Going over cliff brings some benefits to LA fiscal house

Hopes have dimmed considerably that the federal government will address the “fiscal cliff,” or the combination of tax increases and spending cuts created by last year’s budget deal among Democrat Pres. Barack Obama, a Democrat-led Senate, and a Republican-led House, before the Dec. 31 deadline, after which those go into effect. And that may turn out as a net benefit to Louisiana, at least as far as the direct impact of individual income tax changes.

Some have wailed and gnashed their teeth over the prospect. One estimate argues that the deal would cost the state 28,000 jobs as taxes go up on just about everybody and federal spending is curtailed. In addition, as federal income taxes may be written off from those for the state, an increase in those means less revenue for Louisiana.

Other complain that the impending changes will affect the poor negatively, especially in that Louisiana ties its earned income tax credit and child care tax credit breaks to the presence of the federal ones, which would go away. The former affects only the lowest income earners, while the latter allows disproportionately more money to stay in the pockets of the lower earners and subsidizes a special interest industry.

Internecine quarreling makes group, state look amateurish

What’s a holiday season without lots of bickering among family? That’s the situation facing auctioneers in Louisiana and provides an object lesson into why elected officials, despite far larger policy concerns, need to keep an eye on state licensing bodies.

In the state, one must have a license to be an auctioneer, and the Louisiana Auctioneers Licensing Board regulates that and industry practices, being comprised of five members, one each from Public Service Commission districts who are licensed auctioneers, and two at-large consumer representatives. All are appointed by the governor, concurrent with his term, with Senate confirmation, and serve at his pleasure. Typically, there is much carryover from governor to governor, term to term.

But on Sep. 10, 2010, Gov. Bobby Jindal took the unusual step to remove one of his appointees, Robert Burns. No public reason ever was stated for this, but undoubtedly stemmed from the fact that increasingly Burns, often allied with another auctioneer member of the panel the Rev. Freddie Phillips, clashed with the remainder of the Board on some votes, where the Board’s voting history demonstrated typically unanimity, dealing with issues such as spending, procedures for charitable auctioning, and individual licensing decisions. In the past couple of years, Burns and Phillips separately have sued the association for alleged violations of procedure. The pair also went about creating a new professional association for auctioneers, the Louisiana Association of Professional Auctioneers, in competition with the existing Louisiana Auctioneers Association, Inc., citing their group as one that held itself to a higher ethical standard.

Christmas Day, 2012

This column publishes usually every Sunday through Thursday after noon (sometimes even before; maybe even after sundown on busy days) U.S. Central Time except whenever a significant national holiday falls on the Monday through Friday associated with the otherwise-usual publication on the previous day (unless it is Independence Day or Christmas or New Year's when it is the day on which the holiday is observed by the U.S. government). In my opinion, there are six of these: New Year's Day, Memorial Day, Independence Day, Veterans' Day, Thanksgiving Day, and Christmas.

With Tuesday, Dec. 25 being Christmas Day, I invite you to explore this link.

Shreveport govt seems unaware of new law's pitfalls

After years of talk, Shreveport enacted a few months ago some kind of minimum property standards for rental housing. Its City Council every two months is to review reports on city enforcement of property standards. As the year ends, maybe it's time they looked how how Ordinance 11 of 2012 is working out.

Much as some think they can repeal them or pretend that they don’t exist, politicians cannot avoid the law of supply and demand. They need to realize two corollaries as they apply to the situation where people live in housing that does not have entirely working plumbing, electricity, flaws in construction, etc.: people may choose to live in this housing because it’s all they can afford, and by far leading reason why housing can deteriorate into this condition is because of the people who live in it.

Among many policy-makers and a good chunk of the chattering classes the idea that certain behavioral choices indicated a moral defect that thrust responsibility for the consequences of that behavior on its doers has fallen by the wayside in favor of the idea that circumstance beyond their control “forced” them to do certain things. Because fault no longer was assigned to them, instead parts of or all of society not only had to pay collectively those costs, but also had to permit and even subsidize continuance of the behavior.

Legislators want strong gov.; critics exaggerate to bash

Every so often, perhaps goaded by statements emanating from some legislative elites or other outsider malcontents over the direction of gubernatorial policy, it seems some handwringing must occur in Louisiana’s media about the presumed powerful office of governor. On these occasions, it’s important to remember just why this happens and exactly what it means – which is a whole lot less alarmist than some breathless advocates would have one believe.

Yes, Louisiana’s governor can find himself in a position to influence strongly policy emerging from the Louisiana Legislature. Remarkably, it does not come from the formal powers of the office, which, according to a long-standing metric created by an academic researcher to assess formal powers of governors, are modest ranking right below the top third of all the states. Rather, they come from using other means. Often, three of these less formal avenues are identified.

First, the governor enjoys a line-item veto power on appropriations bills, requiring two-thirds majorities on each cast in order to overrides, which seemingly cows legislators into supporting him as they value stuff coming into their districts that makes them look better to constituents for reelection purposes. Second, the State Bond Commission makes funding choices from capital budget requests forwarded by the Legislature, which the governor can control through allies who owe their appointments to him, which serve the same function by delivering stuff to constituents. They have these jobs because the governor helps get them elected to leadership positions in their respective chambers by marshalling coalitions through the chicken-and-egg process of promising assistance in making sure their pet projects avoid line-item vetoes.

