LA faces federal endorsement that puts power above law

Federal District Court Judge Susie Morgan, recently appointed to the bench by Pres. Barack Obama, followed through for her political allies by ignoring the most pertinent constitutional question concerning the succession process determining who will be the next chief justice of the Louisiana Supreme Court. Hopefully, more responsible jurisprudence will prevail in the future of this case that pits whether abuse of power or rule of law prevails in the state.

It involves Associate Justice Bernette Johnson, who has sat with the Court since 1994 but did not get elected to it until 2000, after two other members were elected. Constitutionally, the senior most justice in point of service gets to be chief justice, with the current holder of that Kitty Kimball retiring at the end of the year.

The original agreement that allowed Johnson, elected to an appeals court, to make decisions with the Supreme Court, was amended years later to reflect passage of an act of the Legislature (although it did not codify this in statute) that said the judge in this position was to get the “benefits” of Court service “as provided by law,” deemed by Johnson and other special interest allies, ideological fellow-travelers among elected officials, and the Obama Administration through this subsequent act’s explicit mention to include seniority for purposes of determining who sits as chief justice.

Jindal needs to help Ethics Board end campaign loopholes

It seems like the investigation, under its own volition, of the Louisiana Board of Ethics concerning changes and its implementation of campaign finance law is beginning to bear fruit. You can tell because legislators are starting to carp about it.

Starting in January with a target date to finish by the end of the year, the Board hopes to provide clearer guidance in the way it interprets the law. Comments coming from its members indicate they believe current interpretations, such as the one offered by state Sen. Robert Adley, that “[t]he law says that campaign dollars can be used to anything that is part of the cost of serving your office,” is unclear and deserves more precision.

In fact, that is not at all what the law intends on the matter. R.S. 18:1483 broadly defines an expenditure as “a purchase, payment, advance, deposit, or gift, of money or anything

of value made for the purpose of supporting, opposing, or otherwise influencing the nomination or election of a person to public office,” and in R.S. 18:1505.2 is related to contributions in that “contributions received by a candidate or a political committee may be expended for any lawful purpose, but such funds shall not be used, loaned, or pledged by any person for any personal use unrelated to a political campaign, the holding of a public office ….”

Isaac to test berm decision, reliance on gouging law

So, seven years after the last hurricane to strike southeast Louisiana took its epic toll, Isaac has rolled onto its land and will test a couple of policy decisions made since.

Among other casualties of Katrina, it had accelerated loss of coastal land. Unfortunately, only the federal government had the wherewithal to start immediately with restoration, and a deal legislatively struck shortly after the event would not start providing Louisiana with significant funds to accomplish this until 2016. But out of bad luck came the potential for good with the Macondo well explosion in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010. Obviously negative was the oil spill that hit Louisiana shores, but an opportunity for one positive outcome was possible when the company for whom the drilling was done, BP, said it would pay for all reasonable damages.

Gov. Bobby Jindal seized the opportunity by getting the firm to pay for berms to catch oil, but cleverly planned their deployment in a way that they could be leveraged into full-blown coastal restoration infrastructure. At no cost to any taxpayer, Louisiana quickly got years ahead in preserving the coast.

Change law to prevent legal, illegal speed trap revenues

There’s more than one way to skin a cat if you are a Louisiana municipality in the business of financing yourself by shaking down out-of-town motorists – even if it seems illegal.

After a year-long investigation, state officials lowered the boon on the top two police officials in Henderson, part of whose town limits were extended a few years ago to patrol Interstate 10 around where the highway begins/ends its stretch over the Atchafalaya Basin, for an alleged illegal scheme to kick back money to officers writing traffic tickets. The more written, the more income from a state grant could be funneled under the table.

Besides feathering their own nests, another reason why a regime like this would be created is it helps the town coffers as well. Previous to the middle of 2010, municipalities could write up outrageous amounts for alleged speeding, but then R.S. 32:266 came into force, which directed fine money for infractions 10 miles below the speed limit on an interstate highway to the state for highway safety purposes for municipalities not operating under a home rule charter.

Ignorant APSA note damages further LA higher education

Thanks a lot, American Political Science Associations Executive Council, for making the professional lives of specifically political scientists and generally anybody in higher education harder by making us look stupid.

First, I would like to apologize to the reading public, and Gov. Bobby Jindal, legislators, and state Supreme Court justices, on behalf of political scientists everywhere who can think logically and for themselves for the ignorance shown by the APSA Council’s letter to these policy-makers, criticizing the state for its prohibition of same sex “marriages” and saying it will not hold its annual meeting again in the state until that changes. Believe me, many of us are not as intellectually lacking or divorced from the real world as the letter implies political scientists generally are.

That meeting, occurring this week in New Orleans, was planned with the city as its site almost a decade ago, before the state by an overwhelming popular vote amended its constitution to make sure marriage was defined as a union of one man and one woman. By 2008, some APSA members got around to protesting the arrangement, but the organization, which has backed out of other host cities because of its liberal orthodoxy, decided to stay to prevent disruption.

Landrieu reminds of her vulnerability on education issue

Some Shreveport Times journalists got a reminder of Democrat Sen. Mary Landrieu’s hypocrisy on education in a recent meeting with her as she cruised through the state’s Gannett affiliates, ammunition that, in particular, Republican Gov. Bobby Jindal might find useful should he determine her office suitable as the next act in his political career.

