Media get upset at attempts denying corporate welfare

In an era where traditional media in general and newspapers in particular are suffering significant declines in revenues as a result of increasing public skepticism and technological changes, it’s understandable that they wish to preserve income sources as much as possible. But it’s disappointing when they try to do so by making false and conceited claims about legal changes to save taxpayers money that, rather than thwarting their somehow being indispensible guardians of freedom, instead denies them corporate welfare.

This bad tendency flared this week courtesy of hearings on HB 131 by state Rep. Bodi White and an editorial printed in the normally-sensible Alexandria Town Talk. White’s bill would remove the mandate that government publish names of jurors in newspapers; the editorial addressed HB 1212 by Rep. Jeff Arnold that would remove the requirement that the state and local governing authorities must have their official journals of business conducted printed only in a newspaper.

On HB 131, the Louisiana Press Association bleated that this would erode the “public’s right to know.” Presently, clerks of court in most instances have names of jurors available for public inspection and this list is given to a newspaper which then is paid for printing it. White’s, as well as the Louisiana Law Institute’s concern is that it increases the chances of parties attached to a defendant to discover names and then try to intimidate jurors.

Tucker power moves may have policy repercussions

As I was saying about House Speaker Jim Tucker’s desire to create an independent power base and the relative lack of professionalism of the Louisiana Legislature?

With Republican Tucker’s removal of Republican state Reps. John LaBruzzo and John Schroder from the House Appropriations Committee, and of Democrat state Reps. Charmaine Stiaes and Noble Ellington from the House and Governmental Affairs Committee, not only did he makes moves that would draw the admiration of ex-U.S. House Speaker “Uncle” Joe Cannon, but also demonstrated a desire to mold the Louisiana House into a source of power beholden more to his wishes than to party, ideology, or alliance with Republican Gov. Bobby Jindal. The Speaker is given the latitude by the House to make all committee assignments and their leadership decisions.

Tucker is not directly saying so, but he made it fairly unambiguous that reasons for the moves stemmed from Ellington being supported by LaBruzzo, Schroder, and Stiaes in the contest for Speaker Pro-Tempore concluded earlier in the week. Tucker had said at the time of the contest that some votes didn’t go the way the way he expected, and later added certain personnel moves among committees were going to be made related in some way to some legislators not keeping their words. Presumably, this meant that in Tucker’s view the three had pledged support to the winner, state Rep. Joel Robideaux, even though Ellington claimed LaBruzzo and Schroder said they had made any firm commitments to him well before the vote.

Unusually (and as a sign of its aggravation with the whole affair), public confirmation of this interpretation of events came from the Jindal Administration whose Chief of Staff Tim Teepell said it had asked Tucker not to retaliate to minimize “distraction.” Again, that such a public and now publicized break occurred demonstrates the degree to which Tucker is willing to assert independence – especially given that Robideaux’s new office is not that important and seems an unlikely vehicle over which to make such a power play. Important to remember here, however, is that the move is more over demonstration of power and strengthening bonds of loyalty than anything else – acquisition of power and engendering loyalty being the only tools by which a Speaker can utilize to stay in office and to function with fewer constraints on him.

This also is evident in both the actions themselves and their outcomes. LaBruzzo and Stiaes recently had been criticized by Tucker for lax attendance on the Appropriations Committee; they claimed their records were no worse than anybody else’s. This may have been a warning shot to both to vote “correctly” in a contest that, as the final vote indicated, was closer than perhaps Tucker had liked. Had Tucker not wanted so openly to display the true dynamics behind it all, he could have booted both off this committee for this reason. It also would not have been so nakedly obvious had he then removed Ellington from either committee (he sat on both).

But dumping Stiaes from HGA instead and especially the ouster of Schroder was as blatant as signals get that Tucker does not brook what he perceived as prevarication as an impediment to his wielding of power. Schroder is a particularly interesting example – as one of the most conservative members of the House (his Louisiana Legislature Log rating for 2009 being 90), he could be expected to be a valuable vote and natural ally for Tucker on that committee yet Tucker showed no compunction in giving him the boot.

Further reinforcement of this comes from the significance of his successor choices – Democrats James Armes and Rosalind Jones for Appropriations and Republicans Nancy Landry and Nick Lorusso (all of whom voted for Robideuax). Not only are they, in the aggregate, more junior than those replaced, but they completely changed the partisan balances of their committees. With these moves, on Appropriations Tucker actually took a Republican advantage (not counting his ex-officio membership on it) of 13-10 and made it a deficit of 11-12, while on HGA the numbers (ignoring the one independent) went from a marginal 10-8 GOP advantage to a blowout 12-6. This shows that it is more important to Tucker to have presumably loyal individuals on the most important legislative committee in the House, Appropriations, to better stamp his authority on the budget, than the power he thinks he could derive from putting party and probably ideological loyalists on it. That’s reinforced by meaninglessly padding the HGA GOP advantage.

