Unruly choir demands bold Jindal leadership on budget

Three political forces continue to move towards digging Louisiana out of a tremendous projected budget hole for next fiscal year. The question is, whether they will be able to go far enough, fast enough to prevent unnecessarily harsh spending cuts.

There’s the one majoritarian branch which has shown the greatest progress but at a slow rate. While Gov. Bobby Jindal’s rhetoric sometimes has exceeded results to date, slowly but surely the cautious, incremental reform approach of his administration grinds it way to better prioritized and more efficient state spending. Big moves have been few, yet the little ones are starting to add up. But this approach unlikely to be enough in time to address this dilemma.

Then there’s the other majoritarian branch that makes grand gestures but ends up with not much to show for them, the Legislature. Last year, it convened the Commission for Streamlining Government and its companion the Post-Secondary Education Review Commission which made suggestions from incremental to grand to make state spending more efficient. The Jindal Administration shot layups on the smaller stuff but only mildly pushed for the bigger and the Legislature, lacking any other imperative, whiffed on those. Whether the greater imperative of the crisis will be enough for more sweeping measures this year is another matter.

Cao's contests affect careers of LaFonta, Hines

The inability of Rep. Anh “Joseph” Cao to secure recent reelection for his federal office has produced interesting political consequences regarding different state offices and their holders.

While Cao’s defeat was expected, the size by which he lost to state Rep. Cedric Richmond was not, despite spending huge sums to hold onto his seat in an uphill battle. Demographics worked heavily against Cao, who two years ago found the right combination of circumstances to be elected as a Republican in a majority black and Democrat district.

But Cao’s conduct in office and reputation for honesty and weighing ethics heavily in his decisions was the former seminarian’s strong suit, and he may have found the office that would emphasize most those qualities as he left the door open for a run for Louisiana Secretary of State, to be occupied on an interim basis by former state Sen. Tom Schedler when his boss Jay Dardenne becomes lieutenant governor next week. A significant portion of the job deals with elections and their integrity, and integrity is Cao’s strong suit.

Cao’s leaving the door open for this possibility should not have been received well by state Rep. Walker Hines, who last week announced a party switch to the GOP and possible pursuit of the same job. He has established a centrist voting record largely made that way by enthusiastic reform efforts. Schedler, who has registered his intention for the job and is anticipated to be supported by many establishment Republican activists, would be expected to be backed by long-standing conservative forces so Hines’ strategy may have been to come in front the center, stressing his reform credentials.

However, were Cao to enter the contest not only could he stress those same credentials, but his reputation for integrity, greater name recognition, and congressional experience would trump Hines’ qualities. He also has demonstrated the great fundraising prowess necessary to run successfully statewide while Hines has not (although Cao cannot use any leftover funds from his federal campaign). This may make any such campaign by Hines stillborn from the start.

In addition, Cao’s defeat may have been the final straw to end, at least for now, the elective career of state Rep. Juan LaFonta, whom Richmond convincingly defeated in the Democrat primary. LaFonta, first elected in a special contest five years ago, proclaimed that he would not run for reelection, in essence arguing the job wasn’t any fun any more if it ever had been.

LaFonta called the atmosphere of the Legislature “vindictive,” said over the past few years (meaning about all the time he was in it) it frustrated him, and, in particular, Gov. Bobby Jindal was really spoiling the party by threatening to under the penalty of their withdrawal or actually vetoing LaFonta’s slush fund line item appropriations. Confirming that he had no stomach to fight for and/or no confidence in his own leadership qualities to pursue his agenda, he remarked, “To beat Bobby Jindal it takes ... the people of this state to really wake up and put their foot down. To be vocal and active and organized and I just have not seen that.”

LaFonta insists he had made up his mind on this before Richmond’s shellacking of him. Translation: LaFonta was putting up with his fruitless legislative position only so long as it took him to use it to ascend to higher office. But now that Richmond has got it and the district’s demographics and history (of long tenures once elected) on his side, he doesn’t want to play any more and is going to go home.

