False alarm obscures hospital privatization savings

A false alarm should not detract from the fact that, to this point, privatization efforts of Louisiana’s charity hospital system are pulling in more revenue than predicted, although vigilance will be required to ensure the realized savings do not get overcommitted and prematurely in years to come.

Some unnecessary anxiety came from one media source when it breathlessly reported from an item in an in-house publication put out quarterly by the Legislative Fiscal Office, which is attached to the Legislature to analyze the fiscal impact of legislation. The LFO claimed that existing cooperative endeavor agreements signed with the operators of state hospitals were supposed to generate over $140 million for the state, but predicted only $101 million or so would materialized, leaving the actual intake $38.75 million short. This money was assigned to pay for several budgetary items out of a pool where 70 percent would go to higher education.

But the LFO report was dated and not privy to inside information, leaving an erroneous impression. First, it was not even sure about its figures because it printed that one CEA remained unresolved, that for Huey P. Long Medical Center in Pineville. But last week those details, apparently overlooked by LFO staff or happened too late to include in the online PDF version, were finalized, in that the takeover there would not occur until the beginning of FY 2015. Thus, the LFO printed estimated figure was “final.”

Subterfuge reduced by requiring teacher knowledge exams

For months we heard from union lackeys, their politician bootlickers, fellow-travelling ideologues, and substandard teachers about how the new COMPASS evaluation system for public school teachers in Louisiana was so deficient in erring, they asserted, about true teacher quality. They were right – for the wrong reason.

The party line from this crew was that the new system, which would base half of scoring on measured student learning progress and the other half on subjective evaluations similar to the past, would make good teachers appear substandard. Of course, we never heard complaints from these fiddlers that as the state continued to rank among the lowest in student achievement, and lower than many with similar demographic characteristics, about the fact that under the old completely subjective system that only one percent of all teachers were rated poorly enough to be subject to dismissal for incompetence and that only a little over two percent get fired for that reason.

Now the results are out and, contrary to all the hyperbole, the system computed that only four percent of teachers were judged “ineffective” and thus could be set up for dismissal in the next two years, while only eight percent fell into the category suggesting remediation before things got worse. That means more than seven-eighths of all teachers were found at least adequate, despite the state’s continued below-average showing – hardly the stuff of hyperventilating claims of a “war on public education.”

End govt handout to organization overseeing hospitals

After sucking up tens of millions of dollars in public funds over nearly two decades,  Shreveport’s Biomedical Research Foundation continues to hang on to taxpayers’ udders even as its new purpose transforms the organization away from its original that has not proven cost-effective for the citizenry.

An ordinance by Caddo Commissioner Ken Epperson that would have stripped public funding of the organization failed last week, falling four votes short of passage. By Oct. 1, the  BRF becomes the administrator of both the Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center – Shreveport and E.A. Conway Medical Center in Monroe, including their clinics. The state is in the transition of finding non-government operators for all but one of its state-owned charity hospitals and while the others have been recommended to be managed by hospitals, the only entity that currently does not deliver in-patient health care tapped to take over management of a state facility is the BRF, which never has run any hospitals.

Its experience lies elsewhere. From its beginning, the 501(c)(3) tax entity was envisioned as instrument to provide facilities to small concerns in the area of biomedicine, where they could develop innovative products. Since then, it has expanded its purview to trying to attract any technology-related tenant to its portfolio of facilities worth $53 million and also has gotten into the providing of venture capital.

Obama reforms would not improve LA higher education

As if Louisiana higher education isn’t already going through significant changes, along comes the idea by Pres. Barack Obama to dole out federal dollars to schools on the basis of presumed accountability measures that would impact further the state’s higher education delivery. The problem is these changes don’t reform higher education so much as they empower bigger government, and miss the point of true, beneficial change.

Obama would want to tie federal aid to metrics such as how many students from disadvantaged backgrounds are served, average tuition, scholarships and loan debt, and graduation and employment outcomes. That would mean the lower the tuition, the more scholarship and grant monies exist, the higher the proportion of minority and poor students, the higher the graduation rate, and the higher post-graduation salaries are, the more money they would get, primarily through the federal loans students could get to attend that school. Other elements he supports would be creating a national scorecard of schools to publicize records, incentives to create competency-based and accelerated learning, and to cap loan paybacks to a percentage of income.

In some ways, the basic strategy of accountability mirrors what has been going on in Louisiana over the past few years, where state assistance is tied to its public universities and colleges abilities’ to reach performance targets. As such, it suffers from the same drawback that minimizes the effectiveness of this reform: gamesmanship by schools in setting reachable targets and pressure on them to lower standards in order to reach targets such as graduation and retention rates.

Blanco reminds of her unsuitability as governor

It’s been six years, so in case anybody needed a reminder of how unsuited former Gov. Kathleen Blanco was for that job, they got it courtesy of her remarks concerning the jackpot justice lawsuit filed by the Southeast Louisiana Flood Protection Authority – East.

The suit, dubious both as to whether it was filed legally and whether there is any legal merit to it, wants to extract from about a hundred companies potentially billions of dollars in purported tort damages in order to fill the coffers of the agency to pursue an ambitious agenda decided solely by itself, which far exceeds its statutory resources. All of Gov. Bobby Jindal, apparently legislative majorities, and a number of other state and local agencies have expressed opposition to the suit on the basis of its merits and in how it subverts statewide coastal restoration and protection policy.

Yet some observers have praised its action, seemingly unperturbed that an agency with little accountability is trying to stretch its power to exercise that in ways never intended by the legislative majorities and in all likelihood Blanco herself when it was drafted into law seven years ago. Its members are selected by the governor for fixed terms from nominations provided by professional and political interests that may be removed only through impeachment, serving with confirmation of the Senate.