(If you’re keeping track, the scorecard numbers, which reflect ideology and reformist impulses where higher scores mean more conservative and reformist, for 2009 of those replaced on Appropriations were Schroder 90 and LaBruzzo 90, while the replacements’ were Armes 60 and Jones 10.)

That Tucker headed in this direction shows the truly unprofessional (that is, relatively unconstrained by institutionally-based norms) nature of the House and how personalistic politics (norms focused on personal charisma and relationships) continue to hold sway. This allows Tucker, despite his being one of the more partisan and conservative members of the House (2009 score of 80), to continue in power in a body almost exactly evenly divided between the parties, because he can command fealty from a number of Democrats who will vote his way when the chips are down. This should be no surprise; he began acquiring this loyalty when he spearheaded a politically-suicidal move to pay part-time legislators full-time salaries early in his tenure.

Most interesting will be how these decisions play out over the next couple of years. In particular, committee voting on the budget and redistricting might prove fascinating and produce a number of speculative scenarios about why things will happen as they do and what might have happened otherwise. From the perspective of conservatives and reformers, they had better hope that the results of this repositioning of slots by Tucker, believed to be one of them, don’t set back their policy agendas.

Landrieu must explain vote enabling sex offenders

While this week she’s out cutting a bunch of ribbons, Democrat Sen. Mary Landrieu last week was casting some very interesting votes in the Senate. Most concerned allowing discussion and voting on certain amendments to the Reconciliation Act of 2010, the contorted legal exercise to ram through the ruinous health care legislation supported by Democrats only that will increase the premiums and cost of health care while lowering its quality.

The list of her choices is illuminating, to say the least. All in all, she voted against:

• Preventing Medicare underfunding by transferring money from it to other entitlements
• Provisions designed to eliminate fraud, abuse, and waste under the new regime, twice
• Lowering taxes on medical devices, and again for reducing taxes for children with disabilities, and again for veterans
• Ensuring the new law does not degrade health care provision for veterans and their families
• Allowing consideration that she and other committee leaders be required to purchase insurance through the new health exchanges or that all Members be required to enroll in Medicaid
• Eliminating fraudulent payments and prohibiting coverage of Viagra for child molesters and rapists and for drugs intended to induce abortion
• The right of states to opt out of the provisions of the new law
• Waiving a $40,000 penalty to employers to hire somebody previously unemployed
• Measures to prevent job losses as a result of the Act’s changes
• Reducing tax liabilities for individuals with high medical expenses
• Increasing women’s access to breast cancer screenings
• Allowing consideration of legal changes that would encourage free care to the medically underserved
• Ensuring that the system would not benefit those in the country illegally
• Applying the Act if it does not reduce health care costs to individuals, families, and taxpayers
• Preventing using the Act as a backdoor way to increase taxes by not indexing for inflation and on allowing consideration of the same for health insurance policies
• Jettisoning the dubiously-Constitutional scheme of penalizing people for not buying insurance
• Awarding permanent tax credits provided to small business to comply with the extra costs imposed by the new regime

Note that these actions prevented even any discussion or votes on these matters. If Landrieu doesn’t support free and democratic debate on these points, one must wonder whether she supports any of this. She had a perfect opportunity to reveal her views, yet she chose to hide along with almost every other Democrat.

So Landrieu must explain to her constituents, does she not want to help the disadvantaged to receive and pay for health care, or to protect taxpayers from waste, abuse, and fraud, or to save money in health care provision, or to prevent stealth tax hikes, or to increase access to life-saving medical procedures, or to safeguard states’ rights and the Constitution, or to have the law apply equally to all, or to prohibit federal funds going to satisfy the cravings of sex offenders and to pay for abortions? These are not hypotheticals – her own behavior leads reasonable observers to pose these legitimate questions.

Silence on these questions, raised by her own voting behavior, creates a dangerous impression that by her willingness to countenance these things therefore at the very least she must not care about them. Until she indicates otherwise, that’s a reasonable assumption.

Officer vote shows personality still plays big role

For a largely symbolic office, we got largely symbolic results, but it’s a significant symbolism that offers a tiny hope that Louisiana’s political system continues to mature away from being based on personality and more towards focusing on ideas.