Useless change shows what holds back LA education

One jilted politician went out with a flourish, reminding those who wish to rebuild Louisiana’s elementary and secondary education that the disease that has kept it back can be difficult to eradicate, and its effects may linger.

The rump Orleans Parish School Board, unlike all other districts in the state that have their elections in off-presidential election years, have its conducted during presidential election years. One casualty was outgoing president Thomas Robichaux, in a landslide. It had partly to do with race, since the district he had won in the post-Hurricane Katrina aftermath political chaos was majority black and he is white who faced black opponents, but was exacerbated by the board’s decision earlier this year to raise taxes, which was opposed largely by black residents.

So, Robichaux decided to manufacture an issue out of nothing as a parting gift. No stranger to giving the citizenry a Bronx salute, on the issue of ethics, he gave it another when he spearheaded a move to for the half-dozen schools the district still controls to prohibit the teaching of “creationism” or “intelligent design” in science classes or to allow teachers to use textbooks that in the Board’s opinion did that.

Hope fading for establishment to negate education reform

The fellow travelers of the educrat empire took a TKO with 19^th District Judge Michael Caldwell’s ruling that most of Act 1 of 2012, which overhauled teacher evaluation and employment practices, was constitutional. But they stayed on their feet with the striking of one section of the law that without will make it marginally more difficult to realize the full effectiveness of the law.

In essence, the law requires demonstrated and consistent competence in order for teachers not to be discharged. State teachers’ unions have invested themselves with the rearguard strategy the left has tried to perpetrate to stop democratic majorities from making and implementing reforms, as it does not have the ability to persuade majorities to give it a majority as policy-makers, employing a series of court challenges. This one complained that the law had too many objects to, as the Constitution states there shall be but one object in a bill.

Which Caldwell correctly noted in this case was dealing with matters of teacher evaluation for continued job performance. However, he also decided that the part about school district superintendent matters, which included personnel matters dealing with teachers but also included personnel matters dealing with the superintendents’ jobs, did stray beyond that object.

To protect Louisianans, end pretend "gun-free" zones

A tragic mass shooting in a public school need not act as the only trigger to reevaluate security measures in Louisiana. But we must recognize that, until gun control restrictions are relaxed in Louisiana, these measures do little to prevent these kinds of tragedies.

School districts around the Baton Rouge area report increased vigilance and are taking another look at their school security policies in the wake of the recent incident in Connecticut where a mentally ill individual, after killing his mother, shot up a school. The semi-automatic weapon used is available in most states for carry as a concealed weapon for qualified users, where no state allows permitting of concealed carry by somebody with a history of mental illness.

The districts report increased visitation of security officers at schools and a review of emergency review plans. There is talk about increasing officer presence. Unfortunately, while these measures are better than nothing to reduce the possibility of a horrific event occurring, they are next to nothing in effectively dealing with the situation.

Even dramatic changes won't stop UAL bomb explosion

Another day, another discouraging reminder of the obvious: a report highlighting the precarious state of a Louisiana pension system, in this case the state’s largest Teachers Retirement System of Louisiana. And while it’s never too often to be told that TRSL has astronomically-high unfunded accrued liabilities – at the recent $10.8 billion this will cost every Louisiana resident nearly $2,400 and that mark makes the entirely unrealistic assumption that the UAL will go no higher – it’s another matter whether the state will do anything meaningful about this very soon, if ever.

 That Louisiana ranks 11^th worst-funded in dollar terms, 11^th worst in per capita terms, and fifth worst in funded ratio, and that given the constitutional imperative that the unfunded status of this and all statewide systems must end by 2029 it means – again, making the entirely unrealistic assumption that the UAL will go no higher – an average annual cost of $636 million extra to the state, you would think there might be some policy-maker urgency to address the conditions creating over half of the state’s entire UAL, if not all of it.

Think again. Last year, exactly nothing was done about this except for the relatively small portion of TRSL that constitutes coverage of university instructors, where beginning July 1 new hires go into a cash balance program (already some higher education employees can participate in a related defined contribution program). This only prevents future hires from adding to the UAL and does not address the current crisis.

Cuts should prompt reflection on ways to prevent them

Another round of mid-year budget cuts must be endured by Louisiana, but more interesting than its causes and dealing with those solutions chosen is the reaction of one policy-maker in particular.

Given the overwhelming number of protections placed upon most spending in the state, the brunt of these reductions must fall on the two large areas of state government that rely for much of their funding on the state’s general fund, health care and higher education. The latter essentially was spared, by eliminating some unfilled jobs and by factoring increased, and higher-than-expected aggregate collected, tuition. Thus, health care took most of it, in ways to displease a number of policy-makers.

Those presumed concerned over the use of nonrecurring revenues for recurring purposes should note a lawsuit settlement was included in making up part of the $166 million the state was forecast to be short at the regular Revenue Estimating Conference meeting, plus the deficit in the Minimum Foundation Program because of increased school enrollments. Medical providers took another small haircut in reimbursement rates, but after several of these they do add up and may force cost-shifting or retrenchment of services. Some Medicaid optional programs that provided small savings will be terminated.