Given a voting record favoring higher taxes, more spending, bigger government, and greater regulation by it, the citizenry should congratulate LaFonta on his exit from elective office, if not ask, since he seems set on this, for his immediate resignation.

LA's Medicaid proposal superior to providers' preference

As Louisiana tries to get a handle on its biggest ticket item, health care spending on the poor and disabled, it’s imperative that it get it right which means making sure taxpayers and patients’ needs are put before those of managing care, whether they be insurers or providers.

In the past few years, accelerated under Gov. Bobby Jindal’s term, the state has sought to move away from the uncoordinated system that relies on individual providers and the charity hospital system to provide this care. It has resulted in user overutilization often of the least efficient manner of service provision, while users have neglected much more efficient practices such as preventive care.

For lack of a better term, recent reform has gone in the direction of “Florida Plan,” which encourages competition among private providers managed by insurers (either third-party or extensions of providers). The state pays the manager the premium for the Medicaid enrollee which then reimburses the provider. Different plans would offer different mixes of benefits.

Changing wind blowing Alario to new, expedient label

Another day, another announcement for all intents and purposes that a Louisiana Democrat lawmaker is going to switch to the Republican Party. But this one smacks even more of seeking electoral advantage.

The proclamation by grizzled Legislature veteran state Sen. John Alario that he was almost certain to change registration before the year’s end seems even more expedient than the recent declaration by state Rep. Walker Hines that he was doing the same now. At least in Hines’ case his three-year career voting record seemed more amenable to a GOP affiliation all along, so the expediency comes from his having had to gain his election in a fairly Democrat-heavy, majority-black district. Having secured that election as a Democrat, his present defection is a signal to the GOP to help him out in redistricting and may help his chances in case he makes a run for Secretary of State next year.

But Alario’s move would come for almost the opposite reason. Until recently, he never has shown much affinity for a conservative/reform agenda, not the least because he served as House Speaker and as a committee leader in periods where the governors and Legislatures were comfortable with tax increases and big spending. His voting record, as by the Louisiana Legislature Log’s index, over the past seven years averaged about 49, where 100 is the maximum support in voting for conservative or reform positions on legislation.

However, this centrist score is skewed by his activities since entering the Senate after being term-limited in the House at the end of 2007. His last term there he averaged under 35, barely above the Democrat average of about 32 and well under the House overall average of around 46. Yet he seemed a changed man in the Senate, averaging about 67 in those three years with a stunning 90 in 2010.

It’s not that his district is pushing him in this direction; although it has been trending more conservatively, its large majority of Democrats and one-quarter black minority does not mean he could not get reelected as a Democrat. Unlike Hines’ case, redistricting really does not threaten dismembering his district, packing it with enough blacks to invite a challenge from a black Democrat, or with more Republicans to make that party able to knock him off: the Louisiana Family Forum plan, for example, adds some blacks but leaves it clearly with a white Democrat majority.

Rather, Alario, as he has done his entire career, is going whichever way the wind blows. When populist Democrats and/or Republicans-in-name-only called the shots in the Governor’s Mansion and Capitol, he was out in front of that as one of the biggest yes-men and facilitators of their tax-and-spend, grow government agenda. Times are different now, with conservative Republicans having captured the fourth floor, tightening their grip on the House, and may well gain a Senate majority for the first time since Reconstruction in the Senate by this time next year.

Alario acts however he needs to try to retain influence with whichever faction wields power. While he mouths the expected “Democrats have left me” line to explain it, any switch that does occur must be evaluated in light of this fact.

While expedient, Hines switch also better fits his record

The fact now has been ratified by the numbers: with the party switch of state Rep. Walker Hines from Democrat to Republican, effective control by Republicans of the Louisiana House of Representatives becomes official control. But the story is less about the evolution of a legislator that it is his concern over his political future.

