End of fee hike battle completes triumph of triviality

Guess what, if the Legislature is single-minded enough, it can get the governor to blink, as the current one Bobby Jindal did by signing the bill to roll back an increase of and to refund if that increase was paid individual drivers license fees. Just don’t expect that too often and maybe next time not on an issue that became totally trivialized.

Presumed inside information held that Jindal was going to deliver a veto after the constitutional deadline for legislative session closure, this Monday (85^th day in even-numbered years) at 6 PM, thereby asserting it still came back on the 12^th day after presentation to him. By doing so this would require a veto override session and all the trouble and extra expense that would incur to discourage it from happening and thereby foil any attempt to override this veto.

Forcing such an outcome may have seemed to be the only way to stop the bill. Given the House passed it several votes above the two-thirds necessary for an override and the Senate on concurrence to House changes with a couple of votes to spare (and there were absentees in each case), that made override chances great. Further, Jindal could not be sure he would have had a potent arsenal for governors to try to persuade individual legislators, the ability to veto so-called “members’ amendments,” line items in the operating budget that shovel money to private and public interests in a legislator’s district. This tactic may not have been available because the Senate already had forgone any such funds for senators and stripped out House members’ requests. These slush funds may reappear before it’s all over tomorrow, but the Senate’s resolve threw this into doubt.

Without much real leverage to flip some votes and his only tactic a very legalistic interpretation of the Constitution that would have brought charges of imposing his will against the will of the large majority, while it didn’t look good for Jindal to sign and therefore imply a mistake in judgment, it would have looked worse for him to veto and face a tough public relations battle, so he crossed up the purveyors of the information that he was going to veto (perhaps in the end, it was a pint-sized feint to make the bill’s author, state Sen. Joe McPherson, look silly by sounding a non-existent alarm although McPherson historically hasn’t needed anybody’s help to do that on his own).

Nor does the implicit threat of reducing State Police operations (the increased fee was to support them) seem to have materialized. The bill itself partly obviated that by stating district offices could not be closed, and other reductions just may have been too difficult to achieve without significant decrease in performance. The money will have to come from elsewhere so somebody’s oxen will get gored, perhaps most likely from the indigent and disabled and/or higher education.

So the Legislature found a backbone and branches of government able to spar against each other cannot be a bad thing. But one wishes it had found it long ago over far more serious matters, such as getting rid of slush funds, or refusing to build reservoirs, or paying nursing home operators (like McPherson) for empty beds, or any number of genuinely wasteful uses of funds as this one arguably had merit and demonstrable purpose. This one only happened because it was too politically convenient for many legislators to show they “cared” about constituents and for some because it was a jab at Jindal. So whether this incident represents improved governance in Louisiana is debatable.

Blanket primary return to bring reduced accountability

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Unfortunately, the maturation of Louisiana’s political system and culture looks certain to suffer a setback with the return to the blanket primary system for federal elections, with an increased possibility of public policy less influenced by the people’s wishes.

Already used in all other elections in the state, the blanket primary as practiced here skips the party primary entirely by having all candidates run together regardless of affiliation in what technically constitutes a general election, and then have a general election in runoff if no candidate receives an absolute majority. The closed primary system here, instituted in 2008 and to be discontinued after 2010, has each party choose a nominee by a popular vote of its registrants and whoever else the party invites, a runoff if needed if not candidate receives an absolute majority, and the winner advancing to the general election to face other party nominees and no-party candidates where a plurality determines the victor.

The most common complaint about the blanket primary system when used for federal elections was that it could delay Louisiana input into decisions such as choices for chamber leadership and committee seniority.

House budget blueprint offers chance to kill vampires

Readers may be forgiven if they get a headache trying to figure Louisiana’s budget situation at this time five days before session close. Typically in a session at this point details are being haggled about to fit a defined number. Instead, not only do we have no defined numbers, but even bigger breaks with precedent loom on the horizon.

Almost at adjournment sine die, the House and Senate differ over not just numbers, but over several assumptions after conclusion of Senate work on the budget yesterday. The Senate assumes use of the Budget Stabilization Fund ($198 million), proceeds from this fiscal year’s tax amnesty ($242 million), a deficit $261 million larger that must be paid this year out of next year’s funds, a deficit for next year of $57 million more, and the Mega-Projects Fund ($55 million) is committed to uses and unavailable for use. In addition, whether the BSF can be used next year, either by legislative change to make it easier to tap or because circumstance will make it available under present rules, and whether it must be refilled next year even if used this year, are unknowns subject to the political process. To add more uncertainty, nobody knows whether $13.6 million will be around as Gov. Bobby Jindal has yet to decide on the fate of a bill that would reduce drivers’ license collections by that much.

