Chicken hawks on the verge of becoming real budget hawks?

Perhaps a group of mostly Republican state representatives who style themselves as purists for sound state budgetary practices and results finally are evolving from a politicized, “chicken hawk” approach to a true “budget hawk” position that genuinely can improve Louisiana’s fiscal situation.

Formally organizing their enthusiasms as the Louisiana Budget Reform Coalition in the past few months, more than a year prior to that various group members have criticized some long-standing budgetary tactics employed in the executive budget and ratified by the Legislature. Drawing their special scorn has been the practice of using “one-time” money to provide some funding, generally in the range of 1-2 percent, of operating expenses. “One-time money” has come to mean a lot of things, but generally as used it includes funds from one-off transactions such as sale of government assets or a windfall of some kind and monies dedicated for a certain purpose that gets used for another courtesy of a supplemental appropriations bill called a “funds sweep.”

But their problem to date has been they have used the idea mostly as a political cudgel that sounds great and scores points for election purposes, but actually prevented any real progress in improving the state’s fiscal structure. Their great bane, one-time money, they declared a pox upon in advocating it never be used to fund operating expenses, but never seemed to grasp it was just a symptom of the real disease wherein lay the true cause of budgeting distress.

Colleges remain unserious about enacting needed change

While it’s an intriguing idea, Louisiana higher education’s attempt to free itself from legislative control of tuition seems neither legally valid nor addresses the fundamental problems ailing it and higher education in general.

According to the Board of Regents, members now doubt whether individual colleges raising tuition rates necessarily must go through the Legislature to do so, as it appears they would courtesy of a 1995 constitutional amendment (now Art. VII, Sec. 2.1) that reads “Any … increase in an existing fee or civil fine imposed or assessed by the state or any board, department, or agency of the state shall require the enactment of a law by a two-thirds vote of the elected members of each house of the legislature.” Enough doubt seemed to exist about whether tuition counted that a year later an attorney general’s (96-353) opinion needed issuing to confirm that, where it said that as the mission of higher education was to provide exactly that, a charge for anything directly related to that constituted a fee.

This upset in particular new Regent Edward Markle, who declared, “A fee is for a driver’s license or a speeding ticket. Tuition is something you pay for yourself voluntarily. It’s not a fee you pay the government; you pay it to educate yourself.” Such a statement makes one wonder whether Markle might be the best choice in a matter of legal representation if you want to win your case.

Greedy film crowd wishes to keep snouts in LA trough

Finally, it seems state officials have come to their senses about the massive transfer of taxpayer wealth from Louisiana citizens to a small coterie of professional makers of mainly schlock cinema. Which has those same bloodsuckers and star-struck political backers up in arms to try to derail efforts to bring sanity to the state’s motion picture tax credit program.

As part of his tax swap proposal, Gov. Bobby Jindal seeks to limit the usability of this device, which allows producers to take 30 percent or more of their costs and use them to decrease one-to-one Louisiana tax liability. This he hopes to accomplish by limiting the salary range to $1 million for a production.

Which, of course, would rule the high-priced talent needed to make such American Film Institute, Smithsonian-destined cinema masterpieces such as Drive Angry and Olympus Has Fallen impossible to qualify for much of their expenses. And has caused none other than the state’s highest-priced bellhop, Secretary of Economic Development Stephen Moret whose agency oversees then program, a past vigorous defender of it, suddenly to talk of altering the program to find efficiencies and better return on the dollar.

Compelling LA tax swap case at risk from demagoguery

It would be a major blunder by the Gov. Bobby Jindal Administration to let its tax swap plan falter because it allowed empty demagoguery to triumph over intellectually superior, economically beneficial, and individually empowering ideas.

Too often forgotten by conservatives, at least among those who aren’t populists, is that the increased intellectual demands underpinning their philosophy make cognitive demands on many unfamiliar with its study that causes what appears obvious to its articulators not to be understood fully by those receivers. (Conservatives of the populist kind, like liberals in general, base their belief more on emotion and faith with the consequent reduced ability to explain intellectually why they accept it as the superior understanding of why the world works as it does.) And it’s the practicality of translating abstract ideas into information for mass consumption that may make or break the plan.

In essence, the plan eliminates all state income taxes in favor of an increased sales tax on more items, provides income support for individuals making $20,000 or less in earning or those drawing retirement pay at $60,000 or less, eliminates some exceptions to the tax code while retaining those designed to shield basic necessities from sales taxes, and raises taxes dramatically on tobacco consumption. The state calculates the net impact to be a small gain to the lowest-income earners with higher gains for highest-income earners, while business may end up paying more but will be advantaged by lower administrative costs and an increased amount of revenue with more money in the mass public freed up to be spent.

LA Catholics should find beneficial continuity with Francis

As with his predecessor, the accession of Jorge Cardinal Bergoglio to the papacy as Francis should prove to benefit the Church in Louisiana.

In his nearly eight years, Benedict XVI brought needed stability to the Church increasingly under pressure that came from both within and without for it to become something that it wasn’t through demands to alter its core principles. At the same time, he also had to tackle the internal problem of escalating incidents and numbers (even if just a tiny fraction of the whole) of priests and religious committing sexual abuse, introduced when the Church let its guard down post-Vatican II, that was allowed to fester.

The response wasn’t altogether satisfactory because of the hidebound nature of bureaucracy, which the Vatican, like any large organization created by man, is not immune to suffering its implications. As an insider, Benedict had certain strengths to tackle the decay from within the church (where, unfortunately America has been a leader in this regard) that begins in the seminaries and extends from there, and correction should be on its way.

