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

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.

Create cheap dental coverage to foster responsibility

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.

Mistaken ruling opts for convenience despite clear intent

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.

Factless distortion campaign continues against plan deal

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.

Roemer adds another layer of hypocrisy to campaign

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.

Fortitude needed to complete needed retirement reforms

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.

Strain governor pursuit possibility good for conservatives

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.

Hypocrisy flows from LA teachers' union leaders

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.

Politicized theory, assumptions negate report usefulness

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.

Lawsuit compels more state exit of managing benefits

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.