House GOP bending, not yet breaking, on tax hikes

Yesterday Louisianans dodged a potential tax increase, despite the attempt of an overeager Republican lawmaker to put a fig leaf of respectability on it, but remain in the woods on the issue.

HB 11 by state Rep. Rob Shadoin, a backer of Democrat Gov. John Bel Edwards in last year’s elections, with this bill carried Edwards’ desire to raise revenue by limiting deductibility on individual state income taxes federal income tax deductions in excess of the standard. When fully ramped up in future years, this would separate from individual taxpayers an extra more than $132 million annually.

This garnered skepticism from Republicans on the House Ways and Means Committee who, if not wanting to see anybody’s taxes go up after about $2 billion worth of hikes over the past 12 months, at least wanted revenue neutrality as part of larger tax simplification. This means that in the near term any tax code adjustments would not change revenue flows coming into state government, although the simpler code over a few years would create greater incentives for economic development that would bring higher revenues stemming from the economic growth it triggered than without the change.

Edwards wants taxes, spending over reasonable cuts

Monday the Louisiana Legislature closed out another regular session, amid a sanctimonious attempt by the Democrat Gov. John Bel Edwards Administration to resist using tens of millions of dollars in available funding for spending it claims has high priority in favor of future efforts during the just-commenced special session to raise taxes.

After careful reading of the Constitution and statute, and with the concurrence of Republican state Treasurer John Kennedy who in the past came to the same conclusion independently, Republican House Speaker Taylor Barras will wish to have included in the budget, and forwarded a resolution to Kennedy to confirm, that the amount will flow into the Bond Security and Redemption Fund from dedicated sources, freeing a like amount for use in operating expenses. Most non-self-generated revenue sources in the state must flow into the BSRF, a device to collect funds prior to their distributions to their assigned accounts, to ensure that sufficient capital exists for debt payments.

In essence, at the end of the regular session the House identified $74 million in spending attached to relatively lower-priority functions of state government and instead of passing it through the BSRF to its designed destinations would shunt it to debt service. That would add that amount of available cash otherwise allocated for repaying debt to the general fund for spending elsewhere.

Disingenuous Edwards speech reveals desperation

Perhaps more than the expected dosages of hypocrisy and schoolmarm sanctimony present in Democrat Gov. John Bel Edwards’ address to the 2016 Second Extraordinary Session of the Louisiana Legislature, a hint of desperation stood out. As it should, for no doubt Edwards feels the situation slipping away from him after the results of the just-concluded regular session.

As has become typical in his communications regarding policy, Edwards in these commits the follies of which he accuses his political opponents or alleges he avoids. He claimed his budget, emerging largely intact from the regular session process, represented a breath of honest air into a process he accused in the past of being otherwise, even as he argued it cut “critical services” and thereby demanded this addendum session to gather more revenues through tax increases.

Yet a nontrivial chunk of the budget, relative to its single largest expenditure, Medicaid, he built upon questionable numbers derived from unsustainable assumptions through calculations kept from the public. And who in their right mind can call paying the tuition for below-average students to attend college, the most generous such program in the country so watered down that it acts as an entitlement rather than a driver of excellence, a “critical service?” There’s nothing honest about a budget built upon these, among other, mischaracterizations.

Latest numbers make Kennedy big Senate favorite

Although still five months out from the election, state Treasurer John Kennedy’s position relative to capturing the U.S. Senate continues to improve at his opponents’ expense.

While a Southern Media Opinion and Research poll in late May used a sample on the small side, Republican Kennedy’s lead over his opponents made the larger margin of error resulting from that essentially irrelevant; with 32 percent of the intended vote, he led the next highest receiver Republican Rep. Charles Boustany by 22 points, followed by Democrat Public Service Commissioner Foster Campbell at 9 percent, Republican Rep. John Fleming with 5 percent, Republican former Senate candidate retiree Rob Maness at 4 percent, Democrat former lieutenant governor candidate trial lawyer Caroline Fayard with 4 percent, no party former legislator Troy Hebert at 2 percent, and Public Service Commissioner Eric Skrmetta (who technically has not announced running but did form an exploratory committee) with 1 percent. 32 percent of voters voiced no opinion, and apparently declared candidate and former Republican Rep. Joseph Cao did not figure in the questions.

That undecided total disproportionately seemed a function of more liberal voters dithering over Campbell and Fayard. 42 percent of Democrats expressed indecisions, as did 52 percent of blacks. By contrast, GOP identifiers and whites had undecided rates at half these.

The Advocate column, Jun. 5, 2016

Lawmakers should reject more tax hikes
http://theadvocate.com/news/opinion/15981653-93/jeff-sadow-lawmakers-should-reject-more-tax-hikes

Links:
http://theadvocate.com/news/15925277-127/task-force-eyes-changes-in-state-sales-taxes
http://theadvocate.com/news/15925618-128/gov-john-bel-edwards-issues-call-for-second-special-session
http://gov.louisiana.gov/assets/Proclamations/70-JBE-2016-Second-Special-Session.pdf
http://www.bea.gov/newsreleases/regional/spi/2016/xls/spi0316.xlsx
http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/compare_state_spending_2015bF0a
http://theadvocate.com/news/15951181-70/senate-finance-leaders-to-reveal-budget-plan-today-proposal-expected-to-differ-from-house-plan
http://theadvocate.com/news/15961608-123/with-louisiana-budget-still-a-bit-of-a-mess-heres-how-gov-john-bel-edwards-hopes-to-address-it
http://theadvocate.com/news/15970139-171/senate-slated-to-take-up-budget-today
http://www.nola.com/politics/index.ssf/2016/06/louisiana_senate_budget_vote.html
http://www.regents.la.gov/assets/BOROctober/TOPS2015.pdf
http://jeffsadow.blogspot.com/2016/04/edwards-expansion-assumptions-highly.html

TOPS changes this session bring little benefit

Perhaps time constraints made it necessary, but legal changes being made to the Taylor Opportunity Program for Scholars provide next to no resolution to its neither fish-nor-fowl status that promotes inefficiency and waste that beg for follow-up.