Good tax plan economically faces tough battle politically

While there are more hits with Gov. Bobby Jindal’s proposal to swap sales for income taxes, there are enough misses that could derail the change that needs a supermajority in the Louisiana Legislature.

The plan would eliminate all personal and corporate income taxes, plus the corporate franchise tax (in essence a licensing fee based upon corporate capital that is perhaps the most unfavorable of all the states that have one), in exchange for raising the state tax rate 1.88 percent and coverage of that to a host of previously-exempt services. However, several large exemptions will continue to exist against the entire state sales tax portion, principally concerning the acquisition of unprepared food, medicines, and utilities. Plus, any person whose income falls below $20,000 annually will be able to apply for a rebate of up to $300, and anyone drawing retirement payments such as Social Security can get a rebate tied to the first $60,000 of income (currently, recipients and state and local government retirees do not pay income taxes). Finally, it raises the tax on tobacco products, by $1.05 per pack of cigarettes.

Evaluated on economic terms, the plan has much going for it. Over the decades, research results continue to demonstrate that the most reliable path to increased societal wealth comes through systems relatively light on income taxes compared to sales taxes (nine states currently have no income taxes). Empirically, states with the lowest income taxes for decades have seen the most economic growth, while those with the lowest sales taxes have seen the least growth.

Budgeting choices now may affect governor's race later

Some presumed candidates for Louisiana governor in 2015 got called onto the carpet by state legislators for their alleged overspending on employee pay raises. The legislative querying produced some campaign propaganda points favoring certain of them at the expense of others.

The House Appropriations Committee, in its initial budget review for the next fiscal year, suddenly seems to have discovered that elected executive branch officials can give these pay raises, even as “merit” pay raises for other executive branch civil service classified employees have not happened for four years and for some unclassified employees even longer. Why this sudden realization that legally these officials could do this materialized now, from among individuals who wanted to vote themselves pay increases less than five years ago, remains a mystery, but became a topic of interrogation for some elected executives.

As they pointed out to varying degrees extenuating circumstances, such as the need to keep what they believed were key employees, that they budgeted to be able to do this, and that attainment of merit standards by employees meant these people deserved this. In addition, Insurance Commissioner Jim Donelon claimed Department of State Civil Service rules forced him to grant four percent pay raises when money was available, and Agriculture Commissioner Mike Strain said the law made him grant raises. These were in reference to mandated civil service rules that said certain personnel actions required raises to be given if money was available. But agency heads have discretion in making these dollars available: they could have gone to filling more positions or to finance other activities, so to claim they were “forced” to give raises is an overstatement.

PAR expansion framework falls short for proper analysis

More information always is better, and in that sense the Public Affairs Research Council has done a service by producing a guideline for analysis of whether Louisiana ought to accept federal money with considerable strings attached to expand Medicaid eligibility. But unfortunately it falls short conceptually, which makes vulnerable whatever recommendations would stem from its suggested course of study to the criticisms it levies.

The report reviews mainly two others from dispassionate, nonpartisan sources that provided the starting point from which Louisiana officials to date have determined not to pursue this option. However, some of its critiques also focus on problems that cropped up in more partisan, less objective analyses (many already addressed prior to this effort here).

Had the effort stopped just at pointing out the shortcomings of analyses based upon these several reports, little value would have come of it. But by then highlighting avenues of data acquisition and analyses that policy-makers ought to pursue provides for a good start. If state policy-makers already are not cognizant of these items in need of periodic review, then this serves as a basic primer on them.

Landrieu wish to punish oil further toughens reelection

Did Sen. Mary Landrieu commit political suicide with remarks recently published about her willingness to end tax breaks for oil companies?

The Democrat has walked, successfully to date, a fine line in staying on office in a state whose people increasingly are willing to vote on this basis of ideology, the majority of whose views poorly fit her own expressed views. To date, she has sustained a myth that she is a moderate Democrat when in fact she votes very much to the left: her lifetime American Conservative Union voting record (where a score of 100 equates to a perfect conservative voting record) is barely above 20.

Yet she has won three elections and his gunning for a fourth, partly because she has become expert at peeling off just enough support from those whose interests she typically votes against, but on the most salient issues to them she sometimes backs them. One is the oil industry, where historically she has fought attempts to increase the tax burden on the industry, one understandably important to Louisiana.

Dardenne Senate run may make sense for him, conservatives

Suddenly, if you consider media reaction being anything close to a genuine reading of public opinion, in Louisiana Lt. Gov. Jay Dardenne is the hottest politician in terms of political future. And perhaps it is conservative Republicans, who have had a rocky relationship with him, who join the mainstream media here in a kind of wishful thinking that may become reality.

Last month, a poll came to attention perhaps more because of Dardenne’s place in it than anything else. In part, it asked public opinion on hypothetical 2014 Senate matchups featuring Sen. Mary Landrieu. The Democrat widely is considered, if not the most vulnerable, one of the most vulnerable senators to lose her seat in the upcoming election.

Although Dardenne’s name never had been mentioned as a Senate candidate – the most cited names have been Reps. Bill Cassidy and John Fleming, former Rep. Jeff Landry, and recently inserting himself into the discussion, Board of Elementary and Secondary Education Chairman Chas Roemer – it was included against Landrieu, and he polled the best. State media outlets made inquiries, and then a national opinion magazine did a whole story on the possibility of Dardenne running. The perspicacious The Hayride also weighed in.