Unshackle Harrah's to maintain state revenues

As the culture in Louisiana changes, partial adaptation to that by policy-makers is as bad as not adapting to it at all, as the nexus of nonsmoking and casino revenues demonstrates.

Once may be a coincidence, but twice looks like a trend: monthly revenues are down year-over-year at Harrah’s New Orleans’ land-based casino twice in a row, just after the city banned smoking almost everywhere indoors making it the only casino in the state so circumscribed. It’s likely that a good portion of the $9.2 million fall, or about three-tenths of June, 2014 revenues, came because those who gamble and smoke don’t like to hover outside when lighting up and either don’t patronize the place or use time they would have gambled to puff away outside.

This has consequences for the bottom line of all of state and local governments. The state is required to receive the greater of 18.5 percent of gross revenues or $60 million a year from Harrah’s. Lopping off $110 million a year makes it rather difficult for Harrah’s to meet this expense and thereby stay in business; in fiscal year 2014 it paid just over $72 million to the state. Until 2001, the state demanded $100 million a year.

The Advocate column, Jul. 26, 2015

Louisiana right to reject Medicaid expansion

http://theadvocate.com/news/neworleans/neworleansnews/12991490-172/jeff-sadow-la-right-to

LA defending right Constitutional principles priceless

Louisiana spent a lot of money defending its Constitution for something overturned by federal judicial fiat. It was worth it.

Last month’s decision by the U.S. Supreme Court that protected from prohibition by states a product of homosexual activity, same sex marriage, ended up costing the state at least $330,000 in fees it paid outside counsel for that defense; these dollars might have been lower in terms of manpower had state attorneys handled the case that Louisiana’s constitutional ban, approved by over three-quarters of voters over a decade ago, was within powers granted by the states that should not be abrogated by including practices not already listed in the Constitution as protected as in the case of free speech and religious exercise. That figure probably will end up half again higher when court costs and reimbursement of the plaintiffs’ legal fees are figured in. Ironically, because Louisiana’s case presented the best exposition against the plaintiffs’ claims, that probably increased the costs.

Of course, a half a million dollars is relative. After all, Louisiana wasted, net, around $170 million in motion picture investor tax credits in the last year for which there is calculated data, and probably will waste around $50 million this year in the earned income tax credit that discourages working to maximal effort. Still, anything is better for use than having nothing available.

Resign-to-run would cost LA more than benefit it

So, New Jersey legislators want to indulge in pique, soothe bruised egos, and half bake concern over state governance by forcing officeholders to resign for office if they declare candidacy for another. While experiencing a similar dynamic in Louisiana with Gov. Bobby Jindal running for president, such a move brings more costs than benefits.

These kinds of laws exist in a handful of states, varying in their scope. A couple are absolute, negating running for anything at any time without resignation. A couple more limit the resignation imperative only up to the last year or so in that office, and still others apply any resignation requirement to only a circumscribed range of offices.

Just looking at the 2015 governor’s race here, depending upon the kind of law, all, some, or none of the current candidates would be able to run. Under the most stringent law, not a single one could have declared a candidacy, or in another couple of instances upon qualifying, unless resigning their current offices. Under more relaxed scenarios, as their terms in other state offices end at the beginning of next year, Lt. Gov. Jay Dardenne and state Rep. John Bel Edwards could have avoided resigning by making a declaration as late as early this year, but in no instance could have Sen. David Vitter or Public Service Commissioner Scott Angelle.

LA should end deal with combative hospital operator

The best defense is a good offense, and so the private-public partnership for charity hospitals in Shreveport and Monroe has descended into farce as the state claims breach of contract and the operator sues its presumed opposition, providing so far the only real blemish on a largely successful transition into this model.

You knew trouble might develop when the state made the decision to turn over operations at all but one of its ten state-run general hospitals to nongovernment entities with the eventual deal almost two years ago for Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center-Shreveport and E.A. Conway Medical Center – historically managed together – going to the Biomedical Research Foundation of Northwest Louisiana. The nonprofit established nearly three decades earlier had no experience in managing health care except for operation of a PET scanner and had subsisted mainly off of taxpayer dollars (renewed only recently).

Until then, all of the hospitals were run directly by the Louisiana State University System which still officially oversees the operators, and all but the north Louisiana hospitals ended up under the management of nonprofit entities that run hospitals, although one partner in central Louisiana was a for-profit company. For its part, the BRF created a subsidiary to manage the hospitals, now called University Health Systems, past a startup period.

Events conspire to give Jindal breakout chance

The next two weeks could make or break Gov. Bobby Jindal’s presidential aspirations – and suddenly several events have teed up the softballs he needs to jumpstart his campaign.

