For good and bad, process used to shape bill substance

Legislative hijinks continue unabated as the 2009 Regular Session passes its halfway point in Baton Rouge, with legislators looking for ways to use process to affect substance creating winners, losers, and everything in between.

By this time in the session, with introduction of bills long over, legislators must get creative if some issue grabs their attention and they want to get it into the process with a chance to become law. Or, they can try the same tactic to resurrect a stalled measure either to give it new life, or to counter another. This can be done in committee easily (as long as the informal custom of the author giving permission is followed) and with certainty on the floor, so long as the presiding office concludes the amendment is germane and/or the chamber declares it germane.

A winning example concerns HB 719 by state Rep. Bubba Chaney. This bill became a vehicle to include the state’s deal with the New Orleans Saints to shovel money in the direction of the team’s owner to entice the team to remain. Instead of the straight-up giveaway of the past decade, now at least the state gets something back in the form of leased space for state offices that admittedly is sorely needed. Amended in committee, it passed the House without a lot of trouble.

The journey of HB 138 also provides another lesson. Most legislators aren’t exactly known for their courage when it comes to actions on bills, displaying a distinct preference for trying to have their cakes and eat them, too. This means privately they may feel one way about a bill and wish it a certain fate, but publicly they will act and say differently if they can find a way to have the fate they desire for it fulfilled in another fashion.

Originally, the bill got bottled up in committee on a close vote, but author State Rep. John LaBruzzo’s scaled down its scope to require medical drug testing for a narrow range of public entitlement recipients. Yet this version looked like it might garner a fight when state Rep. Walker Hines objected originally to its passage. But he relented when he learned it bill likely would have to head to the House Appropriations Committee as it would incur an expense of greater than $500,000, and out the bill sailed from committee.

The reason why opposition evaporated was Appropriations, in this year of tight budgets, probably would spike the bill on that basis. This gave Hines and other opponents the perfect excuse to not oppose the bill so they can claim they are for not handing taxpayer dollars to drug addicts even as they defeated its previous incarnation and may have stopped this one as well. Thus, they rely on process to give them results they actually want even as their actions try to convey something different.

(This is the first time I have mentioned the freshman Hines since a post last year where I called him “liberal” on the basis of the unmistakably leftist tilt to a number of bills he had introduced that surprisingly went nowhere. He protested the label in a note to me, and while I explained to him how richly he deserved the appellation from the content of his legislation, I promised at the next available opportunity that I would base my next description of his ideology on his score from the year-end scorecard I compile for my Louisiana Legislature Log. The time is here, and with a 2008 score of 70 for now I officially change my assessment of Democrat Hines to call him a “moderate,” and almost borderline conservative. Interestingly, the previous post also addressed Hines’ actions in the context of trying to convey an image of something he was not.)

Losing in the process, however, was House Speaker Jim Tucker who tried to slip an amendment onto another uncontroversial bill, HB 892 by state Rep. Michael Jackson. It would have had the effect of negating the substance of HB 841 by Rep. Avon Honey, who pulled off the most prominent example of this genre in years when he took his innocuous bill and slipped into it an amendment on the floor that would force the state to accept federal spending bill money that would expand unemployment benefits and turn them from an insurance into a welfare program.

But unlike when Honey caught conservatives napping, liberals were attentive on this occasion and made a germaneness request. With Tucker making the motion, he could not be in the chair for the moment held by Speaker Pro-Tem Karen Peterson, one of the liberals’ own and an HB 841 supporter. The subject matter of Jackson’s bill, information provision about unemployment insurance, was not that divorced from the amendment as both dealt with the disposition of unemployment insurance benefits, but Peterson ruled it nongermane.

This brought a move to override the speaker’s ruling. But Tucker counseled not to do so, even though a clear majority of the House appeared to favor the amendment and opposed HB 841 in its current form, arguing to uphold the ruling preserved the “process.” The override attempt was defeated.

While Tucker as speaker would have an interest in fending off challenges from powers he can exercise, in this case he needed to act otherwise. Honey’s amendment had not been germane yet went through, and it clearly was the will of the chamber that his language not be passed out of the House. Slavishness to process should not be the end-all when a basic tenet of democracy, majority rule that does not violate fundamental liberties, is subverted as a result.

Process is important to observe in understanding substantive impact of legislative actions, but it should not be used as a substitute for it.

New Ethics Board, but continuing confused attitudes

It seems you can change the players but you can’t change the mentality when it comes to Louisiana’s Board of Ethics.