Hines’ move brings the GOP total to 51 in the lower chamber, compared to 50 Democrats and four independents – although two of them reliably vote with Republicans and a third somewhat less often. As heard often in these cases, Hines cites certain things indicating the direction of the Democrats as reason for his change in affiliation.

That may be true, but two political considerations that certainly contributed he doesn’t mention. One, with redistricting coming up and Republicans looking likely to control the process, Hines wanted to shore up his odds that in the coming loss of seats for Orleans Parish he doesn’t get hung out to dry with a move of more black residents into his district, increasing the odds that a black Democrat could successfully challenge him. By joining the majority, he makes it more likely Republicans in the process will want to preserve his district with a white majority.

Also, two, Hines seems to have his eyes set on the Secretary of State’s office next year. As it is becoming increasingly apparent that in statewide contests Democrats are at a distinct disadvantage, running as a Republican would improve his chances of winning in all likelihood should he run. Some wonder whether this is not another version of the “Manchurian” candidacy witnessed in the recent special election for the lieutenant governor’s office where the politically untested daughter of a Democrat political activist and large donor ran as a blank slate mouthing some conservative themes, as a backdoor means by which a liberal can try to win statewide office.

This evidence suggests while Hines’ shift does smack of political expediency, he can claim genuinely that he is more at home with the GOP. When he ran in 2007, fresh out of college, as a Democrat he was criticized by student Democrats as being too squishy about their boilerplate liberalism and did not draw their endorsement for his run. Despite that, he caught a break when fellow Democrat and considered liberal front-runner Una Anderson right before the election was accused of allegedly being involved in a bribery scheme. After his successful election, nothing more was heard about Anderson in this matter.

In his first session, Hines charged ahead with playbook liberal legislation such as abolishing the death penalty, wasting money on making government buildings “green,” and government intervention into the marketplace for mortgage lending, plus he tried to sabotage tax cutting. But he also introduced some good reform measures and his reform instincts led him to score a 70 (where 100 is the most conservative/reform) on the Louisiana Legislature Log’s scorecard. In his second session, while his score dropped to 60 and he opposed some good conservative reform, he only introduced one objectionable bill which would have needlessly spent money on a fruitless effort to reduce homelessness.

This past session marked a significant movement in both his legislative agenda and voting record. With bills to force more efficiency in spending of health care dollars and other reform measures (one of which would become one of his first bills to make it to law), his only real misstep came in offering up something akin to the constitutional amendment that passed a couple of weeks ago which devalues property rights too much, a temptation shared by Orleans delegation regardless of ideology. And he ended up among the highest on the scorecard with a 95. (Hines throughout his legislative career also has been a member of the American Legislative Exchange Council, the considered “conservative” organization of state legislators.)

So it could be argued that the real political expediency for Hines came when he first ran as a Democrat (representatives of this label averaged a 44 over the last three years on the scorecard; note that Hines’ average of 75 is much higher than the average of about 58 for outgoing Republican Secretary of State Jay Dardenne over his last three years in the state Senate), even as his voting record trended in the opposite direction. This may have been needed with a district of demographics favoring Democrats. So despite the fact that his father is a political activist and he’s young, Hines (who once indicated Republican activists had asked him about switching from the beginning of his attempt for office) can claim legitimately it is not only for political expediency that he made the switch.

Whining, inaction not options to deal with higher education

With emotions running high over the state of funding higher education in Louisiana, adding needed perspective to the issue produces a better idea what should be done, what can be done, and what is likely to get done. We begin by addressing certain myths about the funding situation for higher education:

