Between The Lines

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

2012-01-18T09:20:00.001-06:00

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. 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

2011-12-20T10:35:00.006-06:00

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.

LA GOP success may moot party governance controversy

2011-12-11T10:55:00.003-06:00

The Louisiana Republican State Central Committee met yesterday. Talk may have focused on the fact that only 16 of 230 vacancies occurred when qualification for seats on this body for the next term ended the day before, two fewer than for the 2008 election and certainly better than the 38 of 210 vacancies for their Democrat counterparts, demonstrating the former’s ascendancy and the latter’s decline. But by qualification for the 2016 election, because of this ascendancy Republicans might be like Democrats and thereby sidestep a controversy about their districts that nearly derailed this election.

Last month, longtime RSCC member (and the man holding the singular distinction of losing to David Duke for elective office) John Treen sued to prevent the election. He contended that the official schedule for submitting boundaries of districts had not been followed, and therefore the default according to R.S. 18:443.2 of a member per legislative district would have to be followed. While he argued on legal grounds, he indicated the request also would have the effect of decreasing representation on the SCC from more ideologically social conservative elements.

However, the federal judiciary disagreed, in the form of (interestingly, the former head of state Democrats) District Judge James Brady, and elections and qualification for these districts proceeded as the state party had planned.

For his trouble, Treen redrew a 2008 opponent, Public Service Commissioner Eric Skrmetta, which may end his tenure, as typically when an elected official runs against someone who isn’t for these spots, historically that official wins (Skrmetta would be elected to the PSC months after his attempt for the committee seat, which Treen won with 54 percent of 634 votes cast).

But the question of the party drawing its own districts may become moot by the next election cycle. The operative statute giving the party essentially free rein in drawing districts, so long as they are contained within state House of Representatives’ districts, applies only to recognized parties with less than 30 percent of the state’s registered voters. Otherwise, as Democrats currently must follow, R.S. 18:441.1 applies that mandates one female and one male representative from each of the 105 House districts (which has the tendency to increase seats with no qualifiers).

At a little under 27 percent after qualification for state contests this fall, the GOP continued to operate under the same statute as it has. But considering in 2007 Republicans comprised only 24 and two-thirds percent, and in 2003 a bit over 21 and a half percent, the same growth rate could push the party above the 30 percent mark. Ironically, this may achieve what Treen wanted, as presently the party’s ability to draw more boundaries within districts where there are more Republicans will get negated under the other statute.

So perhaps this will be the last cycle where this controversy occurs. Not that this doesn’t mean plenty of drama may remain; for example, while many seats are unopposed, both of the state GOP’s national committee members face challengers, with one, Ruth Ulrich, squaring off against former Rep. John Cooksey in perhaps the highest profile contest of all. A privilege of serving on the Republican National Committee means automatic delegate status in picking a Republican presidential nominee during a contentious primary season this spring, and no doubt plenty of other lower profile but equally vigorous skirmishes will occur for both parties on Mar. 24.

Pay plan disposition may signal Jindal strategic shift

2011-12-08T08:20:00.003-06:00

The perfunctory approval of the Joint Governmental Affairs Committee of the latest pay plan to make it out of the State Civil Service Commission, and then its expected approval next week by that body, may signal a shift of strategy in the long campaign by the Gov. Bobby Jindal Administration to create a more efficient classified civil service.

This endorsement of the rather tepid changes, which now sends the proposal back to the SCSC for public comment and formal approval at its next meeting next week, does not now attain what Jindal has stated he wants in a new pay plan. Principally, it does not allow for pay raise levels to be tied to evaluation category (the present five being collapsed into three), nor within a level allowing agency supervisors flexibility in determining raises. The one-size-fits all current system where roughly 99 percent of rated employees fall into the top three categories and all get the same four percent raise acts more as a cost-of-living raise (an actual one not given now for over a decade) than any motivational tool or wise expenditure of taxpayers’ dollars that accurately matches compensation to productivity.

Yet the new plan, less bold that ones passed out by the SCSC previously when not all non-elected appointees had come from Jindal but he vetoed as they did not contain exactly what he wanted, looks certain to go to Jindal as he has given no indication that he will reject it.

After two failed tries and boosting his number of appointees to six of seven members, one would think if a plan even less like the one he appears to want than previous ones he rejected got proposed, some word would have come from him that it wasn’t going to fly and it would not have progressed to this stage.

If Jindal does sign off on it, no later than the middle of January, this likely indicates a change in strategy to an incremental approach. More time would seem beneficial as the offer also contains other changes of a more procedural nature that may take time to implement. Also, the more radical past attempts attracted a flurry of employee, if spurious, complaints, so the thinking may be to get the less controversial stuff through before more substantial changes. So Jindal approval should not be construed as acquiescence to the SCSC not wishing to go as far as him, but as a process of building to his desired alterations.

If so, it appears the systemic changes wanted by Jindal will not occur before the 2013-14 fiscal year. As one current change shifts all evaluation to a fiscal year calendar, the state would wish for the 2012-13 fiscal year beginning next July to operate under the new rules before tackling anything else. That is a shame, as the state likely that year would save tens of millions of dollars through increased productivity and reduced or no raises going out to low performers. However, this probably is another Jindal strategic concession, just as his inactivity over the past couple of years in pushing home his ideal plan after the previous tries can be written off as not wishing to rile some state employees as his reelection approached.

