Tax break panel's attitude putting it on course to fail

If Louisiana legislators remain invested in the same ideology that has spawned the hundreds of tax exceptions, not a single constructive thing will emerge from the effort.

Last week, the Revenue Study Commission reviewed a number of these in an effort to parse out whether policy as it exists in this regard optimally forgoes revenues because of these exceptions. Part of the exercise allowed arguments, particularly from current beneficiaries, stating cases as to why their breaks, some of which on the surface seem very questionable, should continue.

And so we got from them arguments like Lt. Gov. Jay Dardenne’s, who oversees arts policy as part of his portfolio, defending the sales tax exemption on art sales in the state’s designated 63 arts districts, who claimed it was a economic redevelopment tool that cost only $500,000 over the past two years but the districts themselves had economic activity of over $1 billion. Bullion dealers say introduction of a sales tax exemption on sales above $1,000 caused their business to increase many times. A representative with the New Orelans Jazz and Heritage festival said a new exemption applies to sales tax on admission and vendor sales helps “maintain a ticket price that is reasonable.”

Demoting old hands needed to achieve deisrable change

With the departure of another high-level executive from Louisiana State University’s hospital and medical division, that indicates the necessary change in culture is occurring to improve system performance and to have it operate more efficiently.

While the old hands being replaced, first Fred Cerise by the Board of Supervisors and then with his replacement Frank Opelka informing Cerise’s immediate subordinate Roxanne Townsend that he was replacing her choices to head up some system hospitals triggering her resignation, unfortunately experience goes with them that might be useful as the system begins its long-overdue transformation from state-supported provider to quasi-public status and hopefully beyond. Former Gov. Kathleen Blanco indicated as such when she opined about Cerise’s departure that “I think they made a terrible mistake firing Fred Cerise, a man with so much integrity and so much knowledge on how to serve people”

No doubt – if you are invested in a government-run health care model for the indigent, as was Blanco and her allies and former appointees Cerise and Townsend. But that is a deviant model among the states, with no other state sharing the charity model foisted upon the state over 75 years ago, and for good reason, as it has produced low outcomes at high cost. And for that same reason it’s not the model that the Gov. Bobby Jindal Administration wishes to follow.

Lame remarks need not deter LA from improving vote laws

While generally the comments made by former New Orleans Mayor Marc Morial at his party’s national convention have no basis in reality, they illustrate why tighter voting registration requirements are vital to the health of American representative democracy, including in Louisiana.

Morial, who now heads the National Urban League, opined to Democrats that laws requiring certain, positive identification of potential voters were a plot by wild-eyed racists, presumably not Democrats, to bring back “the old Jim Crow.” Then in expressing approval of laws that allow for loopholes, he firmly came down in the camp of those who would subvert democracy because anything but laws mandating strict identification measures with government-supplied, if need be free to recipients, photo identifications cards allow for fraud.

The vanguard states for honesty at the polling place are Indiana and Georgia, which have these requirements. Even without that identification, one can vote provisionally but then shortly after the election must produce it for the vote to count. Other states like Louisiana generally require photo identification but have exceptions granted that easily may be used to cheat.

Changing law good response to lame duck sheriff damage

Scooping up the low-hanging fruit is easy. But new Bossier Parish Sheriff Julian Whittington will need to get a lot more ambitious if he is to promote long term cures for what ails the department.

Elected last fall to succeed a retiring Larry Deen, as parish executive offices work in Louisiana, Whittington had to wait over half a year to assume his new post. In the interim, Deen doled out some hefty promotions and pay raises that took a deteriorating fiscal condition born of spendthrift ways and pushed it into deficit spending.

For over a decade, Deen had been ramping up expenditures with an ever-increasing size of his agency as it performed more peripheral functions or others that should have been left to other law enforcement agencies, while its performance stagnated or declined. Eventually, revenues calculated at constant property tax levels weren’t enough so in 2010 he raised collections by announcing a roll forward of millages (sheriffs are the only unitary authority of all local governments so, unlike with other units, they may do this unilaterally).

Obama retracts middle finger, grits teeth and stops by LA

What first seems counterintuitive about the dueling major party presidential candidates’ recent trips to Louisiana becomes perfectly understandable once we remember who and what the parties, candidates, and ideologies involved are.

Following the custom born in the 20^th Century, Pres. Barack Obama is visiting the state most of which recently was declared by him as a disaster area from Hurricane Isaac, at the invitation of Gov. Bobby Jindal, days after the storm departed the state even as its effects linger. But expanding upon the custom, days earlier Obama’s Republican candidate for the presidency former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney took a brief tour also at Jindal’s invitation.

Indeed, Romney came right after his party’s national convention closed, cancelling a campaign swing through the very competitive state of Virginia to head to wringing-out Louisiana where he will win by a comfortable margin. Meanwhile, Obama said during and right after the natural catastrophe he watched sports on television, and only after word got out that Romney would show up did he commit to coming on by the state, after doing some campaigning in the competitive state of Iowa where he watched some football on TV and scarfed down pizza.

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.