Ousted legislators resort to ill-informed, illogical rants

There are three certainties in life – death, taxes, and sore losers among Louisiana legislators who want to blame others for problems of their own making. The fallout over House Speaker Chuck Kleckley’s booting a pair of House Appropriations Committee members over a contract to have insurance administration currently done by the state performed by a third party administrator reminds us of that.

Seven House Republicans last week, in a special joint meeting of Appropriations and the Senate Finance Committee ruled to have the power to approve of the contract, voted for moving the matter to a vote which well may have lead to its defeat on the House side. Their Senate colleagues refused to bring up the matter that would have led to a vote, prompting withdrawal of the contract as is presumably to be reintroduced in modified form in the near future. With six of them having put together demonstrably conservative/reform records over the past five years, their votes came more as succumbing to constituent and public relations pressures than as any signaling of repudiation of their political beliefs.

Of those seven, four held spots appointed through election by members from their 2000-10 U.S. House districts, meaning leverage against them could come only from their other committee assignments made by Kleckley. One, state Rep. Jim Morris, already had been stripped of a position he coveted on another committee, so there wasn’t a whole lot of inducement to be directed against him. Another, state Rep. Brett Geymann, has no other committee assignments since he declared himself in reclusion earlier this year (and is a pal of Kleckley’s so is allowed presently to have just the one House assignment). A third, state Rep. Rogers Pope, has been an inconsistent supporter of Kleckley’s agenda so punishment by removing him from another committee would not produce much leverage. The fourth, state Rep. John Schroder, has been perhaps the most consistent conservative voice in the Legislature in the past five years, and got a pass as a result.

GOP defectors on contract put image before conservatism

It’s a wacky time in the Louisiana Legislature when self-proclaimed Republican conservatives team up with liberal Democrats to try to defeat conservative policy. Yet understand that a vote last week by some Republican House members to push to defeat a money-saving measure does not so much reflect that they have abandoned conservatism but more that they needed to throw a tantrum to save face with constituents and/or to shape a public perception of them – even if it costs them influential positions in the House.

Such happened when the House Appropriations Committee met jointly with the Senate Finance Committee to review a contract negotiated to administer the state’s Preferred Provider Organization health care plan for state employees and retirees. The current state-run operation wastes taxpayer dollars and will produce an estimated $20 million in savings for them as well as lower costs to clients with comparable if not better service.

Trying to stop this contract – for while Republican Gov. Bobby Jindal’s Division of Administration has complete legal authority to remove the state from operating its own insurance business without legislative input, an attorney general’s opinion interpreted that law to mean a contract to do so would have to pass muster of majorities of both committees – has become the latest cause célèbre for Louisiana’s left on the heels of a long string of defeats. Ignoring the taxpayer and ratepayers that preventing privatization represents, they justify this partially out of their love for big government (as a number of inefficient positions would remian), but perhaps more pertinently they wish merely to try to poke Jindal in the eye as he uses a conservative agenda to sweep them aside from policy-making relevance.

Orleans history confirms wisdom to approve term limits

While this space has provided guidance on statewide Amendments 1 through 9 in upcoming elections, there remains for voters in 67 school districts the question of imposing terms limits locally – one the answer to which should be affirmative.

The official view of those satisfied with the current state of elementary and secondary education in Louisiana is that “the best term limit is the ballot box” because term limits “mandate removal of qualified members.” So what? It is the height of conceit and arrogance for any politician to consider oneself so talented as to be indispensible to the body politic, and a sign of intellectual laziness if not of a slavish willingness to surrender self-governance to think as such of any. It is folly to think that in any school board district in the state there is not at least one person who would be as good as, or better than, an incumbent in each.

But, as explained ably elsewhere, likely an enormous proportion of those capable unelected does not run or cannot run competitively because entrenched incumbency brings advantages particularly in contesting low-level offices over a governmental unit that typically has the largest budget, often by far, than any other local government. Worse, this disproportionately aids the stinkers sitting in those seats in retention, most particularly those tied in with special interests who like things as they are and who have disproportionate electoral and policy clout in a situation where policy benefits get concentrated in the hands of a few (politicians, administrators, employees, unions, ideological fellow-travelers) while their costs are dispersed among the many (the taxpaying public).