In the contest for House Speaker Pro-Tempore, Lafayette-area state Rep. Joel Robideaux, an independent who entered the House through a special election and won reelection for this term, defeated Democrat state Rep. Noble Ellington from northeast Louisiana who has served longer in the Legislature (having previously been term-limited out of the Senate before winning a House seat this past election) than any other member of the House. The 53-48 result showed personalistic politics still plays a large role in decision-making.

This officer does little more than a typical member of the House, unlike his boss the Speaker, Republican Jim Tucker. He gets a salary bump and a better office and can preside over the chamber when the Speaker isn’t around but the latter offers few opportunities (rulings mainly) to wield power. So how the vote turned out is where the real significance is.

In understanding legislative politics in Louisiana, the most important factor is the personalistic nature of politics. That is, politics revolves first and foremost around the individuals themselves and their characteristics, interest group support and own agendas, with party and ideology less important. Historically in Louisiana, regionalism has been next in importance; only within the last 20 years has party and ideology become at all significant in understanding legislative behavior.

From the perspective of classic democratic theory, personalistic politics is problematic. Because it relies so much on individuals rather than institutions and on personal agendas rather than ideologies, it creates a difficult linkage mechanism for the mass public in terms of its decisions about who to send to office and how to keep them accountable once in office. Unless a constituent has a special connection to a policy-maker, partisan and ideological ties that bind the two together create a weak bond. It’s no accident that, around the world, in states with weak or nonexistent democracies personalistic politics plays the dominant role in understanding political behavior.

In a mature institution, party and ideology play more important roles in decision-making than personal relations which assists the public in assigning credit or blame for actions because knowing the partisanship and ideology of representatives very often coveys accurate information about how they decide. Where politics is personalistic, that muddies the waters considerably and creates confusion among the mass public.

Were either chamber of the Legislature more professional bodies (such as the U.S. Congress), this vote would have sharp cleavages: most if not all Democrats would have voted for Ellington and most if not all blacks (since all but one are Democrats) should have voted for him. Had he captured all of these and all members had been present, he would have lost 52-51 (two seats lie vacant, most recently represented by black Democrats).

Instead, his losing tally (even though they answered the roll call as present, state Reps. Patrick Williams and Juan LaFonta seemed to wander off by the time of the vote; Tucker asserted they would have voted for Robideaux) was comprised of 13 Republicans, while Robideaux helped win with 17 Democrats including seven blacks. Lest anyone think regionalism has lost its power, Ellington captured nearly half (29) of the members outside of north and central Louisiana – including some Republicans, while Robideaux siphoned 10 from that region – some white Republicans, but also some black Democrats.

In the final analysis, many more Republicans voted for Robideaux (he essentially is one of them but because of internecine Lafayette politics originally ran as an independent and has stayed one) and many more Democrats did he same for Ellington, showing that party and ideology does matter. That leads to some belief that psychological attachments may be gaining in strength in terms of decision-making calculus in the Legislature, but that personalistic considerations continue to hold substantial sway in a body that slowly is becoming more professional.

Jindal hits major themes except for future big picture

Part campaign speech, part softening up expected opposition on some matters, nonetheless Gov. Bobby Jindal’s 2010 State of the State Address provided some large strategic indicators revealing how and decent reassurance that Jindal has fortitude to deal with satisfactorily a challenging fiscal environment for the upcoming fiscal year. Beyond that, he left us uncertain.

Jindal gave his remarks essentially extemporaneously, a skill perhaps explained when he made references to national politics tied to state concerns, leading to the suspicion that remarks somewhat similar to these have been delivered before in locations outside of the state. Concentrating almost exclusively on touting specific policies due hoped-for legislative deliberation, nonetheless he used them together to make several larger points.

First, to the consternation of critics on the left who say he has helped cut taxes too much and to those on the right who, regardless of any real evidence to support this thought, insist he is going to collaborate to raise taxes, he once again avowed he would not in the quest to address budgetary concerns. (Raising fees – on drivers’ licenses for many, state park users, and those pursuing higher education without the benefit of TOPS – are another matter than he did not address and which he does want to raise, but fees are not taxes – fees are voluntary and necessarily related to the service for which they are charged.) He called on state government to live within its means which indicates he will continue his welcome and increasingly successful campaign to make government work more efficiently and, to a lesser extent, change its priorities.

Second and related, he solidified his ground against some criticisms. Louisiana’s Legislative Black Caucus has protested by note and deeds his request and Attorney General Buddy Caldwell’s agreement in suing the federal government over certain provisions of the recently-enacted health care reform law, saying that trying to overturn certain parts of the law that may violate state sovereignty was wasteful of time and money especially not needed in the current fiscal environment.

