Legislators want strong gov.; critics exaggerate to bash

Every so often, perhaps goaded by statements emanating from some legislative elites or other outsider malcontents over the direction of gubernatorial policy, it seems some handwringing must occur in Louisiana’s media about the presumed powerful office of governor. On these occasions, it’s important to remember just why this happens and exactly what it means – which is a whole lot less alarmist than some breathless advocates would have one believe.

Yes, Louisiana’s governor can find himself in a position to influence strongly policy emerging from the Louisiana Legislature. Remarkably, it does not come from the formal powers of the office, which, according to a long-standing metric created by an academic researcher to assess formal powers of governors, are modest ranking right below the top third of all the states. Rather, they come from using other means. Often, three of these less formal avenues are identified.

First, the governor enjoys a line-item veto power on appropriations bills, requiring two-thirds majorities on each cast in order to overrides, which seemingly cows legislators into supporting him as they value stuff coming into their districts that makes them look better to constituents for reelection purposes. Second, the State Bond Commission makes funding choices from capital budget requests forwarded by the Legislature, which the governor can control through allies who owe their appointments to him, which serve the same function by delivering stuff to constituents. They have these jobs because the governor helps get them elected to leadership positions in their respective chambers by marshalling coalitions through the chicken-and-egg process of promising assistance in making sure their pet projects avoid line-item vetoes.

Useless change shows what holds back LA education

One jilted politician went out with a flourish, reminding those who wish to rebuild Louisiana’s elementary and secondary education that the disease that has kept it back can be difficult to eradicate, and its effects may linger.

The rump Orleans Parish School Board, unlike all other districts in the state that have their elections in off-presidential election years, have its conducted during presidential election years. One casualty was outgoing president Thomas Robichaux, in a landslide. It had partly to do with race, since the district he had won in the post-Hurricane Katrina aftermath political chaos was majority black and he is white who faced black opponents, but was exacerbated by the board’s decision earlier this year to raise taxes, which was opposed largely by black residents.

So, Robichaux decided to manufacture an issue out of nothing as a parting gift. No stranger to giving the citizenry a Bronx salute, on the issue of ethics, he gave it another when he spearheaded a move to for the half-dozen schools the district still controls to prohibit the teaching of “creationism” or “intelligent design” in science classes or to allow teachers to use textbooks that in the Board’s opinion did that.

Hope fading for establishment to negate education reform

The fellow travelers of the educrat empire took a TKO with 19^th District Judge Michael Caldwell’s ruling that most of Act 1 of 2012, which overhauled teacher evaluation and employment practices, was constitutional. But they stayed on their feet with the striking of one section of the law that without will make it marginally more difficult to realize the full effectiveness of the law.

In essence, the law requires demonstrated and consistent competence in order for teachers not to be discharged. State teachers’ unions have invested themselves with the rearguard strategy the left has tried to perpetrate to stop democratic majorities from making and implementing reforms, as it does not have the ability to persuade majorities to give it a majority as policy-makers, employing a series of court challenges. This one complained that the law had too many objects to, as the Constitution states there shall be but one object in a bill.

Which Caldwell correctly noted in this case was dealing with matters of teacher evaluation for continued job performance. However, he also decided that the part about school district superintendent matters, which included personnel matters dealing with teachers but also included personnel matters dealing with the superintendents’ jobs, did stray beyond that object.

To protect Louisianans, end pretend "gun-free" zones

A tragic mass shooting in a public school need not act as the only trigger to reevaluate security measures in Louisiana. But we must recognize that, until gun control restrictions are relaxed in Louisiana, these measures do little to prevent these kinds of tragedies.

School districts around the Baton Rouge area report increased vigilance and are taking another look at their school security policies in the wake of the recent incident in Connecticut where a mentally ill individual, after killing his mother, shot up a school. The semi-automatic weapon used is available in most states for carry as a concealed weapon for qualified users, where no state allows permitting of concealed carry by somebody with a history of mental illness.

The districts report increased visitation of security officers at schools and a review of emergency review plans. There is talk about increasing officer presence. Unfortunately, while these measures are better than nothing to reduce the possibility of a horrific event occurring, they are next to nothing in effectively dealing with the situation.

Even dramatic changes won't stop UAL bomb explosion

Another day, another discouraging reminder of the obvious: a report highlighting the precarious state of a Louisiana pension system, in this case the state’s largest Teachers Retirement System of Louisiana. And while it’s never too often to be told that TRSL has astronomically-high unfunded accrued liabilities – at the recent $10.8 billion this will cost every Louisiana resident nearly $2,400 and that mark makes the entirely unrealistic assumption that the UAL will go no higher – it’s another matter whether the state will do anything meaningful about this very soon, if ever.

 That Louisiana ranks 11^th worst-funded in dollar terms, 11^th worst in per capita terms, and fifth worst in funded ratio, and that given the constitutional imperative that the unfunded status of this and all statewide systems must end by 2029 it means – again, making the entirely unrealistic assumption that the UAL will go no higher – an average annual cost of $636 million extra to the state, you would think there might be some policy-maker urgency to address the conditions creating over half of the state’s entire UAL, if not all of it.

Think again. Last year, exactly nothing was done about this except for the relatively small portion of TRSL that constitutes coverage of university instructors, where beginning July 1 new hires go into a cash balance program (already some higher education employees can participate in a related defined contribution program). This only prevents future hires from adding to the UAL and does not address the current crisis.

Cuts should prompt reflection on ways to prevent them

Another round of mid-year budget cuts must be endured by Louisiana, but more interesting than its causes and dealing with those solutions chosen is the reaction of one policy-maker in particular.