At its May meeting, several board members queried the chairman of the House’s Government and Administration Committee state Rep. Rick Gallot about the possibility of going back to something like the system in place until the end of last year which made the Board the prosecutor, judge, and jury of alleged ethics violations. The new system allows the Board to levy charges, and then professionals adjudicate the case from there.

All of the members of the Board save one were appointed in the last few months. This is because in part many previous members thought the changes stripped them of power and prestige and so they lost interest in service and quit it, coupled with the fact the burden to serve increased with more stringent financial disclosure laws also applying to the Board.

You would have thought the new members would bring a new attitude congruent to these changes, but the comments from its Chairman Frank Simoneaux and Vice Chairman Scott Frazier makes one wonder about that, comprising a confusing rehash of old, inadequate arguments. Simoneaux claimed that the new system might not work well because it featured “two boards in one unitary ethics system” and implied its members, having taken office prior to the changes, were not prepared for such a thing, and Frazier said the new system could be inconsistent and thought there would be a lack of expertise in the adjudication process.

Clearly, these officials are unfamiliar with the whole debate around the issue last year and as well what many other states do (and thereby obviously have not read the commentary in this space), which is unfortunate and derelict since they are the top officers of the Board. Let’s go through it again, beginning with Simoneaux’s comments.

It’s a strange argument to assert the board members were getting procedures switched on them in a confusing way. Almost all of the old board resigned by the middle of last summer so the appointments were made in the fall, technically a couple of months prior to the new procedures coming into effect. But the board didn’t do anything under the old rules, and any incoming member who did not know about the new procedures was negligent given they were known to be on the horizon.

Also weird from the comments is the contention of “two boards.” The new system largely replicates the typical civil and criminal system that features (for all non-trivial accusations) a grand jury comprised of non-expert citizens which fields requests for indictments by prosecuting authorities, and decides whether the accusations merit a trial. Professionals perform the remainder of the process in most cases, with a jury trial of (different) non-expert citizens only occasionally making the final decision of innocence or guilt.

Under the new system, the Board acts as the grand jury. Administrative law judges, who are selected impartially on a case-by-case basis and are required to have considerable legal experience, conduct the trials and make judicial decisions. Simoneux should know that and where there is a board in addition to the Ethics Board itself is a mystery to which perhaps only he knows the answer.

Frazier also needs to review the information about the process. It is as much mystery how he can think the political appointees from mostly non-legal backgrounds to the Board are going to have more expertise in this area of law than law judges with law degrees and experience who will be required to study this area of the law. If anything, the increased professionalism will lead to greater consistency.

The fact is, the new system is considered best practice and a number of states use a similar one for their ethics adjudication. There’s no reason to reverse a process which barely has begun and that the newcomers suggest as such is not only curious, but indicative that they have a ways to go in understanding what they actually need to be doing and the right spirit in which to do it.

If state won't, citizens must push school board reforms

Louisiana State Superintendent of Schools Paul Pastorek’s ideas on school board reform need a serious hearing, if not outright enactment, this session.

Pastorek is going to get introduced in the upcoming legislative session bills that call for switching the paying board members salaries in favor of per diem, limiting the number of terms they can serve consecutively, and requiring them to have at least a high school diploma to serve. Pastorek also wants to give more power to local superintendents when it comes to hiring and firing. He argues that these would reduce the influence that politics has that can interfere with quality educating.

That supposition seems plausible. Some board members in some places have served over two decades, and some or others have boards with little turnover. This could produce insular policy-makers too caught up with long-standing relationships within the district. Regular pay regardless of activity may be too encouraging for those more interested in wielding power and drawing a paycheck than people willing to spend much time and effort in trying to make good decisions and policy. Those who haven’t even matriculated from high school may not understand what comprises quality education. Too much ability of boards to intrude into personnel matters hampers optimal administration of education.

The Meaning of Memorial Day

This column publishes every Sunday through Thursday around noon U.S. Central Time (maybe even after sundown on busy days, or maybe before noon if things work out, or even sometimes on the weekend if there's big news) 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, Christmas, or New Year's Day when it is the day on which the holiday is observed by the U.S. government). In my opinion, there are six of these: Memorial Day, Independence Day, Veterans' Day, Thanksgiving Day, Christmas, and New Year's Day.

With Monday, May 25 being Memorial Day, I invite you to explore the link above.

