Thanksgiving Day, 2016

This column publishes usually every Sunday through Thursday around  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. My column for The Advocate will run on Easter Sunday.

With Thursday, Nov. 24 being Thanksgiving Day, I invite you to explore this link.

Delay appropriate to resolve constitutional question

A Louisiana House panel last week wisely held off on approving health insurance provider contracts, but the prudential value of this action will decay rapidly.

The House Appropriations Committee refused to act upon approval of these, which relate to the state providing health insurance to its employees beginning Jan. 1, because of legally-questionable language. The documents incorporate phrasing from Democrat Gov. John Bel Edwards’ executive order JBE 16-11, that states “contracts for purchases of services … shall include a provision that the contractor shall not discriminate on the basis of … sexual orientation, gender identity….”

The authority a governor has to create protected classes of individuals undefined by law, as are sexual orientation and gender identity, runs counter to opinion #16-0078 issued by Republican Atty. Gen. Jeff Landry. He has taken the matter has to court to resolve the ambiguity, with the case’s next hearing scheduled for Nov. 29.

LA public asks for smarter, not bigger, state govt

Efforts at tax simplification and whittling away roads needs in Louisiana won’t necessarily dissipate if policy-makers won’t use these as excuses to raise taxes.

About the time the state’s Task Force on Structural Changes in Budget and Tax Policy released its report to accomplish its mission, voters turned away a constitutional amendment that would have implemented a matter related to the panel’s final report: removing the constitutional protection of corporations to deduct federal taxes paid for their state tax liability. Companion legislation would have removed the deduction and refigured marginal corporate tax rates from several brackets topping out at 8 percent to a flat rate of 6.5 percent.

That attempt echoed the report’s suggestion that the same happen to the constitutional protection mandating individual deductibility along the same lines. If the electorate felt uneasy about the corporate version, that could make the same in the case of individuals dead in the water, a notion floated by the House Republican leadership.

Outsider perception guiding LA contests for Congress

As expected, of the three contests left for federal elective office in the 2016 cycle in Louisiana (and the nation), the one featuring an intra-party battle looks the most interesting, if polling data prove correct. Yet all three ratify the notion that 2016 is the year of anti-establishmentarian politics.

After most survey outfits missed the call in the presidential contest (and quite a few other statewide races across the country), one might question legitimately the accuracy of surveys of Louisiana’s Third and Fourth Congressional District runoffs as well as that for the Senate. But not only do these align with conventional wisdom, they also came from one of the few pollsters to pick accurately the electoral college win of Pres.-elect Donald Trump. (Note: I was one of the respondents for two of these, and judging from the demographics the sampling seems right.) And these bring bad news for Democrats.

For the Senate, Republican Treasurer John Kennedy holds a 58-35 percent lead over Democrat Public Service Commissioner Foster Campbell (numbers throughout include both definite and leaning vote intentions). Campbell’s only lead occurs in CD 2, with its 63 percent black registration and, somewhat humiliating, trailed Kennedy by 21 points in his home CD 4. It’s hard to win statewide when picking up just over 20 percent of the white vote and barely half of your own partisans, while Kennedy picked up five out of every six Republicans and a majority of other/no party voters.

The Advocate column, Nov. 20, 2016

TOPS response shows smaller government can work
http://www.theadvocate.com/baton_rouge/opinion/jeff_sadow/article_d2a4b5c0-ad0e-11e6-a15a-0bf2cf706f06.html

Links:
http://www.theadvocate.com/new_orleans/news/education/article_2d0c1ec2-ab61-11e6-806c-878b0b6dbbda.html
http://www.theadvocate.com/baton_rouge/news/education/article_f530b77a-aa92-11e6-b29e-eb49ae05d34b.html
http://as400.regents.state.la.us/pdfs/ssps/fall15/sspsload215.pdf
http://jeffsadow.blogspot.com/2016/02/legislature-should-run-with-edwards.html
http://www.theadvocate.com/baton_rouge/news/education/article_f530b77a-aa92-11e6-b29e-eb49ae05d34b.html
http://house.louisiana.gov/housefiscal/DOCS_TENYEAR/10-Year%20Total%20Budget%20History%20by%20Department.pdf
http://gov.la.gov/news/gov-edwards-statement-on-tops-funding-for-spring-semester
http://www.nola.com/politics/index.ssf/2016/11/tops_tuition_rates.html

LA higher education heads misintepret election results

Louisiana higher education leaders they may be, but they drew the wrong lessons from election night results.

