One
particularly bad prefiled bill for the Louisiana Legislature’s upcoming
regular session betrays both an authoritarian impulse and admission of policy
defeat.
HB 15 by
Democrat state Rep. Ted James
would alter state law regarding creation of new municipalities, but targeted at
just one parish. If enacted, no longer would incipient municipalities in East
Baton Rouge Parish merely need to obtain majority voter approval from those in
the area wishing to incorporate; it also would require a majority of the parish’s
electors as well.
Such policy dramatically departs not just from
Louisiana law, but that generally
among America’s states. No state allows voters from surrounding local
governments to have any say over the wishes of unincorporated areas; the
closest strictures to that are prohibition of incorporating within a certain
distance of another municipality without its consent or having the state or a
county-level government organ decide rather than putting the matter to a vote
of those in the area petitioning for incorporation. Having just one part of a
state operate under a different law than the rest of it is unprecedented.
Practically no one likes having their day disrupted
by panhandlers, and Bossier City wishes to join Shreveport in regulating the
practice largely into nonexistence. The problem is the two proposed ordinances
and Shreveport’s on the books likely are unconstitutional.
Councilman Thomas Harvey last week introduced
an ordinance to ban all panhandling by roadways and another banning aggressive
or threatening personal solicitation in and around businesses. Only Councilman
Jeff Darby objected to the measures, citing a desire to assist individuals he
claimed down on their luck.
Shreveport has had an ordinance
since 2004 essentially covering both concerns. Bossier City officials thought
that increased enforcement of this had caused a “surge” of panhandlers across
the river, necessitating the new laws that move on to consideration of final
passage next month.
With the exception of mentioning his name and West
Point’s honor code together, Democrat Gov. John Bel Edwards over the
past couple of years most often is heard saying “this
not the budget proposal I want to present.” But in this case, it turns out
to be the one Louisiana should want, for now.
The day after the Legislature wrapped up the First
Extraordinary Session of 2017, its Joint
Legislative Committee on the Budget went back to work by hearing a presentation
of Edwards’ budget submission for fiscal year 2018. Increased by $1.5
billion to $29.7 billion over last year’s, in terms of its general fund next
year’s budget falls $440 million under what the governor would like, according
to revenue estimates at present.
Edwards graciously provided a list of items to add
in with more funding; i.e. tax increases: paying for all of Taylor Opportunity
Program for Students awards instead of only about 70 percent; increasing the
Minimum Foundation Program that funds schools 2.75 percent, giving performance
raises for state employees; restoring old rates for charity hospital providers
and privatized prisons; matching funds for transportation that unless provided could
lose federal funds; and making a small two percent reduction from last
year’s totals to many agencies, among others. The roster did not include
deferred maintenance at higher education institutions – about $1.75 billion
worth – nor additional waiver slots to allow home- and community-based services
for people with disabilities.
A move to institute a charter school in East
Feliciana parish shows how far the educational reform ethos has come in
Louisiana and the tension it continues to introduce between families and
interests backing traditional state-monopoly schools.
Last
week, the process began for the conversion of Slaughter Elementary School,
a traditional government-run school, into a charter school. It involved an
enhanced use of the “parent trigger,” which allows families to wrest a public
school from local governance and have it run by a nonprofit entity, contracted
either to the local district or with the state.
When Louisiana conducted a massive overhaul of its
educational system in the direction of school choice in 2012, the dramatic
changes overshadowed parent trigger provisions included. And what little
publicity these received focused on parents’ ability on their own to convert
low-performing schools in R.S. 17:10.5.
In case anyone had forgotten what propelled the
reelection of Republican Congressional majorities and the GOP capturing of the
White House three months ago, activity
at a town hall meeting in Metairie for Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy provided
a reminder.
Political opponents of Cassidy converged at the
location, strategically arriving early enough to pack the venue. During the
event, they filibustered against Cassidy’s issue preferences and others imputed
from GOP Pres. Donald Trump,
rudely shouting down attempts to explain when those veered from their party
line. In all, it replicated a pattern seen at a handful of other such meetings
involving politicians in prominent positions of reforming the excesses of the
former Pres. Barack
Obama era – in Cassidy’s case, by his sponsorship of a reasonable
alternative to the misnamed Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (“Obamacare”).
Recognize that little in the way of reason or
intellect marked the screed launched by the militants. This reflects the state
of liberalism in America today, that has seen over the past half century constant
erosion of its validity, as history and analysis increasingly demonstrates its
bankruptcy. Only raw emotion remains, where liberalism as an ideology now
centers on invalid assertions repeated often and forcefully enough will grant its
views legitimacy, despite what we have learned by experiencing liberalism in
action – as its rejection at all levels of government culminating in last year’s
elections demonstrated.
Perhaps Louisiana’s Superintendent of Education
John White should change his first name to “Solomon,” such as it seems he has
tried to thread a needle in recent policy decisions.
During his tenure as the executive responsible for
carrying out the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education’s mandates, White
has shown marked preference for expansion of school choice as a means to
improve delivery quality, and also backing ever-escalating accountability
standards. Typically, this has pitted interests who focus on increasing achievement
as a means of spurring economic development and improving life prospects
against those invested in a one-size-fits-all model that advocates for
increased inputs into the system that disproportionately flow to state-run
providers and their allies.
Typically, the former group has supported his
efforts while the latter has opposed White. Yet a few recent decisions by him have
scrambled alliances, sometimes putting those who see progress as inducing greater
efficiency out of schools in the same camp as those who view as best a state system
monopolizing education flush with cash, for and against him.
Although a deal seems afoot to resolve Louisiana’s
latest budgetary shortfall, what
if it doesn’t come off?
The special session that ends legally tomorrow
Democrat Gov. John Bel
Edwards called to close the gap. That came about beginning when on Jan. 27
the Joint Legislative
Committee on the Budget confirmed a $304 million general fund deficit
existed.
At that point, according to the Constitution and
fleshed out in statute,
Edwards had the option (the word “may” features prominently in all language
regarding procedures in this instance) of making cuts on his own, with JLCB
blessing, of up to three percent per budget unit for most appropriated spending.
If he can close the gap to seven-tenths of a percent – almost $63 million in
this instance, he can ratchet that shaving of up to five percent in most
instances.
It doesn’t help Louisiana’s higher education in
general make the case that it should garner increased subsidization by
taxpayers when in aggregate institutions’ endowments shrunk in a positive investing
environment.
Disturbingly, a number of institutions’ academic foundations
– legally separate fund-raising arms but controlled by their beneficiary
institutions – reported not just losses for the past fiscal year, but in many
cases these extended losses from prior years. This does not include athletic
foundations. For example, the state’s largest endowment by far – the Louisiana
State University Foundation – lost in the past two fiscal years 5.2 percent in
investments, even as in this time span the total system funding eked out a small
rise in total assets under the leadership of former Secretary of Economic
Development Stephen Moret, who departed towards the end of the period.
That his investment acumen fell much short of his
fundraising prowess seems shared across several other Louisiana universities
that reported much similar losing results. Former Commissioner of Higher
Education and present president of the University of Louisiana Lafayette Joseph
Savoie, whose school’s foundation also suffered investment losses, inappropriately
blamed fickle markets: “The endowment tends to follow the market. It goes up,
and it goes down, depending on the overall performance of the market.”