Before and after announcing his presidential intentions, Jindal has continue to suffer low polling numbers for the Republican Party nomination. Granted, in a field of over a dozen serious candidates, the random mean would be seven percent, but bouncing around five points or more below that does not inspire hope that he can break out from near the bottom to grab it. More crucially, candidate debates that either will exclude or grant second-tier treatment to the lowest-ranking candidates in polls begin in a couple of weeks. While not getting first-team status doesn’t definitively doom his campaign, it does make things more difficult to come out on top in the end.

Fortunately for him, over the last month issues in the area he has chosen to distinguish himself most from his competitors, social, have fed him assists under the basket that he merely had to lay up to score. About the time he announced formally his candidacy, the U.S. Supreme Court rather inexpertly found a protected behavior nowhere written in the Constitution, homosexual activity, that had to be recognized  this way by states in the form of same sex marriage. This put Jindal front and center as he had issued an executive order not long before this stating that government could not discriminate in its dealings with citizens on the basis of their views on marriage.

The Advocate letter, Jul. 19, 2015

Jindal did right thing in probing abortion clinics

(http://theadvocate.com/news/opinion/12930377-123/letter-jindal-did-the-right.)

Bad 2015 session for conservatism, but how bad?

A couple of interest groups graded Louisiana’s legislators harshly for their votes last session. But a more comprehensive overview shows things weren’t as “bad” as these groups make them out to be.

This month, stalwart grader the Louisiana Association of Business and Industry put out its annual scorecard, while Americans for Prosperity launched its initial version. Both hew to conservative issue preferences, with the former representing business interests and the latter ideological conservatives.

LABI provides a listing for every legislator and grades them on a long list of votes, some procedural, some final, with some counting for as little as less than one percent of the cumulative score and the most about ten percent (weighings varied between chambers). By contrast to this completeness, AFP does not attempt an aggregate listing nor a grade; it simply shows how legislators who represent a postal address voted on eight measures, most of these also appearing on LABI’s.

LA just had to have public breastfeeding controversy

Do we really have to have a controversy over breastfeeding in public in Louisiana? Especially in a state known for at least one location notorious for public exposure of female breasts without babies attached?

It seems that in Leesville recently a restaurant owner informed a woman that she could not stay on the premises if she chose to breastfeed her baby uncovered – this in spite of R.S. 51:2247.1 that allows a woman to do so “in any place of public accommodation, resort, or amusement.” The female owner said if the mother did so she had to use a cover, but many women find them cumbersome and larger babies may have difficulty with them, and this case the mother refused. However, the law does not give owners the ability to require that, and while the mother graciously does not plan legal action against the establishment, the owner, citing decorum, put out a sign demanding that breastfeeding patrons cover up and plans to build an enclosed area in the dining room as a station for these mothers.

Besides the logistical problem in the rare instance that multiple women wish to breastfeed at the same time – which will be induced artificially as compatriots of the affected mother plan a kind of “nurse in” at the restaurant in the near future – even having a separate and enclosed area for this purpose does not affect a woman’s legal right to breastfeed uncovered in public in Louisiana. In fact, it explicitly exempts women from R.S. 14:106 that defines obscenity as showing the female nipple.

Formula will work best by demoting institutions

Drowned out by all of the cheering concerning a standstill higher education budget in Louisiana passed last month was these dollars continue to flow in a way that props up an inefficient delivery system, perpetuating waste of taxpayer dollars in a tight budgetary environment that by law is becoming harder to justify.

The issue came to the surface at the latest Board of Regents meeting, where community colleges complained that state money continues disproportionately to go to baccalaureate-and-above schools, and to certain ones of those. The Board has a funding formula that details how much of this money should go to institutions, based largely on enrollment but also in recent years’ performance. But it also has a provision called “stop-loss” that attenuates the impact of the formula the lower the state subsidy goes, which means fewer dollars are subtracted than the formula would indicate the lower enrollment goes for an institution.

This has been to the disadvantage of community colleges because their enrollments have been growing. In essence, because as a result the portion of money they receive through tuition and fees continues to rise, this is used to supplant part of what they would get from the state, which then is transferred to weaker four-year institutions that have been losing students (ironically, those institutions have kvetched about proceeds from tuition hikes substituting for reductions in taxpayer subsidization). Generally speaking, with a shift to stronger entrance requirements at senior institutions and continuing increases in tuition that may price out some baccalaureate-and-above students and intended students, the proportion of students attending junior institutions in Louisiana has been on the climb over the past several years.