LA campaign spending rules need more limits

Even as Louisiana legislators reduced the impact of the inherent flaw of limits to campaign contributions this year, more work is needed on the expenditure side that reduces the uncertainty involved induced by the unelected state Board of Ethics.

Over the past year, elected officials have complained they have less certainty about what are allowable expenditures from political action committees in particular. This is because the legal standard is extremely open-ended on the campaign side, and on the PAC side there hasn’t been definition at all with the assumption that it matched that of the campaign side. PACs are allowed to spend on behalf of a candidate but must do so independently of a principal campaign committee for that candidate.

This summer, the Board, which oversees campaign disclosure, initiated a rules process that would limit PAC expenditures to exclude “expenditures for the purpose of supporting an elected official’s holding of public office or party position” or “expenditures for the benefit of a candidate that would be a personal use if made from a candidate’s campaign funds,” both of which can be done from a campaign account. However, the rule has yet to be made final with legislative leaders indicating they would exercise their veto power over it if made final.

Trump win ensures more bucks for LA coastal aid

If Republican former Pres. Donald Trump doesn’t win back the presidency in just under two weeks, Louisiana could face some real headwinds in coastal protection and restoration.

Not attracting the attention that it should, this summer a Maryland Democrat Pres. Joe Biden-appointed judge threatened to shut down oil and gas exploration and extraction in the Gulf of Mexico, giving as a reason the federal National Marine Fisheries Service insufficiently took into account the endangered species designation of Rice’s whales in rules promulgated for transit around the area. Basically, her ruling said, despite the extreme unlikelihood of a repeat of the Macondo well blowout in 2010, that this had to be worked into the rules. If the rules weren’t made by December, oil and gas-related activities could have been ordered to cease.

But this week the deadline was extended to May, 2025, as the agency said it didn’t have the resources to redo the process so quickly. Notably, this puts the final product months into the next presidential administration, which could influence the final rules.

New ploy but same infirmity to film tax credit

Prepare to hear a lot of squawking from grifters enjoying, directly or indirectly, taxpayer largesse from the Motion Picture Production tax credit as it rests on the chopping block in Republican Gov. Jeff Landry’s tax reform agenda. Much of it is recycled drivel, but there’s something new under the sun worth ridiculing.

The facts about the program’s wastefulness to taxpayers are indisputable. Even under the most optimistic assumptions, at best it returns 40 cents on the dollar, and subsidizes each job “created” (regardless of whether full time) to the tune of $13,300 each. Given recent data pointing to $500 million worth of credits issued since 2018, that’s a loss to taxpayers of at least $300 million (if all are redeemed, and typically within a few years are).

Supporters will spout off that, regardless of huge taxpayer costs, economic activity is created, such as an estimate that a buck of incentives induces $1.60 in economic activity. However, in isolation this is a meaningless figure because it doesn’t compare to alternate uses of funds, inside or outside of government. As compared to other tax credits, for example, the Digital Interactive Media and Software Tax Credit does better, so why not shut down the film one and transfer it all to the media and software one? More to the point, in the private sector if these dollars stayed in the hands of individuals, they almost certainly would invest differently and in enterprises that create far more jobs and wealth than making a bunch of movies and television episodes.

School group keeps shilling for adults, not kids

Having already taken a chink out of Louisiana’s elementary and secondary education standards, let’s hope the Legislature reins in whatever might come of the Greek chorus it established that advocates doing more of the same.

At the tail end of the 2024 session, the Legislature established the Louisiana House K-12 Education Study Group, ostensibly to study regulations on public schools, testing requirements, curriculum in particular as it pertains to local input and decision making, requirements of teachers that includes but not limited to training and general workload, and federal funding. Instead, it largely has honed in on how to change things to meet the needs of adults, rather than of children.

The major tactic to implement this strategy has been to go after student testing, which is built around two purposes: as a marker to identify areas of excellence and improvement among students and also to evaluate teacher and school performance. The state-mandated testing regime chafes administrators and teachers because it shines sometimes an uncomfortable spotlight on their product. The state’s student body has experienced slow but steady improvement in nationally-normed achievement in large part because of this rigor, at the expense of exposing weaknesses while aggravating school boards, because their members feel politically vulnerable in instances when accountability measures reveal their district’s schools aren’t doing so well, and administrators and teachers feel professionally pressured at schools whose students don’t show adequate achievement, growth, or progression.

LA brain drain fault of higher education

It’s called singing for your supper, but it shouldn’t be a flight from reality for Louisiana higher education.

Data reveal not only that the number of recipients of Taylor Opportunity Program for Students senior college awards has declined significantly in the last few years but also those eligible for the highest award level, Honors, disproportionately are turning down the free taxpayer-aided gift. Honors eligibility requires a 3.5 grade point average for a set of required courses and an ACT standardized test score of 27, making them eligible for the award of tuition mostly paid plus $800. The regular award requires a 2.5 GPA and 20 on the ACT for all but the $800 lagniappe.

The blame for this, according to one Board of Regents official, is unenlightened legislators and their greedy taxpaying constituents, with many of the student cohort opting for out-of-state schools offering better financial aid packages because of the inability for TOPS to cover the full cost of attendance. Starting in academic year 2016-17, the Legislature stopped indexing TOPS but would have to approve annually increases in the award to match tuition increases (fees aren’t included, and these have risen as well), which it has done infrequently since.