Democrat con job another try at embarrassing Jindal

In line with what Democrat plans appear to be in reference to HB 841, are they going to take another shot at Gov. Bobby Jindal or do something responsible?

HB 841 is an extension of Louisiana legislative Democrats’ mission to make Jindal look heartless by making him act against a bill that would allow more people to draw longer unemployment insurance and change its nature into a welfare entitlement program rather than insurance. They hope to get it to Jindal where he casts a veto on it, even as they know this will happen and will sacrifice other salutary parts of the bill and waste precious legislative time on it.

SB 335 by state Sen. Lydia Jackson has turned into a similar kind of vehicle. Democrats, pushed out of the Senate Revenue and Fiscal Affairs Committee this bill which would prevent scheduled tax cuts that began this year for which roughly 20 percent of all tax filers (meaning more like a third of all taxpayers) of which the majority also are the biggest payers until 2012. It’s not like they didn’t have any help, however, because they actually are outnumbered by Republicans on this panel. While a couple of the GOP members were absent (and one such claims he would have voted against it), others of exceptional unreliability (such as Robert Adley, who until recently was a Democrat but had authored legislation to put these cuts into place) and of impeccable tax-cutting credentials (such as Buddy Shaw, who steered home a major income tax cut last year) all present went for the legislation which now goes to the Senate floor which has a Democrat majority.

Obstinate Caddo board must accept reality of its failure

It’s not as thick as with their East Baton Rouge counterparts, but nevertheless an air of unreality lies about the Caddo Parish School Board, unwilling or unable to understand that some major changes are coming to education in the parish because it couldn’t cut it.

Last year, the state could have taken over Bethune Middle School but chose instead to place special conditions on its operation. Another 10 schools in the parish, about 14 percent of the parish’s schools, this year were eligible for takeover of which the state’s Board of Elementary and Secondary Education opted to take two and allow the other eight the potential to be operated like Bethune. The two, Linwood and Linear, scored above 50 only twice since the accountability rating system was implemented in 2002-03. In other words, many years of warnings and possibility of the Caddo Parish School District to change the situation have gone by.
Yet now that the state finally is intervening, from the rhetoric coming from some policy-makers in the district it seems only now do they seem to realize the implications – among those who aren’t living in a state of denial over where things are and how they got to this point. Whining has emanated from several board members about how the state gets to dictate certain expenditures and reimbursements regarding the eight schools, including extra costs associated with improvement plans and their monitoring coming out of Caddo’s coffers.

The district also clings to the fiction that the so-called “Caddo Plan” will be the basis of improvement plans for the schools and that the state should pony up for its additional expenditures. As noted previously, the idea calling for academic-themed schools, an opportunity to change personnel among schools, and increased technology expenditures only tangentially addresses the real problems hampering achievement at these schools and stands little chance of making any substantive improvement. In any event, the strictures of the memorandums of understanding the state has presented to the District indicate major modifications of the plan would be needed for it to be accepted by the state.

And even if some portion of the plan does get adopted, Caddo will have to pay for it. Even as school board members moan and complain about being on the hook for costs, the state showed it did not let go by the fact that the district (by 2007) had a general fund surplus of over $46 million, about a tenth of its yearly spending, in its general fund, and total fund balances of almost $115 million. These balances make the state’s question about why wasn’t money spent years ago to intervene in these schools pertinent, its implication that Caddo can pay the estimated $11 million this year for changes salient, and the excuse given by the District that it needed cash on hand for contingencies questionable.

It’s quite clear from some of the comments coming from some Board members that not only do they not get it, but that the attitudes behind these comments demonstrate why the District has been unable to improve these failing schools. District 12 member Dottie Bell screeches about how the state shouldn’t come in and tell “us how we're going to spend our money.” It’s lamentable that even after a few years on the board (and many as a teacher) that Bell doesn’t yet understand that the vast majority of operating funds of Caddo schools come from the state. And it’s never been the district’s or her money to spend, it’s been mostly state taxpayers’.

And District 2 member Eursula Hardy put money before children when she publicly stated that parents should not enroll their children in the new Linwood or Linear not because they are failing schools, but because Caddo would lose money to the Recovery School District as a result. It is these attitudes reminiscent of children playing with toys and refusing to share with others instead of focusing what’s best for children that has gotten education at the schools into its sorry situation.

