Convention as envisioned good but tricky

If kept within the intended parameters, the (very) limited constitutional convention envisioned by Republican Gov. Jeff Landry and legislative supporters best should happen this summer.

HB 800 by GOP state Rep. Beau Beaullieu would convene the conclave in the middle of May and give its two months duration, composed of legislators plus 27 selections made by Landry. It would be limited only to removal of parts of the existing document, adhering to an argument that its size and ensuing inflexibility needs paring to increase legislative policy options that can address state needs. The idea would be to jettison sections that then could be teed up to become statute, if not altered or ignored, with the changed document if approved by voters later this year to become effective in 2025.

Skepticism is warranted over the convention’s composition, of elected officials and political appointees. One reason why fiscal reform is so difficult and needed in Louisiana is the straitjacket made by the Constitution, but that’s something many elected officials don’t really mind. Its inflexibility gives them an excuse from making hard decisions in raising revenue and allocating it. The state never has had a revenue problem, but a spending problem in part because officials point to the Constitution and claim they have to spend money in certain ways, thus they declare themselves not responsible when more important things capture less funding and low priority items get too much, or revenues are raised in inefficient ways.

More evidence of Edwards' dark days receding

Rightly the negative legacy of Democrat former Gov. John Bel Edwards for the most part continues to slip into the sea, as the latest sign confirming the ruinous nature of Edwards’ regime reveals.

Last month, S&P Global Ratings raised Louisiana’s bond rating a notch. It now sits at AA, the third-highest, considered investment grade but with some nontrivial long-term risk. It’s the first change since a 2017 downgrade, and follows on an increase from Aa3 to Aa2 by Moody’s Investors Services in 2022 to the third highest ranking and the first change since a downgrade in 2016. The third major credit reviewer, Fitch, hasn’t made any changes since it downgraded the state’s debt in 2016.

It's instructive to know the timeline here. Hamstrung by a sputtering national economy throughout the presidency of Democrat Barack Obama and in the later years at the state level stung by declines in oil prices even as for the most part Louisiana’s economy did better than the national throughout Republican Gov. Bobby Jindal’s terms, in his last year Jindal got the Legislature to go along with tax increases. Understand that Jindal tried to reduce state spending by making government more efficient, but even when the GOP captured majorities in the Legislature just before his second term began, he was unable to reduce spending that essentially remained flat during his second term. Revenues continued to be constrained, and while he tried to offset this with strategic reductions in overfunded accounts, clearly that strategy couldn’t last forever.

Bossier school officials flunk ESA test

Are the members of the Bossier Parish School Board and Superintendent Jason Rowland merely ignoramuses, or are they so craven as to put their own self-interests ahead of children’s needs?

Last week, the Board met – and in special session, no less, at increased taxpayer expense so triggered they were – to pass a resolution specifically opposing HB 745 by Republican Rep. Julie Emerson. The bill would create education savings accounts that could be used to pay for educational expenses, including attendance of nonpublic schools but not home schooled, phased in over three years starting next academic year. Upper-middle-income and higher families would receive 55 percent of the state’s per student contribution to local schools, others would receive 80 percent, and for those families with children with disabilities each would receive 160 percent. Any funds raised locally by a local education agency would remain unaffected.

Yet ultimately the Board voted unanimously (Republican Sherri Pool being absent) for the resolution, which was full of dubious claims easily rebutted. Unfortunately, financial statistics about education notoriously are difficult to come by and often quite out-of-date. The federal government has some final numbers only as recently as 2021 and the state in aggregate form has others incredibly only up to academic year 2018. Still, some conclusions may be drawn from these and likely relational rankings and other comparisons haven’t changed a whole lot in the present.

Good bill to do little to discourage panhandling

The concept is sound, but the Legislature has a tricky road ahead if it wants to pass a statewide law to ban attempted panhandling that, if successful, by definition will do little to curb the practice.

HB 97 by Republican state Rep. Dixon McMakin would make panhandling illegal on all public roads in the state. Current statute bars this only on interstate highways and points of entry and exit, which practically doesn’t happen since panhandlers populate areas where traffic speed is extremely slow as that’s the objective: grift from vehicle occupants, which can’t be done unless vehicles are basically not moving.