His second term now secure, Jindal now has the opportunity to finish this job, more gradually, before he leaves office. That would leave only one more nagging issue unaddressed for the SCSC to handle – the wild inflation of evaluative standards that rates almost every state classified employee as at least competent, thus qualifying for the flat pay hike, far above the norm for private sector workers. With the ability for supervisors to give flexible increases, that would make easier dealing with the consequences of this tendency, which also wastes taxpayer resources. Hopefully, the actions in conjunction with the presently-proposed plan indicate a projection to this point.

Maybe good politics, but Landrieu on jury bad for process

2011-12-07T09:55:00.003-06:00

It’s great politics for New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu to serve on a jury. But the symbolic benefits he seeks to reap for his own ambitions come with real costs to the integrity of the judicial process – and might backfire on him if things go to an extreme conclusion.

This week, Landrieu found himself in the jury pool, and then was accepted by parties to the trial of accused murdered Gerald Nickles. He perceives the experience as beneficial to his quest to gain insight into ways to lower the nation’s homicide rate of any major city over the past few years by examining this microcosm of the larger environment (Landrieu is a lawyer by trade but did not practice criminal law).

Yet his service, which he no doubt hopes generates an aura that he doesn’t see himself as too important to try to avoid an important civic duty and that’s he’s an ordinary, concerned, and dutiful citizen like voters fancy themselves to be, appears problematic on a practical level for a few reasons.

The least of these would be wondering who’s running the city while he’s listening to testimony for hours a day for several days; rest assured, New Orleans has plenty of deputy mayors to keep things going, such as they are.

More of an issue is how his presence will alter the outcome of the trial. There’s no report that he’s the jury’s foreman, but just his presence may cause one or more jurors to defer unusually to his views in deliberation, given the naturally-assumed authority they will ascribe to him.

Even more intriguing, it’s an oddity that he got selected without objection by the city or defense. About the last person lawyers like to see on the juries in a case like this, especially the defense, are educated people, in particular other lawyers. But there he is, possibly because …

… if it all goes wrong for the defense, Nickles’ lawyer might ask for a mistrial, stating Landrieu was a hopelessly biased juror because of his political desire to be seen as doing something about the murder rate, and one way to do that would be through a conviction. Or, she could argue that since the public safety forces are lead by him as mayor, he naturally is prejudiced against her client by their story. As such, her move to allow him on the jury might be a stroke of genius as an insurance policy if a guilty verdict gets rendered. She already has questioned the role of publicity surrounding his service on the trial.

However, let’s say the jury reaches that verdict and there’s no complaint from the defense about Landrieu or the judge dismisses such a complaint. Then Landrieu might find himself in a political minefield because the jury would have to decide whether to impose a capital sentence (I am assuming from that facts reported, although the charge itself has not yet been, that Nickels stands accused of first-degree murder.) Apparently, Landrieu expressed no definite opinion either way in pre-selection questioning or else one side or the other would have made a preemptory challenge on his service. Votes of juries do not have to be made public in terms of what individuals cast, but if the sentencing vote is unanimous one way or the other, that would give fodder to one side of the issue or the other about Landrieu’s views for future political ambitions for statewide office, possibly putting him in a no-win situation politically.

The fact is, Landrieu’s presence likely distorts the process and potentially alters it in unproductive ways. If he really wants to gain insight into New Orleans’ abysmal inability to reduce homicides through the intricacies of a murder trial, he need only attend one and does not have to sit as a juror. Even if driven by civic duty to want to serve, he should have realized that discretion was the better part of valor in this instance. In short, that he chose to do so anyway reflects negatively on his capacity to exercise judgment desirable in an elected official.

Vitter reform bill helpful to reduce poverty, increase growth

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

Last month, Sen. David Vitter, along with several other senators, joined House colleagues in introducing their version of the Welfare Reform Act of 2011 that promises to right-size and make appropriate taxpayer efforts to assist those truly down on their luck and in need of social welfare assistance.

Despite the wailing and gnashing of teeth by the uninformed who 15 years ago claimed work and time requirements placed on recipients of Temporary Assistance to Needy Families would cause widespread poverty and misery, the opposite happened as rolls of those using the program declined, in some cases dramatically. Further, states with more restrictive requirements saw the biggest decline, while economic fluctuations played a minor role. In other words, making this cash benefit program available only to the truly needy, structured in a way that would encourage self-sufficiency rather than dependency, worked.

But the problem is, that was just one of over six dozen federal programs that provide some type of anti-poverty assistance and thereby solved only a small part of the difficulty in ensuring only the deserving poor receive such benefits as today the typical recipient of anti-poverty funds receives an average of $19,000 per year costing taxpayers $871 billion in 2010.

This is the equivalent of a working person making about two dollars an hour more than the minimum wage (and these benefits are tax free), with no requirement to work or, in many cases, to show any desert except for a small net household worth.

Many of these individuals can’t work due to disability or are children or are responsible for them. But some (I know of them personally but will use more general and theoretical data here) willingly trade leisure for work, bolstered by these assistance programs. For example, in Louisiana, all a single individual has to do to qualify as a single individual for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (once known as “food stamps” that involved actual coupons, but run through debit cards now) at $200 a month is make less than $1,180 monthly gross income – the equivalent of working 38 hours a week at minimum wage. And this is just one program, with all them getting leveraged by having more household members.

