Political courage needed to reduce superfluous judgeships

The Louisiana judiciary went into full bunker job protection mode at the latest meeting of the body that advises on judicial policy, to the detriment of the citizenry.

The Judicial Council of the Supreme Court was nonplussed, to say the least, at a report issued last month by the New Orleans-based Bureau of Government Research that determined the state’s judiciary as a whole, but particularly in New Orleans, was overstaffed. The Council, which has a majority of judges sitting on it with the remainder of the 17 members from the legal community save a lone citizen representative, spent considerable meeting time criticizing the report.

Perhaps what really irritated them was in its calculations the BGR used the Council’s own data and formula for deriving the ideal workload in demonstrating at the statewide level (using only the ten largest districts) there were about a quarter more judges than needed (excluding Orleans) and in New Orleans a stunning double-and-a-quarter times needed. This led during the meeting to a series of attacks on the study’s methodology, the irony being the Council ended up criticizing its own methodology. It even led to one member to ask for redoing the formula – precisely a recommendation in the BGR report which noted that many states followed the National Center for State Courts' that used 25 base types instead of nine and to use time studies rather than raw time amounts.

LA protects rule of law against inconvenienced few

The federal government’s effort to paint stripes on the same-sex pair horse and calling it a marriage zebra in Louisiana produces both a challenge to the rule of law and emotionally hyperactive invective bereft of intellect.

In recent months, courtesy of its interpretation of what is permitted by a U.S. Supreme Court ruling this past summer, the Pres. Barack Obama Administration has instructed that the federal government recognize same-sex marriages wherever possible. However, only a handful of states recognize them for their legal purposes, and like almost all that don’t Louisiana has written into its Constitution that marriage occurs only between a single man and single woman. Further, in terms of constitutional law, the federal government cannot define marriage, only the states may and for its purposes the federal government only can accept a license from a state as proof of marriage for its administrative purposes.

So, the ruling allowed the federal government to claim that (given the privileges and immunities clause of the Constitution) a marriage in one place is good in any place for its administrative purposes, but cannot force that on states that do not recognize same-sex marriages for their administrative purposes. Practically speaking, this has caused at least two complications for Louisiana.

Study exposes dishonest, disingenuous federal suit

What we must understand is that the ideological imperative trumps all other considerations in Pres. Barack Obama’s Department of Justice’s lawsuit to limit Louisiana’s scholarship voucher program, despite the demonstration that overall this produces all benefits and no costs to the students involved.

Last week, a report produced by two doctoral students studying at the leading academic center for educational policy noted that, contrary to DOJ’s assertion that Louisiana’s program, which allows students at schools rated mediocre and below to receive state subsidies to attend another, almost all private and religious-affiliated, school, had the effect of increasing segregation by race in public and private schools, when in fact it had the opposite effect for districts under desegregation orders. DOJ sued the state in August, claiming that because the program could tilt the racial balance of a public school more towards the majority race in it and/or do the same to private schools that received such students, this could violate desegregation court orders that should mandate court review of such actions.

In a sense, both the research and DOJ positions are valid. The researchers, who used the data from a substantial portion of the voucher population created by passage of a law that took effect last school year, saw reduced segregation on the basis of schools matching their communities’ racial distributions. They discovered that, in the aggregate, "transfers made possible by the school-choice program overwhelmingly improve integration in the public schools… bringing the racial composition of the schools closer to that of the broader communities in which they are located.” They also note that “[i]n the school districts under federal desegregation orders, which are the focus of the Department of Justice litigation, L[ouisiana] S[cholarship] P[rogram] transfers improve integration in both the sending schools and the private schools that participating students attend.”

Pay decision may set precedent for efficient bureaucracy

The silver lining for Gov. Bobby Jindal having the misfortune to govern through a period where subpar policy decisions at the national level have caused economic malaise that eroded Louisiana’s finances is that he could use this to spur policy innovation to make state government more efficient. Having worked out this way in health care and corrections, to name two major areas, this may be extended to classified personnel pay policy.

In the past few years, Jindal has spurred changes to better align health care resources to needs, to make Medicaid work better, and to get the state largely out of the business of direct health care provision, savings hundreds of millions of dollars annually as a result. More has been saved by introducing operating efficiencies into the prison system through technology and judicious closings. While it may be that the atmosphere of fiscal difficulties prodded him to seek these aggressively, that he did so indicates his natural inclinations led him.

But one area where he found himself mostly unsuccessful was in civil service pay reform, especially in tying pay to performance of classified employees. His most far-reaching proposals ended up getting watered down by the State Civil Service Commission, which would have included such a measure. Presently, the norm for departments in giving pay raises of 4 percent to whomever does not get rated as “unsatisfactory” – which ends up, in a figure hardly changed over the years even after the most recent reforms – at 1 percent or less of the total.

Political machinations, unfairness justify end to Tulane program

It’s clear the time has come to end the unique-in-academia arrangement where government officials have the power to award scholarships to a private university in Louisiana.

Starting with a 19^th-century arrangement, its current version allows every legislator one and the mayor of New Orleans five annual scholarships to be awarded to Louisiana high school graduates who meet Tulane university’s entry requirements and graduation in the top quarter of their class and an American College Test combined score of 28 or a Scholastic Aptitude Test combined score of 1870 or for continuing students maintenance of a 2.3 grade point average. Until two decades ago, awarding had no academic requirements at all.