Disappointingly, Amendment 2 went down to defeat at the hands of voters last week. This would have transferred tuition authority from a supermajority of the Legislature to university management boards. This makes tuition changes fairly inflexible in a marketplace demanding more and more adroitness in pricing decisions.

While difficult to ascribe motivations for voting behavior on this issue, perhaps the majority felt the Legislature would look less kindly on hiking tuition than the appointees it vets for the boards. Currently, the GRAD Act has delegated in a limited fashion the Legislature’s authority for this by allowing schools to increase tuition up to 10 percent annually until reaching the southern regional average, under contracts that will expire soon. Successful negotiations for new six-year contracts could continue this power exercised by the three boards.

LA CD 3 runoff has barnburner makings

In a year presumed for outsiders, the ultimate insider may win Louisiana’s Third Congressional District because of the votes of those typically least connected to the political process – if they turn out.

Last week, Public Service Commissioner Scott Angelle led the field in this contest. The former Democrat/now Republican not only has served in cabinet posts under two governors, but also led a parish and sits on the Louisiana State University Board of Supervisors. Few in the state can match the breadth and length of his political career.

Yet he outpaced a raw amateur by just three percentage points, as law enforcement officer Republican Clay Higgins racked up 26 percent of the vote, way ahead of the third-place candidate, a white Democrat who ran a fairly unserious campaign that benefitted as a default for Democrat voters at nine percent. Right behind him came a black Democrat, followed by three Republicans who shelled out big bucks only for each to score in single digits.

LA GOP ready to stamp its authority on Senate, CD 4

As a result of last week’s elections, northwest Louisianans have two opportunities to nullify the playbook authored by Democrat Gov. John Bel Edwards for his party to win the biggest elections in the state.

Edwards famously captured the governorship last year when he tactically navigated, by emphasizing the few areas of agreement he had with voters while downplaying the many he did not, through a field of Republicans too busy savaging each other to expose him on those issues. This sent a gravely wounded Republican through to the runoff phase with him, where Edwards triumphed.

This year, only two general federal election contests resulted in a Democrat making the runoff. For Senate, northwest Louisiana’s Public Service Commissioner Foster Campbell with 17 percent of the vote squeaked into a runoff with Republican State Treasurer John Kennedy, who pulled in 25 percent. For House District 4, area lawyer and the lone Democrat Marshall Jones with 28 percent edged out Bossier City Republican state Rep. Mike Johnson by three points.

Mendacious letter distracts from expansion problems

When you can’t refute the argument, avoid addressing the argument – a time-honored strategy Louisiana Department of Health Secretary Rebekah Gee employed in a letter to the editor addressing my recent Baton Rouge Advocate column that mentioned Medicaid expansion. Better, she not only dodged it, she added in some misdirection and misinformation on top of that.

That column really focused more on the “surprise” the Gov. John Bel Edwards Administration experienced when a budget deficit for this fiscal year appeared in its calculations, which to anyone conversant in economics would have expected: you raise taxes the equivalent of nearly 20 percent of general fund revenues and the resulting depression of economic activity will cause revenues to undershoot projections, especially as the Legislative Fiscal Office used a static model of revenue generation in formulating the impact of the hikes. However, the piece also mentioned the spending side, pointing out that almost the entire increase in the FY 2017 budget in state general fund dollars – the receptacle for the tax increases – came in health care spending.

That over $500 million increase stands in stark contrast to the alleged $184 million Medicaid expansion “savings” asserted by Edwards through his implementation of it – a figure which Gee’s department never has explained its derivation despite numerous questions from this space and others about that. The only study, by the department during the former Gov. Bobby Jindal Administration prior to Edwards’ election, cast serious doubt on those numbers and projects over the next several years the state would pay billions of extra dollars (shortly after the change in administrations, the new regime removed this and a successor paper from Health’s web site).

The Advocate column: Nov. 13, 2016

True reform in Louisiana should mean lower taxes
http://www.theadvocate.com/baton_rouge/opinion/jeff_sadow/article_41d2ba5c-a772-11e6-b145-0ffeb612f859.html

Links:
http://www.theadvocate.com/acadiana/news/politics/article_d0da0afc-a128-11e6-8f0d-ab6cc7441d13.html
http://revenue.louisiana.gov/Miscellaneous/HCR%2011%20Task%20Force%20Summary%20of%20Recommendations%20Nov%201%202016.pdf