Merit-based, integrated TOPS key to achieving its goal

A continuing tight budgetary environment in Louisiana has gotten observers to consider picking up the knife to slaughter some sacred cows. First it was the motion picture tax credit, and now perhaps the Tuition Opportunity Program for Students?

This space on several occasions has spilled the ills of the program that pays for all tuition costs at any public community or technical college, or at any public baccalaureate institution and perhaps even more in some cases, or a portion of tuition at a private baccalaureate institution, for high school graduates in the state or of families claiming residency in the state. The idea was to get presumably college-ready students to a college in the state, drawing both on those who might have left the state and those who otherwise did not have the financial means to attend college.

But because of the program’s relatively low standards and tying the award directly to tuition levels, it did not evolve into a true scholarship reward but rather an entitlement program. Among its several pernicious effects – inflating the number of marginal students who would not complete degrees going to college, providing a disincentive to achieve past a point of mediocrity in high school, providing an incentive for colleges to raise tuition and to lower standards to capture revenues without regard to quality and efficiency – in these times the fact that it self-defeats greater reliance on tuition as a way of responding to budget reductions seems to be getting the increased attention of policy-makers.

Generous LA pension system for most now hurts a few

Unfortunately, the chickens continue to come home to roost as the consequences of Louisiana’s over-generous retirement system, as a segment of retirees in the state’s two largest suffer at the hands of a system that directed too much money to those encouraged to work too little.

At Senate interim committee hearings the latest statistics revealed that in the Louisiana State Employees Retirement System some 18 percent, and in the Teachers’ Retirement System of Louisiana 39 percent, of retirees received monthly benefits that were below the poverty level for a two-person household. The few cost of living increases to retirees that have come about in the past several years have not matched general price inflation.

The numbers at first glance seem unsettling, but overstate the problem of large numbers of retirees living hand-to-mouth. First, some in both systems worked for the state as only one career, and have either a private pension, something like an IRA, or Social Security benefits coming their way as well. Second, some were part-timers, which in part explains why the TRSL figure is so much higher, a portion of which are part of households with another member either still employed or with a retirement from a full-time job. Third, even for those who worked in either system full time, some will have another household member either employed or also with retirement income. Fourth, these households get a small break in that they are exempt from state income taxes. Finally, many of these may be single households.

Needless boards cost LA far more than members' expenses

It’s not so much in monetary terms that a Louisiana rife with commissions and boards acts as a drain on the state, but in the inefficiency that this condition brings to policy-making for which the citizenry pays.

This year’s annual report on the number of boards and commissions not in and of themselves a separate state agency by the Legislative Auditor reveals nearly 500 of them. The law also requires computing the costs of personnel serving on these (salaries, per diem payments, and travel expenses), which is at the least approaching $5 million. Note that this does include the overall expenses of these, which can be considerably higher but most of which would be spent by other agencies if that function needs to be performed, nor costs of staff, which also would have to be paid for by another agency if it performed that function, or already is as many of these bodies have minor administrative assistance from personnel on loan from other agencies.

The member personnel expenses can be deceiving somewhat. For example, the Louisiana Developmental Disabilities Council is required by federal law and spending on this category is paid for by federal funding, so the state does not have the option to not have it and does not pay state funds for these kinds of expenditures. But perusing the list of all of them brings considerable questioning into the utility of many of these entities, which by their abolishment or consolidation into another agency would save on these kinds of expenses.

This time, public may find high appointee salary worth it

Gov. Bobby Jindal means it, and is willing to pay handsomely to get it. But unlike some of his past appointments, if he gets the job done, it will repay Louisianans many times over.

Last week, Jindal appointed former administration official Tim Barfield as secretary of the Department of Revenue, with the specific instructions that he serve at the point to reform the state’s tax structure. Riddled with exceptions that create inefficiencies, the current system is designed more to satisfy political constituencies than as a regime that encourages investment through market signals that will increase the overall tax take without raising rates through the efficiency provided by a fairer, flatter, and perhaps even with lower rates system.

This joins with the Legislature, which has launched a special committee to investigate the matter. Given past fizzled efforts, this act doesn’t seem likely to lead to much so Jindal explicitly backing this effort may produce the needed pressure to make sure months from now the report that gets issued doesn’t only have a few very uncontroversial conclusions make it into law and have the rest disappear until the next go-around on the issue in the distant future.

Candidate slates point to LA Democrats slipping further

Subtract the results of the Second Congressional District, and it is possible that the votes for Libertarian and no party candidates in all of the other U.S. House contests will exceed those cast for Democrats across the rest of Louisiana, belying the notion that state Democrats are anywhere near a sustained and successful rebuilding effort.

The final qualifying statistics registered Republicans having one or more candidates in all six districts, in five of which they are favored overwhelmingly, Libertarians contesting all but the First, and Democrats competing in just three, and in the Second their Rep. Cedric Richmond is the heavy reelection favorite. Besides those dismal statistics for the state’s former majority party, some others compound recognition of its plight.

By the numbers, the most competitive district for the party outside of the Second was supposed to be the Fourth. Instead, Republican Rep. John Fleming gets the closest thing running to a free ride in the state this cycle with only a Libertarian opposing him. Perhaps the next most vulnerable for the GOP was the Fifth, but Republican Rep. Rodney Alexander almost got off as easily, also facing a Libertarian and a no party contestant who has run for office before and has been treated by voters as a crank.