• Higher education in Louisiana is underfunded. By now the statistics should be familiar to anybody attentive about the issue, whether using statistics of a few years ago or more recent ones: in fiscal year 2009, Louisiana ranked seventh nationally in per capita expenditures for higher education, indicating that this never has been a funding problem but an efficiency in spending problem.
• There has been a large reduction in higher education budgets over the past couple of years. Again, you really can’t argue this, as the $212 million in reduced state support is offset by $124 million in tuition and fee increases through the end of fiscal year 2010, so the total decline from the peak has been about 7.65 percent – not insignificant, but hardly catastrophic, at least up until now.
• Since the beginning of 2008, higher education has faced reductions totaling only $43 million. This is what might be gap including the 2010-11 tuition increases courtesy of the GRAD Act which commits schools to improve performance, but it does not take into account the unfunded mandates being passed along which the University of Louisiana System estimated typically took up much of the tuition increases until the GRAD Act came along; for example, at my institution over half of the extra tuition revenue has been offset by unfunded mandates which the Legislature has stopped covering with additional monies over those past two years.
• Tuition increases will unfairly burden students. Louisiana ranks right about the bottom third of states in tuition charged and with many states also raising theirs probably will hardly advance on this list even with GRAD Act effects, and this does not take into account that roughly 22,000 students a year qualify for Taylor Opportunity Program for Students money which pays for tuition at the estimated cost last fiscal year of about $135 million, so while many will have to pay 10 percent more, it’s easier to call this unfair to taxpayers than for students in general.

Disregarding these myths and understanding the facts, what should be done is an extensive restructuring of higher education. Once again, the statistics here don’t lie: Louisiana has the eighth most public baccalaureate and above institutions and sixth most below baccalaureate institutions in the nation, meaning it ranks almost at the bottom of states in terms of students per institution. Further, it is a system skewed to the baccalaureate-and-above institutions whose enrollments are proportionally much higher than the national average and therefore adds an estimated $91 million more a year in delivery costs – about the budget reduction over the past two years including unfunded mandates.

In short, the system is overbuilt and top heavy. Some baccalaureate-and-above institutions need to be consolidated or converted into two-year schools, and among the technical colleges there need to be consolidations and closings as well. But this never will happen because legislators like having these institutions in their districts for the money and jobs they bring and also because alumni who help them in their campaigns (if the legislators themselves are not alumni) will threaten loss of support if any of these kinds of changes get made. Even the idea of relatively smaller savings that might come from following the lead of many states and consolidating governance systems into having just one higher education board has been fought tooth-and-nail to date.

Given this political reality, what could be done is sort of what is being done – the GRAD Act and trying to shift more students to community colleges and technical schools with overdue and delayed admission standards increases at the four-year schools, but this still falls short. TOPS standards, rather than being set at the national American College Test average, for tuition at baccalaureate institutions should be increased to make it a true scholarship program and some kind of payback required for dropouts (Louisiana ranked thirteenth in funds paid for freshmen dropouts from 2003-08) would encourage fewer marginal students to go to college and better direct students to appropriate fields of study and institutions. In addition, the state’s penchant for dedicating revenues, which would require constitutional amendments to change, skews priorities that forces higher education to be deprived of funding while less important activities automatically get money without review. Gov. Bobby Jindal would have to lead the charge to get these things implemented, including calling a special session by early 2011 to deal with the proposed amendments.

Instead, if Jindal does not exert some leadership to get these changes implemented, what is likely to happen is what is happening now – Jindal being unable to do the things at a global level to correct the problems of inefficient use of resources, so with no other choice than having to make higher education institutions cut at the margins it ends up from a public policy standpoint of treating the symptoms rather than the disease, and from a political standpoint damages him and higher education through the conflict that will ensue. For its part, Louisiana higher education has to wake up and support sensible changes (tax increases not being one) that can allow it to transition over the next several years into a more efficient deliverer of public services (although higher education does itself no favors to garner support when clownish behavior like this occurs).

The fact is, with the removal of federal spending dollars on tap, tens of millions, perhaps even more, dollars more may disappear from higher education next fiscal year. Politicians need to put aside parochial interests and make some systemic changes, while higher education has to devote its energies to pursuing realistic responses to this unfavorable environment that impair delivery the least. Inaction and whining are not options.

