Retirement reform advances compelled by fact, logic

You have to hand it to the obstructers of beneficial change in Louisiana, they don’t go down without throwing everything they can into the fight. But with arguments the quality of which is like bringing a knife to a gun fight, it’s no accident that they lose.

Such was the case with objections to HB 61 by state Rep. Kevin Pearson, which would have state employees hired after this year have their retirement benefits, contributed from their salaries and an employing agency proportion, put into a cash balance plan. This would allow the state to invest money for these plans and essentially have any losses covered by the state. Current employees could opt in. For the employee such a plan may allow for greater periodic payments after retirement and is portable; for the taxpayer-funded employer, it means less future strain on retirement benefit payments that have already lead to a nearly $19 billion gap in unfunded accrued liabilities that will cost the citizenry about $1 billion extra this year alone to cover.

Legislative opponents supporting special interests invested in the current system tried to disparage the reform, without success. In part, this was due to the conceptual weaknesses of their argumentation.

Legislators gripe about system they made, refuse to fix

We hear the same complaints again and again from legislators who talk a great game but when it comes to action are gutless wonders when it comes to budgeting and spending in Louisiana. If they’d just get it together, the public could revel in their silence with the problem solved.

That problem is, in times of fiscal stress as now, the state’s propensity is to conduct “funds sweeps” for “one-time money” in order to balance the budget. The state has hundreds of dedications of revenues and fees-for-service tucked into law and the Constitution, making for mostly hands off concerning about three-quarters of all monies coming into the treasury from state sources. Unencumbered funds go essentially only to three areas, with the majority to higher education and health care, so if forecast deficits for next year’s budget fall, the money only comes out of this quarter of the funding, disproportionately affecting these areas.

To soften the blow of further reductions on these areas, one strategy is to pass a bill that raids some of the hundreds of separate funds, which accumulate surpluses they probably never would use. That happens because the dedication set up for them is indiscriminate, by definition making their purposes equally as important as all others similarly situated but more important than areas without dedications, even if in the real world some state functions clearly should have much higher priority and need more funding than others subject to dedication. Thus the vacuuming procedure, a rebalancing of sorts to correct imbalances created by budgeting by autopilot.

LSU System must hire with changed environment in mind

It’s a wonder my former uber-boss, ex-Louisiana State University System President John Lombardi, lasted as long as he did, both in his job and in good health, as no doubt his case of athlete’s mouth from sticking his foot in it so many times was severe. But it’s good riddance because, in the final analysis, he did not have the best interests of higher education of Louisiana in mind – not the kind of person needed going forward.

On some issues, Lombardi was on target. Early in his reign, he sent around to the campuses a reprint of a column exhorting the increase of standards in instruction, definitely swimming against the currents in higher education as indicated by grade inflation and with a general weariness by faculty members to hold the line on quality when so many pressures, some external to them, some internal and part of the faculty culture, exist to let things slide.

He also correctly noted the intuitively obvious that students, who by far are the biggest beneficiaries of their educations, ought to pay more of that and relieve taxpayers of that burden to some degree (Louisiana still is well below the national average in average tuition and fees charged, despite having one of the higher per capita costs of higher education). The inherent redistributionist mentality only slowly disappearing from the consciousness of the state’s political culture that lies behind the low tuition concept fundamentally is at odds with increasing student achievement, because students who invest more of their own resources into education are more likely to work harder at it, and this discourages marginal students whose lack of ability or work ethic for it from wasting taxpayer dollars.

If dotty at times, LA GOP still better off than Democrats

Dysfunctional behavior, while more costly to Louisiana’s Democrats, is not its sole province. At the same time their rivals gave us a demonstration of this, Louisiana’s Republicans proved they could do the same.

Recently, the rapidly-declining Democrats met to choose new quadrennial leaders. As the compelling nature of conservatism has gained greater awareness among Louisiana’s population, which has led to the party’s increasingly-impoverished electoral status, rather than to try to select someone willing to co-opt some conservative ideas, instead they chose as a leader an even shriller, more doctrinaire liberal, guaranteeing the party difficulty in halting a slide towards policy-making irrelevancy.

Minority parties have a much reduced margin for error when they try to exercise power. Majority parties have much greater latitude in this regard, able to afford more mistakes or embarrassment coming from those associated with it. The machinations regarding, results of, and reactions to this past weekend’s Republican caucuses will provide a tiny test of this proposition.

LA Democrats' leadership choice ensures continued slide

The new overseer has got different equipment and is a couple of shades darker than the old one, but the party’s fortunes seem very unlikely to change for Democrats in Louisiana.

The state party witnessed a coup when former Chairman Buddy Leach got the heave-ho at the quarterly meeting of the party’s state central committee. Clearly, something was afoot as these meetings (as with the Louisiana Republican Party) are plagued with attendance problems where quorums are less common than not, but this issue appeared to get enough members mobilized to oust Leach in favor of state Sen. Karen Peterson 85-75.

Just so. Some months ago, the party attained a black plurality of registrants and by the end of the summer will be black majority. One-legislator majorities of black Democrats exist in both chambers of the Legislature. For the foreseeable future, blacks will be in the majority both in the party’s electorate and officeholders. Peterson is black; Leach is white, and it was about time for a representative change in the running of the plantation.

