LA must resist wasting bonus for water systems

Even though Louisiana doesn’t have a great history in these situations, odds of success can improve if lawmakers put the people’s interests ahead of politics.

Because of a tremendous debt-laden federal government gift, well beyond any genuine necessity, the state will receive $3 billion from national taxpayers (which, of course, includes Louisianans). In essence, this gives the state one shot at fixing some longstanding infrastructure woes.

While not all of the mortgaging of future generations’ prospects went to best uses, one provision in HB 642 passed this session (and awaiting gubernatorial approval) did address a pressing need: putting water systems on a solid operational footing. The Louisiana Legislative Auditor has noted dozens of instances where smaller water providers owned by government have reached a point where it has become prohibitively expensive for them to maintain and operate a workable system.

Appointment illustrates opaque Bossier Jury

How the Bossier Parish Police Jury handled its recent vacancy illuminates why it has remained the most opaque of major northwest Louisiana governments.

You don’t get much transparency or sunshine from parish government, compared to Shreveport, Bossier City, the parishes’ school districts, or Caddo Parish. Besides live cable television coverage of some of these, all have high-quality Internet video delivered live and on demand of past meetings.

Further, all provide citizens with online information about agenda items typically a few days in advance of a meeting. This gives the public a chance to review upcoming matters and facilitates its members participation in the legally-mandated comment periods during governing bodies’ open meetings.

Cortez, Schexnayder fail leadership tests

The 2021 Regular Session of the Louisiana Legislature closed with confirmation of the utter failure of leadership of its Republican majorities, at the hands of House Speaker Clay Schexnayder and Senate Pres. Page Cortez.

All around them in neighboring southern states, enlightened bill after enlightened bill made it into law. Matters such as net income tax cuts, concealed carry of firearms without permit, protection of children from genital mutilation or harmful drugs, ensuring fair play for female scholastic and college athletes, preventing the teaching of neo-racism in schools and in government seminars, making election administration less amenable to outside influences, and budgeting that didn’t kick cans down the road all will become law in these places.

Likely none of this will happen in Louisiana. These others states did benefit from having Republican governors, although occasionally legislators had to override a misguided veto here and there. By contrast, Louisiana is saddled with Democrat Gov. John Bel Edwards – but like these other states have, on these issues working majorities of Republicans and a few Democrats or no party legislators here and there differing from issue to issue that could override a veto.

GOP shoots own goal with bad UI benefits swap

Louisiana conservatives must scratch their heads and wonder what is wrong with Republican legislators when mainly their votes send to the governor a bill like HB 183 by Democrat state Rep. Chad Brown.

The bill started out innocuously as giving claimants the ability not to have taxes withheld from emergency unemployment benefits, such as the extra $300 a week the federal government doles out through Sep. 6 on a state’s request. Half the states have signaled an intention not to participate in this through to that date.

Louisiana isn’t one of them, as surveys show the bonus payments discourage a portion of the unemployed from seeking work (despite that most states, including Louisiana, require that recipients seek jobs and take one if offered, but this requirement easily is gamed by recipients, for example, by inquiring repeatedly about jobs which they know for various reasons they will not be offered). Despite every southern state with a Republican governor having opted out, Louisiana’s Democrat Gov. John Bel Edwards has joined with the region’s other two Democrat chief executives in letting this form of universal basic income continue.

Democrats gamble on long shot map redraw hope

Louisiana House Democrats, in particular the Louisiana Legislative Black Caucus members of that chamber, seem willing to look a gift horse in the mouth apparently longing for a bigger, if unlikely, payoff in the future.

SB 163 by Republican state Sen. Patrick McMath would have added two state Supreme Court seats, bringing the total to nine. While this constitutional amendment, which would have taken effect in 2025 with voter approval in 2022, doesn’t set out the actual districting, its standard that districts be roughly equiproportional would mean the creation of two majority-minority districts, where just one exists at present.

Democrats, particularly blacks of the party, have carped about just the one, and this bill would have delivered a likely two of nine. Better still, Republicans magnanimously offered it up, despite the fact that no constitutional jurisprudence would force the state to draw districts in this fashion.

GOP leadership failure risks popular bills

What could have turned out to be a session-defining game of chicken fell flat, due to poor legislative leadership more interested in avoiding conflict than in promoting the goals of the Republican majority, reflecting voters’ wishes.

A number of important bills muscled their way through the two chambers despite the lukewarm support given, if not outright hostility displayed to them, by GOP House Speaker Clay Schexnayder and Sen. Pres. Page Cortez. Although leaders have discretion in the fate of bills, such as in point of order rulings, committee assignments of members and (in the case of some bills) bill disposition, and in timing when to move legislation, when an overwhelming portion of the majority party membership wants something to pass, they can’t stop it.

