New degree puts LA universities on slippery slope

For its senior institutions, Louisiana higher education launched their intents and purposes down a slippery scope by allowing a hollowing of select bachelors degrees.

This week, the Louisiana Board of Regents approved a request by the Louisiana State University System to offer “accelerated” such degrees. LSU Alexandria will offer two and another the flagship campus in Baton Rouge will house, which take only 90 hours to complete rather than the typical 120. The system points to nascent programs scattered across the country, local business demand, and average salaries ranging from $68,000 to $145,000 for graduates with these three majors as justifications for their introduction into the degree inventory.

All are related to artificial intelligence, with the LSU one more directly so. The one at LSU is designed to train those in the fields of machine learning engineering/data science, artificial intelligence research (computer and information research scientists), and artificial intelligence software development (including quality assurance and testers). The ones at LSUA will crank out computer information and systems managers and information security analysts, and data scientists, database administrators, and software developers. Somewhat similar programs for the LSUA pair are in computer science, cybersecurity, and biology, while the LSU one claims it is entirely dissimilar to any other in the state although it facilitates entry into a masters degree in computer science.

Monroe should shore up finances, not splurge

Last meeting, the Monroe City Council heard some potential good news that could portend the disappearance of bad news it will have to deal with starting at its meeting this week – but maybe discover a whole new set of problems for which it will require foresight and discipline to manage.

At that last session, independent Mayor Friday Ellis revealed the city could be receiving a major economic development project. He asked for, which the Council granted, permission to sell the old Ouachita Candy Company riverfront property which the city bought a few years ago to a developer that would create a mixed-use complex.

The project builds upon the win down the road in Richland Parish snagging Meta’s Hyperion Project, a data center that is forecast to pump in $27 billion to the region for startup and continue with hundreds of higher-paying jobs. Anecdotal reports are that the activity has pumped up lodging, entertainment, real estate, and general retail sales, and triggered interest in the historic property, which Ellis said those elements making it historic will be retained because of the tax credits involved and the complex built around it.

The boost in downtown development reflective of the Meta activity promises to line additionally city coffers, with that bonus already starting to be detected in year-over-year numbers. That provides a ray of sunshine to offset disappointing budget news.

According to the budget Ellis sent to the Council, which was covered in budget meetings a week earlier, it sees a nearly million-dollar deficit, which will drive the general fund balance to its lowest level since the start of Ellis’ first term in office. Even as revenues advanced three percent, expenses went up four percent.

Ellis noted increased costs came primarily from higher insurance premiums, fire department compensation hikes, and pouring more into repairs and maintenance of community centers, a priority of the majority Democrats on the Council. He declared that streamlining through reductions in force – 69 percent of the budget is in personnel expenses – would be pursued to balance in the future.

Yet the good economic news could change all of this. The budget anticipates only a one percent jump in property tax revenues, which comprise about 11 percent of all, and just three percent in sales taxes, which make up 63 percent. Putting more property on the rolls and with more sales at prices above assessments from two years ago, and with sales tax revenues up 10 percent year-over-year, that could add as much as $5 million in revenue from these rather than a projected $1.4 million, padding the general fund nicely.

What’s more, the budget has Monroe Regional Airport losing $4.2 million. Yet because of Hyperion, MLU already has seen flights added and passenger volumes going higher, so the passenger facility fee revenue could take a bite out of that deficit.

The larger question that remains is if the bounty transpires whether later in the year the Council will want to spread it around. The Democrat majority has made no secret that it would like to spend more on city government and particularly with capital projects in their districts, calling neglected the areas of the city they represent. At the same time, Ellis has an ambitious capital program, Oneroe, that doesn’t entirely mesh with the majority’s agenda.

Normally, when a government lands some unexpected largesse, its elected officials become a big, happy family with bucks to go around for all. Taxpayers should hope if that this scenario plays out that the city still pursues its efficiency measures and thinks ahead with the bounty; for example, increased activity will mean greater needs for roads, their repairs, and traffic management. Now is not the time to splurge.

Reality intruding on DA Stewart's "progressivism"

Call it the “Alan Seabaugh effect,” if you will, when the Caddo Parish district attorney one time touted as “progressive” decides to shed the most visible aspect of that as a means of keeping his job.

When Democrat First District Attorney James Stewart first ran for the office over a decade ago, his campaign held him out to be in the mold of a “progressive” prosecutor, or one who typically asserts that too much policing occurs that disproportionately negatively impacts “victim” classes, often identified among others as racial minorities. That stance sucked in nearly a million dollars in special interest money to cover a race he won narrowly.

Yet in the next election in 2020, much of that money dried up, in part because his record was mixed on his progressive promises. He did follow the playbook initially in declining to prosecute many cases, some serious, but at least for some of the more serious ones which he eschewed he claimed reasonably extenuating circumstances.

Tiny measures won't fix overbuilt LA higher education

Welcome to the party, Louisiana policy-makers, decades late but maybe, finally, after over two decades of hammering you all over the head, you’ll actually do something productive about one of the great wastes in state government.

That would be our overbuilt higher education system, which this space relentlessly has advocated its pruning. And I do mean relentless: a quick search, which likely misses some instances, brought up over the past 21 years 73 different posts about how too many schools chasing too few students needlessly drives up costs to state taxpayers (here are the latest couple).

And, it now appears, policy-makers may have gotten this concept through their skulls. Some legislation has popped up for the Legislature’s regular session this year dealing with alignment of higher education administration and programs to match actual demand. As previously noted, some of it like paring programs is good, some of it like doing away with the Board of Regents is bad.

