Messy process best reflected people's remap will

Shreveport and Bossier City had a lot churning around them concerning redistricting, but in the end the messy process provided the best outcome.

While legislative maps for every other major metropolitan area in the state underwent rather substantial changes, with almost all either gaining or losing districts and of those that didn’t having split them in dramatically new ways, this metropolitan area remained an island of calm. A few precincts moved around and, if anything, Bossier City’s House districting looks much more compact and contiguous.

Things turned out this in part because only three vacancies were opening, one of which is Senate District 37 being sought by term-limited House District 8 Republican state Rep. Jane Smith, and in part because of the small amount of population change area-wide and geography hemming in to the west and north. This gave incumbents plenty of incentive to protect their turf and limited spatial options.

School results beg for fundamental LA education change

The good news is Louisiana elementary and secondary schools continue to improve their performances, leading to better educated students and better served taxpayers. The bad news is the state at this point considers a school where as few as 39 percent of its students achieving at grade-level is a successful school.

Those were the big lessons pointed out by the release of the preliminary school accountability data for 2010-11. Reforms instituted 15 years ago continue to bear fruit, as indicated by scores then and now. Under the current standard defining adequate success, 12 years ago two in every five traditional schools (not alternative) would have been categorized as unsuccessful; for this past year, less than one in ten of all (including alternative schools) did not succeed.

But tempering any celebration for progress is the low standard, even if elevated from the past, defining adequacy.

Confused editorializing errs on LA ethics administration

Giving Shreveport Mayor Cedric Glover the idea to police his own illegal campaign affairs is like taking a foundling and dropping it in a wastebasket, as in the past eight months he apparently has done little to clear up reporting problems in his last run for his job. But to rectify the situation and discourage others from such inattention, whether intentional, needs proper diagnosis of the situation.

At the end of 2010, the Shreveport Times for reasons unrevealed decided to traipse through Glover’s campaign finance reports from the fall election. It found several irregularities, to which Glover made penitent noises about fixing. Turns out since then he’s done almost nothing to get at the bottom of the presumed oversights, earning him another scolding from the newspaper.

However, the paper editorialized that part of the problem came from changes made in 2008 that “that separated investigative efforts from prosecution of complaints [and] neglected to adequately fund the enforcement staff.” This misunderstands the intent behind the function of the Louisiana Ethics Administration Program, a part of the Department of Civil Service, as well as draws erroneous conclusions about the enforcement efforts of it.

Marionneaux quest depends on Democrats' desperation

It’s a week until August, about a month before qualifying for state office begins, and do Louisiana Democrats know where their gubernatorial candidates are? A sacrificial lamb would be  better than no major candidate at all.

Which is what they’ll get if term-limited state Sen. Rob Marionneaux decides to run. He seems to be giving it until the end of the month, stating that he’ll pony up if, in his words, he can answer affirmatively on all of  “The belief [Gov.] Bobby Jindal could be beaten; That my family is secure in my doing this; The belief I could change the state.”

Going in reverse order, the last would not happen because Marionneaux neatly fits into the eroding state political culture of populism, that government needs vigorous redistribution of wealth from the few to the many because the many have more votes.

Blanco babbles as hypocritically, cluelessly as ever

For anybody who cares about good public policy in Louisiana, former Gov. Kathleen Blanco’s first major appearance and speech in some time, with her sidelined by health issues that seem to be on the mend, demonstrates how little she is missed from the state’s top policy-making job.

Blanco took to the annual state Democrat fundraiser to complain about cuts in state government, especially in higher education, asserting that her successor Republican Gov. Bobby Jindal and new GOP majorities in each legislative chamber were “intent on destroying our state's financial base” and that these reductions produced “carnage … gutting of colleges and universities that are sending higher education into the dark ages.”

Such statements also go to show that besides Blanco having been unsuitable for serving as governor neither would she be a good weight-loss counselor.

Good old boy early favorite to lead next LA Senate

Having already reviewed early candidates for next year’s (assuming they win reelection) Louisiana House of Representatives speaker’s job, mentioned Senate President candidates now are on tap and ready for a review of the morning line of them.