Given the overwhelming number of protections placed upon most spending in the state, the brunt of these reductions must fall on the two large areas of state government that rely for much of their funding on the state’s general fund, health care and higher education. The latter essentially was spared, by eliminating some unfilled jobs and by factoring increased, and higher-than-expected aggregate collected, tuition. Thus, health care took most of it, in ways to displease a number of policy-makers.

Those presumed concerned over the use of nonrecurring revenues for recurring purposes should note a lawsuit settlement was included in making up part of the $166 million the state was forecast to be short at the regular Revenue Estimating Conference meeting, plus the deficit in the Minimum Foundation Program because of increased school enrollments. Medical providers took another small haircut in reimbursement rates, but after several of these they do add up and may force cost-shifting or retrenchment of services. Some Medicaid optional programs that provided small savings will be terminated.

Subversion of popular rule raises anti-democratic worries

A troublesome development concerning Louisiana’s State Civil Service Commission points to the potential for future mischief and subversion of democracy, perhaps requiring constitutional amending to mend.

Yesterday, the SCSC considered the layoff plan for the Southeast Louisiana Hospital, which has been deemed by the state as too inefficient to continue under direct state operation. With local governing authorities, it has worked out a deal to reopen the space to be closed (some continues to stay open under a previous contracting agreement from a couple of years ago) with a bed count of about half its recent size contracted to a private operator. This deal better fits market demands, costs taxpayers less, and promises continued quality care. However, it means that all current state employees must be discharged, and probably less than half would be rehired under the new arrangement.

Part of the Commission’s constitutional duties is to promulgate rules related to layoff, found in Chapter 17 of its rules. Essentially, the Commission must study each proposed layoff plan to see that it comports to procedure, where the plan must show it carries savings and that all necessary information and procedural steps were followed. This is to demonstrate that the action is not one where layoffs are being used to coerce employees into supporting electorally a particular political faction.

Reform needed to stop annual $1 billion taxpayer drain

At least someone’s trying with serious ideas. State Sen. Elbert Guillory announced his intent to file several pieces of legislation for next year to overhaul the state’s ailing pension funds, aimed that the two that have the large majority of members, the Louisiana State Employees Retirement System and the Teachers Retirement System of Louisiana, and they are needed.

Last year, Guillory helped to spearhead efforts at reform, designed to rein in the lucrative retirement benefits regime promised by the state disproportionately generous to what employees contribute. The problem has created a situation where each fund could pay off only a little more than half of its future obligations with present funding mechanisms and predicted investment performance. This has created increasingly massive unfunded accrued liabilities that the state constitutionally must pay off by 2029.

In order to do so, since 1989 the state has had continually to increase its extra portion paid in beyond what the system was designed to do. For example, for fiscal year 2012 TRSL paid in an additional 17.73 percent for employees under its largest of four plans, above its 5.97 rate while employees paid in 8 percent. Assuming this figure across all state plans (it varies and TRSL’s regular plan’s is lower than most; for some of the smaller ones, the figure was in the 30-40 percent range), and using average salaries and fulltime equivalent employment numbers and estimated full-time equivalent number of teachers and their salaries, this means an estimate of the extra that taxpayers had to contribute to meet the generous payouts was $1.045 billion in that year, or four percent of the entire budget and enough to have restored funding for health care and higher education to 2008 levels.

End begins for charity model with crumbled resistance

In the relative scheme of things, perhaps early December, 2012 will be viewed in Louisiana political history as the health care policy equivalent of the peaceful breaching of the Berlin Wall. The ending of the era of a state-operated charity hospital system has begun peaceably, and both clients and taxpayers are better off for it.

Yesterday, the Louisiana State University System that runs the state’s 10 charity hospitals announced agreements to begin the transformation of at least three of the facilities to have their operations leased to nongovernment entities. Other deals appear to be in the works. These initial agreements come in front of the LSU Board of Supervisors for ratification later in the week.

The state will receive a payment upfront, then periodically over terms to last several years, limiting its involvement to ownership of the property and overseeing executing of the contracts. Even though it will reimburse the operators at a higher rate than for others for Medicaid – the state sets rates subject to federal oversight as a large portion of the money used comes from the federal government – apparently given the lease payments, the federal matching funds that may be drawn from them, and eliminating most of the expenses associated with running a hospital, this still will result in substantial savings to the state.

Coming college crisis should spur reevaluation of spending

It has become fashionable in some quarters to lament the departure – some by retirement, most by taking jobs elsewhere – of higher education leaders in Louisiana, often blamed on a tough budgetary climate of reductions in the neighborhood of $425 million since 2008 (but a far lower amount compared to 2006). But not only are these concerns largely misplaced, they in fact present an excellent opportunity to improve higher education delivery.

For the salient fact, derived from an admixture of both (my 26-year employed career in higher education) experience and common sense, is that on the academic side most university administrators (those above the department level) earn in excess, sometimes far more, of what abilities they actually bring to the table, or of needs of the job, or even if the job is one that actually contributes meaningfully. Thus, people leaving these positions provide the chance for fresh faces to assume their duties, and usually at a salary level more commensurate with what the job requires.

That’s more important than ever these days in Louisiana higher education, where the beginnings of a fundamental transformation are in place, away from an input-oriented model to one focused on outputs. Some of these officials had come in under the past paradigm, or risen through the ranks under that paradigm, that is part and parcel of the higher education bubble that will force major changes and retrenchment in public higher education that, to some minor extent, Louisiana policy-makers already have recognized. The newer leaders hopefully understand this while a number of the departed undoubtedly do not and will find themselves unprepared for a contracting environment.