But Jindal sent a response when he remarked about how the provisions, which he called an “unfunded mandate,” would cost the state hundreds of millions of dollars annually soon. And, in an echo of his anti-tax remarks, he implied that improvements in economic indicators, along the lines of employment, inflation, business activities, and bond ratings, resulted from his support of tax cuts and regulatory changes.

Third, to some degree he buttered up the Legislature because he’ll need its support to accomplish some more specific things that could be controversial. It began with the honorable gesture of asking for a moment to remember the late state Rep. Avon Honey – but ironic because last year Honey’s attentiveness and his legislative opponents’ inattentiveness caused perhaps the biggest legislative embarrassment for Jindal when he got the House to approve a bill in direct contradiction to Jindal’s stated intentions regarding unemployment benefits.

At several points, Jindal preached how everybody had to work together, and at many points promoted initiatives and sometimes their legislative authors. He even cooed about the House’s speaker pro-tem vote that had actual open conflict for the first time in years. Some have criticized Jindal for being too detached (perhaps, some suggest, as he divides his attentions too much with national elective ambitions) from the legislative process so this may be a signal he’s willing to get up close and personal to work with them on these matters he sees as important. With the first couple of years gone in his term and likely some reduction in political capital plus with stakes being higher, he would do well to get his Administration more personally involved.

I grade governors on these and this work got Jindal a solid ‘B.’ Yet he didn’t deserve an ‘A’ because of what he didn’t address – what happens after this session relative to the spending plan it will produce. While this could seem unfair, since he’ll have another speech next year to go into this, it’s relevant now and needs explanation now because decisions made this year may impact critically next year given an even larger deficit is forecast now for it.

To date, Jindal has tinkered well with getting more out of government with less. But the magnitude of the crisis forthcoming will require grander gestures and thinking. Recognition of this that specifies the larger solutions necessary must come out now. That some of Jindal’s tinkering is not wise (such as redefining the purpose of the Budget Stabilization Fund) does not lend complete confidence that the state’s fiscal structure truly will be positioned to fend off potential financial catastrophe. Before much longer, we really need to hear from him on this account.

Statistics show how LA govt privatization can win big

While Gov. Bobby Jindal’s budget’s focus on privatization, representing the greatest move towards it in state history, has caught the attention of policy-makers, why Louisiana can benefit here more than in most states shows why it can be a very effective strategy for improving performance for fewer dollars.

There’s a reason why some state employees or their representatives – especially union bosses – and legislators look at this issue anywhere from askance to with hostility: because of the sweet deal public sector employees typically receive compared to their private sector counterparts. On average, total compensation for state and local government employees is 45 percent higher than those in comparable positions in the private sector, so considerable savings exist by pruning government where the job can be done just by the private sector.

Some savings would be immediate, as salaries are about a third higher in the public sector. Thus, assuming the jobs pared average the roughly $41,000 a Louisiana classified employee makes, and assuming that the 3,000 or so jobs the Jindal budget seeks to drop, many of which would go courtesy of privatization, that could produce an annual savings of $41 million just by this differential – enough to pay for the earned income tax credit the state dishes to low-income earners who file state income taxes despite having no liability and instead get a refund.

However, a substantial long-term benefit also would accrue to the state by exporting government jobs to the private sector, because benefits for government workers are about 70 percent higher on average than those same ones in the private sector. Already, the state is struggling with an unfunded accrued liability problem that by itself is about 60 percent of the state’s entire annual operating budget – and it continues higher. By shedding these jobs now, this would aggravate less this ticking time bomb.

It’s no surprise that unions have been vocal critics of the privatization effort – statistics also show that almost all of the gap between public and private jobs has come about because of unionization. So, most of that $40 million potentially realized from salary savings alone would manifest only if it were all unionized jobs that were culled, which is not the case. Still, in 2008 in Louisiana 4.6 percent of the entire workforce was union members, and in state and local government the proportion was over 10 percent of them.

Of course, even if the large majority of jobs contracted away won’t save much in terms of personnel costs, chances are private sector workers are more productive and efficient. (Which is why private workers are three times more likely to quit their jobs than are government workers.) Thus, savings would emerge from that source as well.

Unfortunately, it’s not just union hacks and state employees who know, if rehired in the private sector, they may have to work harder and may even get less compensation so they speak out against privatization, it’s also lawmakers whose parochial views put a few constituents first and the rest of the state and its taxpayers second also who object. Too many of them see state employment as a device that wins them votes, so the more of it in their districts, the better. More than these other sources, Jindal will find these obstacles the toughest to overcome.

