Politicized theory, assumptions negate report usefulness

Apparently, Louisiana’s Secretary of Health and Hospitals Bruce Greenstein doesn’t suffer fools gladly nor has much tolerance for knaves, judging by his reaction to a report extolling the virtues of Medicaid spending in Louisiana.

The leftist Louisiana Budget Project, anticipating the negative publicity surrounding the huge increase in Medicaid spending Louisiana will be put on the hook for courtesy of Democrats’ Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (“Obamacare’), attempted an inoculation by claiming increased spending on the program that mainly serves the indigent constituted a positive economic stimulus, hence a cutback would cause economic contracture. In turn, Greenstein, whose department must grapple with the imposed additional costs and also is overseeing a dramatic reform of the system called “Bayou Health,” which promises to increase its efficiency, termed the conclusions “fallacy.”

Former newspaper political reporter Jan Moller, now heading the group, expressed disappointment that Greenstein did not directly address the report’s arguments. While the Secretary did so only obliquely, investigating the assumptions and selective use of information contained in it supports Greenstein’s statement.

Lawsuit compels more state exit of managing benefits

As another compelling reason manifests for getting Louisiana out of the active management of health benefits for its employees and retirees, defense of the current inefficient system continues as the Gov. Bobby Jindal Administration gets ready to resume efforts at reform.

Months ago, the Administration proposed to take the book of business that it directly manages, a little less than a quarter of all enrollees, and do with it like it does to all other in the system, have a third-party manage it. In order to get access to that business, it’s estimated that an administrator would pay as much as over $200 million.

Compelling reasons exist for this, besides the one-time bonus. Analysis indicates it would save money both for ratepayers and taxpayers (roughly estimated as $21.2 million annually for the former and about $56.3 million for the latter) and reduce the size of government, joining the other 48 states that do not directly administer their benefits programs. None of these figures or facts (even after my repeated attempts to have Office of Group Benefits, or members of its Policy and Planning Board, which voted to oppose the change, produce any evidence to the contrary) is in dispute. Yet those connected to OGB both past and present and others interested in protecting government jobs continue to voice disapproval.

Ending LA juco open admissions better uses tax dollars

To date, the slowly building wave of reform that steadily washes around Louisiana higher education certainly has lifted community and technical colleges. As baccalaureate-and-above institutions have experienced retrenchment, these have enjoyed rapid growth and state money that comes with it, courtesy of policy decisions. So these institutions should get out of their getting mode and into their giving mode when it comes to alterations they need to make in response to policy changes they may not find quite as appetizing as those before.

Joe May, president of the Louisiana Community and Technical College System, in a luncheon address complained that the higher education funding formula, which in so many other ways has come to favor those kinds of schools, does not when it comes to penalties it levies for non-completing students. Recent formulaic changes now deliver funds for schools for the number of course completers, not enrollees. The previous emphasis on getting people to sign up for classes created incentives for warm bodies to register, but not to finish coursework or, more importantly, degrees.

May noted that community colleges are open admissions – anybody with a high school diploma or General Equivalency Degree can enroll for their classes. This increases the chance that unprepared students do so, where as a term begins schools must budget for teachers and space according to this number. If a larger proportion of these students drop out of classes or their entire program for that semester, then the school ends up wasting money, such as by hiring teachers not necessary when the final numbers are in.

Jindal bold education plan mostly deserves enacting

Gov. Bobby Jindal finally began to give some details on his proposed elementary and secondary education overhaul for Louisiana. They reveal a plan as bold as his initiative last year regarding higher education yet even more comprehensive, and also, as the other did, in need of some tweaking.

The most revolutionary change from the often-cautious Jindal consists of a dramatic expansion in the use of public money that could go to private schooling. In essence, it would make a large portion of students, because about 70 percent of all public schools in the state would have their students qualify, to receive money to attend a private school if that is their families’ wishes. Further, this money would be excised from the current pool that pays for public schools.

Jindal argues that this would not be a transfer of total per pupil cost for the public schools transferred to private schools, because private school tuition typically is substantially lower than the nearly $12,000 a year the typical school gets for the typical student from the state or local agencies. This actually could expand money available to public schools if they same overall dollar amount of aid or something near it is kept. However, the savings/additional revenues may be less than the Jindal Administration thinks, for not only is the generally lower private school tuition than public school per pupil payment because of greater efficiency, but also because most private schools have endowments or other forms of support that are relatively fixed. That is, as the number of pupils increase that they serve, the less per pupil the other support will pay for, meaning tuition must rise to compensate to maintain.

LA needs to excise wasteful, distortive ethanol laws

While Louisiana, following the federal government, allowed its modest contribution to a boondoggle to expire, also like the federal government for real benefits to accrue it must stop indirect as well as direct support of wasteful corporate welfare.

At the end of 2011, Congress let ethanol subsidies expire. An eclectic coalition of conservatives, who correctly noted the economic inefficiency of subsidizing something with insufficient market demand when cheaper alternatives existed that had no worse externalities, and liberals, who found fault with another market distortion in how ethanol’s demand for foodstuffs jacked up those prices and skewed land use in what they thought were inferior environmentalist ways, built sufficient political power to discourage renewal.

The industry itself went along, but perhaps to deflect attention from a more insidious kind of market intervention: federal requirements of usage of ethanol that continue to increase that will have the same distorting effects that will cost consumers and taxpayers extra money. Louisiana tracked this national trend in a similar fashion, for both good and bad.