No doubt unfortunate domestic situations make it tougher to educate effectively, that there are too many incompetent in knowledge and/or methods in these schools, and too many incapable administrators are in place in them, but the fact is the buck stops with the Board. It, and it alone, ultimately is responsible for the quality of education in the district, and any member who throws up his hands and says some kind of extraneous condition made success impossible with these schools needs to tender his resignation now because why else serve in a job where you don’t think you can succeed?

Clearly, the Board has failed in this regard, and throwing a Hail Mary pass called the Caddo Plan doesn’t change this fact. Given its record of non-accomplishment with these schools, it is comical even to suggest that unfettered local governance could do a better job that what the state offers in these desperate situations. Its obstinacy to the change serves it poorly, and it needs to settle down, take its medicine, and with state guidance get on with finally doing its job right.

Senate Democrats face responsibility or politics choice

A stark choice presents itself to the Louisiana Senate – do what’s in the interests of the state, or do what scores Democrats political points.

With the escape of HB 841 in amended form from the House, the Senate now deals with it. The bill, which originally made uncontroversial changes to workers’ compensation law, had on the House floor gotten an amendment by the author state Rep. Avon Honey to permit the state to spend money on expanded unemployment benefits and coverage that would change the nature of the program from insurance to welfare, to tap into the federal spending bill’s permitting of this. The state could do so with the legal changes now part of the bill.

Inattentive opponents, mainly Republicans, let the amendment on without objection and then voted unanimously to pass it. This was a bigger hurdle than the Senate, as Republicans have a working majority in the House while Democrats have a nearly two-thirds advantage in the Senate. Its presiding officer, state Sen. Joel Chaisson, also identifies as a Democrat in contrast to the House Speaker Jim Tucker whose confusion on HB 841 let it go through.

There’s only one chance that the bill in the Senate has to survive both houses, and that is to make no changes at all to it. This is because anything that creates a different version would allow the House to change it back, or to sit on it and not let it proceed in the process. That may be too difficult for Chaisson to achieve if this is his intent. While he has a majority, there are enough Senate Democrats with quibbles over the bill as is that enough of them may not support it for different reasons to get it through.

But if it does somehow make it unaltered, then it would go to the governor, where it awaits a sure veto by Republican Governor Bobby Jindal who has vowed not to let such bad public policy become law. There is next to no chance two-thirds of the Senate would override the veto, and there is no way that could be obtained in the House. Simply, this bill is dead in amended form, and in fact to allow it to continue is self-defeating for its original purpose.

Therefore, the only reason Democrats would pursue this bill with that amendment attached would be to try to score political points by forcing Jindal into vetoing the bill. This is done on behest of the national party, which fears Jindal’s stature as a national politician and competitor to them, and could use this to claim Jindal was against (with rich irony considering the source) workers in the hopes of reducing him as a threat. State Democrats, who until Jindal’s rise historically have run their agenda down the state’s throat, also would like to weaken Jindal with this to strengthen their own hand.

So the question to Senate Democrats as a whole is whether they are more interested in the original intent of HB 841 making into law, or that they would rather irresponsibly waste time, effort, and taxpayers’ resources in trying to play politics. GOP House members already have suffered embarrassment on this. Do Democrats want to add Jindal to that list?

Effect of bill sleight of hand only to cause embarrassment

Daydreaming Louisiana representatives suffered political embarrassment Monday afternoon when one of their colleagues put one over on them for a pyrrhic victory.

Of some controversy has been Republican Gov. Bobby Jindal’s refusal to accept money from the federal spending bill if the state would change its laws to expand the reach and definition of unemployment insurance. Democrats made noises about trying to pass legislation to force him to do so, but had those bills bottled up in committee – until now, when one sailed straight out of the House courtesy of many inattentive legislators who have argued in the past they needed substantial pay increases because they sacrificed so much for their legislative jobs.

State Rep. Avon Honey’s HB 841 seemed innocuous enough when it came out of the House Labor and Industrial Relations Committee he heads, dealing with workers’ compensation issues. But on the floor without any opponents realizing it, without opposition he amended onto it the substance of the bills that would force Jindal’s hand, and then got all 98 other members present to pass the bill. Only after did chastened opponents, mostly Republicans, figure this out and express indignation.

Honey, not known as a mover and shaker in the House, did slightly violate protocol in not bringing up the matter at all in his committee, but now only a major protocol violation can prevent the bill from causing a lot of extra work. A member of the voting majority – practically any member – could ask for bill reconsideration so the amendment could be undone and then it could be passed again to head over to the Senate, but reconsideration traditionally is considered the province of the author and is seldom used and just in the case of defeated bills. If there is no willingness to undertake this essentially unprecedented move, the Senate will have to strip the amendment, pass the bill, then send it back to the House which could concur.