Rulings show how same-sex marriage discriminates

The false narrative propagated by supporters of same-sex marriage came crashing down yesterday as a couple of administrative rulings made clear that the relevant policy question is not about spreading “fairness,” but in fact is about special privileging that tears at the very fabric of fairness.

Recent federal agency actions rippled across their Louisiana counterparts, when the Internal Revenue Service declared that a married jointly filing status could be used by those legally married in a state or the District of Columbia regardless of residence, and the Department of Defense the same for National Guard benefits. Louisiana’s response was that the law would have to be changed in regards to income tax filing to unlink status because the Constitution forbids marriages that are not one man to one woman, and that it would refuse to convey such benefits to same sex couples for the identical reason.

Citizens should note that both of these federal decisions institute forms of tax increases and/or encouragements for deficit spending, although one may have a minor negative impact if at all. While individual income tax circumstances vary, in aggregate an expansion of the married jointly filing status certainly will decrease taxes taken in the immediate future, but may increase them in the future, this having to do with the vagaries of different rates at different, non-equivalent individual and family income levels between this status and filing individually.

Senator whines to deflect scrutiny of sham charity

When your hand is caught in the cookie jar, the best defense often is to create such a distraction that observers will forget you’re up to your elbow. That’s what state Sen. Yvonne Dorsey-Colomb is trying to do by claiming it’s “a political war against me” when, after years of neglect, a recipient of nearly a million dollars of taxpayer money she initiated into state budgets is being asked to follow the law.

She’s married to the founder of the Colomb Foundation, which began in 2004 and lists in at least one state document that it is to encourage “everyone to adopt habits of personal safety,” to promote “breast cancer prevention and early detection,” and to encourage “reading by publishing and distributing” free books to area youth. That’s all we can go on because, as previously reported, it apparently never received a final letter of determination from the Internal Revenue Service, which would require a statement of purpose, nor filed any of the Form 990s it legally was required to from 2004-10, when as a result it lost its tax-exempt charity status.

Yet it still holds itself out (as of this publication date) illegally as such, even though it apparently never has received any revenues at all from any source, donor or otherwise, except from state and local governments, according to its audited reports filed with the state (typically late and with adverse notes). They show from the state it got a free $300,000 building and the majority of its funds have been spent on administrative expenses, including salaries.

Caddo venture capital attempt violates trust of citizens

There’s a problem in logic here: if Shreveport is such a great location for site selection of a business concern, then why is Caddo Parish spending $7.5 million more in taxpayer funds to lure to it a manufacturer rejected elsewhere?

Earlier this year, Elio Motors declared it was coming to Shreveport to build its three-wheeled vehicle, coveting the former General Motors plant in the southwest of the city. The state stated it was in line for hundreds of millions of dollars in incentives when production got rolling, and the Caddo Parish Commission jumped in with $1 million guaranteed up front to back bonds to be issued through the parish government’s subsidiary Industrial Development Board.

This, of course, after the federal government, Michigan, and its city of Pontiac turned down similar overtures over concerns that the concept would not be profitable. The CPC subsequently got the same financial information – which makes a host of questionable assumptions and leaves unanswered questions – and oddly then decided earlier this month, with only Commissioner Stephanie Lynch in opposition, to up the ante.

Unwinding bad decisions reminds LA of liberalism's costs

It’s like thinking back to a particularly horrific nightmare. You were in it, you knew what it was and how to stop it, but you just couldn’t. That’s the sick feeling limited government advocates should get when they see how over eighty million taxpayer dollars were wasted by the former kingmaker of Louisiana Democrats, Bob Odom, but they also should derive from it a larger lesson.

This space has documented thoroughly (most recently here) the capital projects favored by the former long-time secretary of Agriculture and Forestry, who served seven terms before being forced into a general election runoff in 2007 and then withdrawing to elect current Secretary Mike Strain, that identified them as boondoggles from the start and sounded an alarm of taxpayer money in jeopardy. Unfortunately, as Strain continues to concede, the assessment was entirely correct.

It could have been worse. In addition to two failed government enterprises, dealing with cedar mulching and sugar milling, another sugar mill had been proposed. But head of the State Bond Commission, whose panel must approve such deals utilizing debt, and Treasurer John Kennedy, who had gone along with the mill that got built, balked at the arrangement for another, more expensive version, and eventually was joined by then-Gov. Kathleen Blanco with objections. Together, they had enough votes on the Commission to have the idea rejected, and in doing so preventing the waste from doubling.

Landrieu invitation to corruption shows poor judgment

So if senators who police ethics for their chamber say it’s acceptable to have a member’s spouse engage in real estate transactions with parties who may wish to influence her, why should Louisianans be concerned that Sen. Mary Landrieu and her husband Frank Snellings engage in this?

At least two instances have been uncovered where Snellings has been party to transactions with individuals who lobby for interests on issues she handles through the Senate Energy Committee on which she serves, and perhaps even personally; one, in fact, is a former employee of hers. Given the typical commission rate and prices of the properties, Snellings stood to bring at least around $75,000 into the family coffers as a result of these deals. The matter having been brought before the Senate Ethics Committee, it disposed of this case long ago by following its pattern of ruling that spouses can do any outside work they wish, including lobbying, as long as they don't improperly influence their partners on behalf of paying clients.

It’s legal, and also ethical by Senate standards. But it displays poor judgment on Landrieu’s part because it invites the fox into the henhouse, as long as it swears up and down with no independent verification that it won’t touch the chickens.