Legislators double down on hypocrisy, idiocy, illogic

Generally, when you’ve already made yourself look like an idiot, you need to stop flapping your gums because you’ll only compound that mistake. But when you’re trying to salvage political standing, going all in on stupid may be your best bet.

That’s the situation state Reps. Chris Hazel and Robert Johnson find themselves in over a political blow they suffered at the hands of Gov. Bobby Jindal. The governor outflanked Hazel when the representative tried to slip money into the state’s operating budget to keep open a prison up for closure that will save a few million dollars, when excess capacity exists across the state. Jindal thwarted the attempt that would allow Hazel to take credit for what he seems to think is the purpose of government, directly employing individuals in his district at the expense of taxpayers, by casting a line item veto to defeat the end-run.

When that veto first got announced, Hazel ranted about it with all of the intellectual persuasiveness of a moron. Not content with looking like a fool once, when contacted recently Hazel decided to burnish his credentials with another helping of asinine, if not hypocritical, comments. He said with this the governor was “paying back campaign contributions from private prisons,” and that by vetoing the line item he was ignoring the will of the chambers of the Legislature that had approved of the entire appropriations bill that it had been in.

Independence Day, 2012

This column publishes 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 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.

Typically, on this day this space links to a site celebrating the United States of America's independence. But this year, due to a threat to one of our most cherished liberties, please check out this link.

Education reform opponents blame White for doing his job

Here and there, ideological opponents of recent reforms to improve elementary and secondary education in Louisiana seem to have gone foaming at the mouth over revelations that the administrator responsible for implementing them is … well, implementing them.

The shakedown cruise that begun after the legislation became law, with a compressed timeline because the changes are to go into effect this school year, exposed areas of needed clarity and supplementation. One such matter involved assessing whether schools involved in the scholarship voucher portion of the change had the capacity to handle the number of slots they could fill with students qualifying as initially authorized by the state.

Because of the tight time schedule, notifications went out to the schools on the basis of paperwork submitted. Then the Monroe News-Star published a piece that took a look at one of the dozens of schools accepted into the program that cast doubt upon its institutional ability to educate adequately the maximum number of students authorized under the program.

Jindal has right idea to swap tax breaks for lower rates

There’s a right way and a wrong way to perform tax simplification, and it would appear the most important figure at the anticipated outset of the task in Louisiana has got the right attitude about it all.

During last session of the Legislature it resolved to study the tax break structure of the state. Around $4 billion, or something approaching a third of all potential taxes collectible to the general fund, get shielded from collection by the state as a result of a myriad of such exemptions. Because of tight budgetary conditions over the past few years, covetous eyes have turned towards these in the hopes of the abolition of some of these might make up some revenue ground.

As it is, many of these exemptions are narrowly tailored to favor a certain activity, and often the narrower they are, the less revenue forgone exists. At the same time, even recapturing these revenues does not come without a price, as the extra economic activity produced by their presence disappears with theirs, chipping away at revenues.

Jindal's career enhanced, Landrieu's ended, by events

The end of June produced the two biggest days in Sen. Mary Landrieu’s political life. What transpired ends her political career even as it enhances Gov. Bobby Jindal’s.

Last Thursday the U.S. Supreme Court made known its decision on the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, which has little to do with the first part of its name and relevant to the second part is a total lie. Landrieu had cast the decisive vote that allowed it to continue to become law, but not before she proudly proclaimed that part of it contained, in essence, extra money for Louisiana to pay its Medicaid bills. Just before the convoluted procedures played out that foisted the law into being enacted, it was estimated this additional benefit would bring an extra $100 million a year in each of 2011 and 2012 to the state.

But, wonder of wonders, the extremely complicated language in the bill that tried to isolate Louisiana as the only state to benefit backfired, to the American taxpayers’ detriment but the state’s benefit. Instead of a two-year fix, it became a multi-year bonus at a much higher level. Louisiana stood in line to get as much as $700 million in those years, and as much as $3.6 billion in the years to follow. When Republicans took control of the House in 2011, they got through a supposed fix that still left the state $1.6 billion to the good through 2014.

Must hurdle dependency attitude to right-size LA govt

At a certain point, the parent must facilitate the child’s independence and the child must accept that, lest an unhealthy dependency ensue. But judging from the reaction of Louisiana’s Council for the Development of French in Louisiana to a budget cut enacted by Gov. Bobby Jindal, you can tell those involved with CODOFIL aren’t grown up enough to take the step willingly even after the point was reached long ago.

The group and its supporters bemoaned the fact that Jindal, given broad instructions by the Legislature, to cut $15 million out of the operating budget for next fiscal year using his own discretion, lopped off from it $100,000 from what had been a budgeted $257,000, an almost 40 percent slicing. Making the leaving of the overgrown toddler, now at the ripe old age of 44, hungry for more mother’s milk was the abrupt separation on this occasion, with the Jindal Administration not giving it any prior notice.

