Politics, practicality prevent Caddo school district breakup

As if the legislative process did not prove daunting enough last session, more evidence has come to show why the idea of breakaway schools districts will be a hard sell in the future for any district in the state, but particularly Caddo Parish.

The continuing plunge of the Caddo Parish School District towards financial – whittling a $40 million reserve to $5 million in just three years that only stayed static under the current budget – and academic – nearly half of its schools are rated as failing or threaten to become so soon – disasters, has created talk of dissident geographies seceding to form their own districts. But if the procedures to do that aren’t daunting enough, the politics and history and practical matters are such to make this possibility the longest of shots to hit home.

Creating a new school district out of another takes two simultaneous steps. The Legislature must pass a law defining the new district and its governance structure while the state Constitution must be amended to carve in the new district granting it powers of any school district absent any special acts.

As background, 61 of Louisiana’s school districts are coterminous with parish boundaries. Washington Parish has the Bogalusa City School District and the remainder of the parish in its own, Ouachita has the Monroe City School District and the remainder of the parish in its, and East Baton Rouge is fragmented into the Baker City School District, Central Community School System, and Zachary Community Schools with Baton Rouge and the remainder of the parish in the East Baton Rouge School District.

Caldwell pass on defending rule of law brings questions

Perhaps even more interesting that the constitutional questions involved in a federal case brought by Louisiana Supreme Court Associate Justice Bernette Johnson against her colleagues is the political question sprung from the fact that the state’s Attorney General Buddy Caldwell refused to intervene formally in it.

Johnson filed suit because the retiring Chief Justice Kitty Kimball wanted to convene a special hearing of the Court to determine who had the most seniority on the Court and therefore would succeed her at the end of the year. Johnson has served with the Court a few months longer than another member, but has been an elected member of it many fewer years because the first six years of her service came as an elected member not of the Court, but of an appellate court from which she was on loan.

Further muddying the waters is that, by the Court’s own ruling, this method of having her decide with the Court was unconstitutional. By the same token, a state law later amended to the original consent decree attempted to convey to her seniority privileges. Thus, Kimball wanted to have the Court sort it all out under state jurisprudence, but Johnson wants the federal government to intervene, abrogate that attempt, and through the power of the decree force her acceptance as the next chief justice.

Flak over hospital realignment shows power of populism

The wailing and gnashing of teeth you hear from the big government “conservatives” in St. Tammany Parish presents an object lesson into the sea change of thought necessary for right-sizing Louisiana state government.

Local elected officials were disappointed to learn that part of the fallout of a decision by Congress to ratchet back excess funds given the state for Medicaid meant the eventual closing of the Southeast Louisiana Hospital in Mandeville, one of the three state-owned facilities devoted to mental health patients. This will reduce the roughly 900 state-run beds for maladies of this kind by about a quarter, although the Department of Health and Hospitals pledges it will find space for all, even though that might be hundred or more miles away.

It’s unfortunate that the closing comes when it did, but not that the closing will come. The state has planned for that day to come, following the trend of almost every of state that are removing beds and closing facilities (some have closed all of them). This merely follows a long term secular trend starting with the deinstitutionalization movement launching six decades ago that has left state-operated beds at less than a twentieth in number of what they had been.

Old media finally getting wastefulness of film tax credits?

Not that agents part of the traditional media in Louisiana are very quick on the uptake on many issues of the day, but they finally may be catching on to the fact that Louisiana has spent approaching a billion dollars on corporate welfare for the film industry to get back pennies on the dollar. Or, maybe not.

Recently, the Shreveport Times ran an editorial that questioned the need for the state’s sacred cow of motion picture tax credits, editorializing on an effort by the leftist Louisiana Budget Project that reiterated from state reports about the roughly 13.5 cents on the dollar in tax receipts the state got for every dollar of tax credits they doled out to filmmakers. Clearly, the attentiveness of neither the LBP nor The Times does them much credit, for in this space no fewer than 10 times starting in 2005 the exact same point has been made again and again, every so often taking the newest data that would reveal the same old picture of wasteful spending, which now is approaching a billion dollars worth of issued credits.

Why did it take a burn-through of a billion bucks for The Times to catch on despite this space’s persistent analyses (and similar columns appearing in a publication that the newspaper receives, Fax-Net Update)? Even the LBP seemed to pick up on this faster than The Times, as it issued a brief in opposition about the issue last year. Regardless of how late it is to the party, it’s significant in that it becomes the first mainstream media outlet in the state even to question the merits of the program.

Nod to Ryan may push Jindal to challenge Landrieu

If Gov. Bobby Jindal does envision a career ahead of him in extremely high national office, potentially the Republican vice presidential candidate pick of former Gov. Mitt Romney of Rep. Paul Ryan presents the most problems possible for that to come to fruition and directly affects his next steps relative to service to the state of Louisiana.

Ryan went a bit against type in becoming (presumptively) only the fourth nominee in the past century from a major party from the House that did not serve in the Senate or as a governor (and the only winner, John Nance Garner who became vice president in 1933, had served as both House Speaker and Minority Leader). In fact, one must go back over a century to find the closest parallel to a choice like Ryan’s: the GOP’s James Sherman who won in 1908 and, like Ryan, was famous for sweeping policy preferences but, like Ryan, was not in the highest leadership positions in the House and/or his party.

But give Ryan a good tan and magically add gubernatorial experience to his résumé and you’ve got Jindal. They are about the same age, both have House service, both are considered bright but not that exciting (at least not in the Prisoner #03128-095 sense), both are Catholic with three children, and both have fierce reputations as opposing tax increases while wanting government to live within its means.