Obama budget blows to LA subvert his fiscal agenda

Louisiana can’t help that Pres. Barack Obama served up a one-two punch to the state’s economy. What can be dealt with is its response, with some clues as to what that might be.

The state’s Revenue Estimating Conference met Tuesday to ratify that in the fewer than 70 days left in this fiscal year the state was short $210.5 million on what it had been budgeted for. Even with that lower baseline, it also said next year’s budget would still have to be constructed with $92.8 million less than even that, compared to the previous forecast.

State budget analysts noted one problem as a lingering national recession. That was the first punch by Obama, whose economic policies have caused this. His follow-up was with the placement of ideology over people with policies designed to slow the extraction of oil in the Gulf of Mexico, in order to throw some red meat (maybe tofu in some cases) to environmentalists and to make a greater case to shift energy production to alternative energies (and all the crony capitalism that involves). While the former has hurt the entire country, the latter additionally persistently has hurt disproportionately Louisiana.

Normally compliant voters send Bossier schools message

It was a tale of several northwest Louisiana local governing authorities this weekend concerning funding propositions for local governments, with very different fates. Of around 140 ballot propositions across the state for a dizzying variety of jurisdictions and purposes, only nine failed to pass. Interestingly, five of them were in this part of the state.

Some authorities around here won, and big. Multiple propositions renewing nearly half of the projected revenues for the Caddo Parish Sheriff’s Office breezed by the voters by margins that make Russia look like a healthy democracy by comparison.

This is a testament to the leadership of Sheriff Steve Prator, whose tenure now of over a dozen years has featured putting a brake on spiraling costs while expanding services. He even did something seldom seen around these parts by governing authorities with property tax renewals – rather than renew them at their previous authorized millages, he put up to the voters the millages at which they had been rolled back.

Image before issues backfires on LA Democrats

It seems very likely that Pres. Barack Obama will wrap up the Democrats’ nomination for the presidency after today, regardless of the eventual outcome of an incident in Louisiana where the state branch of the party, famous for its ability to construct omelets on its face, just went and cracked a few more eggs to add to its embarrassment.

Last month, ironically driven by voters who will not support the party in the general election, a hard leftist Tennessee lawyer named John Wolfe appeared to have won delegates in the state’s presidential preference primary, the rules stating that anybody who earned more than 15 percent of the vote in a state congressional district was entitled. By the rules, he seemingly won three, the first that would have been awarded not to Obama.

Democrats at all levels, knowing Obama faces trouble in reelection, desperately want every advantage they can muster and strongly desire the appearance that Obama has perfectly solid support within the party, thus making it imperative that nobody but Obama wins delegates to their national convention. With Wolfe’s results threatening this chimera, the state party decided to shut him out, announcing that his failure to file relatively simple if somewhat tangential requests regarding his candidacy (although no forms are provided in the delegate selection plan) that it claims was available prior to its due dates (an assertion disputed by another candidate) voided his opportunity to receive any delegates.

Electioneering note reminds educrats need supervision

Passing reform legislation is one thing. Getting it implemented when those who have benefitted from the previous system are part of that equation is another thing, as a recent incident reminds.

About the time Gov. Bobby Jindal was readying himself to sign Act 1 and Act 2 of the 2012 regular legislative session, which among other things would reduce school board influence over certain decisions made by school superintendents, Livingston Parish School District Superintendent Bill Spear stood up before the local Chamber of Commerce and lied about activities of the Jindal Administration, making the fantastic claim that, according to the Livingston Parish News, it “already made a public records request for e-mails sent out to Livingston Parish school employees concerning proposed changes.”

Apparently, the reporter lacked any critical perspective on the matter and accepted the charge at face value (nor did she show much accurate knowledge about the whole issue, such as claiming charter schools “are public schools run by private businesses” when in fact most in the state are run by nonprofit organizations). More on the ball were Gannett News Service reporters Mike Hasten and Barbara Leader, who actually investigated the claim and found it, if not outright fabricated, badly distorted. Instead, they learned the request had been about electioneering activities by Spear in the fall elections and from a law partner of a state Republican Party official.

Populist hypocrisy should not stop prison privatization

Populism and hypocrisy can make for a potent mix, but it still may not be enough to derail efforts to improve Louisiana state government efficiency, as long as Gov. Bobby Jindal stays committed to achieving it.

Jindal and his legislative allies had to trim sail a bit on a measure that would allow for selling the Avoyelles Correctional Center that could have pumped $35 million into the Budget Stabilization Fund, but have retained the option for it to be operated by the private sector, as are Allen and Winn Correctional Centers presently, at an estimated $7 million a year. Unfortunately, legislators don’t get much political mileage out of telling the folks back home they stuffed away more money into a savings account for a rainy day, as compared to what small but intense constituencies can bring to oppose such items. It’s those special interests that want to scuttle the savings as well.

The leading loudmouth in this regard is state Rep. Robert Johnson, who has Avoyelles in his district. In floor debate on HB 850 that would set the stage for that facility’s private sector operation, Johnson said of private correctional facilities operators, “They're trying to make profits, they're not worried about safety,” and claimed staff turnover was almost nonexistent at Avoyelles, compared to high turnover at Winn, thereby arguing that as the profit motive encouraged lower wages, therefore higher turnover that resulted led to less safe conditions.