But if they concede to do the bidding of the governor, they can find a way to sabotage such bills from becoming law. The surest way uses methods to slow down bill passage just enough so that a bill doesn’t go to the governor for signature or veto within 15 days prior to the end of the session. This is because bills passed in identical form have three days for transmission to the governor, ten days for gubernatorial decision (failing to veto within that span makes the bill law), and if vetoed two days for transmission back to the chamber.

Deal good, if LA lawmakers keep their resolve

The deal struck in the Louisiana Legislature to advance roads construction works well on many levels – if lawmakers resist falling into a trap.

State senators whipsawed again HB 514 by Republican state Rep. Tanner Magee. It now steers starting in fiscal year 2023 a quarter, then for FY 2024 half, and finally for FY 2025 and beyond three-quarters of the estimated $500 million a year in vehicle sales taxation away from the general fund and towards transportation infrastructure. Something close to its present form should emerge from conference before the end of the session.

The instrument hardly resembles it original posture, which would have taxed medical marijuana and sent a portion of that to roads. In the interim, it became a vehicle for extending one temporary sales tax and making another permanent, dedicating much of that to roads.

Edwards idleness bonus tactic masks agenda

Who does Democrat Gov. John Bel Edwards think he’s kidding?

Under pressure from state employer interest groups and Republican elected officials, Edwards has resisted terminating early extra $300 weekly payments from the federal government, due to expire Sep. 6. Research continues to build showing that the presence of this bonus, which in many states can hike the weekly stipend by more than double, plays a significant role in discouraging work which then constrains business operations, leaving employers a choice of whether to go out of business because wage demands become distorted higher or cutting back on service hours.

But the data demonstrating this largely are anecdotal and survey-based because of the short interval since the bonus went into effect and that only next week do the first of the half of all states ending it early start to implement this. Only one study, tangentially related – and not particularly applicable to the current policy question because it reviewed data about the previous $600 level and modeled the impact on middle-class wages – has addressed the issue, which showed that roughly one of seven people who refused work did so because of the bonus.

LA should resist changing school grade formula

Louisiana should tread carefully, if at all, down a path of deemphasizing actual knowledge and thinking ability imparted by its public schools when assessing their performances.

Next week, the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education will debate whether to change the calculation of school performance scores, which provide a method for comparison and assessment that could affect whether schools continue to operate as well as a way for families to evaluate them. The formula varies for the level of schooling involved:

• Kindergarten through Grade 3 – 75 percent from aggregate student statewide assessments, 25 percent from student progress from testing prior to the school year
• Grades 4 through 8 – 70 percent from assessments, 25 percent from progress, and 5 percent from how many course credits the past year’s eighth graders earned in Grade 9
• Grades 9 through 12 – 25 percent from assessments (although a sixth of this actually come from language and math progress), 25 percent from standardized higher education testing or its equivalent, 25 percent from the rolling four-year graduation rate, and 25 percent from how past students have fared in accumulating college credit or certifications (a measure of the quality of the secondary education)

New conservative caucus proving merit already

The new Louisiana Conservative Caucus doesn’t promise the world, so it needs to pass its first test.

This new House of Representatives group of Republicans formed last month pledging fiscal conservatism, pursuing pro-life advocacy, and backing Second Amendment protections, and only adds new members after invitation. It largely mirrors the House GOP segment that in early 2020 voted for Republican state Rep. Sherman Mack to become Speaker, with 38 of its 41 confirmed members having supported Mack (two others won special elections to the chamber afterwards). The one exception who backed GOP Speaker Clay Schexnayder – as did all 35 Democrats, both no party members, and 21 other Republicans (one other noninvited Republican recently won a special election) – GOP state Rep. Ray Garofalo – Schexnayder recently dumped as a committee chairman because Garofalo insisted on pursuing legislation that would forbid neo-racist ideas from propagation through the public schools and in state higher education.

Importantly, the LCC didn’t form, as has been implied, over Schexnayder selling out Garofalo after Democrats complained about the bill and the reaction to it. So far, it has limited its public intervention to one issue – a statement saying its members would vote against an attempt in HB 514 by GOP state Rep. Tanner Magee to maintain the 2016/2018 sales tax hike of 0.45 percent past 2025. Besides not intervening on behalf of Garofalo’s bill, it hasn’t gotten involved in controversy over bills forwarded by its member Republican state Rep. Valarie Hodges that would mandate teaching in schools pivotal moments in American history and civic literacy that a Senate committee watered down last week.