Debates confirm governor's race revolves around Vitter

Whether he’s present at them, the Louisiana gubernatorial debates have been all about Sen. David Vitter and his campaign strategy, as witnessed in the two most recent this week.

For the first and last time presumably this election cycle, statewide televised forums occurred on consecutive days, the first with Public Service Commissioner Scott Angelle, Lt. Gov. Jay Dardenne, and state Rep. John Bel Edwards, and the second including them and Vitter. The events’ tones differed as a result.

Two things distinguished the first: the bland, technocratic presentation that lacked almost any ideological referents and almost as much discussion and referents made about Vitter by the other three. Knowing nothing else about the candidates or contest, one might have thought the Republicans Angelle and Dardenne and Democrat Edwards all were moderates of the same party as they differed by small degrees in their issues preferences as expressed there and almost went out of their way to avoid drawing distinctions on their core beliefs.

CCSSI/PARCC critics unwisely try to shoot messenger

The predictable disappointing results from Louisiana’s first round of Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers testing has led to an equally forecastable palaver from critics of education reform in the state built upon killing the messenger rather than a desire to improve children’s educational attainment.

Superintendent John White released results using a scale he hoped that the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education would ratify, presumably aligned with what the other ten states and District of Columbia that comprise PARCC will use, which it did. Louisiana is the first state to embark upon evaluating the results so it must anticipate here, and also when all others have done the same it is expected that Louisiana’s students in the grades 3-8 who took the tests in the aggregate will be among the lowest scorers; the state’s students usually perform near or at the bottom of state’s on scores of the National Assessment of Educational Progress, the test given to samples of students in all states mandated by the federal government.

With White announcing that only 22 to 40 percent of students hit the benchmarks, this set off a chorus of carping from observers more generally against reform and those specifically critical of PARCC testing because of its connection to the Common Core States Standards Initiative. Perhaps most obsequiously attuned to criticism was state Rep. Brett Geymann, who declared on this basis that the whole of Common Core, introduced in full last year in Louisiana classrooms, had failed.

Edwards again fails religious freedom defense test

One can rest assured that those who run the Louisiana chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union remain on their medications if at least twice a year it launches into some manufactured outrage. They all seem well, courtesy of an ill-advised attempt to curb constitutional religious expression at Bossier Parish School District’s Airline High School that has broader implications in state politics.

The excitable lot in continuing its quest to promote a secularist religion last month fulminated over the penchant of AHS principle Jason Rowland to throw out references to God on his page attached to the school’s web site and that prayer boxes, marked with crosses, sprinkle the campus. It asked for the school to cease and desist in supporting this activity and requested reeducation sessions of school employees.

Perhaps the organization felt emboldened by its apparent success in browbeating Caddo Parish officials earlier this year when it scolded employees at Walnut Hills Elementary-Middle School for posted website material such as a newsletter to parents asking for prayer for exam-taking success and in its publicizing a student-run prayer group. While the community rallied on behalf of the school, the district said it would investigate and since then has mentioned nothing more publicly about the matter. Such references have disappeared from Walnut Hill’s communications.

Edwards expansion omission, lie speaks poorly of him

If by his reaction to partisan criticisms of his position to expand Medicaid gives voters an indication of gubernatorial candidate state Rep. John Bel Edwards’ command of facts and use of logic, then a vote for him backs someone who has neither ability.

The Democrat got upset when a Republican Governors Association ad pointed out he had sponsored this year a resolution to enact the Medicaid expansion portion of the misnamed Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. That measure went nowhere, but the Legislature did pass a resolution allowing it and the governor to act in the first quarter of next year to assess a fee on many hospitals to pay for the state’s share of expansion, which then undoubtedly would be passed along to health insurance ratepayers and taxpayers.

Other major Republican gubernatorial candidates have expressed qualified desires to expand Medicaid. Public Service Commissioner Scott Angelle wants to pursue a hybrid public/private strategy as in Arkansas – apparently oblivious to the fact that this meant that state had to accept such restrictive rules that the cost overruns from these now has it trying to abandon the effort. Lt. Gov. Jay Dardenne seems to want to accept the arrangement as is except with a provision that the federal government not raise the proportion the states are to pay into it, known as “cost blending” – except that the fiscal evidence shows cost blending is approaching inevitability. Sen. David Vitter seems most dubious about expansion, averring that he would look at it as long as it undergoes programmatic changes that likely radically would overhaul Medicaid as a whole.

