If a student has depended upon or counted on in
their future the Taylor Opportunity Program for Scholars to fund fully their tuition,
or is a university administrator searching for revenue, it’s not the end of the
world, it’s the just the real world.
For the first time since its founding as a
statewide quasi-merit, quasi-entitlement program almost two decades ago, the
state will pay only a portion of total tuition bills to attend Louisiana
institutions of higher learning. Before
the Louisiana
State University System schools raised their tuitions this week that
changes overall calculations slightly downwards, the typical state public
institution student would see 95 percent of the bill covered in the fall and,
unless unanticipated revenues emerge before the end of the year, around 40
percent for terms in the first half of next year.
Some have taken to declare the end is nigh for the
higher education experience in the state, where about a fifth of all students
use the program. That proportion nearly is four times higher at LSU Baton
Rouge, given its (relatively) stricter admission standards, large contingent of
traditional (first-time, full-time) undergraduate students, and highest
in-state tuition, leading its Pres. F. King Alexander to lament that the cut
will cost the campus students and thus revenues.
Last month Democrat Gov. John Bel Edwards issued
an executive order that will do nothing to save state taxpayers money or
promote economic development and will increase the incentives for local
governments to make deals to empower them, if not steer preferential treatment
towards local politicians and their allies.
Edwards’ JBE 16-26
covers the way in which the state implements its Industrial Tax Exemption
Program. This allows the state through its Board of Commerce and Industry, most
of whose members the governor appoints and serve concurrently with him, to give
out exemptions from, among things, local property taxes for five or ten years. Statute
deliberately defines these breaks as needed because of the uncompetitive tax
structure in Louisiana that means businesses pay most property taxes.
By the Constitution and regulation, a firm must
certify it is wanting to enter but feels discouraged from doing so or is threatening
to leave the state because of the uncompetitive tax structure, fill out
paperwork justifying the exemption, and negotiate a contract with several state
agencies that may have additional contractual conditions added such as for performance.
After five years, it can petition to have another five years’ worth of
exemption and to have certain kinds of expenditures included.
This column publishes every Sunday through Thursday around noon U.S. Central Time (maybe even after sundown on busy days, or maybe before noon if things work out, or even sometimes on the weekend if there's big news) except whenever a significant national holiday falls on the Monday through Friday associated with the otherwise-usual publication on the previous day (unless it is Thanksgiving Day, Independence Day, Christmas, or New Year's Day when it is the day on which the holiday is observed by the U.S. government). In my opinion, in addition to these are also Easter Sunday, Memorial Day and Veterans' Day.
Finally, the right thing was done. But was it done
for the right reason?
Yesterday, the Louisiana Supreme Court affirmed
that it would not take another look at its decision nearly two weeks ago not to
review lower
court rulings dealing with whether St. Tammany Parish zoning laws could
overrule a land use decision made at the state level. This involved drilling an
exploratory well that in the future could lead to the use of the hydraulic
fracturing technique that has become controversial through sensationalized
opposition to it. As soon as the company had word of the declination, it
spudded in.
Of considerable amusement over this two-years-plus
odyssey has been the reaction
of a vocal minority of St. Tammany residents, some of whom drew upon every imaginable
discredited allegation against the practice of fracking to argue why it never
should happen. In this time, science has settled with even more certainty that,
as long as drillers
follow safety protocols, the process
does not cause any realistic danger (including the overblown assertion that
they cause meaningful earthquakes, although the less common practice of
injecting wastewater into deep wells, which can be regulated against, is theorized
as a potential cause of these).
Seems Gov. John Bel Edwards and
his Administration’s campaign
of employing the Goebbels Principle to create a distorted view of the
Democrat’s first six months in office could not wait for the launching of its
formal tour.
Both Edwards the organ grinder and his monkey
sidekick Commissioner of Administration Jay Dardenne laid on the
balloon juice thick and fast in the past couple of days: Edwards through a series
of poison pen letters-to-the-editor
and Dardenne in comments when sought out by the media in response to cogent
remarks about the recently-concluded legislative sessions made by Treasurer John
Kennedy, also a candidate for the U.S. Senate. Kennedy
noted in an address that state spending in the budget had escalated by
about a third in just six years, fueled by $2.4 billion in higher taxes – all approved
by Edwards as a legislator and governor.
Dardenne in response said while the budget Edwards
recommended that largely made its way into to law was the largest since those
of the previous decade that were inflated by disaster recovery spending, the
current effort he alleged represented a more honest look at revenues and
expenditures. Yet examining that claim more closely shows a good bit of
dishonesty unto itself.
The announcement that Louisiana’s state government
intends rather than to rehabilitate to build a new Jimmie Davis Highway Bridge
over the Red River stirs more questions than answers where politics may interfere
with sensible use of taxpayer dollars.
Apparently, barn
swallows triggered this change in direction. The federally-protected
species insists on building nests on the sides under bridge decking and delayed
the project two years while everybody involved figured out how to chase them
away. Last month, both the state and contractor gave up, leaving motorists to
wonder just how much longer the bridge would remain safe to use.
Then last week, Democrat Gov. John Bel Edwards
dramatically announced that instead he would seek to reallocate the existing $23.4
million in funding for the fixup to a new span. For years denizens particularly
in Bossier City dreamed of four lanes crossing, and plans have floated to build
another span. Mayor Lo Walker, referring to numbers of at least a decade ago,
estimated the cost of that at $60-80 million. Apparently, the $14 million or so
in federal funding could transfer over to kick start the process, and state
Sen. Barrow Peacock, who always has
preferred a new span over redoing the old one, cleverly inserted language to
speed up the process in case the state went for new over refurbish.
Seems that Gov. John Bel Edwards
plans to launch an apology/blame
tour now that he took some knocks in his first legislative sessions as
governor. As we might expect, not much of what follows from it should we
believe -- even if we pay for it.
Edwards, along with his new best friend forever
Commissioner of Administration Jay Dardenne, look to
invade legislators’ hometowns over the next two weeks to spin what happened in
the regular session sandwiched by two special sessions. What
happened was when comparing the state’s baseline spending – ranked
18th per capita among the states – to expected revenues
Louisiana would come up way short in the upcoming fiscal year, and over the
course of these sessions taxes went up $1.5 billion (after hikes of $800
million last year), general fund spending increased $800 million or 10 percent,
and total spending escalated $2 billion or 8 percent.
Yet somehow that wasn’t enough for Democrat Edwards,
who feuded with Republicans, particularly in the House, over raising taxes that
left him more than $300 million less than he wanted. So prepare ourselves for
the litany of excuses and red herrings to come from him an attempt to warp the
reality of the matter.