Thus, the situation has been perpetuated where taxpayers subsidize lifestyle choices of some, hence the legislation that would make less attractive the willingness to trade off. As of now, taking just SNAP as an example, one could live quite decently off the amount of money provided and the kinds of food allowed as part of it. The bill would restrict those choices to perhaps less appetizing but healthy (if not healthier; the poor in America tend to have the worst eating habits and higher obesity rates, despite lower incomes) fare and also institute work requirements (training, employment seeking, or actual employment) that currently do not exist.

There’s nothing radical about this; indeed, it is timid compared to some places. In Britain, the government has proposed legislation that would limit welfare handouts to no more than the average weekly wages for working households. Canada drastically slashed these kind of expenditures even before the initial U.S. effort, as this bill on a small scale wishes to do, with no real ill effects. Both of the countries have much more generous histories of provision of these kinds of benefits. In all cases, the able-bodied are encouraged to be producers rather than consumers.

Naturally, Vitter and his colleagues will catch plenty of heat from the left on this proposal, but understand that such complaints are meritless on both theoretical and data-driven bases but instead are based on political considerations. Like in Canada in the early 1990s, only a major overhaul of spending practices will ensure continued economic health and vitality for the public, and a great place to start is found with Vitter’s legislation.

LA Democrats delude selves in analyzing election results

2011-12-05T11:50:00.003-06:00

Readers who desire an illustration of the definition of the phrase “whistling in the dark” need look no further than comments made by organizational and legislative leaders of Louisiana Democrats, on the subject of what the party and its candidates did in this past election cycle to win what they did in the Legislature, and what they need to do going forward to improve on that performance.

The template the likes of party Chairman Buddy Leach and legislative leader Eric LaFleur are attempting to have some compliant media and uninformed public accept is that, against tremendous odds and badly lacking in resources, the party’s legislative losses were sparse because it’s on the right track to “rebuild.” Hence, the argument goes, state Democrats need only do more of what they did in order to become more competitive and, as far as policy impact over the next four years, they remain substantially influential.

The first part, that candidates and their stated issue preferences carried the day against a presumed GOP onslaught, conceivably could apply only in a limited number of circumstances.

For one thing, in terms of overall performance – 144 legislative spots – reviewing all non-black majority districts (all won by Democrats), Republicans bested Democrats in 14 of the 25 where the two parties competed. Not that the Democrats competed well overall; in these districts where either all Democrats or all Republicans ran or where one of these parties had a candidate unopposed, Republicans held an astounding 67-9 edge.

So keep in mind, in essence, that these leaders were crowing about an inter-party performance where they lost 56 percent of the competitive races, setting aside the monstrous drubbing they received in noncompetitive ones. Even including the black majority districts (two had only no party opponents), Republicans still plastered Democrats 67-47 in all noncompetitive contests. To argue this even constitutes a moral victory takes some substantial suspension of disbelief.

But setting all of this aside and conceding that winning 11 of 25 competitive districts is an accomplishment, the leaders’ analysis largely is selective if not absolutely mistaken if they assume candidate image and their messages largely dictated the outcome. In fact, the most significant determinant, given the huge disparities involved in many cases, was fundraising ability and funding decisions.

Reviewing the 14 contests where both parties made significant investments, either by the candidates of at least one of the parties or by party committees, in half each one party’s candidates outraised the other, but, when throwing committee in-kind expenditures, Democrats held a 9-5 advantage. Even more significantly, combining candidate money raised and committee in-kind expenditures, Democrats outpaced Republicans by an incredible $1.753 million to $988,000 in these races through October.

Thus, another legislative Democrat, state Rep, Sam Jones, flat out lies when he asserts, “They had $4 million. We had $400,000.” The former figure to which he refers might encompass the amount of money spent by Gov. Bobby Jindal, some of which he dispersed to favored candidates – both Republicans and Democrats (and it appears at least four of the latter turned right back around and donated to other Democrats or to party committees) – but he is being disingenuous to suggest that was all Democrats spent on legislative contests. In fact, in October alone (November figures through the runoff election are yet to be reported), their party committees donated to or spent on behalf of their legislative candidates nearly $1.1 million – with over half of that going directly on behalf of the 14 competitive contests.

By contrast, Republican party committees spent about $1.5 million during the same period, but because their spending was scattered over a much wider range of candidates, including those for non-legislative contests, they put in much relatively much less to these contests, less than half of what Democrats did. Perhaps more than anything else, this disparity along with free-spending candidates explains why Democrats won 10 of them.

Simply, the reason Democrats did not do disastrously was they raised and spent as much, if not more money (we won’t know for sure until the next batch of reports come out) than Republicans and targeted it much better than the GOP. They were given an opening and they took it, but as much of the result is the fault of the Republicans’ tactical errors. It’s not because, as Leach dreams, “because the incumbents stood up for Democratic values.”

Obviously, Leach understood none of this, and reiterated this lack of understanding when he singled out the efforts of incoming state Reps.-elect Stephen Ortego and Gene Reynolds. As candidates, they obviously had potential to win, but what put them over the finish line was, when party in-kind contributions were included, through October more resources to draw upon than their GOP opponents. (Nor does Leach seem to have a clue about education in the state, when he said Reynolds was “well versed in problems facing public education – and I'm not talking about charter schools, I'm talking about public education,” idiotically not seeming to know that all charter schools are public schools with most of them being run by nonprofit entities.)

