Jindal politically goes all in with risky CCSS gambit

Gov. Bobby Jindal has staked perhaps his whole political future on a battle where he doesn’t exactly have a lot of cards to play to win the hand. But maybe his political calculus tells him that emerging victorious in the battle isn’t essential to winning the war.

Yesterday, Jindal announced several actions through executive orders BJ 2014-6 and BJ 2014-7 designed to interfere with the Louisiana’s ability to administer exams designed through the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers, based upon the Common Core State Standards initiative. Despite having once been a supporter and with the state’s own testing used as a model for constructing the PARCC exam, he has become a critic of the effort, arguing that, even if CCSS does not impose any content standards in curriculum, PARCC somehow could be used as a tool to impose a nationalized curriculum, which he opposes. Thus, in stopping PARCC, CCSS falls on its own accord, the thinking goes.

These are interesting as much for what they include as what they leave out. First, they order the Department of Education – directed by the separate Board of Elementary and Secondary Education and its hired superintendent that runs DOE – essentially to rebid the contract for testing. The argument used is that DOE allegedly failed to follow state law in allowing a group procurement for the PARCC organization, because it could skirt competitive bidding laws -- despite the fact that the contract started with the same firm for using previous tests in 2003 and was renewed regularly since.

Abolishing judicial retirement age needs rejecting

Yet another exercise in bad public policy joined others on the fall constitutional amendment election ballot this past session of the Louisiana Legislature which would decrease the quality of justice in the state.

HB 96 by state Rep. John Bel Edwards would repeal the age restriction on service currently for state and local judges. Now, they cannot run for office if they would be sworn into it after their 70^th birthday. This joins on the ballot a pair of other clunkers, one that locks the state into spending more on nursing homes even as their need becomes reduced, creates pressure for tax increases, and/or increases the threat of legal action against the state, and another that has the effect of increasing bureaucracy and the size of government with the establishment of an unneeded cabinet department.

Opposition mainly is driven by existing judges themselves, as they enjoy the job’s flexibility, stability, high rate of pay for work required, but perhaps most importantly because of the power they can wield politically, especially in rural areas, which allows them to parlay the infrequent elections to them into almost never losing reelection. Thus, they resent forcible retirement from these plum positions, and legislators are more than happy to assist them because among the roughly third of the Legislature that are lawyers, many eye post-legislative careers either as judges or elected to offices that work with them regularly.

Burrell nonprofit service may reflect on mayoral bid

Shreveport television station KTBS may have just scratched the surface when it ran a story about unannounced announced city mayoral candidate state Rep. Roy Burrell’s involvement with a nonprofit organization the activities and accounting for which raise substantial questions about his potential service as the city’s chief executive officer.

Burrell, since his days as a city councilman, has lead an organization known as the Inner City Entrepreneur Institute, for which he appears not just to make a decent living off its only activity,  a two-week yearly event currently in progress called BizCamp, but also in a way that seems, relative to other organizations and their leadership pay, unusual. KTBS reports since 2005 the city of Shreveport has given ICE a total of $315,000, and since 2006, the Caddo Parish Commission has given it a total of $112,000.

But trawling through the group’s required, as a 501(c)(3) charitable organization, Internal Revenue Service Form 990 for each year since 2001 (excepting 2002, for which a filing could not be found) reveals a murky picture sometimes obscurant in details. For these years, the organization garnered $995,702 (and including 2002 figure reported in 2003, over $1 million) – from 2005 on over half of which came from government grants varying from $66,191 in 2007 to $15,000 in 2009 (forms previous to 2005 are unclear as to whether government grants comprised revenues). With public support (that is, contributions from outside government) making up the rest, this has led to wide ranging total figures, of a high in 2008 of $135,818 to a low of $36,890 in 2002, and thus also in terms of expenditures – the vast majority of which are for the director Burrell and the annual event – the most in 2008 of $169,226 to the least in 2009 of $65,134.

