Split decision on contested law strongly favors reformers

The politics behind the decision made by state District Judge Tim Kelley are murky to discern, but, despite an adverse ruling in part, the decision actually favors reformers, including Gov. Bobby Jindal, supporting the scholarship voucher program.

Essentially, Kelley faced two tasks, a procedural and a constitutional ruling. The procedural concerns were about whether everything was followed correctly according to the Constitution, statute, and chambers’ rules when the Legislature passed the law that created this program to allow students at lower-achieving schools to use state money through the Minimum Foundation Program potentially to attend private schools. The constitutional concern was about whether the funding could come from the MFP.

While the Constitution, statute, and rules in question were not crystal clear in application, more connecting of the dots had to occur on the procedural end of things, with more inferring necessary to sort out those questions, meaning the greater ambiguity increased the chances of an judge choosing to find violation. The constitutional question of the use of MFP money seemed much simpler, given the wording of the Constitution that indicated it was permissible, hence more creative judicial reasoning would have to be employed to counter that.

Populist echoes put LA in tough property, budget spots

The reason why Louisiana finds itself caught short on a real estate deal with larger budget implications is the populist obsessive-compulsive disorder too many politicians have with state ownership and provision of things.

When after 2011 the state contractually was free to do what it willed with the 17.22 acres comprising what it had run until 2009 as the New Orleans Adolescent Hospital, the plan that evolved during this past legislative session, as constituted in Act 867, was to lease it to the neighboring Children’s Hospital in an arrangement that hoped to bring the state $35 million, or the value at which the state had insured it. In turn, that money, presumed realized by no later than Aug. 1, 2013 (as the last bills of state government for the prior fiscal year came due), was to be treated as “one-time” funds eligible for use.

But now it turns out that the property’s appraisal is just $20.9 million. There’s some room for debate there when accounting for a different use – for example, put down some streets and drainage, sell 50 lots of a third of an acre in size with houses to match, and being prime Uptown property in the shadow of Audubon Park you might get a million bucks a house and a developer might be willing to fork over $35 million for it as is – but it’s all hypothetical because the law doesn’t permit that. It only allows for negotiations exclusively with Children’s until Feb. 1, 2013, and then adds for the next six months anybody else willing to conduct health care operations to bid, which if not executed then the property reverts back to the Louisiana State University System. The one thing it doesn’t allow is sale of the property, even if it were for health care purposes.

Don't tinker with, but repeal, fuel price ticking time bomb

Unintended consequences earlier this year in Louisiana caused a needless government flap over something that could have cost the state hundreds of millions of dollars for a purpose never imagined. A related time bomb remains that could hit the pocketbooks of the citizenry that not only does the state continue to seem unconcerned about, but also willing to extend.

Poor drafting of a law allowing huge tax credits on vehicles that could run on fuel that was a fraction non-petroleum-based, never intended by the Legislature, had the state on the hook for a potential large sum, until rescinded by Gov. Bobby Jindal on a technicality. But in the same past legislative session that did not, through (depending upon your view of certain legislators’ motives) lack of information or dalliance, address that issue, part of a bill made technical changes to an alternative fuels law that could hit the public harder.

In 2006, the Legislature unwisely passed Act 313, creating R.S. 3:4674 that mandates production of alternative fuels comprising at least two percent of fuel sales in the state if a substantial minimum (with the lowest trigger being 10 million for diesel fuel) got produced annually. That target never has come close to being reached; in fact, of the 28 states that produce any, Louisiana most recently ranked dead last in both capacity for and production of all alternative fuels at 1.5 million gallons.

Ruling promotes spendthrift govt, race-based attitudes

Local government arrogance and perverted judicial overreach have combined to create a court decision that will be stayed faster than Democrats can jump in to blame Gov. Bobby Jindal every time a sparrow falls to the ground, with its overruling to follow.

Yesterday, Federal District Judge Ivan Lemelle ordered a halt to implementation of the state’s new voucher and teacher hiring laws in Tangipahoa Parish, saying those laws conflict with court orders in the parish’s decades-old desegregation case. Lemelle oversees the consent decree over that case, and declared that, under one law, students using the program to move out of public schools, in one of the worst performing districts in the state, to private schools threatened funding the previous court orders requiring the district to build new schools, to improve existing facilities and to maintain magnet programs. He also said in regards to the other that it interfered with court-ordered procedures for the recruitment and retention of black teachers and administrators.

 

Yet any rationale behind such reasoning borders on condoning policy-maker irresponsibility, if not signaling racist assumptions. Concerning the funding issue, it assumes that immediate harm has come from 50 students taking advantage of the program, which, according to the plaintiff’s rendering, comes to a cost of the $69,393 local contribution to the Minimum Foundation Program. This is despite the fact that overall savings to state taxpayers is $124,368.

Jindal no hypocrite, but must move on from 2012 diagnosis

Let’s assume the gossiping and connect-the-dots reveals this: Gov. Bobby Jindal latched onto the 2012 Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney’s campaign and when it started to go well started stumping for a high appointive post had it succeeded, but when it failed soon thereafter launched a couple of criticisms of the candidacy, leading some former campaign insiders to accuse Jindal of hypocrisy. Then, in fact does this make Jindal a hypocrite and what does it mean for him politically?

That’s a big negative on the first question. No surrogate, whether volunteering for campaign assistance or employed as a policy-making extension of a chief executive, is going always to agree with the boss on every issue or action. But that doesn’t matter so long as he loyally supports without public dissension of whatever the candidate/executive does; that’s all you can ask. And if that support cannot be forthcoming, then the subordinate resigns to avoid disunity.