While Republicans’ advantage in the House should grow larger as a result of fall elections, the GOP doesn’t have as much upside from the simple fact that, with an additional majority-black district present as a result of redistricting, there are few seats currently held by white Democrats to pick off. One of these planning on returning, state Sen. Ben Nevers, appears to be a candidate to run the chamber. It also may help him that what essentially gave the GOP its majority of moderate size was plenty of party switches from Democrat to Republican in the last year, so these new Republicans may be amenable to voting for him.

Except that one of the switchers, state Sen. John Alario, also has expressed interest in the top job.

Scree reminds of newspaper corporate welfare cost

In other words, the Shreveport Times is mad because politics got in the way of it legally picking the citizenry’s pockets through good old fashioned corporate welfare, in the process reminding us of how this is a waste of taxpayer dollars in the first place.

The Times worked itself up into high dudgeon when last month the Caddo Parish Commission yanked its business from The Times by a narrow vote. Legally, each June on an annual basis, local government bodies are to select an official journal among newspapers domiciled in the parish (if any exist) of the local government’s boundaries that “shall publish all minutes, ordinances, resolutions, budgets and other official proceedings of the police jury, town or city councils, or the school board.” For this, the official journal receives compensation from taxpayers of that jurisdiction, and is required within 20 days of the issuing of the documentation to have it in print.

This year, a combination bid of the Caddo Citizen and Shreveport Sun won the business. The weeklies came in 3 cents an agate line cheaper than The Times at 24 cents, or 9 cents below what can be charged maximally. Getting aced out of this made The Times furious, as evidenced by an editorial long on emoting but short on logic and coherence.

Tenure needs discarding in LA colleges, schools

As institutions in the University of Louisiana System begin to generate controversy through tenure terminations of faculty members in response to streamlining program offerings, tenure elimination as a desirable policy in Louisiana higher education echoes to some degree that in public schools, but with more complications.

Ridding the public schools of tenure, as suggested by Board of Elementary and Secondary Education member Chas Roemer, is a no-brainer. The concept of tenure is to prevent firing of teachers at any level for arbitrary reasons, among which are to prevent politicization of education. But there are other methods in the public schools that can prevent that from happening without having to resort to jobs-for-life for all but the worst performers or rule-breakers.

Below the collegiate level, classroom teachers have practically one job: teach. Further, ability to do so can be easily measured, through a combination of student testing, progress reports, and observation by others (and should, in Louisiana, have subject area testing of the teachers themselves added as do many states). As long as clear rules exist to ensure termination occurs only after low evaluations on these categories, all but observation being amenable to objective measurement, this will ensure firings do not occur for arbitrary reasons. As such, teachers need only be offered contracts of a few years after their probationary period to enjoy protection from arbitrary dismissal.

However, serving as a faculty member at a college is more complicated.

Smarter bureaucracy may follow big Jindal state job cuts

Gov. Bobby Jindal’s roundabout plan to squeeze more efficiency out of Louisiana’s bloated, inefficient bureaucracy continues to succeed at great cost savings to taxpayers, and may pick up even more momentum at the beginning of next year after time out for fall elections.

On multiple occasions Jindal has pushed for reform of the state’s civil service system, which does little to tie pay to performance and, until he successfully agitated for the change, previously also only tenuously connected performance to reductions in force. But with a State Civil Service Commission full of members from his predecessor, it failed to present reforms that would produce the wholesale changes he sought.

As a result, he scaled back his efforts and concentrated on reform from the flanks.

EWE helps people validate accepting their own failings

Having investigated why former Gov. Buddy Roemer seems ready to consummate a presidential campaign, why not also try to figure out why Prisoner #28213-034 talks of doing the same? But, most fascinatingly, why is there all the semi-nostalgia for the man who defeated both in the 1991 governor’s contest, Prisoner #03128-095?

As previously noted, Roemer’s dalliance with the presidency stems from a yearning for relevance when, over two decades ago, Roemer was talked of as one of the two rising Southern figures that could return Democrats to the White House (the other one ended up there). The electorate’s multiple rejections of him since has left a bad taste in his mouth and reduced him to nothingness in terms of influence, and for some people they will not rest until they think they have rectified that condition, no matter how improbable their return to power seems.

For former state Rep. David Duke, let’s face it, campaigning always has been money-maker for him.