But after a spate of unfavorable publicity where family members of politically-connected individuals, if not family members of legislators themselves, received these free rides, the standards for the little-known program got established. Still, it seems not much has changed.

Union hack's remarks show necessity of education reform

Previously, this space discussed fractures within the education reform movement in Louisiana, mentioning its opponents only in passing. To illuminate their place in the debate, one needs only to focus on one recent incident to understand why they encapsulate everything that made the state’s educational system a laughingstock for so long.

Interestingly, it was one of their own, Bernard Taylor, the superintendent of the East Baton Rouge Parish School District, who stirred the bats in the belfry. As a motivational tool, he rewarded by publishing in newsprint the names of over 1,000 district teachers who rated in the highest category of the state’s new, somewhat improved, teacher evaluation instrument known as COMPASS.

This disturbed one Carnell Washington, president of the East Baton Rouge Federation of Teachers, who in the past with these kinds of arguments treated policy-makers to a display of crepuscular intellect. He claimed this broke the law because evaluation results “are confidential, do not constitute a public record, and shall not be released or shown to any person” outside of personnel actions internal to a district or as part of a court case.

Populist legacy threatens to derail LA education reforms

Along with Gov. Bobby Jindal and Board of Elementary and Secondary Education Chairman Chas Roemer, state Superintendent John White is one of the three most despised individuals by established political powers and special interests in education in Louisiana. Yesterday he made a bid to go to the head of that class and then some by laying out a stunningly accurate assessment of the state of reform and where it’s headed in Louisiana and maybe elsewhere.

In remarks made to the invaluable American Enterprise Institute, White noted that the enemies of reform include not just the usual suspects – teacher unions, educrats, and ideological fellow-traveling policy-makers that are invested in the current government-monopoly model because of the power and privilege it brings them – but also those who preach reform yet allow themselves to become coopted by that system and those who become opponents of beneficial reform only because it gets a policy foothold. The latter category of individuals particularly is noteworthy and disproportionate in size in Louisiana because of its political culture.

The former bunch’s source of antipathy is well known and its causes well understood – by expanding choice in education, this exposes the self-serving, hidebound nature of the structure it has built and nurtured. That since the advent of the first charter schools the vast preponderance of scholarly work has demonstrated their performance is superior to that of government monopoly schools, affirmed by the latest and most comprehensive study, and particularly in Louisiana, only this attitude can explain why they view choice as such a threat. As White noted, choice has not only the effect of reducing bureaucratic command and control that frees creativity and innovation, but that this very maze of regulations acts to insulate and protect vested interests.

Without federal change, LA state flood insurer idea impractical

Today higher, in some cases much higher, premiums go into effect for flood insurance across the country, but disproportionately so in Louisiana. Last week, state Treas. John Kennedy said he wanted to start a conversation about what the state could do to lower these rates. And when we do it, it turns out to be a lot of hot air.

Kennedy’s suggested that the state create its own, basic flood insurance program with the federal program as a catastrophic backstop that might allow combined rates overall to come down. He figured this possible as state authorities could factor in to pricing elements such as locally-built levees not considered by the Federal Emergency Management Agency in its determination of flood risk used by the National Flood Insurance Program. He said a similar state insurer, Louisiana Citizens Property Insurance Corporation, might serve as a model.

Whether that would produce an outcome of lower aggregate pricing is anybody’s guess, but Insurance Commissioner Jim Donelon sees certainly it would increase the administrative complexity. He also noted this is not something the state unilaterally could do in any event, for changes to federal law would have to be made to alter its nature to accommodate.

Appointment reaction reminds of liberalism's bankruptcy

It was the Braindead Goes Wild when the larger world learned of Gov. Bobby Jindal’s appointment of Family Research Council Pres. Tony Perkins to a state commission, illustrating the intellectual bankruptcy of today’s liberalism and the surrender of any rational thinking by some homosexual support lobbies.

In April, Jindal tabbed Perkins to join the Commission on Law Enforcement as one of his 26 appointees to the 55-member body, which provides policy advice and direction on law enforcement and public safety issues. While the FRC is located in Washington, DC, Perkins still lives in Baton Rouge and is a former law enforcement officer and state legislator.

Unnoticed at the time, only last week did this raise any ruckus as groups that have advocated for special rights in public law for those who practice homosexuality condemned the decision ratified months ago, echoing the bigots that comprise the Southern Poverty Law Center that brand the FRC a “hate group.” This provided talking points parroted by the mainstream media and other hangers-on drinking the Kool-Aid.

Reject extensive retirement arrangments oversight by LA

A proposal by state Sen. Troy Brown scored him a small press notice, but makes one wonder whether it will turn into just another exercise of big government.

Brown announced that, in a few months hence, he will file legislation establishing a state program aimed at small business employee retirement options, which he describes as “a simple, cost-effective system of tax-qualified retirement savings accounts for private-sector employees. Generally, the idea is to provide employees whose employers do not offer retirement benefits a way to pool their voluntary payroll deductions through a statutorily-established framework. The retirement savings would be invested as a pool in low-risk investments with reduced fees as compared to an individual trying to build up a retirement nest egg.”

He put the word out now because he plans to invite business and employee groups to give comments and make proposals relevant to the idea. Whatever product emerges he argues fills a need, for only half of all private sector workers have access to a sponsored plan of some kind, and a majority of those receiving Social Security report it is at least half of their income.