As the Louisiana Legislature’s regular session wraps up, three bills have or look likely to become law altering the nature of TOPS, which pays for tuition at Louisiana institutions of higher education for at least below-average scorers on standardized tests with at least decent high school marks having taken a certain core of courses. Together, these changes will delink tuition rates with payouts beginning next year unless the Legislature specifically authorizes full tuition coverage in the future, create higher standards to receive the highest awards that pay a few hundred dollars above tuition, and when not fully appropriated to fund all awards to give out partial awards to all qualifiers.

The last does nothing positive for the program except curtail waste. As typically over 40 percent in a cohort before graduating end up losing their awards – recipients must take at least 12 hours a semester, maintain a grade point average not much above the requirement to stay a student in good standing, and have only eight regular semesters of funding – most of this failure occurs in the lowest achievement bracket. Although detailed records remain unpublicized, from the public reports required by law the average winner scored a 24 on the American College Test while the average score of those with cancelled awards was under 23. So, the fewer dollars going into a wasteful program, the fewer that get wasted.

LA Democrats fall short on constitutional knowledge

Ignorance about founding documents among the Louisiana House of Representatives’ Democrats extends beyond state Reps. Barbara Norton and Walt Leger into unhinged fear, as a recent debate on amending the Constitution shows.

Norton, and to a lesser extent Leger, in debate about a bill that would require elementary schoolchildren to have knowledge of the Declaration of Independence, showed they lacked a basic understanding of the parchment’s content and context as the foundation of the Constitution. But when debating the merits of SCR 52 by Republican state Sen. Dan Claitor, which would have the state authorize a constitutional convention to consider limiting the power and jurisdiction of the federal government, imposing fiscal restraints upon its activities, and limiting the terms of office that may be served by its officials and by members of Congress, other Democrats also began skidding off the rails.

Democrat state Rep. Mike Danahay stayed more on the tracks than others with a proposed amendment to disallow the convention from considering changes to the Bill of Rights, or the first ten amendments (practically speaking, the first eight). But as floor manager Republican state Rep. Ray Garofalo pointed out, to amend the version Claitor presented would make it incongruent with calls from several other states, and for states to initiate a convention on the three items alone the resolution from each needed essentially identical wordings. Thus, Danahay’s amendment, even as on the surface it appeared to help the cause, actually served as a poison pill and the body rightly rejected it.

Declaration knowledge lacking by LA lawmaker

It’s a good thing requirements to take office as a Louisiana legislator do not include even a cursory knowledge of America’s founding as a sovereign state, for state Rep. Barbara Norton surely would have failed any such exam.

Just when you thought Norton had reached a new low in discharging the duties of her position – when she said fellow legislators who opposed her bill to force theaters to use metal detectors on patrons would aid and abet in the killing of children – she suggested that not only children should not consider learning the Declaration of Independence useful but that the document deserved repudiation. HB 1035 by state Rep. Valarie Hodges mandated the teaching of the document in schools.

In her typical inarticulate way, Norton appears to have indicated that because at the signing of the Declaration slavery existed, the bill made an “unfair” request of schoolchildren. Further, she called the Declaration a fraud, prompting Hodges to ask whether Norton believed, using the Declaration’s phrasing, that all men were created equal. She bizarrely mentioned that Dr. Martin Luther King had yet to be born in 1776, and that because many blacks did not get treated equally then, they could not be created equally, seeming to say in order for establishment of equal rights King needed to show up. Thus, the Declaration was a lie unworthy of study.

Memorial Day, 2016

This column publishes every Sunday through Thursday around noon U.S. Central Time (maybe even after sundown on busy days, or maybe before noon if things work out, or even sometimes on the weekend if there's big news) 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 Thanksgiving Day, Independence Day, Christmas, or New Year's Day when it is the day on which the holiday is observed by the U.S. government). In my opinion, in addition to these are also Easter Sunday, Memorial Day and Veterans' Day.

With Monday, May 25 being Memorial Day, I invite you to explore this link.

The Advocate column, May 29, 2016

Leaders seem hypocritical on outrage over Havard's "joke" stripper amendment
http://www.theadvocate.com/baton_rouge/opinion/our_views/article_cb61ddd6-f093-5592-a488-c6dc9563c756.html

Links:
http://theadvocate.com/news/15840570-123/lawmakers-call-on-havard-to-apologize-for-strip-club-amendment-to-regulate-weight-age
http://www.nola.com/politics/index.ssf/2016/05/kenny_havard_strippers_amendme.html
http://dhh.louisiana.gov/assets/medicaid/expansion/BayouHealthSavingsAnalysisFeb15-Jan16.pdf
http://www.npr.org/2015/11/22/456988694/lousiana-democrat-governor-victory-disrupts-partisan-politics-tradition
http://jeffsadow.blogspot.com/2015/06/even-with-casting-error-jindal-vetoes.html
http://jeffsadow.blogspot.com/2014/04/stuck-on-stupid-xxvi-putting-unions.html
http://jeffsadow.blogspot.com/2014/01/license-fee-issue-again-evokes.html
https://www.ocf.berkeley.edu/~glenz/cfwv/cfwv.pdf
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/03/opinion/sunday/health-beauty-and-the-ballot.html
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2013/11/13/no-good-looks-dont-win-elections/
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-9221.2010.00812.x/abstract
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22204678
http://web.mit.edu/polisci/people/faculty/documents/Lawson%20lenz%20baker%20myers%202010.pdf