To the assembled scribes, Landrieu reiterated her criticism of Jindal’s backing of the new voucher scholarship program, where students of lower-income families from low performing schools are given an amount less than what the state pays public schools to educate them to attend any willing and eligible school of their choice, even if a non-public school. She said again that it was too big of a part of state education reform and not accountable enough.

But at both policy and personal levels, on this issue Landrieu speaks with forked tongue. When a Senate candidate in 1996, she then expressed unqualified support for the general idea that government should “Provide parents with vouchers to send their children to any publicly funded school,” according to Project VoteSmart’s National Political Awareness Test. But shortly after election, she apparently had repudiated this preference, for she opposed consistently legislation that eventually would bring such a program to the District of Columbia.

Merit-based, integrated TOPS key to achieving its goal

A continuing tight budgetary environment in Louisiana has gotten observers to consider picking up the knife to slaughter some sacred cows. First it was the motion picture tax credit, and now perhaps the Tuition Opportunity Program for Students?

This space on several occasions has spilled the ills of the program that pays for all tuition costs at any public community or technical college, or at any public baccalaureate institution and perhaps even more in some cases, or a portion of tuition at a private baccalaureate institution, for high school graduates in the state or of families claiming residency in the state. The idea was to get presumably college-ready students to a college in the state, drawing both on those who might have left the state and those who otherwise did not have the financial means to attend college.

But because of the program’s relatively low standards and tying the award directly to tuition levels, it did not evolve into a true scholarship reward but rather an entitlement program. Among its several pernicious effects – inflating the number of marginal students who would not complete degrees going to college, providing a disincentive to achieve past a point of mediocrity in high school, providing an incentive for colleges to raise tuition and to lower standards to capture revenues without regard to quality and efficiency – in these times the fact that it self-defeats greater reliance on tuition as a way of responding to budget reductions seems to be getting the increased attention of policy-makers.

Generous LA pension system for most now hurts a few

Unfortunately, the chickens continue to come home to roost as the consequences of Louisiana’s over-generous retirement system, as a segment of retirees in the state’s two largest suffer at the hands of a system that directed too much money to those encouraged to work too little.

At Senate interim committee hearings the latest statistics revealed that in the Louisiana State Employees Retirement System some 18 percent, and in the Teachers’ Retirement System of Louisiana 39 percent, of retirees received monthly benefits that were below the poverty level for a two-person household. The few cost of living increases to retirees that have come about in the past several years have not matched general price inflation.

The numbers at first glance seem unsettling, but overstate the problem of large numbers of retirees living hand-to-mouth. First, some in both systems worked for the state as only one career, and have either a private pension, something like an IRA, or Social Security benefits coming their way as well. Second, some were part-timers, which in part explains why the TRSL figure is so much higher, a portion of which are part of households with another member either still employed or with a retirement from a full-time job. Third, even for those who worked in either system full time, some will have another household member either employed or also with retirement income. Fourth, these households get a small break in that they are exempt from state income taxes. Finally, many of these may be single households.

Needless boards cost LA far more than members' expenses

It’s not so much in monetary terms that a Louisiana rife with commissions and boards acts as a drain on the state, but in the inefficiency that this condition brings to policy-making for which the citizenry pays.

This year’s annual report on the number of boards and commissions not in and of themselves a separate state agency by the Legislative Auditor reveals nearly 500 of them. The law also requires computing the costs of personnel serving on these (salaries, per diem payments, and travel expenses), which is at the least approaching $5 million. Note that this does include the overall expenses of these, which can be considerably higher but most of which would be spent by other agencies if that function needs to be performed, nor costs of staff, which also would have to be paid for by another agency if it performed that function, or already is as many of these bodies have minor administrative assistance from personnel on loan from other agencies.

The member personnel expenses can be deceiving somewhat. For example, the Louisiana Developmental Disabilities Council is required by federal law and spending on this category is paid for by federal funding, so the state does not have the option to not have it and does not pay state funds for these kinds of expenditures. But perusing the list of all of them brings considerable questioning into the utility of many of these entities, which by their abolishment or consolidation into another agency would save on these kinds of expenses.

This time, public may find high appointee salary worth it

Gov. Bobby Jindal means it, and is willing to pay handsomely to get it. But unlike some of his past appointments, if he gets the job done, it will repay Louisianans many times over.

Last week, Jindal appointed former administration official Tim Barfield as secretary of the Department of Revenue, with the specific instructions that he serve at the point to reform the state’s tax structure. Riddled with exceptions that create inefficiencies, the current system is designed more to satisfy political constituencies than as a regime that encourages investment through market signals that will increase the overall tax take without raising rates through the efficiency provided by a fairer, flatter, and perhaps even with lower rates system.

This joins with the Legislature, which has launched a special committee to investigate the matter. Given past fizzled efforts, this act doesn’t seem likely to lead to much so Jindal explicitly backing this effort may produce the needed pressure to make sure months from now the report that gets issued doesn’t only have a few very uncontroversial conclusions make it into law and have the rest disappear until the next go-around on the issue in the distant future.