Still, the crisis atmosphere may be enough finally to get the state – which is fourth in terms of per capita expense on government and 12^th in percentage of workforce in state government – to move away from this bloat and start using taxpayer dollars more efficiently through privatization.

Tucker's independence to stop unneeded Fund change

That Democrat Sen. Pres. Joel Chaisson’s bills to change the way the Budget Stabilization Fund works appear lifeless even before the session’s start on Monday both shows that Republican Speaker Jim Tucker gets it and any presumed fealty of his to fellow Republican Gov. Bobby Jindal is more a product of association and not correlation.

Chaisson’s SB 1 and SB 2 would amend the Constitution to allow the fund, the state’s savings account, to be tapped if a revenue shortfall occurs as a result of a reduction in federal funds coming into the state that puts a forecasted state budget into a predicted deficit. Currently, a deficit for these purposes may occur only because state-generated revenues independent of any federal contributions do not keep up with state spending independent of federal-supplied funds outgoing. It is an approach with which Jindal may well agree, as his administration has stated the current system doesn’t function .

But Tucker does not agree with Chaisson’s approach, arguing it would be easier to “raid” the fund. While Chaisson notes it would require a supermajority of the Legislature to do so, Tucker is correct at the theoretical level. The Fund concept at its inception was aimed at only state dollars estimates of which must go through a formal process whose amounts are constrained by policy decisions made by the state’s majoritarian branches.

By contrast, decisions about federal funds inflows to the state are out of the hands of state policy-makers, being made in Washington that would depend upon the determination of amounts from Washington sources and which could change without warning and vary considerably year to year. Practically speaking, this means the security of the Fund is much reduced – many more invitations to tap it would open up, and the invitations themselves would be less likely to be genuine and more likely to be influenced by ephemeral whims of federal policy-making.

The point is not that a supermajority procedure makes it more difficult for legislators avoiding hard choices to use it, but that it was designed as an instrument to shape state policy-making through use of state revenue-raising means and spending decisions, not as a tool to respond to federal government decisions over which state government has no control. Chaisson is mistaken to focus on the procedures to justify the change, rather than recognizing the change transforms the fundamental nature of the Fund, which is why that must be resisted.

Tucker realizes this at a certain level and thus, because he is Speaker, only an overwhelming revolt by his representatives or a full-court press by Jindal can hope to get the bills through his chamber. This goes to demonstrate that Tucker relishes independence from Jindal, a reality some mistakenly overlook.

Jindal and Tucker do often agree on policy, but that’s more fortuitous accident than typifying Tucker’s relationship to Jindal, as one observer put it, as “whose loyalty to the governor would normally put a poodle to shame.” As his reaction over legislative pay raises and abolishing the lieutenant governor’s office shows, even if ideological comrades- in-arms, if he feels (whether it actually is) something is beneficial enough to the House and members’ place in governance, if Jindal opposes he will cross swords with him.

Of course, Tucker was wrong on the issue of paying part-time legislators full-time dough and Jindal made him pay politically with a veto, and Tucker is wrong about following his members on retaining the lieutenant governor’s office as well. But he is correct on this issue, and these bills should go nowhere.

LA policy-makers need guts to pursue college reform

Perhaps a new phase has been entered into regarding the way Louisiana conceptualizes the delivery of higher education, one that has been long coming and vitally overdue that is going to need cooperation and courage of both elected officials and academicians to manifest in a way that strengthens that delivery.

Yesterday, legislators on the House Appropriations Committee bluntly told academic leaders that, given the disappearance of nearly $300 million in federal spending bill money starting the beginning of fiscal year 2011-12, substantial changes had to be forthcoming in higher education. This does not even include further monies that could go away because of state revenue-raising difficulties.

By the end of the 2010-11 fiscal year, maybe the latter will be under control. A myriad of bills/proposed constitutional amendments ready for this upcoming legislative session could solidify funding mechanisms for higher education that, under the present regime, has suffered $250 million or so in cuts over the past 15 months. Even more immediate problems might become resolved by fortune or perhaps a little assistance from the Budget Stabilization Fund. Still, these do nothing to offset that federal dollar loss.

One of the unfortunate things about academia – take it from an insider who has spent now almost a quarter century as an employee in it – is that it can be rather tone deaf when it comes to understanding its relationship to the real world (with one of these inabilities to hear being that it is, in fact, a world very distinct and divorced from what goes on outside of it that in many ways bears little resemblance to the outside). In some academicians, it leads to an unfortunate attitude marked by being dismissive about those outside it trying to set parameters for its operation, a haughtiness that maintains that elected officials are (I hear from time to time this word bandied about by those in higher education) “idiots,” and an insistence that things must be done a certain way without understanding the privileges afforded in their jobs that most in the real world lack.