At least LaFleur seemed to have some clue about what the party needed in order to do any better in future elections, by “electing reasonable people to office,” who “bring solutions to the table, not just philosophy.” While LaFleur’s voting record over the last four years in fact has made him one of the least reasonable of folks in the Legislature (a Louisiana Legislative Log voting score averaging 33, meaning a solid liberal/populist rating although he has voted actually more conservative/reform in the past two years), if he’s making the point that Democrats have to shed liberalism and populism, he’s on track.

To modify a famous phrase uttered by a favorite son of Louisiana Democrats, and mentioned many times in different ways in this space as it analyzed the decline of them, it’s the ideology, stupid. Often a laggard, Louisiana has caught up the rest of the country whose majority has come to understand the bankruptcy of liberalism when they clearly can see who and where its practitioners are. The state’s political culture obscured that longer than most elsewhere, but Louisiana’s majority, even more right of center than the American public, has dispelled that fog.

Whether that modification will happen is another matter. Leach and Jones hope against hope that Republicans, who command solid majorities in both chambers, will have to work with Democrats to get much done. Stay tuned to this space over the coming months to see just how that dream turns into a nightmare. Unless Louisiana Democrats decide to moderate where at least they can persuade a majority at least some of the time that their worldview does in fact reflect the reality of the human condition, they better get ready in the Legislature to have little influence for a long time.

Roemer wishes to be Trojan Horse for Obama reelection?

2011-12-04T11:25:00.004-06:00

Tired of banging his head against a wall he thinks doesn’t exists, former Gov. Buddy Roemer has decided to change strategy in his quest to slay his inner demons. But in doing so, in fact ultimately will he end up contributing to the problem he claims that exists of which he has faith he is part of the solution?

Roemer, plying his trade as a banking owner and executive for much of his post-gubernatorial career, has met the enemy and declared they are us, thereby engaging in a quixotic quest to win the Republican 2012 presidential nomination on a platform that moneyed interests have disproportionate power in politics. That campaign has gone nowhere, as polling of those likely to participate in the primary election process have had little appetite for a Roemer candidacy, where his drawing one percent of their support has been a good day.

Reasons for Roemer’s unpopularity have little to do with the reason Roemer fantasizes causes it. He thinks it’s because of his inability to raise much money because he limits donations to his campaign to $100, and if he had more resources the message that so resonated with the public could get out. In reality, it’s because Roemer’s messenger has little credibility and his message stinks, like a guy who’s a financier can deliver a credible conspiracy-driven rap against money or, better yet, can convince the public he’s the guy to put in charge when he can’t even prevent the likes of jailbirds David Duke and Edwin Edwards from denying him reelection to his last executive branch gig.

But desire to feel relevant after a bright future petered out continues to drive Roemer (summed up by his quote, "I want on the national stage"), and he’s not ready to quit just because Republicans find other candidates far more persuasive and credible. Previous flirtations with the silly Occupy movement and with a group attempting to try to place a non-major party alternative onto presidential ballots now have turned into full-blown courtships, with Roemer giving his best “power to the people” fist pump to the former and making his announcement that he intends to link up with the latter.

The group, Americans Elect, seeks to gain ballot access in all 51 jurisdictions, invite politicians to compete for nomination to fill those spots, and then vet an Internet plebiscite to produce a winning ticket. In fact, of the candidates its leaders already identified, Roemer led the field according to the metric used to establish whether a political figure met the group’s allegedly “moderate” ideology. It publicly argues that it wishes to have a moderate figure and ticket that straddles the major parties, to satisfy the craving that many Americans have to work outside a system where a number of people say they are dissatisfied with the choices provided by the major parties.

However, a number of questions surround the group’s real intentions, which began four years ago but then ran into problems because they incorporated as a political party but hesitated to reveal donor information. From the ashes of that group, the new effort incorporated as a social welfare organization not required by law to list donors. Other than that its main founder, former hedge fund financier Peter Ackerman, gave a substantial sum, nothing is known about who has given what or how much for each.

This has gotten some on the political left, to whom anything that conceivably could be part of a conspiracy despite any evidence to the effect therefore must be, riled up. They claim the secretiveness of the group hides big money interests trying to create a candidacy to peel off voters from Pres. Barack Obama’s reelection bid.

But in applying a more learned and critical perspective to the facts, it appears either these voices act as useful idiots for or have assented to assisting a campaign of disinformation designed to promote the reelection of Obama. Several clues point to this being the real motivation behind the group.

Beginning with the shielded donors, the group has put forth no good reason why this is so crucial to its stated mission. The other of its main organizers, political operative and consultant Kahlil Byrd, has argued secrecy is warranted to protect personal and professional lives. But do those who support “centrism” really face such ostracism? Hidden contributions as a tactic to prevent uncovering the group’s true agenda, through matching higher-profile donors to their pet political causes, seems a more convincing reason.