Analysts whistle into wind on fading Landrieu hopes

Hope springs eternal and generals always are fighting the last war. This explains why a number of Louisiana-based observers continue to miss the obvious: that Democrat Sen. Mary Landrieu is in deep trouble in her reelection bid, as confirmed by a recent poll.

This one commissioned by an interest group through a firm that usually conducts polls for Republicans showed GOP Rep. Bill Cassidy leading Landrieu 50-44, significantly putting him at pulling a simple majority of the vote, It continues a trend for months now where the combined vote of all announced Republicans (the two also-rans from the GOP picked up 5 percent of the remainder, which means the pollsters prompted initially undecided respondents to make a choice) exceeds the vote for Landrieu.

But the state’s mainstream media hardly touched the significant breakthrough for Cassidy. It was mentioned briefly by New Orleans Times-Picayune reporter Bruce Alpert, who then immediately dismissed it as “it should be taken with a grain of salt” because it “seems to over-represent Republican voters and under-represent African Americans.”

Jindal treats bills of same rationale differently

Gov. Bobby Jindal’s veto of HB 1091 is unfortunate not only as a matter of bad public policy, but insofar as it contradicts the logic correctly justifying his signature of HB 388.

The latter bill introduces more stringent and constitutional restrictions on the operation of abortion clinics, with an eye on making it safer for its surviving human, the adult female patient. Currently, three of the state’s five operating mills without modifying their buildings or practices would not meet the new requirements. Critics, legally unsuccessfully in other states with similar laws, have complained that these amount to limiting abortions so severely as to overturn the U.S. Supreme Court declaration that abortion can’t be made always illegal. Proponents contend that these reduce the risk of adult deaths added to those of the unborn, to which critics respond by saying women dying as a result of complications from legal abortion is rare.

Maybe rare, but it does happen even when done according to the law. And if erring on the side of life when considering unborn humans is not respected adequately in American jurisprudence, there’s no excuse not to do so when it comes to a female already born voluntarily choosing an elective if unsavory procedure. Abortion cannot be justified by putting even more innocent lives at needless, avoidable risk.

Voting rules changes can improve LA Legislature

Perhaps stricter limits on floor voting would reduce the amount of posturing and self-fulfillment common among Louisiana legislators in the performance of their legislative duties, as well as have the salutary effect of cranking out fewer but more thoroughly vetted and better bills.

This past session representatives smothered HB 373 by state Rep. Steve Carter, which would have amended the Constitution to reduce the length of the even-year “general” session of the Legislature and have limited the number of non-local bills intended to have the effect of law that a legislator could introduce to 10. Carter argued that Louisiana ranked high in the number of bills introduced but low in passage rates compared to other states, and so changing these parameters would make for a more efficient, productive, and less-costly Legislature.

Naturally, it went nowhere. Many legislators are enthralled with filing bills, some racking up dozens a session, which this time resulted in almost 2,000 being filed and almost 900 passed (and, believe it or not, in the past two decades there have been years where these figures were around 50 percent higher), and didn’t want time or numerical limitations on them. Their addiction to filing them comes from a desire to win credit from constituents and/or special interests by making a physical demonstration they support or care about something (even if there’s no chance the bill could pass given political realities) and/or from an ideological imperative drives them to express that and/or because they enjoy the process and perhaps psychological satisfaction of winning passage and having their handiwork appear in the law or the Constitution. And this is facilitated by having more days in a session to work these over.

LA nursing home subsidies too much to continue

While the just-concluded 2014 regular session of the Louisiana Legislature did nothing to create a less-favorable policy environment for long term health care for the disabled and indigent, a report by the Louisiana Legislative Auditor emphasized the problems that remain in having the state pay too much for too little service.

Historically, Louisiana tilted it resources in this regard towards institutionalized care in nursing homes, where the state paid a much higher proportion of total dollars going to this care to them relative to other states. Operators became dependent on these payments, on average 85 percent of their total revenue, comprising by fiscal year 2013 $840 million that represents nearly a quarter of all state Medicaid money spent. Because of legal changes and court rulings, however, the state has been forced to spend more on home- and community-based delivery even as payments to nursing homes continued to escalate.