To some degree, the prevalence of this attitude within Louisiana higher education has been part of the problem. At the same time, having been an observer of Louisiana politics for this quarter century and witnessing what I have, it’s hard to argue against the view that politicians do some extraordinarily dumb things in their policy-making. So, when legislators argue that higher education is not doing necessary things to change, that’s not really accurate. Over the past year, individual campuses have been making some significant changes to improve efficiency.

But at the same time, our leaders in higher education to date have seemed unwilling to face certain facts which are nothing new to readers of this space, that call for action in the face of certain questions:

• Why, in per capita dollar terms, is Louisiana in the top ten among states in spending on higher education, yet has some of the lowest graduation rates and, frankly, in the aggregate, lower quality education?
• Why does Louisiana rank in the top ten states in terms of number of institutions (75) yet is about midway both in terms of college-age population and total population (which leads to one of the lowest ratios of people-to-institutions)?
• Why should tuition rates increase dramatically when Louisiana already is in the upper two-thirds of rates being charged?

Bluntly, resources going into higher education in Louisiana are not being used nearly as efficiently as they should be, and higher education bears a good chunk of the blame for that. Elected officials do, too – after all, for example, who let higher education create so many campuses – but when these officials, as they did yesterday, sit there and tell academic leaders there had better be so significant changes forthcoming, to have those leaders whine (with, no doubt, a number of their employees throughout their systems nodding their heads in agreement) about how so many cuts have occurred and higher education has done so much to accommodate them, this signals that these people need to wake up, smell the coffee, see reality for what it is, and get with the program.

And what is the program? While to date mostly changes have occurred at the campus level and some still need to happen, many specific ones remain:

1. Simply, there are too many institutions at both the baccalaureate and above and below levels. There need to be mergers of four-year-and-above campuses, maybe turning some baccalaureate institutions into two-year schools, and a strategic plan to whittle down the number of technical schools yet which also will make sure areas of growing population and demand see increases in resources.

2. Much of the problem with low graduation rates comes from misallocation of resources to an appropriate level of student instruction. Too many students who start out at a baccalaureate-and-above institution need to be eased into their courses of study through going to community colleges first. A review of admissions standards of these schools across the state shows many are virtually open admissions universities. For example, at my institution all you have to do is be 25 or older and have a high school diploma or equivalency and you’re in. And even for those younger, the standards are minimal. There needs to be a significant increase in admissions standards across all of these kinds of universities to make sure only students that are ready for the rigor end up at them. For those who aren’t, open admissions policies at community colleges whose college missions are geared specifically to teaching the less-prepared can accommodate them to get them up to speed for transfer to finish their four-year degrees.

3. Also part of this problem is that the Taylor Opportunity Program for Students scholarships aren’t “scholarships” in the classic sense because they demand little demonstrated achievement to have a high school graduate be awarded one. Their presence encourages unmotivated students to go to college whereby they flunk out or leave school wasting taxpayer resources both in funding TOPS and in resources used in the universities. Raising standards here as well would ensure those not ready to commit themselves to advanced education don’t cause this problem, as well as would motivate more achievement in high school in order to earn these and thus better prepare for the rigors of college, and for those who don’t succeed would give them extra motivation to complete school since they will be using their own resources. It’s a waste to allow some teenagers to “find themselves” on the public’s back.

4. Having the charity hospital system as part of its mission distracts and saps resources from the Louisiana State University System. The system wants to hang onto these facilities for dear life because they bring more power, prestige, and resources into the system, but the outmoded regime should have been folded up long ago and the system should never have been the one to administer them. With the ruinous health care law newly enacted that will raise premiums and costs and lower the quality of care, it has no place for this kind of regime so this should be the impetus to dismantle the system over the next few years, leaving perhaps only the New Orleans (which should be pared down given the new reality) and Shreveport hospitals open and under LSU management for purposes of medical education.

5. Faculty teaching loads must be reviewed with changes made to increase some. Many faculty members in the state at the baccalaureate level teach as many as four or even five courses a semester (eight to ten a year) But some who don’t otherwise have additional departmental administrative duties teach far fewer. This is justified on the basis that they are conducting research or running some kind of special program. But what must be emphasized particularly in times of severe budgetary stress is all institutions in the state are first and foremost there for instruction and research secondarily. Thus, downloads of teaching loads not for departmental administrative reasons should be curtailed at least partially, with the goal of having every undergraduate instructor teaching at least three courses a semester, and every instructor who teaches only graduate/professional students teach at least two courses a semester (or maybe something like five a year if doing both), in order to make resources go further.

