Marvin credibility increasingly on thin ice

Subsequent to a puzzling exchange at a community meeting, Republican 26^th District Atty. Schuyler Marvin finds himself with a growing no-win political situation in the context of what has happened to a slew of elected officials in Bossier City over the past four years

The parish’s political insiders in the city have had a rough time of it in recent years. First came the 2021 elections, where voters dumped GOP former Mayor Lo Walker and two city councilors, all part of the same cabal with Marvin. And just from qualifying for this year’s round, three others – Republicans David Montgomery and Jeff Free and Democrat Bubba Williams – removed themselves from reelection consideration as public antipathy towards their high-handed style of governance grew, mainly over the issue of their illegally blocking the sending to voters of a petition installing term limits on city elected officials. Two others, Republican Vince Maggio and independent Jeff Darby who also voted on multiple occasions to engage in that illegal action, have drawn opposition to their reelection bids.

After multiple courts chastised the five who broke their oaths of office with these votes, with one panel deeming their actions construable as malfeasance in office which is a felony, perturbed parish residents began petitioning Marvin to investigate the matter or to call in the state to do so. Not that reformers should have much confidence that Marvin should do either, for Marvin – son of a former district attorney – is among the most insider of parish insiders and has a history of protecting allies when his office is put in a situation where it may wade into legal controversy.

Tate tries con job on opposing new NIH cost rule

When you’re playing the big con, your mark can’t know he’s been taken even after he’s been taken. If a recent communiqué by Louisiana State University System Pres. William Tate IV about changing federal regulations about National Institutes of Health grants indicates anything, Tate shows he would excel at utilizing information asymmetrically to score a big payday for his organization.

Last week, the NIH issued new guidelines about how awardees could utilize its grants. It said, barring unusual circumstances to be worked out between NIH and the awardee, that it would typically set indirect costs awarded at a ceiling of 15 percent. Indirect costs are for facilities, or depreciation on buildings, equipment and capital improvements, interest on debt associated with certain buildings, equipment and capital improvements, and operations and maintenance expenses; and administration, or general administration and general expenses such as the director’s office, accounting, personnel, and all other types of expenditures not listed specifically under one of the subcategories of “facilities.”

Typically, past NIH awards to university researchers averaged 27-28 percent in indirect costs, but the new policy impacts all current grants for expenses henceforth starting this week and forward as well as for all new grants issued. And from the reaction from higher education, you would have thought the Earth had stopped turning on its axis.

Cantrell doesn't enjoy last laugh as NO declines

Between the two of them, singer Lauren Daigle is laughing last and loudest compared to Democrat New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell as another visible decline of the city under recent mayors.

This past weekend, Daigle performed, in well-received fashion, at the Super Bowl in New Orleans. She saw this as vindication for events of over three years ago, when Cantrell made a play to cancel Daigle appearing on the television show Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve that was set to have a satellite location in New Orleans.

Daigle said she was in talks with the production to appear in the hours before 2021 rolled in around Jackson Square, but before anything concrete formed a couple of months prior Daigle on a whim had participated in a concert by a friend there. At the time, orders issued by Cantrell through emergency Wuhan coronavirus pandemic powers limited outdoors gatherings to 50 people with masks (despite that already evidence had accumulated that mandates to wear face coverings outdoors didn’t do a thing to prevent virus spread, and subsequently more confirmation came). The size of the crowd was considerably larger and many didn’t cover their faces.

Make LA civil service panel reform priority

While all of the attention has gone to what control the governor would have over the State Civil Service Commission, ignored has been perhaps a more important change over establishing job classifications that came to light last week, reminding of the necessity of that alteration.

Republican Gov. Jeff Landry wanted to have the SCSC at its last meeting to change 21 positions, totaling 900 current jobs, in state government from the classified to unclassified service as hired after Jul. 1. Classified positions provide their holders more job security and a defined schedule of compensation, while unclassified employees can be more easily hired and fired and be paid in a greater compensation range.

Landry Administration officials testified that these positions, attorneys and engineers, as classified disallowed offerings of competitive salaries that created shortages and inability into inducing continuity into the workforce. Additionally, compared to public sector employment nationally, Louisiana state government has among the highest per capita number of attorneys and engineers employed, so the plan would be to have the flexibility to pay more and maneuver the number of positions according to market conditions, which almost certainly would mean fewer total jobs than at present.

Yet the Commission, which has a history of trying to preserve state employment jobs and circumscribing merit-based solutions to boost employee productivity, rejected the move, with commissioners in the majority claiming doing this would create more instability in times of budgetary stress. With one commissioner absent, only two of six voted to approve, perhaps not coincidentally the two appointees of Landry wanting to approve and three appointees of Democrat former Gov. John Bel Edwards plus the elected state classified employee representative disapproving.

While the concept of civil service is valuable, in that it tries to minimize politics in personnel decisions that threatens to diminish performance, the way it’s structured in Louisiana gives too much power to the unelected Commission. Aside from the employee representative, each of the six private college leaders gives the governor a list of three individuals to choose from for the rolling six-year fixed terms representing all congressional districts. While this insulates selection from political pressures by elected officials, it makes it susceptible to pressure from employee special interests and no other state uses such a walled-off procedure.

That was a problem GOP state Sen. Jay Morris tried to solve with a bill last year to amend Constitution for the selection process. It would have allowed the governor three unmediated selections with the other three from the aggregated list of three nominations by six leaders. This would have inculcated more responsiveness from appointees to overcome the over-insulation of commissioners that leads them to listen more to the special interest of 34,000 or so state employees than to 4.6 million state residents.

Predictably, the mainstream media spun a narrative that this was a power grab by Landry and confined its reporting almost exclusively to the appointment issue. But the amendment also would have removed exclusive power to make such a change as had been petitioned last week from the Commission and given the Legislature the ability to make these changes by statute.

This also would have helped to rebalance the scales and even possibly obviate the need to change the appointment process, maybe in combination with term limits. As increasingly government becomes less immune to market forces, the Legislature is a much nimbler institution to address job classification issues to maintain efficiency and effectiveness in running a properly-sized government.

Last year, the Senate gave the required two-thirds majority to the bill, but the measure came up a couple of votes short in the House likely due to absences in the crush of business at session’s end, so it didn’t make it to the people for their approval. Morris or somebody else needs to try again this year, as this reform will aid Landry’s salutary goal of paring unnecessary spending in state government and make it work better.

LA wind energy grifters bray about permit halt

As Republican Pres. Donald Trump enters the third week of his second term in office, Louisiana grifters – including a state representative – aggrieved at Trump’s turning off the firehose of taxpayer benefits to them have started complaining.

Perhaps taking a cue from a recent Associated Press article about Trump’s suspension and review of wind energy permits, the Baton Rouge Advocate pounded out a Louisiana version. Both discussed the presumed economic benefits from allowing wind power construction and generation, while the AP piece added this constituted a rebranded strategy from hyping the alleged threat of catastrophic anthropogenic global warming to stressing jobs and economic development from wind power.

The Advocate article echoes the development angle. It parades several individuals involved in or advocating for support industries, including Republican state Rep. Joseph Orgeron, to complain how not only would am embargo on wind power development curtail a nascent Louisiana industry but also in doing so potentially cost the state tax revenues from it.