In a way, the matter is self-defeating for Honey because the majority that opposes the sentiment of the amendment could choose to defeat it on return regardless of whether it is stripped. In fact, it might be a strategy that shamed opponents might consider to save face.

Caught napping as they were makes them look like either or both of they were not doing their jobs and/or supported those sentiments. For those whose constituents are not dead set against the expansion of welfare the amendment would provide, their Senate confederates could strip the provision, and then they could vote not to concur, making flowery speeches about how they were trying to help the less fortunate, etc. while making sure there are enough votes for concurrence. It could be a way to work against bad public policy but politically look like all those things the emotive, as opposed to thinking, voters look for: caring, compassionate, ad naseum, and make them look less like they were asleep at the switch.

The bill in its present form has no chance to become law, and the only long-term impact that may result of this incident is in a few years some opponents to the reelection of some of the surprised presumed detractors of the amendment will remind voters of the lack of quality of such an incumbent to fail to do their jobs to this extent. And the legislative hijinks continue.

Political tantrum will not alter shape of LA budget

When analyzed particular in the light of recent history, the temporary defeat of HB 3 in the Louisiana House represents nothing more than a short-term lack of organization by legislative forces loyal to Gov. Bobby Jindal.

This bill, requiring a two-thirds majority of the seated membership for approval, enables debt to be incurred for capital spending projects of the capital outlay bill HB 2 (and any others that might come by if they are calculated into it). Until 2007 it typically was a formality that this would pass. But late that session, Republicans rallied by then-caucus leader state Rep. Jim Tucker defeated an attempt to pass a similar bill during a special session to spend a large surplus. Eventually, however, enough Republicans defected to let the bill through.

Almost two years later, now Speaker Tucker saw the same tactic used against his majority. Where the complaint two years past was against an operating budget viewed as too excessive, many of those in the Democrat majority then successfully deployed this last week against an operating budget they think is too small, while a few Republicans seemed perturbed at the actual distribution of capital outlay funds, dealing the Speaker’s forces a 62-24 setback.

While the shoe may be on the other foot for now, the situations are markedly different in cause and the result will end the same. Back then, only a few members missed the original vote and would not have made the difference. What made the difference eventually was enough Republicans (as their legislative histories showed, in name only) defected. This time, 19 absences of almost all supporters of the bill were the key. As long as Tucker has the foresight to make sure they are in the chamber at the appropriate time, there should be no problem here.

Tucker’s tactics in 2007 garnered some minor concessions because that peeled off enough defectors. Expect little in the way of these on this occasion, as the muscle is there to obviate their need. While those who have temporarily blockade the bill may make grandiose, if not wholly ignorant, statements about the governor running the state roughshod over the Legislature, the reality is they sadly are out of touch with the vast majority in the state, and other elected officials know it. This is why this tactic, essentially a political tantrum, will make no appreciable alteration to the budget nor to the philosophy behind it of proper priorities being structured within the parameters of more efficiency, less politics.

Government must cut cyber venture capital losses now

Two ships up and pulled anchor this, leaving even more tattered the credibility of economic development promises made by Bossier City elected officials, and to a lesser degree their Bossier Parish counterparts.

Sports fans also tuned into the world of politics may have realized that the looming demise of the most successful non-baseball franchise in the area’s history, the Bossier-Shreveport Mudbugs minor league professional hockey team, also creates a big hole for Bossier City. For the CenturyTel Center to have any chance at all to pay its operational expenses, the 40-plus (because they reached the playoffs so often and sometimes went far) home game dates of the Mudbugs were crucial. With this anchor tenant gone, the gains unrealized from using the $56.5 million that the city blew on the arena for other purposes – roads work that could have been finished years ago, not having to raise water and sewerage fees on residents, etc. – now will be compounded by actual annual operating losses perhaps into the millions of dollars.

Maybe a last minute deal will keep the franchise alive (the tentative deadline being today), reviving the joy of area fans and relieving those in Bossier City government who were around to stump for the arena from more egg on their faces. But you would have had to been much more attentive to have learned that an even riskier gamble by the city, and parish and state, essentially blew up in the faces of Bossier politicians with the announcement that the U.S. military will place its cyber command headquarters at Ft. Meade, MD.