6. Across the higher education landscape a number of programs, even a few entire departments, end up adding little meaningful substance to the overall academic experience or environment. Some exist as little more than vanity projects tailored to the tastes of a handful or even of a single faculty member. These need to be reviewed with an eye towards their consolidation into other units or in reshaping them in a way that makes a larger contribution to the basic teaching mission of universities, to produce better utilization of resources.

7. Bureaucratic reforms should not be confined just to the parts of government that are mainly stocked with members of the classified civil service. Almost half of state employees work in higher education and of them the majority are unclassified, almost all faculty members. Review of organizational structures needs accomplishing along the lines of what other agencies in Louisiana currently are pursuing – eliminating middle and upper management posts, both on the academic and administrative sides. Especially this needs to be done at the system level with the combining of the five separate boards that provide some form of governance into no more than two. If states similar to Louisiana can run higher education that way, there’s no reason this one couldn’t do so also.

Notable among these are that only some can be implemented at the campus level or below. Indeed, the majority of increased efficiency would be realized through actions at the highest administrative levels of higher education, some of it accomplishable only by policy made in tandem with elected officials. This involves hard political choices that the politicians inside and outside of academia often seem reluctant to make. For example, when a state legislator claims closing and merging campuses won’t bring cost savings in the near term, it’s ridiculous to use that as an excuse not to start the process. Just because savings and better allocation of them may take awhile to come doesn’t mean the overall net benefits in the future are not there. Even if delayed, the state still reaps lasting rewards.

Following these reforms will take courage, yet policy-makers inside and outside of academia should not be so spineless as to let that deter them from doing so. My expressing these sentiments, given my place in academia, is not going to win me many friends in my profession and I would not be acknowledging reality if I ignored the fact that comments such as these and about some other matters, which are mine alone, that have appeared under my byline have not helped my academic career. But they are correct and necessary to be heard, and if I can write about them, then surely the highest-ranked academic administrators and state appointed and elected officials can have enough guts to pursue them.

Reporter's defense calls into question quality of work

What’s most remarkable about his published defense concerning the unorthodox piece he wrote publicizing an internal poll for Senate candidate Rep. Charlie Melancon is not so much what was or was not addressed in it, but that he wrote it at all.

Surely Gannett News reporter Mike Hasten felt a little disquiet when he decided to go with a story about how Melancon’s campaign pollster showed the candidate down only(!) 10 percentage points to incumbent Sen. David Vitter, when independent polling showed Vitter with a lead more than twice that. And if my original post on the questionable nature of that decision didn’t catch his attention, national political writer Stuart Rothenberg’s critique certainly did to the point that Hasten felt compelled to defend his story’s appearance.

Both Rothenberg and I pointed out in our respective pieces the various ways that impaired trusting the results from the paid pollster as unbiased and truly indicative of the contest (Rothenberg called it “spin”). As further evidence, I compared it with the independent poll and concluded the vast difference between the two meant one was less valid than the other for an objective view of the contest, and on balance the evidence suggested it was the paid pollster’s that came up short. Rothenberg also gave an example from another contest concerning the less-suitable nature that internal polls have in getting an accurate assessment of the actual dynamics of a contest.

Hasten attempted to defend the use of “spin” as the basis for a presumably objective story about the campaign in several ways. He noted the Melancon campaign polling firm, which works exclusively for Democrats, was “reputable.” He wrote that a pollster cited in the story unconnected to the contest that he used to build the thesis that Melancon was competitive was a registered Republican. He observed that the he asked the Vitter campaign if it would release its internal polling for his use but it didn’t.

All of which misses the point that Rothenberg and I made: the information released itself is questionable as a tool for objectively judging the state of a contest. Rothenberg points out, and uses another pollster on background to emphasize, that this kind of information is presented to a candidate in an affirmative way that does not mean the information is not valid, but that it is done so selectively. It does not matter even if the highest quality data were collected; short of having the actual unadulterated data and original, unaltered question protocol, if Hasten was given the same information that went to the candidate, as a whole it will draw conclusions that are optimistic for that candidacy.

The same goes for any other source reviewing such information: conclusions are to some extent predetermined by the choices of information to present. And what good would Vitter’s internal polling do for this? It probably is much closer to the independent polling results. What kind of story would Hasten have written then if he already had decided – he must have because he treated them as such in the story – that the Melancon results accurately depicted the state of the race? They can’t both be right, so would Hasten have been critical of the putative Vitter data despite it being of the same kind as Melancon’s?