BC debt behind call for tax, fee increases

What Bossier City gave to taxpayers with one hand in 2024 the Republican Mayor Tommy Chandler Administration lobbies to take with the other in 2025, creating an election-year problem for graybeard city councilors.

Lost in all the excitement last week over the eventually-thwarted term limits power play instigated by those graybeards – Republican David Montgomery and Jeff Free plus Democrat Bubba Williams and independent Jeff Darby – with their rookie lackey Republican Vince Maggio was the budget workshop presented by the Council, hearing from city Chief Administrative Officer Amanda Nottingham about what the 2025 budget will look like that the Council will have to grapple with over the next two months, starting next week. It ended up as an object lesson as to the wages of the profligacy practiced by the graybeards over the past decade and more.

Nottingham painted a discouraging picture. Under current assumptions, she foresaw a $3 million deficit because expenses would increase faster than revenues. The main culprit she fingered was escalating insurance costs although the lingering problem of the state trying to shore up underfunded retirement systems, by passing costs onto local governments, also contributed.

Don't let up in reshaping LA higher education

Republican Gov. Jeff Landry and legislative majorities must not let the Louisiana State University System, or any of the state’s higher education boards, off the hook because, for now, they appear to be kowtowing.

Last week at the LSU Board of Supervisors’ meeting the panel, fresh off putting on board some Landry appointments that included Chairman Jimmie Woods, Sr. who Landry named to lead it under a new law granting him that authority, passed a resolution to review all programs in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard decision that banned preferential treatment by race in higher education admissions. Even though the decision addressed only admissions, the Board used it as a justification, as well as the Legislature’s Act 641 of 2024 that requires reporting on the existence of programs based upon racial or other preferences, that to comply with the act and the decision it would shut down any such programs or bureaucracies. The same resolution implemented the Kalven Principle in the system (the LSU Faculty Senate recently advocated for that), or that institutions remain officially neutral in commenting upon political issues, something that system Pres. William Tate IV had pursued as a matter of policy previously after some years of silence on the subject.

With that, the Board also ratified something long advocated in this space: a ban on diversity, equity, and inclusion statement requirements for hiring faculty members, which serve no useful purpose in educating and requires (at least lip service to) a mindset antithetical to true scholarly inquiry. This echoed a bill that received a committee hearing in the last legislative regular session that was held in abeyance for Louisiana’s four higher education systems to address issues it raised, including this one.

Rejection sends BC to historic city elections

With its strategy blown up earlier this week, the Bossier political establishment finds itself on the back foot as perhaps the most consequential set of elections in Bossier City’s history looms next spring.

It’s hard to know what has delivered more whiplash – contradictory pronouncements of what is the law made by Bossier City’s Legal Department or the saga of term limits – but for sure is that events at the State Bond Commission upended again the tussle over term limits on city councilors and the mayor. That’s as a result on Oct. 14 of the SBC taking the rare step of deferring to send to the Secretary of State (with a deadline to receive that day) the city’s request for voters to vet on Dec. 7 three items.

What first began as a forced march, which turned into a death march, but which finally became a quick march, Bossier City’s politically-motivated Charter Review Commission spat out three “amendments” for review which the SBC must perform by law for administrative rectitude, two of which unambiguously met the definition of a discrete and specific change in the city’s Charter: one placing a relaxed three-term non-lifetime prospective limit on the mayor, and another on city councilors. The political establishment behind the Commission with its members and allies on the panel pulled out all the stops to try to make the Dec. 7 ballot in an effort to derail a citizen petition that presented to voters strict three-term lifetime and retroactive limits on the mayor and councilors.

Thumbs up on all LA amendments this cycle

In a state election cycle that looks to end up as a yawner, so do the constitutional amendments voters in Louisiana will be asked to decide on Nov. 5 and Dec. 7.

The earlier date has just an Amendment 1, which would sequester from federal government offshore areas funds from alternative energy royalties to the Coastal Restoration and Protection Fund and therefore used for reclamation and flood control purposes. That’s the arrangement dealing with these one-time dollars for fossil fuel extraction in that region, and it makes sense. YES

The other four appear on the Dec. 7 ballot, and are as equally undramatic, if not also as arcane:

Flawed BC charter review invites litigation

The freak show finally concluded that was the Bossier City political establishment’s drive to stave off strict term limits on its mayor and city councilors, but it appears that by no means has this story reached its end

The Council emitted a last-minute gasp to keep alive the chance of deflecting a citizen petition that places on the ballot three-term retroactive and lifetime limits when at a hastily-called Oct. 10 special meeting it passed a resolution to attempt to put on the Dec. 7 ballot votes on three amendments to the charter from its politically-connected Charter Review Commission: a relaxed three-term limit, not lifetime nor retroactive, for councilors, a similar one for the mayor, and an omnibus amendment trying to roll about 160 changes into one. Its tardiness in not having this ready for the regular Oct. 8 meeting agenda meant it had to have unanimous Council approval for consideration, which was not forthcoming then.

If successfully placed on that ballot, the term limits measures would exist alongside the ones in the petition due to be placed on a future ballot, which is subject at present to a spurious appeal by Republican Councilors David Montgomery, Jeff Free, and Vince Maggio plus Democrat Bubba Williams and independent Jeff Darby to an order forcing them to resolve to put it on the ballot. They have used lawfare to evade their oath-bound Charter duty that makes it unlikely the petition measures would be on the Dec. 7 ballot. That means voters could vote into existence the relaxed term limits measure, then months later up the ante with the stricter version.