Populist hot air on contract won't arrest sinking fortunes

Part of the last gasps of populism in Louisiana has come as hot air from opponents of the administrative decision to get the state out of the self-insurance business. Not so much despite, but more because of, the demonstrable savings involved, the populist left that opposes the reform reveals the poverty of their argument.

They’ll get a shot at it tomorrow when two separate legislative committees together get to review the Gov. Bobby Jindal Administration’s plans to contract out the state-run health plan for employees and retirees. An earlier attorney general’s ruling provided the legal basis for the chance to veto the product of the negotiation.

Proponents of larger government with more control very tellingly do not suggest that the plan will not save taxpayers an estimated $20 million and reduce rates for those insured. Instead, they conjure up the notion that “loopholes” exist that will allow unilateral administrative actions to increase payments over the three-year deal to the administrator. Why that’s bad is never explained nor is it compared in any way to the state’s present ability to do the exact same thing under the plan it has run itself. The state needs flexibility over the life of the contract to increase – or decrease – payments as it sees fit.

Partnered with downsizing, consolidated LSU plan good

While the proposed reconfiguration of the Louisiana State University System brings with it many salutary characteristics and strengths, the nagging question remains about whether some of the things the system tries to do would not be done better with alterations to it.

At the end of this week, the LSU Board of Supervisors appears ready to accept the plan, drawn up by a nonprofit organization that consults on the area of higher education, that is congruent with the “One LSU” concept that has been floated by a number of interests in the state. The separate universities, professional schools, research/public service agencies, and medical educators/providers will cede some autonomy that fuses to some degree the Baton Rouge campus and present system, but retain a fair amount of it in a way that hopes to promote cost savings, efficiency, and increased stature.

The structure, similar to those of a couple of other state university systems, would provide consolidation savings of the academic administrative apparatus and also of back-office functions, the latter mirroring recent action taken by the Southern University System. It permits independence in many areas, such as the abilities for schools to continue to make personnel decisions, choose coursework offered (beyond a standardized General Education Requirement), and leave auxiliary programs intact such as sports and academic teams. The initial combining would go into effect by the 2015 academic year.

Kennedy's populist rhetoric suggests insincere conservatism

Since his dramatic pivot from the political left to right after his defeat for the U.S. Senate in 2004, the question always about state Treas. John Kennedy has been whether he truly has embraced conservatism. As he gears up for an expected run for governor in 2015, the things he says and does continue to cast doubt on that transformation.

The latest came in his response to Atty. Gen. Buddy Caldwell’s legal opinion confirming that the state corporation that insures property when no private sector entity will, Louisiana Citizens Property Insurance Company, could increase wind and hail policies for homeowners in several parishes where no standalone private market activity exists because of the high risk involved. In part, this reluctance to write has existed precisely because government will do it.

Legally, Citizens must offer policies at no lower than 10 percent higher than the market rate of a basket of insurers, or the highest rates charged by insurers with a minimal increase in recent business if not wind and hail policies, but if neither exists, then an actuarially rate based on recent past history must be used, This last approach underappreciated actual risk of wind and hail damage and therefore set the state up to collect too little money to pay off potential future major storm damage. In this situation, as occurred after the hurricane disasters of 2005, taxpayers would have to make up the difference.

Instruct lucky Republicans on proper LA Legislature role

If you see one of the few Republicans to sign on to the idea floated by state Rep. Dee Richard, ultimately failing, to call a special session to review recent state responses to budget deficit conditions, offer to stake him at the craps table because this is one guy who knows when to roll the dice to get a natural – even if he may not properly understand his job.