Certainly a review of its leaders would indicate a leftist tilt. Its officers’ backgrounds tend to the marginally political to Democrats who occasionally dabble in supporting Republicans such as Chief Executive Officer Byrd, to “pragmatic” Republicans. The lean to the left becomes more obvious when considering its Board of Directors, chief among them Ackerman who aligns himself with leftist causes that fellow traveler George Soros also supports and who seems to fit the mold of a more honest Jon Corzine, who as the liberal Democrat governor of New Jersey first drove that state into the ground, then after his defeat for reelection drove the firm MF Global into bankruptcy through questionable dealings. The only member with any real GOP past, another former New Jersey governor in Christine Todd Whitman, certainly cannot be considered ideologically to hold a place on the right.

Also, listed are “leaders,” where a similar leftist slant emerges. A few who could be called moderate or liberal Republicans are thrown in, but, apart from the few with no real identifiable past political leanings, the remainder have had careers supporting Democrats and liberal causes, or whose academic work ends up more on the left than right (which may make them outliers right of center in academia, but not in the real world).

Yet despite these leanings, the candidates identified by the group almost without exception are Republicans, the party of which the left universally bays is too rigid ideologically. Even more interestingly, judged by the issues the group says it prefers, it scores these preferences in a way where Obama’s views are not much different than those of their leading contenders such as Roemer. For a group that claims partisan polarization produces poor policy, it seems odd that if the incumbent president isn’t doing a bad job of representing its views why then it would undertake this cause. And it’s especially curious why a group who historically in the main has backed Democrats seems interested almost exclusively in Republican standard-bearers. Again, this fits more the profile of an outfit designed to pick a candidate to siphon GOP votes than anything else.

This impression only is reinforced by the ballot access issue facing the group. It possibly could overcome the logistics problem of getting a place for it on all 51 ballots with a lot of resources. But it also will encounter legal barriers that it is entirely unlikely to surmount, created precisely because of its legal corporate form to obscure donors’ identities. In a significant minority of states its form will not allow it on the ballot, meaning only long-shot and lengthy legal challenges will work to achieve that.

It seems that if the group was serious about presenting a viable alternative to the major parties it would have put itself in a form that could accomplish that. Instead, by choosing its 501(c)4 form combined with logistical challenges that may get it only on half of all of the ballots, this lends more credence to the belief it exists to play a spoiler role – to the detriment, as other supposition indicates, of the Republicans.

That also appears confirmed by a final observation about past political behavior: voters more likely to favor Republicans also tend to be more likely to respond favorably to dissenting minor candidates. This is precisely because, as noted by the left, of the greater ideologically purity of the party, which bases itself on the coherence and clarity of conservatism. By contrast, saddled with a liberalism discredited by events since the 1980s, Democrats must make appeals much less tied to intellectual content and are more emotive to their mass base, while activists are united over a quest for power.

In short, Democrats (especially with a solid black voting base that will absolve about any Democrat of any ideological heresy) are much more forgiving about their candidates’ lack of ideologically purity than are Republicans, the latter of which presently perfectly is being illustrated by internal criticisms of challengers to Obama. Republican-oriented voters are less pragmatic and less tolerant of candidates seen as “imperfect” ideologically, and therefore would be more open to an appeal from a minor party candidate, than are Democrats (and especially activists for whom a quest for power has become the ideology that replaced flawed liberalism, even as they continue to mouth liberal pieties).

All of this points to the subversive purpose of Americans Elect, at least until sufficient contrary evidence otherwise emerges, of trying to split support for the Republican nominee to allow for Obama to be reelected,. That means Roemer might end up allowing himself to be used as a puppet for this purpose. If he truly thinks having a Republican in the White House would best serve America (and given his past Democrat affiliation, this may not be the case), rather than boost his ego some more by seeking this nomination, he should defer from the quest for it and thus deny the aid and comfort it could be bring to his presumed political opponents.

Campaign finance clarity achieved by eliminating limits

2011-12-01T07:10:00.001-06:00

While a Virginia-based public interest group argues for a slight change in Louisiana campaign law that it says would rectify an unconstitutional situation, a different change would moot the whole point and make state and local elections that much more transparent.

The Freedom Through Justice Foundation asked the Louisiana Board of Ethics to issue an advisory opinion that it stop enforcing the state law that limits individual contributions to political committees that make only independent expenditures concerning candidacies (meaning that they do not donate money to campaigns nor coordinate activities with them). The Board correctly said it could not do anything regarding this $100,000 limit over a four-year period to a committee since it lacked jurisdiction over the law, it merely enforced it.

This group now could bring suit in state court, where it bases its objection to the decision in Speechnow.org v. Federal Election Commission, which involved federal law.

While state law is operative here, in the related Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission the U.S. Supreme Court overruled a state statute implicitly regarding limitation, so it may be reasonably inferred that the judiciary would do the same in this instance. So the foundation seems likely to win, given enough time and resources assuming the state would fight the matter.

But why go through all of this when a much simpler solution exists – just throw out any limits on donations directly to a state or local campaign by any individual who is a citizen of the U.S., but mandating reporting of every single contribution? Because right now, the structure serves more to obscure than to provide clarity as the limits can be gotten around.

For example, let’s say you want to give more than the $5,000 limit per election to a Democrat running for lieutenant governor (who happens to be your daughter). You give up to the limit to the candidate, then you have to search for committees likely to give money to that candidate. You find one, and then proceed to plunk down $90,000 to it over the course of five months, surely part of if not all given of the $770,508.22 given to the candidate by the committee through in-kind contributions by the end of the election. It’s nothing more than money-laundering, and would have been a whole lot simpler just to report a donation of $95,000 to the campaign.