Increasingly irrelevant Ethics Board needs abolishment

In light of a recent court ruling, perhaps the time has come to reevaluate the relevancy, leading perhaps to the dismantling, of the Louisiana Board of Ethics.

Until the past couple of years, the Board was prosecutor, judge, jury, and executioner of all matters dealing with campaign finance, financial reporting requirements of government officials and lobbyists, and ethics questions of job performance in an elective or appointive office. Then, a statutory change removed its adjudicatory power. Overall, this was a good thing because it put decisions in the hands of trained, impartial civil servants with protections against political interference rather than inexpert political appointees charged with ruling on potentially the people who appointed them. The decision whether to prosecute on all matters remained in the hands of the Board, but it also continued to issue rulings on campaign finance violations while forwarding other matters to the new Ethics Adjudication Boards for action.

However, in a court case dealing with prosecution and adjudication of a violator of campaign finance regulations, where a former candidate failed to file required documents by their legal due date, the judge ruled that if a defendant challenged the punishment, even though the facts were clear about the case – the reports did not show up by the due date – administrative law judges still would have to have a trial about it. This was contrary to the state’s argument that, in these campaign finance matters, the Board served merely a procedural function, ratifying that reports were not filed when they were supposed to be and acting on information in them, justifying the Board’s continuing adjudication on those kinds of matters.

Yet perhaps what tipped the scales in favor of the ruling was the Board also could make exceptions. Even if a clear violation occurred, it had the power to waive penalties at its discretion. This would moot the argument that failure to file on time was open-and-shut, because not all instances of it drew a penalty. If let unchallenged to a higher court, which the Board has not yet decided whether this should be pursued, this discretionary authority now passes to the Ethics Adjudication Boards.

This decision, should it be unchallenged or upheld, begs reassessment of the Board. It has many powers, but practically all of them now remaining are really administrative. About the only ones that have any non-trivial policy import are whether to investigate resumed violations and discretion to issue advisory opinions about the ethics code. But for these kinds of matters it leans heavily on staff, so why not simply make these staff choices? The executive power of the Board could be placed in the hands of its administrator who would make the final call, as occurs in the Attorney General’s office. Legal changes could increase the administrator’s independence from political considerations.

By divesting the state of the Board, it would remove an increasingly irrelevant set of political appointees, save money, and remove a layer of bureaucracy. If Louisiana, by legislative and/or judicial fiat, has started the process of making its ethics enforcement and adjudication more professional, it should just go all the way.

Shreveport results show candidates, campaigns matter

Candidates and their campaigns matter. You can have the majority of constituents with you on the issues and your party identification may comport to the majority of those voting, but decisions made by candidates in their campaigns can more than negatively offset these advantages, and vice-versa when the demographics aren’t on your side. Recent Shreveport elections presented a good dose of this reality.

If he were honest with himself, Republican Bryan Wooley knew he had almost no chance of winning the mayor’s contest against incumbent Democrat Cedric Glover. No matter how big the wave for conservative Republicans was nationwide, that the city had a 50.2 percent black registration and Democrat registration of 54.5 percent provided a pretty big seawall for use by a black Democrat to fight it off – especially as Glover had shown in the past that he could turn out his base with the best of them.

Assuming this honesty existed, Wooley could justify his attempt after a term on the City Council by thinking he could leverage campaigning for mayor into a seat in the state legislature. Perhaps he considered that state Sen. Buddy Shaw, next year in his mid-70s, might want to hang it up (a special election for the state House seat in his district just concluded) and he could use a citywide run to get a head start on 2011. Really only this could justify giving up a seat where he would be a heavy favorite for reelection. As long as he ran a credible campaign, the experience would boost his political career.