The Advocate column: Oct. 11, 2015

Louisiana’s gubernatorial candidates should embrace state’s limits to its Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program

http://www.theadvocate.com/baton_rouge/opinion/our_views/article_33a57c69-bca5-51d9-8555-3f74f924bb50.html

Governor debates so far more echoes than choices

While a Louisiana gubernatorial debate televised statewide with all candidates present will have to wait another week, what has been said in a dizzying array of forums to date by any or all of the three candidates present for the first one televised statewide last night should give viewers pause about them as choices.

The lone Democrat among these major candidates, state Rep. John Bel Edwards, at least once a minute reminds audiences of his God-fearing life and/or he’s against abortion and/or he’s big on guns and/or he served in the military. When subjects last night concerned fiscal matters, he manages to squeeze in that the state doesn’t have to adjust Taylor Opportunity Program for Students awards, that transportation needs can be solved by not allocating money from the Transportation Trust Fund to state police, that New Orleans can have better police presence, that charity hospital partnerships can get a shot of additional funding, etc., without revealing from where the money to pay for all of this will come. In other words, he preaches that all is well on the spending front, there’s no need to cut anything regardless of its policy value as revenue magically will appear to resolve it all.

The magic, of course, is the opaque idea that a reduction in tax credits will solve everything. Some of these are counterproductive and need excising. But Edwards is perpetrating a confidence game if he thinks these of this kind will be sufficient to balance the budget without any spending cuts. The only way to raise enough revenue would be to get rid of enough in credits to the point this becomes a net tax increase on the public, as those former recipients of credits will pass along their increased costs to the people.

Closed primaries help parties, provide clearer direction

Fascinating even to elected officials is just what impact Louisiana’s odd nonpartisan blanket primary system has on partisan politics and elections, which has an impact, perhaps salutary, on subsequent policy.

The one in charge of elections, Sec. of State Tom Schedler, as do many observers, note the decline in registrations for Democrats and growth among Republicans and even more in the catchall Other classification, which includes all registrants of the minor recognized parties Greens, Libertarian, and Reform, all registrants that put down another label of an unrecognized party, and those that indicated no partisanship.

He offered two theories as to why the Other category has grown the fastest – it’s gone from 18 to 26 percent of the electorate since 2000, while GOP registrants have increased only from 22 to 28 percent and Democrats fallen from 60 to 46 percent – which are somewhat complementary. One is “frustration with the major parties” and the other the participation opportunity the electoral system presents; each merits some discussion.

Thumbs up on two, down on pair of LA amendments

Even though only four constitutional amendments appear on Louisiana’s fall ballot, ten fewer than last year, that’s still enough to have one very controversial one appear.

That would be the first, which deals with the Budget Stabilization Fund, the savings account of the state. In essence, bonus revenues, both those in excess of the state’s constitutionally-determined expenditure limit and including a quarter of all nonrecurring monies, that accrue to the state, mineral proceeds above the base level, and whatever else the state wishes to throw in, up to a maximum balance of four percent of the state’s budgeted revenues at the time get chunked into the BSF. The base level, which may be readjusted at minimum every ten years, recently became $950 million, with the BSF holding $517 million and its ceiling currently set at $811 million. Money removed must be filled at the next available opportunity.

Amendment #1 would divide the BSF into two sub-funds, its original one and a new Transportation Stabilization Subfund. Each would be capped at $500 million, with the new one to have money flow to it from excess mineral revenues after the new Budget Stabilization Subfund. It also would delay at least a year any refilling of the new BSS, with the same applying it would appear to the new TSS, and the base level could be raised after five years (monies in excess of the base level and subject to the delay could be spent on operating expenses). The TSS could have proceeds spent generally on transportation projects, although some would be dedicated.

Avoid campus shootings by LA excising gun-free zones

The same inconsistency that plagued Oregon’s legal code that likely contributed to a tragic mass shooting at one of its educational institutions could come back to haunt Louisiana as well.

Last month, a gunman shot at dozens of individuals at a community college, hitting many and killing some. As in the similar event this summer in Lafayette, the area was designated as a gun-free zone and that may have contributed to the gunman’s picking out that venue to conduct carnage.

For around four decades Oregon education officials had banned guns on campuses. However, a few years ago a student successfully sued the state to allow carrying of concealed weapons on them, as the state had passed a concealed carry law that did not specifically ban colleges. This left policy contradictory – campuses declared that guns (except for public safety officers) would not be allowed on campuses, yet anyone with a concealed carry permit had the right to possess them on campuses. The campus in question had a specific written gun-free policy.

The Advocate column: Oct. 4, 2015

We must follow Pope Francis’ calls against materialism as a basis for society

 http://theadvocate.com/news/opinion/13597893-123/jeff-sadow-we-must-follow