One could argue, as courts have in past campaign finance cases, that such laws are justified merely on the basis that they discourage the appearance of corruption. But isn’t it worse if one can use these committees to obscure deliberately a fact because of legal hoops? What appears more “corrupt,” an easily-spotted donation, or one parceled out and fanned through multiple sources that takes going through reams of paperwork to rescue from obscurity?

And who needs to waste donations on paying for all of these people to file forms and to have entire organizations dedicated to funneling money by donors frustrated with the limits? Accountants and lawyers don’t need the work this badly. Dropping any limits and making everything reported will increase transparency, reduce campaign costs (meaning less reliance on donors), and obviate the need for potential upcoming litigation on related matters. State policy-makers need to look seriously into this proposal.

Panel product may provide impetus for needed reform

2011-11-30T14:35:00.008-06:00

There’s more than one way to skin a cat, and forces sympathetic to beneficial change in Louisiana’s higher education may be getting the upper hand despite previous defeats, as the results coming from a panel dedicated to reviewing higher education policy indicate.

Last year, a bold higher education reform package was proposed by Go. Bobby Jindal, but his legislative allies found it tough sledding. After the failure to merge the worst-performing college campus in the country with another a couple of miles down the road also not performing well, the steam seemed to escape from other efforts such as streamlining the duplicative governance boards and more rational distribution of merit scholarship aid through the Taylor Opportunity Program for Students. In the end, tinkering at the margins to shunt a school out of one system and into another and giving temporary, limited authority for schools to set tuition in exchange for promises of more efficient performance constituted the extent of progress.

Establishment of a Governance Commission to study higher education policy came as one of the consolation efforts, and, from the recommendations it has forwarded, helpfully might build momentum to getting going some of those efforts stalled in the last Legislature. Most controversially, it recommended that the Constitution be amended to strengthen the role of the Board of Regents relative to the four system boards, three for baccalaureate-and-above institutions and one for community and technical colleges.

It’s not quite the idea of creating one board to govern everything as Jindal had wanted, but it’s not too far off, either. By leaving a paucity of power for the other four boards, it won’t do much to reduce inefficient duplication, but it will create more unity in policy and prevent those four boards from working inefficiently, or at cross purposes, or to reduce the negativity of their poor decisions.

The Commission also recommended changing TOPS into a single award amount, instead of the current one weighted to reflect an average of all different levels of tuition charged by institutions, that then would change as did inflation rates. Since that program gets paid for by taxpayers and by draining the Millennium Trust Fund (courtesy of a just-approved amendment), schools has less incentive to manage funds from it wisely. If capped at the lowest level of tuition now charged and to increase thereafter at a level that has seen smaller changes than in inflation of tuition rates nationwide, schools would know they couldn’t just raise tuition and feel comfortable that the state would automatically kick in the extra amount for, in some cases most of, their students.

Of course, presently schools are hampered in their ability to set rates as tuition increases must meet with two-thirds legislative approval, the only state in the Union to endure this farce. The group had something to say about this as well, recommending removal of that law as well so to leave that in the hands of the Regents, who also would have made mandatory for the systems the use of funds by its allocation formula, which presently is not compulsory.

Bolder and needed changes did not come to pass – the Commission decided not to take the outlying community colleges, one each in the Louisiana State University and Southern systems, and put them with the Louisiana Technical and Community College System, and it did not address issues such as transforming TOPS into a true scholarship program, as now its low standards permit too many marginal and/or unmotivated students to receive money that will be wasted without its awardees finishing a baccalaureate degree. But what was suggested represents a quantum improvement over what the Legislature for decades has done left to its own devices.

However, it is the Legislature that ultimately must act on these matters. As a result of this fall’s elections, it likely is somewhat friendlier to these kinds of reforms, and having the Commission’s imprimatur also helps. Coupled with an aggressive campaign by Jindal backing these measures, perhaps 2012 will usher in the first significant reforms, starting with these, to make delivery of higher education in Louisiana more efficient and effective.

Online education plan has conceptual, symbolic problems

2011-11-29T12:10:00.002-06:00

Besides the issue of scope of mission, a question of whether Louisiana resources should support somebody with questionable associations and agendas needs weighing regarding the Southern University System’s request to expand dramatically its online education offerings.

System Pres. Ronald Mason unveiled a proposed partnership involving a company called EOServe, which has assisted several other historically black universities and colleges to establish a national online presence. The idea is that Southern become a “brand” in the area of online education that could compete with for-profit providers that would provide a stream of revenue, even after EOServe takes it cut, especially important for the cash-strapped Baton Rouge campus, which declared financial exigency last month.

This has raised concerns among the Board of Regents, with Commissioner of Higher education Jim Purcell questioning the plan.

Because in large part the concept would appeal to a national audience, it would draw SUS resources into educating non-Louisianans, which Purcell said was not the main goal of higher education delivery in the state.