This points to the elephant in the room that Hasten simply cannot bring himself to see: the independent pollster, Rasmussen, surveying almost at the same time and with a record of a high degree of accuracy, came up with much different results. I previously noted the various sources that could explain some of the variation but it’s unlikely it would account for all – and some of that variation that can be attributed is a result of data collection decisions that can introduce bias into the results. Again, keep in mind that Hasten is deeming as an accurate portrayal of the contest information collected on behalf of a campaign which means by definition he must declare as inaccurate an independent source with an excellent record – an approach that stretches credulity. He must take this approach because otherwise there is no story here – just spin produced by a campaign that should not be newsworthy.

On this matter, Hasten contradicts himself when he bases his defense mainly on getting Vitter’s numbers as well. Not getting them, he never should have run the story in the first place (which was solicited by the Melancon campaign that proffered the information to him) if he believed, as is implied by the fact he told the Melancon campaign that he would ask for Vitter’s numbers, that they were presented in a way optimistic to Melancon. Why even bring that up otherwise?

But then it’s disingenuous to justify running the story anyway on the basis that Vitter’s campaign did not want to share their data (for obvious reasons that they contain campaign-sensitive strategic information: Melancon’s campaign was willing to release theirs because of the sense of desperation around it on the gamble it could change perceptions about the race), missing a chance to “rebut.” Rebut what, a campaign handout with another? Why would that be news that could add anything to our understanding of the contest?

(Ironically, the goal of the Melancon campaign to change impressions of the contest got subverted by the story they hoped would do this. The story and Hasten’s addendum have become the story itself, not the spin designed to be interjected into the campaign narrative.)

One of three things happened here: either Hasten was a useful idiot to the Melancon campaign, or he harbors sympathy for the campaign and wanted it to get a leg up with his story, or, given his weak justifications on this incident, his critical faculties aren’t good in these matters. If the first, chastened he would not have written a defense. If the others, sadly now readers must keep them in mind whenever they read anything presented as a straight news story that carries his byline.

FMAP money saves LA now, but pays far more in future

Make no mistake, few in America will be better off as a result of passage of health care insurance legislation that will raise premiums and spending and simultaneously lower quality of health care. But it does ameliorate Louisiana’s budget difficulties to some degree, even if only delaying the bigger costs it will impose on state taxpayers.

The bad news that initial estimates show the 2009-10 fiscal year for the state is running at least a couple of hundred million dollars short. Since this is so close to the end of a fiscal year, catastrophic cuts would have to occur in some areas including health care. If these figures hold up, Department of Health and Hospitals Secretary Alan Levine said he could use money he was hoping to hold aside to plug another projected deficit for next year to fill in the gap temporarily.

Instead, the problem is temporarily solved. The ruinous bill expected to be signed into law today by its main instigator Democrat Pres. Barack Obama contains the so-called “Louisiana Purchase” line item that gives the state somewhere in the neighborhood of $100 to 300 million extra for Medicaid for its FMAP share because of changes in the state’s matching requirement. Disaster recovery dollars as a result of the 2005 hurricanes drove Louisiana income indicators used to compute the match higher, increasing the state’s burden. Universally, Louisiana policy-makers have cited this as an unfair artifact of the formula that does not reflect the state’s real ability to pay.

But while Levine and his boss Gov. Bobby Jindal and almost every federal official elected from the state have argued standalone legislation should address the problem, Democrat Sen. Mary Landrieu, who had professed previously skepticism about the impending law, then supported after it was revealed the provision to give extra money had been inserted into it at her behest. In all the convolutions since, it has remained and will continue even as Democrats embark upon the unprecedented, unintended, and possibly illegal use of reconciliation to change a bill already passed into law. That Landrieu has written about her support of the reconciliation process in this case indicates Democrats have enough votes to keep it in the manipulated bill they hope to disgorge within the next few weeks. And any future repeals of the provisions politically will come too late to prevent transfer of that money.

Thus, with the money essentially guaranteed and wisely not included in Jindal’s budget, Levine is free to tap into the money set aside if needed to weather this year’s potential sudden shortfall and use the Louisiana Purchase money to shore up next year. Of course, this is just a very temporary solution. In fact, Levine has noted that when the requirements of the new bad law come into full effect, it will cost the state annually about as much as the “fix” itself, so the bill will end up costing far more than any single fix – a fact Landrieu continues to ignore.

This attack on liberty and scourge to quality health care may provide temporary respite to Louisiana’s immediate fiscal problems, but, besides the forced escalation of Medicaid costs, in the long run will cause a host of more serious fiscal and non-fiscal difficulties to the state. Perhaps voters will thank Landrieu for that at the appropriate time.