While Louisiana’s state government should strive
for as accurate a census count as possible, state taxpayers shouldn’t have their
money wasted on a matter infused with partisanship that is best left to local
governments.
This week, Democrat Gov. John Bel Edwards
issued an executive
order creating
a complete census count committee. These, urged by the federal government,
strive to engage in activities that maximize citizen participation in the
census for 2020, and almost every state plus many local governments have established
these.
Census
data serve many purposes, although three have implications far beyond the
rest. These determine the number of House of Representatives seats for each
state, create the baselines through which state and local government reapportionment
take place, and underpin the distribution of $675
billion in federal grants.
On the budget, Louisiana’s Republican legislative majority
will have to choose.
The strong majorities in each legislative chamber
know that Democrat Gov. John Bel Edwards
will spend everything he can to keep inflated state government a reality. The outgoing
Legislature gave him the chance by foolishly extending a temporary sales tax
increase seven years. Occurring simultaneously with federal
tax law changes that boosted state income tax receipts, the state likely
for the next few years will take too much money from the people.
But for use the excess collection,
constitutionally, must garner recognition from the state’s Revenue Estimating
Conference. Here, as
Republicans demonstrated earlier this month, the veto power each
legislative chamber has can prevent this, in effect forcing the spending of fewer
dollars. In essence, if not recognized officially even if in fact collected,
the money would just pile up.
For its upcoming presidential
search, the Louisiana State University System may take a turn towards
insularity that could produce a pick either risky or unsuitable.
With current Pres. King Alexander preparing to vacate
the premises, by spring the System hopes to have a new leader in place, who
also will head the Baton Rouge campus. Two familiar names quickly surfaced in connection
with the job, neither fitting the traditional model of a doctoral holder with
substantial academic experience.
That’s not necessarily a bad thing. Reviews of the
term of Sean O’Keefe, who led LSU through the hurricane disasters of 2005, were
positive. He holds only a masters degree and had spent just a few years in
academia prior to his appointment. However, he had served in a couple of high-profile
George
W. Bush Administration posts and had years of prior government service in
high-level Department of Defense positions. (He also had insider status as part
of a politically-prominent family – for better
and worse – from New Orleans.)
In its latest spiel of demagoguery, the Democrat
Gov. John Bel Edwards
Administration now
attacks the concept of checks and balances.
That spleen venting came courtesy of Commission of
Administration Jay
Dardenne, who took umbrage at the Revenue Estimating Conference’s
unwillingness to approve of revenue estimates higher than the current
standards from April. Although economists from his office and the Legislature
said they expected higher collections for fiscal years 2020 and 2021, with
three members of the panel (including Dardenne) willing to raise the official
estimates by $170 million and $103 million, respectively, because the House of
Representatives’ designee Republican state Rep. Cameron Henry
objected, that didn’t go through.
Henry noted that waiting longer would improve
forecast accuracy. History backs him up. A recent study of REC forecasting
showed a typical error of 1.7 percent (excluding 2006-07 affected by the hurricane
disasters of 2005), which translates over time into an $83.3 million error.
About four-fifths of the time the error came on the low range, but errors have
come a fifth of the time in overestimating – and four times in the past decade –
and in the past decade have averaged an overestimation of about $100 million.