To some degree the problem is ameliorated by the fact that the system would charge higher out-of-state tuition to students not Louisiana residents. Still, disproportionate system resources likely would go to educating out of state students, monies drawn from taxpayers. Purcell hinted that this concern could make the Regents change the funding formula for these kinds of initiatives that presumably would not reward universities for enrolling this kind of student, as a disincentive to pursuing this kind of strategy. In turn, that could make the problem worse, as the university if it persisted would have to divert resources otherwise going to in-state students to maintain the program.

The program also presents a problem in that it would remain disconnected from any larger online education strategy in Louisiana. This space long has advocated creation of something along the lines of the Illinois Virtual Campus, where any student enrolled in an Illinois public university can take online courses eligible for credit at his home school through any other campus. Southern’s solo effort impedes this and threatens to create a balkanization and uncoordinated online education environment in the state.

And yet there is another concern with the private sector entity chosen to handle the marketing and administrative end. Formed a few years ago, EOServe’s president is Benjamin Franklin Chavis, until a few years ago known by the last name Muhammad as he had joined the racist Nation of Islam but since has left the organization.

Chavis first came to prominence as a member of the Wilmington Ten, individuals convicted for firebombing a grocery store in racially-tense Wilmington, NC in 1971. Handed the longest sentence of them, eventually under tremendous political pressure he and the others were freed in 1980 on a technicality. Over the years he popularized the bogus “environmental racism” concept, led the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People briefly until the organization said he used its funds to fight a sexual harassment charge, and just days ago announced an expansion of his partnership with entertainer Russell Simmons to advise the silly Occupy Wall Street movement.

To say the least, Chavis is controversial and Southern aligning itself with such a divisive individual may not convey the best image of the seriousness of this effort nor boost citizen confidence in the effort at a time of increased skepticism in how higher education performs its job in the state. As such, the system and Regents need to reevaluate and oversee, respectively, this effort, with the latter adjusting the funding formula if necessary to ensure the accomplishment of important state goals.

Black legislator power declines, not black voter opportunity

2011-11-28T10:55:00.002-06:00

Even if black voters in Louisiana accept a false premise, this mistaken policy agenda need not relegate them to near-absolute political irrelevancy if sufficiently motivated or open-minded.

As the latest round of state elections confirmed, if we equate power of black interests with the proportion of black legislators and whether their partisan allegiances lie with the majority party, black lawmaker influence in the American South would be low, as pointed out recently by the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, a research center to study public policy as it relates to black Americans. It turns out that most of the 318 black legislators in the south, the highest number in history, belong to parties in the minority in their statehouses.

Yet this does not necessarily condemn interests of black people to the whims of “conservative whites [who] control all the power in the region” who enact “legislation both neglectful of the needs of African Americans and other communities of color (in health care, in education, in criminal justice policy) as well as outright hostile to them,” as the report ignorantly hyperventilates. Such a view entirely misunderstands that all people’s interests, regardless of skin color, at the most basic level are universal and that conservatism addresses them better far than any alternative.

Because conservatism focuses on empowering individuals through giving them the maximal opportunity to succeed as far as their abilities will take them in terms of their contributions to society, only those who choose to act irresponsibly or who selfishly wish to appropriate from society what they have not earned (excepting those not competent enough to contribute adequately to society) would oppose conservative principles in policy. In essence, the report’s view creates a false division by mandating that “black interests” must remain separate from conservatism.

Thus, the report’s conclusion about the effects of the numerical presence and placement of black legislators in the policy-making process errs in its assessment that conservative policy is harmful to responsible black (or any) individuals. But even if accepting that mistaken view, it also neglects to consider that black interests need not be separate from conservatism and that if more black conservatives ran for and won elections, “black interests” increasingly would be reflected in public policy.

However, setting aside the theoretical shortcomings of the report’s analysis and instead focusing on the concept of a “black interest” as separate from a larger “human interest,” and further assuming that this imagined separate interest is one that black politicians and the electorate in the main wishes to pursue that is part of a minority view in legislatures such as Louisiana’s, even in this environment, a way exists to leverage to some degree propagation of this group’s interest in public policy. That comes through participation in the electoral process in an assertive way.

An interesting piece recently published notes that had black voter participation in Republican-only statewide contests matched those where a Democrat ran, perhaps the results of those two contests could have been different. Translate that into black voting for legislators in majority-majority legislative districts, and it points out situations where black voters can impose more of their will on the final choices sent to the Legislature.

According to the latest statistics, in the Louisiana House there are five districts, and in the Louisiana Senate four, where blacks comprise at least a third of the electorate. In two, a Republican ran unopposed, while in another was an all-Republican matchup. One had a Democrat running unopposed, while another featured two Democrats. All the others all had inter-party competition, and of these Democrats won two without a runoff, a Republican won another, and another went to an all-Republican runoff. These represented four all-GOP situations where black voters could have disproportionate influence in the outcome. In fact, all should have been competitive seats for Democrats, where they picked up four of the nine seats.

As noted by others, the increasing creation of essentially monoracial districts bears some blame for relatively few opportunities for substantial minorities to influence within a district. But this is nothing new: the previous decade’s districting ended up with nine swing majority-majority districts also. And swing (defined similarly) minority-majority districts aren’t that numerous either, with 14, an increase of two from last decade. In short, of the 144 districts, 121 effectively are monoracial, thereby eliminating any chance the minority has of its candidate winning the seat through bloc voting.