Paul win specter little reason to put off GOP caucuses

At one time conceived to occur in a little over a week from now, then presumed they might happen just after Carnival, Louisiana’s Republican Party still has not chosen a date for its congressional district caucuses to determine delegates for the state convention that will meet Jun. 2. This inaction has spawned conspiracy theories both implausible and minor in impact that should make no real difference in deciding on a date.

According to state GOP rules, the six district meetings elect three delegates each to serve as national delegates. Officially uncommitted, at the state convention the body, comprised largely of delegates elected at the district level, will decide whether they can have pledged delegates sent to the national convention officially to a candidate. No constraint exists on selection to the state convention except that it occur prior to the meeting at the state level.

Difficult to take seriously is the notion that a delay comes at behest of Gov. Bobby Jindal, in some gambit to enhance his ability to secure some kind of national office. The thinking goes that the state is not that friendly for leading nominee candidate Mitt Romney, so the longer the caucuses are delayed that could select delegates hostile to Romney, the more time Romney has to build a lead in the national contest that can contribute to a self-fulfilling prophecy of the inevitability of his nomination.

Struggle, need for power clouds Caldwell suit approach

While trying to parse the correct policy concerning the state’s liability for payment of service and when to lawyers is like deciding who to root for when, as recently occurred, two of the most despised teams in college football leave us with a Hobson’s choice for having a national champion, it’s easy to misdiagnose without understanding the dynamics behind it all.

At issue is how legal fees are paid for judgment on BP’s liability for the oil spill disaster of 2010. While many individual plaintiffs active and part of a class action are involved, so is the state. Recently, federal district Judge Carl Barbier ordered a contingency arrangement where, of the total damages, six percent is held out for legal compensation for private plaintiffs, and four percent for governments.

The Gov. Bobby Jindal Administration signaled agreement with the arrangement, but not Atty. Gen. Buddy Caldwell’s office. He prefers a billing arrangement where hours worked are submitted for compensation, and other governments also have criticized it. (They also argue it’s illegal, even though the practice is common.) This dispute has lead to an appeal on the ruling to occur later this month.

Committee top spots tilted to conservatives, reformers

Permanent standing committee chairmen-designates are out for the Louisiana Legislature, and with it perhaps some skewed regional news but good news for the conservative, reform agenda.

In the Senate, the partisan breakdown, 11 from the GOP of the 17, was fairly proportional to their presence in the chamber as a whole. But regional differences titled north and southeast. North Louisiana (and especially Ouachita Parish, with two) hit it big with seven chairmen, a part of the state with only about a fifth of the state’s population. And the 2010 census revealed that while the New Orleans Metropolitan Statistical Area had about a quarter of the state’s population and got about that many of the chairmanships, the Northshore picked up three spots and the River Parishes picked up another, so including Pres. Republican John Alario, half of the 18 meaningful positions of power are held by individuals within 50 miles of Orleans Parish.

The real shutout occurred with the Baton Rouge MSA where, despite comprising one-sixth of the state’s population, only one chairwomanship got scored there, and the remaining one was out yonder west. Demographics and partisanship had something to do with these skewed results, but also experience and, particularly in the case of the Baton Rouge area, compatibility with the Gov. Bobby Jindal agenda.

Bossier City tax hike punishes citizens for govt mistakes

If you're a Bossier City property owner or renter, happy New Year: anybody who read this space was warned. And, as a consequence of their past blundering, Bossier City lawmakers last year made it official: they’re raising taxes on the citizenry this year to make it pay for their mistakes.

In 2010, elected officials moaned and complained about how refusal to renew what was listed on the books as a 6 mill property tax would imperil funding of public safety services. That was their immature way of threatening voters to keep the gravy train rolling, instead of making sensible decisions they long resisted such as selling unneeded and underperforming real estate like the CenturyLink Center and Cyber Innovation Center. Even at a loss, the combination of curtailing the money these lost each year would more than have filled any budgetary gap by removal of the tax.

Voting down the renewal might have been the device to get it through those small brains with the giant egos that sit on the Bossier City Council and in the mayor’s office that they could no longer retain their venture capitalist attitude with the people’s money.

Partisan left calls Jindal partisan for calling them out

It’s always fascinating to observe how the left, imprisoned by its false assumptions about how the world works, views the events that invalidate its worldview. Members of the mainstream media and Louisiana Democrats provide a perfect prism by which to investigate this phenomenon in their parsing of Republican Gov. Bobby Jindal’s brief second inauguration remarks.

About the only prospective issue raised by Jindal in an otherwise image-laden, retrospective campaign concerned elementary and secondary education, reinforced by his backing of various candidates to the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education who said the same or did not appear to oppose it. And it turned out to be about the only issue of which Jindal spoke in his address, saying “In America, you do not have a right to have everything your neighbor has, you do not have a right to a big house or a fancy car, and you do not have a right to redistribute your neighbor’s wealth. But I would suggest this. I would suggest that we long ago decided that every kid does have a right to a quality education from an excellent teacher. And by getting a good education, kids then do have an opportunity to pursue their dreams.”

Also, he stated that the “key to reforming education here in Louisiana is not massive spending and tax increases. Throwing more money at the problem has proven to be a failure ... All we need to do is muster the courage to change our ways and to abandon old, tired methods that failed generations of our children. Anyone who stands in the way of providing real opportunities to all our kids must now stand down. Anyone who stands in the way of giving all our parents and all our children more choices when it comes to education must stand down.”