Politics, practicality prevent Caddo school district breakup

As if the legislative process did not prove daunting enough last session, more evidence has come to show why the idea of breakaway schools districts will be a hard sell in the future for any district in the state, but particularly Caddo Parish.

The continuing plunge of the Caddo Parish School District towards financial – whittling a $40 million reserve to $5 million in just three years that only stayed static under the current budget – and academic – nearly half of its schools are rated as failing or threaten to become so soon – disasters, has created talk of dissident geographies seceding to form their own districts. But if the procedures to do that aren’t daunting enough, the politics and history and practical matters are such to make this possibility the longest of shots to hit home.

Creating a new school district out of another takes two simultaneous steps. The Legislature must pass a law defining the new district and its governance structure while the state Constitution must be amended to carve in the new district granting it powers of any school district absent any special acts.

As background, 61 of Louisiana’s school districts are coterminous with parish boundaries. Washington Parish has the Bogalusa City School District and the remainder of the parish in its own, Ouachita has the Monroe City School District and the remainder of the parish in its, and East Baton Rouge is fragmented into the Baker City School District, Central Community School System, and Zachary Community Schools with Baton Rouge and the remainder of the parish in the East Baton Rouge School District.

Caldwell pass on defending rule of law brings questions

Perhaps even more interesting that the constitutional questions involved in a federal case brought by Louisiana Supreme Court Associate Justice Bernette Johnson against her colleagues is the political question sprung from the fact that the state’s Attorney General Buddy Caldwell refused to intervene formally in it.

Johnson filed suit because the retiring Chief Justice Kitty Kimball wanted to convene a special hearing of the Court to determine who had the most seniority on the Court and therefore would succeed her at the end of the year. Johnson has served with the Court a few months longer than another member, but has been an elected member of it many fewer years because the first six years of her service came as an elected member not of the Court, but of an appellate court from which she was on loan.

Further muddying the waters is that, by the Court’s own ruling, this method of having her decide with the Court was unconstitutional. By the same token, a state law later amended to the original consent decree attempted to convey to her seniority privileges. Thus, Kimball wanted to have the Court sort it all out under state jurisprudence, but Johnson wants the federal government to intervene, abrogate that attempt, and through the power of the decree force her acceptance as the next chief justice.

Flak over hospital realignment shows power of populism

The wailing and gnashing of teeth you hear from the big government “conservatives” in St. Tammany Parish presents an object lesson into the sea change of thought necessary for right-sizing Louisiana state government.

Local elected officials were disappointed to learn that part of the fallout of a decision by Congress to ratchet back excess funds given the state for Medicaid meant the eventual closing of the Southeast Louisiana Hospital in Mandeville, one of the three state-owned facilities devoted to mental health patients. This will reduce the roughly 900 state-run beds for maladies of this kind by about a quarter, although the Department of Health and Hospitals pledges it will find space for all, even though that might be hundred or more miles away.

It’s unfortunate that the closing comes when it did, but not that the closing will come. The state has planned for that day to come, following the trend of almost every of state that are removing beds and closing facilities (some have closed all of them). This merely follows a long term secular trend starting with the deinstitutionalization movement launching six decades ago that has left state-operated beds at less than a twentieth in number of what they had been.

Old media finally getting wastefulness of film tax credits?

Not that agents part of the traditional media in Louisiana are very quick on the uptake on many issues of the day, but they finally may be catching on to the fact that Louisiana has spent approaching a billion dollars on corporate welfare for the film industry to get back pennies on the dollar. Or, maybe not.

Recently, the Shreveport Times ran an editorial that questioned the need for the state’s sacred cow of motion picture tax credits, editorializing on an effort by the leftist Louisiana Budget Project that reiterated from state reports about the roughly 13.5 cents on the dollar in tax receipts the state got for every dollar of tax credits they doled out to filmmakers. Clearly, the attentiveness of neither the LBP nor The Times does them much credit, for in this space no fewer than 10 times starting in 2005 the exact same point has been made again and again, every so often taking the newest data that would reveal the same old picture of wasteful spending, which now is approaching a billion dollars worth of issued credits.

Why did it take a burn-through of a billion bucks for The Times to catch on despite this space’s persistent analyses (and similar columns appearing in a publication that the newspaper receives, Fax-Net Update)? Even the LBP seemed to pick up on this faster than The Times, as it issued a brief in opposition about the issue last year. Regardless of how late it is to the party, it’s significant in that it becomes the first mainstream media outlet in the state even to question the merits of the program.

Nod to Ryan may push Jindal to challenge Landrieu

If Gov. Bobby Jindal does envision a career ahead of him in extremely high national office, potentially the Republican vice presidential candidate pick of former Gov. Mitt Romney of Rep. Paul Ryan presents the most problems possible for that to come to fruition and directly affects his next steps relative to service to the state of Louisiana.

Ryan went a bit against type in becoming (presumptively) only the fourth nominee in the past century from a major party from the House that did not serve in the Senate or as a governor (and the only winner, John Nance Garner who became vice president in 1933, had served as both House Speaker and Minority Leader). In fact, one must go back over a century to find the closest parallel to a choice like Ryan’s: the GOP’s James Sherman who won in 1908 and, like Ryan, was famous for sweeping policy preferences but, like Ryan, was not in the highest leadership positions in the House and/or his party.

But give Ryan a good tan and magically add gubernatorial experience to his résumé and you’ve got Jindal. They are about the same age, both have House service, both are considered bright but not that exciting (at least not in the Prisoner #03128-095 sense), both are Catholic with three children, and both have fierce reputations as opposing tax increases while wanting government to live within its means.