So while black lawmakers at the state level in the south, almost all enthralled with a profoundly erroneous view about how the world works, may be slipping in influence as a consequence of a mistaken agenda, blacks in the south need not emulate them. While taking advantage of participatory opportunities in elections can install more moderate Republicans or even Democrats in legislative spots, recognition that there are just human interests, which are best served by conservative principles in governing, and shedding a false consciousness that divides the races, makes the entire question of the race of the lawmaker moot in pursuing the best policies for all people.

Power gone with shoe on other foot for LA House Democrats

2011-11-27T10:45:00.002-06:00

With elections now finished and Louisiana House Democrats finding them in a minority for the first time in over a century as a new Legislature heads towards its organizational session, speculation turns its new leadership. With the biggest question apparently settled, it now is time for Democrats to dream big in the hopes of avoiding the nightmare of their reality when it comes time to handing out committee assignments and chairmanships, and the policy implications that come from that.

With the imprimatur of Gov. Bobby Jindal, state Rep. Chuck Kleckley appears poised to assume the speakership, jumping current Speaker Pro Tem and recent GOP convert (in label only) Joel Robideaux. The latter has complained about his fate but, unless he pushes the speaker’s matter to a vote that would embarrass politically Kleckley and Jindal, he could well hang onto his spot.

Regardless of Robideaux’s fate, created will be a situation to which Democrats seem resigned, the only two full-time jobs in the chamber being in Republican hands.

While unprecedented in over a century, it is perfectly consistent with past practice when one party had a clear majority over the other as Republicans do now over Democrats. The last term was aberrant, in that a closely-divided chamber with a slight majority of Democrats at its commencement picked a Republican speaker, then balanced it with a Democrat for the second spot.

However, Democrats appear to hold out hope that they’ll be able to cling to some of their past power by virtue of committee selections, particularly with the leaders of them. Since the chamber exited its one-party status in more than a trivial way beginning in the 1990s, chairmanships have become a bipartisan affair, even as committee compositions reflected party balances with the most important committees overweighed in favor of the majority party. This may be expected to continue.

But House Democrats seem too optimistic. State Rep. John Bel Edwards, who leads the delegation, mused that since Democrats roughly had 40 percent of the seats, they should get 40 percent, or six or seven, of the 16 standing committee chairmanships.

However, history shows Democrats never were that magnanimous when they ran the joint. The most recent year of best comparison, when the same party held the governorship and House, was after 2003 elections. There were 17 standing committees in those days, and with 67 Democrats to start the session or around 64 percent of the body, they took 12 or 71 percent of the chairmanships. And of the five Republicans that scored one, only voted consistently conservatively and in a reform direction, with two being more moderate and the other two being probably the most liberal Republicans in the chamber.

January should produce similar statistics. After Kleckley, with Jindal’s input, sorts things out, expect the GOP to possess 11 of the 16. One will go to existing Appropriations Chairman and more conservative Democrat Jim Fannin, it composition of which otherwise will be overloaded with Republicans. And of the others, potentially all of them might not be white Democrats.

This is because of another tradition that apportions out chairmanships balanced by race. For example, after 2003 elections with about a fifth of members, all Democrats, black, these legislators received 29 percent of chairmanships. Since all blacks were then and well as today are Democrats, when Democrats controlled it was easier to over-apportion such slots to blacks.

As blacks will comprise their highest proportion ever in the House at a little over a quarter, that might realize the desire of Louisiana Legislative Black Caucus chairwoman Pat Smith for its members to head four committees. The only reason it could be fewer is the inability of Republicans to find four black Democrats, all of whom scheduled for swearing in fairly can be said to be liberal ideologically, to head up four innocuous-enough committees that will wield the least policy influence.

Yet it could happen. Jindal endorsed five such incumbents this fall who achieved reelection. Reviewing the least consequential committees in the House, three have one of these black Democrats serving on them presently. In addition, a more important committee, Education, has one of them, state Rep. Austin Badon, already serving as chairman.

Still, the 2012-16 House seems set to have an obvious Republican and conservative tilt, as most of the chairmanships going to GOP members will get doled out to the more conservative/reformist members. Democrats as a unified force will provide just token opposition, as they don’t have the numbers and, on any given issue, Republicans usually can expect a couple of the more conservative of them to defect, defeating any obnoxious legislation that may arise from even the lesser committees where Democrats have chairmen and be will closer to parity in voting power. White Democrats, now the minority in their own party, in particular will have power only in rare circumstances where two-thirds majorities need commanding for action to occur.

Elections have consequences. The conservative/reformist policy products of the upcoming House will make for a sharp break with the past. The era of Democrats having anything more than paltry influence on policy is over, for the foreseeable future.

Thanksgiving Day, 2011

2011-11-24T00:00:00.001-06:00

This column publishes usually every Sunday through Thursday after noon (sometimes even before; maybe even after sundown on busy days) U.S. Central Time except whenever a significant national holiday falls on the Monday through Friday associated with the otherwise-usual publication on the previous day (unless it is Independence Day or Christmas or New Year's when it is the day on which the holiday is observed by the U.S. government). In my opinion, there are six of these: New Year's Day, Memorial Day, Independence Day, Veterans' Day, Thanksgiving Day, and Christmas.

With Thursday, Nov. 24 being Thanksgiving Day, I invite you to explore the link above.