Big BC Council rancor erupts over small deal

In the recent past, the Bossier City Council has had tussles over spending hundreds of thousands of dollars frivolously, even millions and tens of millions unwisely, and knockdowns, drag-outs over majorities using every trick to subjugate minority councilor (even if extremely publicly popular) interests.  But now all that over $55,000 to manage a tricky situation?

This week, the Council dropped the guillotine on the Bossier Arts Council. Previously, it cued up BAC eviction from the old city hall that had served as its headquarters – rent and city utilities free – for 45 years for failure to follow state law regarding audits. It was in default three years running, despite a city warning months ago and fulfilling basically the same request for the federal government without controversy.

Presaging the weirdness to come, the 5-2 vote had joining the sole nay vote, of Democrat Councilor Debra Ross, from the first reading the ordinance’s instigator, Republican Councilor Brian Hammons. Then shortly thereafter came Ross’ ordinance to create a new city position, salaried at $55,000 annually, that effectively would oversee the arts, or what the BAC should do.

Polls, debate plea hint at Cassidy desperation

You’d be forgiven for getting a case of whiplash trying to follow the Republican nomination race for the U.S. Senate election this fall, with all of the unexpected twists and turns, the latest of these being polls at great odds with each other and an incumbent begging for a selective debate.

Earlier this month, GOP Sen. Bill Cassidy made demands of Republican Rep. Julia Letlow, who is challenging him, to square off against him, but only him, in a televised debate. To date, her response has been she’s busy with other commitments when he proposes to do it.

This runs against type for two reasons. First, Cassidy made no mention of inviting GOP Treas. John Fleming, another challenger who according to an independent poll last month leads the pack at 34 percent, up almost double-digits on Letlow and 15 points clear of Cassidy. Any debate organizer cannot leave out a major candidate like Fleming, unless he declined an invitation.

Backwards bill misses on higher education costs

A bill in the Louisiana Legislature to abolish the Board of Regents has it exactly backwards.

HB 391 by Republican state Rep. Dixon McMakin would amend the Constitution to do this, transferring current Board functions to other parts of state government, in a move described as cost-saving. McMakin called the Regents “duplicative” and that the agency didn’t “serve a positive impact on our students.”

He got it half-right: duplication is a big problem in the state’s overbuilt higher education system, with too many schools chasing too few students. And that’s reflected in the actual duplicative agencies whose functions need to be transferred to the Regents and themselves abolished: the four governance systems the Louisiana State University System, the University of Louisiana System, the Southern University System, and the Louisiana Community and Technical Colleges System, along with their supervisory boards.

Answer to closed primary problems: more of them

The semi-closed primary is not a problem for, but a prime solution to fix, Louisiana’s lagging policy-making system.

In its session, the Legislature will vet a couple of bills to remove from the closed primary roster Board of Elementary and Secondary Education contests. Currently, all federal offices plus the multiple executives of BESE and the Public Service Commission, plus the Supreme Court, fall under the semi-closed primary system (“semi” because true closed primaries don’t allow unaffiliated voters to choose a party’s primary in which to vote, which gets tricky given the jurisprudence involved). That means all local, state legislative, state single executive, district court, and appellate court races remain under the blanket primary system.

Proponents of this small rollback argue for it by saying BESE elections are the only ones on the year-before-presidential-elections calendar by which all other state non-judicial elections except the PSC occur, which creates an extra set of elections with additional costs and could confuse voters with no other blanket primary races on primary election days (the remainder of the bunch all occur during even-numbered years at the state and federal level where only closed primaries are). But this is a backwards way of considering the issue. It’s not that BESE closed primaries add cost and may confuse, but that the extra cost should absorb all state races as well in replacing the blanket primary system for all contests at every level with a closed primary of some kind.

Legislator wants to make youths dumber still

As the world moves on from myths of the past, one Louisiana legislator keeps trying to move the state backwards, to the detriment of its citizens’ health.

The latest attempt from Democrat state Rep. Candace Newell in HB 373 would create a pilot program that legalizes recreational marijuana. Essentially, it allows the legal dispensaries of medical marijuana to set up separate shops to sell weed for any use. It’s just the latest variation on several tries over the years she has backed to do what almost half of the states have done, legalize pot in some fashion.

Of course, the rules surrounding medical marijuana in Louisiana are so fast and loose that the herb almost already is practically legal for casual consumption, but this approach at least would remove the charade and hassle of getting some kind of medical authorization for its use (not that marijuana has almost no valid use as a medical treatment of some kind). Fortunately, recently legislators have begun to push back, with some help from Congress, but hardly successfully.

Facts, logic doom simplistic CCS argument

A Louisiana legislator recently delivered a spirited defense of lightly-regulated carbon sequestration, but omitted the bigger picture that significantly weakens her argument.

Republican state Rep. Jessica Domangue had a piece in The Hayride that made a subsidized economic argument for carbon storage. Essentially, she asserted that additional regulation on storage – such as having local option on whether to allow it, restricting expropriation of/expanding compensation for land used, placing additional restrictions on pipelines to transport it, or even outright bans on storage or transport, with all of these ideas encapsulated in almost two dozen bills that the Legislature will consider this session – would hamper the ability of transporters and storers of it directly or indirectly to take advantage of tax credits that cover in part the methods of capture and thereafter to take advantage of stringent environmental regulations promulgated in Europe that will provide a market for it. This is done through a credit scheme, where the storer certifies the capture and a carbon producer can buy or register the credit to stay under the limits that then allows sales to Europe.

In other words, she argues that free money is there for the taking, in the form of the tax and carbon credits, offset only by the costs of impounding and storing carbon, typically in what are called “pore” spaces (usually fairly deep) underground. Making it harder to consummate the deal, as these bills would do, impedes this extra economic development.