exceeded its costs, in the short term its fruits subsequently had protected the coast from a relatively small amount of oil, and continue to provide long-term protection. Now, a year later, more time has provided additional verification of the wisdom of the decision, as the berms continue to act as the linchpin to an expanding effort still using funding entirely cost-free to Louisiana.

These days, Jindal’s critics have gone into full retreat on the matter, with the exception of the propagation of some wacko conspiracy theories, while the mainstream media only now seems to be catching on to the decision’s wisdom. Even so (especially for non-readers of this space), it likely will remain one of the least publicized, biggest successes of Jindal’s terms in office.