As the law of the instrument goes, give a small boy
a hammer and he will find everything he encounters needs pounding. That vibe
emanates from a recent article
from the Lafayette Advertiser concerning
Louisiana’s college enrollments, where the author fixates on one factor explaining
variation in that level when in fact this one thing, tuition and fee levels,
has less to do with enrollment variance than many others.
The piece begins by alleging “Eight years of state
budget cuts have led to some student turn-offs to public higher education in
Louisiana, and it's showing,” then further postulates cuts translated into
higher tuition and fees, which then discouraged some students from attending.
As evidence, it points to the number of attending students in academic year
2010 – a figure derived from what is called the “14th day registration,”
or the number enrolled at an institution on the 14th day of the fall
term – compared to 2015, a drop of around 10,000.
The obvious question appears immediately – if “eight
years of state budget cuts” caused this, why do we view only five years of
data; why not view AY 2008 to AY 2016 data? Not including the latter endpoint
makes sense at this time because it’s impossible: the 14th day
number for all institutions won’t come through for another month. Which then
begs another question: why did this piece get written now, using nearly
year-old data when waiting a month would have produced fresh data?
They
may have a point, but good luck in ever getting the state to pay off or
change its ways, so compromise should be the order of the day.
Walker Mayor Rick Ramsey feels the state’s
construction of Interstate 12 exacerbated flooding the town received in the
middle of the month. Specifically, the retaining wall of the east-west highway running
down the median appeared to trap water that pooled into the municipality. More
aggravatingly for Ramsey, years ago he requested that the state’s Department of
Transportation and Development provide more drainage underneath, which largely
went ignored.
Present DOTD Secretary Shawn Wilson, who served as
chief of staff of the agency almost a dozen years prior to taking the helm
earlier this year, as much as admitted Ramsey’s proposition. Framing the
argument in expectancy value terms, he said the decision to put in the barrier
and drainage associated with I-12 did not factor in such a severe weather event
because of its remoteness in happening. He hoped the department could work with
those aggrieved by the outcome rather than have the controversy go to court, as
Ramsey as threatened.
Quite correctly the Louisiana Republican Party refused
to censure Public Service Commissioner Scott Angelle and Commissioner of
Administration Jay
Dardenne for their failure to support a Republican candidate for governor
last year, even as Dardenne deserves approbation for the greater disservice he
did the state’s people.
Last weekend the GOP’s State Central Committee
met, with items for consideration including a vote of formal disapproval for Republican
Angelle’s staying silent when Republican Sen. David Vitter made the
runoff against eventual victor Democrat Gov. John Bel Edwards,
and one for Republican Dardenne’s endorsing of Edwards. Angelle now runs for
Congress while shortly after the election’s conclusion Dardenne took the top
job in the Edwards Administration.
Angelle deserved no such condemnation. He gave no
reason for his reticence, which clearly came from two sources even if he never
publicly will admit this: his pique at voters’ rejection of him and a belief
that Vitter should not have bested him but also he wanted to continue to have
an elective political career. Thus, he would not endorse Vitter who in his mind
he felt “unfairly” bested him (because Vitter had admitted commission of a “serious
sin” believed to have been soliciting prostitution yet whose bare-knuckle style
of politics kept him in power despite that embarrassing revelation), but he
also would not endorse Edwards as a way to pay back an ungrateful electorate
and to count coup on Vitter because to do so probably would anger his
conservative base too much, leading him to forfeit any chance for him to run
for Congress successfully.
Louisiana’s Republican Party wisely
pulled back on a resolution that reputes to prevent felons from running for
office using its label, but pledges made to try again continue to ignore what
state and constitutional law have to say on the process.
This past weekend, the party’s State Central
Committee rejected bringing to a vote such a measure amid concerns that it did
not have the legal authority to do so. Members had fewer than 24 hours to
review the proposal that emanated from the Executive Committee made up of party
leaders, even as it wisely
dropped ambiguous language prone to politicization that also would have
prevented “racist” individuals from running as Republicans.
Party leaders maintained that a Louisiana
political party did have the legal authority to limit use of its label in this
fashion by candidates, alleging that both the state’s chief legal officer,
Atty. Gen. Jeff Landry,
and the state’s chief elections officer, Sec. of State Tom Schedler,
both Republicans, concurred. If so, whatever rationale purportedly lies behind
this argument seems counter to statute.