Complicit acts regarding illegal aliens erode rule of law

One the one hand, a Louisiana Member of Congress is taking action against what almost certainly is fraudulent transfer of taxpayer money to illegal aliens. On the other hand, state government inaction and local government and special interest actions in the New Orleans area do nothing to discourage, if not actually aid and abet, the very activities that lead to this taxpayer fraud in the billions of dollars – all against the backdrop of illegal behavior encouraged by the strange bedfellows of business and “social justice” special interests that threatens the rule of law.

As chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee’s Subcommittee on Oversight, Rep. Charles Boustany contacted the Internal Revenue Service concerning a disturbing report issued by the Inspector General’s Office of the Department of the Treasury (which oversees the IRS). It revealed just in 2011 a series of suspicious requests for Taxpayer Identification Numbers, which may be used to receive benefits and refunds from the federal and some state governments, as well as suspicious tax refund requests that were paid out. Worse, the information was easily noticeable and, worst of all, procedures that could have spotted it were deliberately discouraged by some IRS employees for a decade.

While the TIN program has a legitimate rationale, to aid people not in the Social Security system with financial transactions with the federal government, the deliberate laxity in its operation probably has resulted in a large number of illegal aliens allowed to exploit the system and obtain taxpayer dollars illegally. The agency claims new procedures will prevent this, but what of the potentially millions of illegal aliens already allowed into the system?

Charter school can find way to teach character legally

I understand what Delhi Charter School is trying to do, and maybe there’s a way for it to do it.

The school in rural Richland Parish, an above-average performer and one of the highest performers in its area despite having a disproportionate number of below-average households among its students, is a charter school, meaning it is exempt from some standards applying to traditional public schools, may impose additional ones, and is open enrollment in the parish. As one of its rules, pregnant students must study at home, and students suspected of pregnancy either must have that disconfirmed or must study at home as well. If a suspected pregnant girl rejects home study, “the student will be counseled to seek other educational opportunities.”

Its policy manual identifies why this rule: “Delhi Charter School has established an environment whereby the conduct of its students must be in keeping with the school’s goals and objectives relative to character development …. [and] will maintain an environment in which all students will learn and exhibit acceptable character traits ….” While laudable in intent, it’s potentially dangerous when schools overseen by the state try to teach “character,” for who wants to have Big Brother defining what is character? That is the province of the family, often through the form of religious education, neither of which are part of the state.

To preserve liberty, LA must intervene in Court dispute

If you don’t have the rule of law, then no liberty is secure. This is why the state of Louisiana needs to continue to contest a unilateral premature curtailment of sorting out selection of the chief justice of its Supreme Court that not only will sort out a legal puzzle, but also may which have far-reaching constitutional implications for the entire country.

Controversy about this has ensued as with the upcoming retirement of Chief Justice Kitty Kimball at the end of the year, the longest serving member of the Court who becomes chief justice is not the same person who has sat with and decided for the longest period. Associate Justice Bernette Johnson began to decide with the Court in late 1994, but was not elected to it until 2000, after two other members. She was able to because of a consent decree entered into by the state to settle a suit that claimed the state had gerrymandered judicial districts on racial considerations.

But rather than redistricting or amending the Constitution to add a new seat, for political reasons the state assigned in the decree a circuit court spot to sit with the Court, the position won by Johnson. Later, the state passed a law that mandated, among others things, that the holder of that position get counted years prior to getting elected to the Court to count for Court seniority. This declaration was amended into the consent decree later.

Jindal policy begs his reassessment of new Big Charity

Yet another reason has emerged to reevaluate again the size of the new Medical Center of Louisiana – New Orleans, or “Big Charity.” Scheduled for completion in 2015 but with no building of it having begun, just site preparation, there’s still time to take into account the changing policy landscape that reinforces the need to scale back on the facility.

After the hurricane disasters of 2005 damaged the aging former facility, then Gov. Kathleen Blanco came up with a grandiose replacement version firmly wedded to the idea that Louisiana should stay in the business of direct health care provision to the indigent. Even though the actual needs of the state as far as medical training and usage suggested that the old structure could be rehabilitated for much less than a price tag well over $1 billion, Blanco started forging ahead.

When Gov. Bobby Jindal came on the scene, after review wisely he scaled back the size, but still kept a facility larger than what the demographics suggested despite that his policy direction argued for a smaller facility still. The original Blanco plan was to increase the non-state-paid use of it (unrealistically in an over-bedded market) and Jindal throughout his terms has worked to increase private provision.

Don't change LA prison doctor system if not broken

The soon-to-be thrice-weekly-printed New Orleans Times-Picayune recently got exercised over the quality of medical care provided to Louisiana state prisoners. Too exercised, in fact, to make anything but an overwrought case.

It turns out that over half of all physicians for prisoners, that is those who have committed some injury to society, themselves have been sanctioned by the state board that regulates physician behavior and some of these have been convicted of crimes associated with that. The high incidence of doctors with questionable pasts in the profession working in the prison system partly has to do with the fact that part of their penalties is that they can get hired only in institutional settings like prisons if they wish to continue to work in the medical profession. This leads the Times-Picayune to assert, via its headline, that inmates are not getting “good doctors.”

This complaint raises both normative and process questions. Regarding the former, is it necessary that the state provide “good” care for those who damaged it? Should not the moral obligation of society be to provide only “adequate” care to prisoners? Why must taxpayers be called upon to fund anything beyond competence in care to those who declared war on it? Especially when money is tight and other law-abiding, ethical members of society who may depend upon state resources for health care should have first call on scarce state resources?