Unfortunately, in the past 20 years collectively nursing home operators bet on more business, because of a less-healthy and more elderly population comparatively, disregarding the changing fiscal climate courtesy of the mandate to move less acute clients out of institutions, and overbuilt. As a result, Louisiana has among the lowest occupancy rates of the states, which even as this edges downwards faces a continuing decline in the overall number of clients in institutions. The hope among these operators is that they can ride this out until demographics of an aging national population catch up. Yet the continued growth of non-institutionalized options, which on average save the state tens of thousands of dollars a year per client with the benefit of less restricted living for each, portends that the overbuilt condition will not go away any time soon, if ever.

Now buffoonish, McAllister may aim for self-parody

What started out as light comedy has turned into full-on farce as Rep. Vance McAllister becomes ever more desperate to stay relevant and to resurrect a political career the grave of which he continues to dig deeper.

McAllister, who had no political experience before parlaying a lot of his own money and the wit to diagnose a political environment optimally arranged to elect an unknown to Congress, less than a half year later was revealed – apparently through a leak by his own staff – to have committed extramarital infidelity, prompting him to declare he would eschew an attempt at reelection this fall in order to put family affairs into order. Lately he’s hedged on a withdrawal from politics, not realizing that once surrendering that it’s unlikely any electorate ever would take him back.

But, as he made his mark as preacher of dysfunction in Washington, perhaps a return of zeal to stay in power prompted him to get back to that narrative through a bizarre story. His claimed anecdote highlights that (in his words) “money controls Washington” and how work on Capitol Hill is a “steady cycle of voting for fundraising and money instead of voting for what is right.”

Voters need to reject creating unneeded cabinet dept

Perhaps the most surprising of a surprisingly bad crop of constitutional amendments not only would end up costing more taxpayer dollars for no policy improvement, but it could violate federal law if passed, all to feed ego and empower special interests.

HB 341 by state Rep. Joe Harrison proved surprising in that it even made it to the voters. The proposed amendment would allow expand the number of cabinet departments allowed to exist in the state from 20 to 21 and would allow a department authorized by the amendment to disburse funds from Title XIX of the federal Social Security Act, but limit its authority only to over programs not ever administered by another part of government and could come into existence only when it had its own appropriated funds after Jun. 12, 2015.

In practical terms, this means a Department of Elderly Affairs would be created, courtesy of Act 384 of 2013, which set this up contingent on there being enough constitutional room for it. This takes programs and authority from the Division of Administration, principally the Governor’s Office for Elderly Affairs, and also empowers establishing a new program to serve the “frail elderly.” How and why it got there illustrates the quest for political symbolism over policy substance.

Calming agents on LA budgeting this year won't remain

In the decade this space has served mankind (or at least that portion attentive to Louisiana politics), the 2014 budgeting process, described as quiescent elsewhere, provoked the least commentary. Due to the same dynamics involved this, don’t expect it again next year.

Ever since 2006, the state’s budgetary picture has been whipsawed by extremes. Immediately after the hurricane disasters of that year, a great state revenue retrenchment was feared and in special session general fund spending was contracted by about 13 percent or nearly a billion dollars. The cautiousness was debated in 2006 and continued, although reductions focused mostly on reaping the “disaster dividend” (i.e., fewer social service payments because of the disproportionate displacement of disproportionately larger receivers of those), across-the-board cutting with little attention paid to structural changes to make government more efficient or to eliminating programs on the basis of need, and using the Budget Stabilization Fund.

But by 2007, the unanticipated “false economy” of the federal government steadily pumping into the state’s economy what would become in five years the lion’s share of $142 billion allocated for recovery. This created general fund revenues that in fact surpassed those of fiscal year 2006 by FY 2009, even as the country was sliding into economic recession. Now the problem became the opposite: vigorous debates not on how to cut, but on how to spend.