But this long history created extreme separation anxiety with the head of its board of directors William Arceneaux declaring that its response in the future would be to “to go back to the Legislature and fight for those programs.” He clearly doesn’t get it – is it really the responsibility of the Louisiana taxpayer to duplicate services offered by the Department of Education in French language education and the agency of which it’s part, the Department of Culture, Recreation, and Tourism? Should citizens really have to pay more so a few thousand students get some additional instruction in French, and tens of thousands of more some very slight additional exposure to the language? It might be kick for some involved, but what real value does it bring to the state as a whole?

Federal, state insurers need to stop subsidizing riskiness

The fate of the continuing operation of the National Flood Insurance Program should be of more than passing concern to Louisianans, being that no state has benefitted more from its existence or has done the most to put it in the red and prompt its reform. And it also provides lessons for the state’s own policy of acting as property insurer.

Since 2008, the federal government-run program established four decades prior has operated by a series of short-term authorizations under existing rules that continue to drain federal taxpayers to subsidize those wishing to own property in riskier areas. Its rates set below real levels needed to offset actual risk have meant in few years have premiums at least matched losses paid, building up a steady deficit that has caused it soon to hit its $20.8 billion borrowing limit, and with no real pressures to conform to market rates having driven all private insurers of flood risk out early in the program’s history.

Actually, not a lot of the present borrowing authority had been used until 2005, when Louisiana broke the bank and then-limit of $1.5 billion with its hurricane disasters. Although one of the highest users of the program, ranking third in absolute numbers behind only the much larger in area and population Florida and Texas in policies written, the value of them, and their premiums paid amount, historically the state has sucked out resources from the program far out of proportion to its population. With about 1.5 percent of the nation’s people, since its inception the state has been the source of over a fifth of all losses historically and a staggering two-fifths of all claims monies paid out – enough of the latter to account for almost all of the money borrowed in the program’s history to date.

Adverse ruling gives LA Democrats electoral opportunity

Louisiana Democrats have their opening, the potential to secure a small foothold but when you don’t have anything at all it’s an improvement.

Any realistic chance that the state would not have to fork over in the neighborhood of $105 million evaporated yesterday when the U.S Supreme Court denied hearing an appeal by Louisiana Citizens Property Insurance Corporation to a judgment it owed $105 million in penalties in a class-action lawsuit. State courts had ruled the public corporation had broken state law in making payments too late to policy-holder claims. The state-owned and run organization sells property insurance, mostly the kinds and in areas that private insurers are discouraged from offering, and is backed by those revenues but also can levy an assessment on any policy-holder in the state.

Citizens is run by a board of directors, some appointed by the governor from interest group selections, others by legislative leaders, and even has the state treasurer or his designee. But the official with the most assumed control, the one whose designee his chief of staff serves as chairwoman of it, who steers the process to hire its chief executive officer, and who seems to speak in all official situations concerning it, is Insurance Commissioner Jim Donelon.

Jindal veto explanation consistent with constitution's logic

We all need a little help from time to time, some more than and more often than others, and it’s the Baton Rouge Advocate in need this time. Much as a kindergartner needs assistance in understanding 2+2=4, the editorialists at the paper require aid to comprehend why Gov. Bobby Jindal vetoed a series of laws that could have continued the tax on automobile rentals across the state. Let’s see what we can do to remove them from their confusion.

The expiring law, first enacted in 1990 but extended several times since, allowed levying of a three percent tax on short-term rentals that were not replacement vehicles subject to a repair of another, of which one-half percent would be remitted back to the parish. Four bills passed to try to keep the local portion on the books, three identifying certain parishes and the other general to the state.

The Advocate got stumped because Jindal wrote he vetoed them because he pledged not to “raise taxes,” while it argued that this was a tax “renewal” at the same local or aggregate amount, stating “If it’s a renewal, it’s not raising a tax, by definition. It’s keeping it where it exists.” Further, it argued that, as the mechanism in all cases was to provide a local option election to impose the tax, this gave the tax added validity as the people would choose whether to put it upon themselves. Then, somewhat contradictorily, it also tried to provide validation of it by saying local citizens would pay next to none of it anyway. Finally, it defines Jindal’s actions as hypocritical because he has permitted revenue-raising actions, such as on college tuition and other agency fees, to go forward based upon fee-for-service models, but not on what it calls tax “renewals.”

Fake outrage over funds shift good theater, not good govt

A minor jurisdictional dispute over location of a program in state government points out the major flaw of legislative micromanaging caused by legislators wedded to special interests and agendas who wish to appear like they are solving problems when in fact they are doing nothing of the sort, if not encouraging the opposite.

Last week, it became news that, over two weeks after the fact, the Elderly Protection Services unit’s budget authority had been moved from the Governor’s Office to the Department of Health and Hospitals, even as its administrative home remained there. This means a memorandum of understanding will have to be written for DHH to perform these services.

This wimpering denouement concluded a needlessly big argument over small potatoes. As have other governors in the past, earlier in the session Gov. Bobby Jindal tried to combine the functions of the Office of Elderly Affairs, located deep in the Division of Administration and in part to coordinate a number of tasks mandated by federal law and funding provided by it, into DHH. Since the GOEA, which gets about $45 million, oversees the Older Americans Act, it’s not an illogical place for it to be. However, at the same time, it performs a number of functions that not only have little to do with that kind of role, they also are largely duplicative in required oversight needs of others being performed in other parts of government with more expertise to do them.