However, the campaign is over and it’s Ann, not Jindal, who married Mitt. So if Jindal wants to point out flaws that he saw in it, he’s right to do so, regardless of whether it’s from the goodness of his heart to improve his party’s chances of winning elections and/or because identifying himself with that criticism improves the prospects of his political career. It doesn’t make him a hypocrite to have kept his mouth shut during the campaign about, then after it criticize, the remark that Romney made that said he had an uphill climb when 47 percent of the population was in families receiving some kind of benefit from the federal government, followed up by Romney calling many of these transfer payments “gifts.” It makes him loyal as long as there was something to which to be loyal.

LA REAL Act law exposes change, hypocrisy choice

If you say you’re going to do something, then do it; don’t start doing the opposite and claim you aren’t really acting that way. In essence, that’s the dilemma Louisiana finds itself in over the REAL ID Act as it is complying substantially with it even as state law prohibits that.

Passed in 2005 to override a less-structured version, the Act’s purpose is to have states produce identification such as drivers’ licenses securely in a very tamper-resistant way. Some funds, not enough to cover the anticipated costs, have been provided for the purpose, and its deadline has been extended on a few occasions to Jan. 15, 2013, with rules issued in the interim to guide implementation. The penalty for noncompliance is refusal of federal agencies to accept state identification for things such as air transport.

A number of states, Louisiana included, did not act enthusiastically to the law’s presence. In fact, in 2008, state Rep. Brett Geymann authored what would become Act 807, passing handily with Gov. Bobby Jindal’s signature, joining laws from other states prohibiting the state from implementing its provisions, citing several reasons among which was it made it more likely that the state Constitution’s right to privacy could be violated.

Thanksgiving Day, 2012

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. 22 being Thanksgiving Day, I invite you to explore this link.

PR campaign doesn't change fact of LASERS deterioration

As faithfully as the sun rises and sets, whenever it faces criticism about its viability and performance, the Louisiana State Employees Retirement System shoots out a stock fill-in-the-blank press release to entice media coverage, full of selective information that tries to put on its best face possible. Here we go again.

In June, the Pew Center on the States released a report broadly critical of the health of state pension plans, singling out Louisiana’s as one of the most endangered fiscally. This prompted a release from LASERS, subsequently effectively rebutted by Pew and in this space. Only weeks later, it sent out a release crowing about its investment performance – which in reality wasn’t anything to write home about.

This month, the New Orleans Times-Picayune, first in a news article, and subsequently and more obliquely in a piece by an opinion columnist, criticized the underfunded nature of LASERS and other state pension funds. Thus, LASERS issued a release deflecting from a couple of points made in the article but in no way disputing the facts – like the other major state fund, the Teachers Retirement System of Louisiana (which also tries, less strenuously, to fight its own rearguard action against deserved criticism) is badly underfunded. Its defense? At (then) 58 or so percent funded, it isn’t really in bad shape.

While flawed, opinion request does raise valid issues

While the rationales offered in a request by members of the Louisiana House of Representatives are inadequate to produce a result they will like, the exercise of asking for the attorney general’s opinion of the law and Constitution on this matter might serve a broader and more useful policy-making purpose.

Spearheaded by state Rep. Kirk Talbot on behalf of 17 fellow members who fancy themselves as fiscal hawks (more symbolically than in substance), the request made of Atty. Gen. Buddy Caldwell claims the current state budget runs afoul of the law and Constitution in three ways. First, it claims that money predicted to be used as a revenue source from outside of the Revenue Estimating Conference procedure that they term as a “contingency,” cannot be used; this budget uses such funds. Second, it claims that some of these funds are “fictional” because they won’t come about; this budget includes as in the general fund money from an unused hospital building and expected recoveries of excess paid out funds. Third, it claims that placed into a fund any that were initially determined by the REC as nonrecurring stay nonrecurring and cannot be removed from that fund for nonrecurring reasons; this budget takes money declared nonrecurring, puts it into a permissible fund, then removes to the general fund a like amount of money from that fund for spending on recurring purposes.

Interesting questions they are, but on closer investigation the assertions of legal violations do not hold up. The contingency portion of the Constitution is designed to address things along the lines of, “if something else by statute happens leaving a funding source unavailable without backup, this creates an impermissible hole.” However, this is not what was done in the budget. Here, the dispute simply is over the estimation of available funds – the concept of having to forecast what will be out there and available a principle applied to every cent of revenue that is declared as “there” by the REC.

Wary nat'l, combative state media deal with Jindal future

Perhaps more interesting than the things he actually says is the reaction of both the national and state media to the concept of Gov. Bobby Jindal as a politician of national concern. That they invest themselves in this love/hate relationship with him tells us they think he is a threat to what they hold dear.

In the almost two weeks since the implosion of the former Gov. Mitt Romney presidential candidacy, it has become increasingly clear to all observers that the era of the Republican Party acting more as an echo of rather than presenting a choice to Democrats will not survive the 2016 election cycle. The GOP’s greatest successes in this post-Pres. Ronald Reagan period have come when its congressional party as a whole offered a conservative vision (1994, 2010), nor is it an accident that its only presidential winning candidate was seen as a conservative with moderate tendencies (Pres. George W. Bush) while all the others who were seen as moderates first with conservative tendencies lost.

By the content of the three interviews for the national media Jindal has given in this period, he gets the Reagan understanding that explanation and education of the center-right public of America of a conservative agenda wins elections. While there is a race on by Pres. Barack Obama and his fellow travelers to transform the country’s culture, this perverting hardly has begun, needs extended time for consolidation, and can be reversed through candidates and campaigns that articulate the basic principles of conservatism in an accessible way to the public.