Jindal diagnoses well, must follow own advice in quest

You have to go back to the administration of former Gov. John McKeithen to find a tome published under the name of a current Louisiana governor, but it seems that Gov. Bobby Jindal’s effort shortly to be released is going to make for some more interesting reading than the previous boilerplate. At least a pre-publication view indicates both that it will not be viewed favorably by the Washington/media liberal swamp and that Jindal should be going after higher national office unafraid to slash and burn.

The reviewer, a Washington Post subaltern, barely mentions the substantial portion of Leadership and Crisis concerning Jindal’s pre-political career (even though Jindal entered the political arena at 25, given his 39 years that’s about two-thirds of his life) which should prove interesting but instead concentrates on the political aspects. These, he maintains, consist mainly of criticism of elected and bureaucratic officials in Washington, with the occasional insinuation about the insularity of the media.

(Jindal apparently summarizes that he has fairly good media relations. This may come as a surprise to many of my friends in the traditional Louisiana media, whose kinds of stories they choose to run and sometimes the content of them in tone often range from contemptuous to exasperated because in his media relations not only does he not allow them to define him and his policies the way they want to, but also because they perceive his handling of them accelerates their slide into irrelevance and abrogates what they see as their right to wield influence. Perhaps Jindal refers to his relations with the members of the media at a personal level, but no doubt he acutely realizes the hostility the traditional Louisiana media generally feel towards him.)

Jindal seems to have harsh words about Washington politicians in general. He calls the typical members of Congress, where he served for three years in the House, “little kids” who are more interested in their own political fortunes than thinking of their constituents (scratch my musings that Jindal could position himself to run for the Senate in 2014; with this, it’s clear he’s all in for the executive branch), on the oil spill crisis highlights the many failings of the Pres. Barack Obama Administration, and critiques politicians who break the law and/or received legislative or judicial censure as a result of their activities as enriching selves and feeding appetites. (The reviewer faults him for not including Newt Gingrich on the list of bad behaving men as Gingrich wrote and approving blurb for the book, but the subaltern seems blissfully unaware that Gingrich never broke the law nor was censured by the House or judiciary for any activity.)

These observations follow the theme of the book, “leadership,” as a negative barometer of it, where it seems Jindal finds the pursuit of personal gain and power an impediment to it. “Leadership,” of course, in its classic administrative sense means to bring about a desired end-state for a group (in this case, the American people) by persuasion and task performance. From the review, it would appear Jindal doesn’t give many specifics about the particular policies he would advocate as part of his leadership (or perhaps the reviewer omitted them for space or political reasons), but he does make the global statement that too much interest in political selves interferes with it.

As he enters his final year of what could be his first term in office, Jindal must understand it gives him an excellent opportunity to practice what he preaches to avoid, as Louisiana faces severe budgetary problems. The book appears to serve as another resource which Jindal wants to use for a presumed vice presidential nomination sooner, and/or perhaps presidential nomination later, positioning himself as an outsider, particularly to Washington, even as he holds office. Given the tremendous disconnect the public presently sees between its interests and Democrat leadership, that is a political plus for achievement in the national political arena and perhaps explains the book’s apparent shift in tone from what had been anticipated, title change and all. But if that is his ambition, he needs to make sure he does not fail to provide leadership at home while in the pursuit of his own personal political quest.

Jindal strategy may help or backfire on national hopes

In a kind of campaigning for any future national aspirations, Gov. Bobby Jindal may have become a victim of his own success for the long term and signaled his hopes for the near-term.

Widely considered to be amenable to a presidential or vice presidential nomination in 2012 or 2016, during the recent midterm election campaigns Jindal lent his support to, if not outright appearance for, a number of Republican candidates, most of whom won their offices successfully. Jindal is thought of as a good draw by campaigns and the monetary support his endorsements appear to trigger seems to verify that.

Partly because of his efforts, which are typical of a politician who wishes to build a donor and high-profile supporter network for future national ambitions (and taken seriously by Democrats who already are beginning opposition research on him), several younger (that is, around his age) conservative Republicans won high profile offices,