Altogether, 49 of the 144 legislators signed the effort that would have inserted much more decisively the Legislature into the policy implementation process. That’s greater than a third of seated members, but it did not allow for advancing to a vote whether to have the session since a third was needed in both chambers and the House was five to the good yet the Senate four to the bad. The session would have allowed rewriting of laws to allow for greater legislative insertion into the policy implementation process and could have undone the budgetary adjustments, many of which downsized or closed government facilities in a handful of legislators’ districts.

Observers who for political reasons desire fomenting opposition to Gov. Bobby Jindal simply for the sake of conflict and inefficiency in state government, or the gullible who thought anything meaningful could happen by the session’s emergence, even if just the symbolism of a chimerical “legislative independence” appeared as a result, rooted for success in the matter. Of the legislators involved, the large majority of signatories being Democrats, representing about half of all the legislators of that party, fit the former motive. But the GOP signatories had a very different motive – raising their political profiles while coming across as “concerned” about how the cuts impacted their constituencies.

GOP petitioners gamble their, LA Legislature's power

Emitting a yawp for “legislative independence” at the expense of losing personal and Legislative power? For a handful of Louisiana Republican members of the House of Representatives, it’s a gamble they take hoping to avoid this consequence.

As noted previously, an effort for the Legislature to call itself into special session to pursue an agenda injurious to efficient policy implementation would turn the body into little more than the equivalent of the Transportation Security Administration for Louisiana on budget implementation, with the chambers frisking executive decisions to find any evidence of policies that could right-size state government and/or impede their abilities to feed statewide or constituency-based special interests at taxpayer expense that assist in their reelections, and then to try to eliminate any offensive implementation decisions that threaten their reelections and/or trouble their faiths in big government. The first of four steps, getting a chamber, the House, to sign a petition to put the matter to a vote, has been achieved.

The author of the effort, state Rep. Dee Richard, enthusiastically waxes that should it come to pass the session could be used to reverse recent cost-cutting reformations made to state government. Of course, nothing of the sort will happen, and not just because the math does not add up to produce enough votes to override a veto of any of the reforms by their executor Gov. Bobby Jindal, but also because by the time the session concludes, a large share of the implementation will have become an accomplished fate.

Legislators need not sacrifice power to satisfy left's agenda

If perhaps state Rep. Dee Richard can manage to swing a third of the Senate to request a special session of the Louisiana Legislature, setting up a needed majority vote in both chambers to have it, or even that doesn’t transpire, the best thing he can do is declare a misinterpreted victory now before sending the Legislature into one of the Pyrrhic variety.

In essence, he has announced the task to meeting is a quarter-way there with the assent of 38 House members to the petition. A similar performance by senators by the end of Friday will set up the vote to hold it. Regardless of whether that happens, at the close of Friday if he’s smart Richard will hail the effort as a sign of vigor in and independence of the Legislature, and leave it at that.

Of course, in real life it’s nothing of the sort. Instead, his limited success to date is part of the dying bray of liberalism and populism as significant political forces in the state. The rationale for the session, as previously noted, is to pass laws that would make the Legislature the equivalent of the Transportation Security Administration for Louisiana on budget implementation, with the chambers frisking executive decisions to find any evidence of policies that could right-size state government and/or impede their abilities to feed statewide or constituency-based special interests at taxpayer expense that assist in their reelections, and then to try to eliminate any offensive implementation decisions that threaten their reelections and/or trouble their faiths in big government.

End solar credits, industry greed, raiding taxpayer wallets

The Louisiana Legislature’s Revenue Study Commission grinds on, with its most recent review revealing greed, arrogance, and presumption of the highest order.

The legislative panel is investigating the utility of tax breaks granted by the state, with an eye towards eliminating those that do not sufficiently bring benefits to the state. One of the most egregious offenders in that regard is the absurdly generous credit given to solar panels that enriches few at the expense of the people.

On top of a generous federal tax credit of 20 percent, the state in the waning days of the Gov. Kathleen Blanco Administration passed a law that lards on another 50 percent for solar or wind construction for the first $25,000 in expenses (most installation costs will go above this level, many way above it). The most recent figures indicate that costs $13 million a year, and the generosity is such that the forgone dollars are expanding rapidly.