These assumptions of the Senate run entirely counter to the desires of the House leadership, where Speaker Jim Tucker refuses to use the BSF without paying it back next year (although he said he had a plan to make it over three years, which seems to be part of the bill to make fund tapping easier), refused to recognize the tax amnesty money, refused to recognize the extra deficit amounts, and remains skeptical about whether Mega-Project funds have been committed. Except for the last, until he gives legal assent to the Senate assumptions, they do not exist in a legal sense.

Thus, as noted previously, Tucker pretty much holds most of the cards in a strategy designed to reduce more spending now to make it easier and more certain to cut in the future. As such, his method is to be preferred. However, this does not mean that there are not some merits to the Senate’s approach. It reverses House cuts in higher education to about $25 million and health care to $25 million in part by getting rid of all House member amendments, surprisingly allowing none of their own, and funding to the governor’s office semi-version of them. These “slush funds” while attenuated by the efforts of Jindal, never were completely eliminated by him or legislators. This should be retained by the House.

The Senate also boosted spending on Medicaid to attract more federal dollars. As long as this extra money is used wisely, not just flung out there but coordinated with reform plans that include closing state charity hospitals, supports and services centers, and privatization of mental health services, it can properly broker the state into a transition to a more efficient system that will be challenged by the coming of the national Democrat-passed health care legislation that will increase demand for Medicaid while simultaneously increasing its costs and lowering quality.

Therefore, the best strategy would be to take the basic details of the House budget minus the slush and leverage that into about $100 million more for Medicaid. The Senate may have thought it was being clever and could think it would work a deal to restore these and add their own if Tucker gave in on something like recognizing amnesty proceeds or permitting BSF withdrawal. Instead, this alternative could delegitimize whole concept as legislators would find out over the next year that the world will not end if local groups and governments have to raise money on their own if the needs are even important enough to try to do so.

Tucker also should stand firm on draining the Mega-Projects Fund, which Jindal also apparently would oppose and could through a line-item veto; again, a historic opportunity that should not be passed up to end the counterproductive practice of paying people to do business in the state. The problem is for Jindal then he’d have to make $55 million in cuts elsewhere and no slush funds to excise to punish legislators. This tactic could then square with the Senate’s preferred amounts on higher education and health care, and if Jindal complained about “commitments” to the fund, Tucker could remind him that if they actually come about (few ever do), he’d find a way to rustle up the money when needed. The only leverage Jindal would have is whether to veto the $13.6 million fee reduction in exchange and have that retained money available for the fund, but given the large majorities that passed the bill he may risk an override with, again, no slush funds excising as a counter-threat to prevent that.

As painful as budgetary concerns have become and will escalate, it’ll be worth it, if this blueprint is followed, to have stakes driven through the hearts of two of the vampires that plague good policy-making in Louisiana, with the end of slush funds and removing of remaining funds from the corporate welfare program to where they may be used more wisely.

Resource-hungry BPSO needs no new tax dollars

Tomorrow, Bossier Parish Sheriff Larry Deen plans to take input from parish residents about rolling forward property tax rates to fund operation of his department. If the last time he sought such input is any indication, in the near future he will announce taxes are going up – regardless of whether it best serves the people.

The Louisiana Constitution ensures that when the quadrennial evaluation of property tax valuations occurs that the same overall revenue be maintained, meaning the ad valorem rate is decreased, unless a local government’s governing authority promulgates reinstatement up to the authorized rate. That requires a two-thirds vote – unless the authority is a single officer, such as a sheriff, who need only announce the fact at least 30 days after a public announcement then subsequent hearing on the matter.

Thus Deen has set the table to do so, having last bumped the rate back up in 2005. He has set his sights on going from the current 12.10 mills to the maximum allowed 13.51, an increase of over 11 percent. That desire also contradicts what he said through his spokesman Ed Baswell in 2008, when he argued that increasingly difficult economic times for the citizenry was good reason not to raise rates – and phrased it as “saving Bossier Parish taxpayers almost $900,000.” In mid-2010, with conditions little better if at all, Deen suddenly has changed his mind.

Contingency OK to enrich lawyers at citizens' expense

Today the House Civil Law and Procedure Committee began hearing a bill that potentially could enrich trial lawyers at the expense of Louisianans, and has the chance rightly to stop it.

Supporters of SB 731 by Senate Pres. Joel Chaisson, who had brought a somewhat similar bill forward in 2006, argued that since almost every other state had the ability to hire lawyers on contingency that so should Louisiana. In committee they argued this was necessary to ensure the state could have access to expertise to fight expensive cases against deep-pocketed entities. They also claimed that sufficient checks were in place – the Attorney General explaining the need, open bidding for work, and approval by the Joint Legislative Committee on the Budget – to prevent backroom, sweetheart deals from coming about.

But the bill has a glaring weakness (among others) – no caps on what could be earned by lawyers, with potential for 10 percent of anything recovered past $250 million plus higher percentages at lower amounts plus expenses. Even though the bill was amended to apply only to massive oil spill cases, as currently applied to the BP spill the state could pay out hundreds of millions of dollars to a handful of lawyers.