This extension threads a very narrow needle eyelet, given Supreme Court decisions of the past decade. Essentially, the Court has ruled that panhandling can’t be banned because it’s annoying – which it is – as it is an exercise of free speech. Thus, grounds to regulate this behavior in any way must rest on other criteria, such as public safety for both those in vehicles and those in and around the road.

Easter Sunday, 2024

This column publishes five days weekly after 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 Sunday, Mar. 31 being Easter, I invite you to explore this link.

LA families to win with school choice bills

Louisiana finally has a chance to get it right with school vouchers, while opponents to the idea keep getting it wrong, research shows.

Currently, HB 745 by Republicans state Rep. Julie Emerson and SB 313 by GOP state Sen. Rick Edmonds have started advancing through the Legislature. Each would provide for education savings accounts (ESAs) for families to choose to spend on nonpublic elementary and secondary education rather than enroll their children into public schools. It would start by offering transition of students in one of the existing three voucher programs based upon quality of last public school or attended or assigned, family income, and exceptionalities, followed a year later by expanding to all middle-lower income and below households, and then a year later inviting all families. It would not reimburse families for home schooling.

While the House bill heads to the floor, the Senate bill will take a detour to review finances. That is of some concern, as wildly varying estimates have come forth for new added expenses, mainly in fiscal 2028-29 and beyond. The difficulty in coming up with a reasonably accurate estimate lies in so many indeterminacies. For example, as the bill would pay out to upper-middle-class and above families (defined as 250 percent of the federal poverty line or higher) only 55 percent of the money it sends per student without exceptionalities to public schools, 80 percent to others below that, and 160 percent for students with exceptionalities, private schools would have to make a judgment call on tuition. Taking into account demand and supply curves and incremental costs, with this potential new revenue available they want to set a price point to maximize profit, which could mean lowering their tuition to grab a lot more students, or even raising it that may attract fewer but as the ESA amount would buttress family finances this may retain most.

Uncertain legality threatens BC charter review

Legally impaired from the start, Bossier City’s Charter Review Commission finds itself hurtling towards a politicized and suspect outcome that may cost taxpayers dearly.

The panel was born of the desires of four Bossier City councilor graybeards – Republicans David Montgomery and Jeff Free, Democrat Bubba Williams, and no party Jeff Darby – plus their lapdog newcomer Republican Vince Maggio to scuttle term limits, as a reaction to a successful petition drive to impose retroactive three-term limits on city elected officials. It ran afoul of a legal technicality, so organizers are out there again with another attempt plus another couple of measures upon which they report they are making steady progress in signature collection.

However, while possible it’s not probable that enough signatures will have been collected and certified to meet a Jun. 19 deadline to have the measures appear on the Nov. 5 ballot. The timing is important, not only because if the petitioners are too slow – even as it appears almost certain they will have enough signatures to make the Dec. 7 ballot, which is due Oct. 14 – then next years’ city elections won’t have limits in place.

Conservatives win, lose in tough LA environments

For Louisiana’s Republicans when facing unfavorable local electoral environments, sometimes the magic works, and sometimes it doesn’t, results from elections from this weekend show.

It worked for Monroe independent Mayor Friday Ellis, who in facing an electorate about five-eighths black registrants not only won reelection but expanded his majority. Friday, who is white and while he runs as an independent has Republican support including that of a fundraising bundling group designed to steer nationally donations to Republican candidates, bested two black Democrat candidates, one of whom was Democrat former mayor Jamie Mayo whom he deposed four years ago.

All that needs to be known about this election comes from 14 precincts, 11 through 24. With seven-eighths black registrants in these, Ellis pulled down 37 percent of the vote and even won two of them. Considering that he ran up majorities in and around 90 percent in precincts just as heavily populated with white registrants, which also turned out at twice the rate or better than these others, it was no contest.

LA Democrats seem willing to break election law

What is a woman? Louisiana Democrats might start having to explain themselves on this as their answer might endorse breaking state election law.

Across the state this Saturday, registered Republicans and Democrats will cast ballots for their respective party’s governing institutions, both for parish executive committees and state central committee. State law sets some parameters for this process for recognized political parties of a certain size, i.e. the two major parties.

Statute for composition of the state central committees gives parties two choices. One, they can follow the somewhat-structured R.S. 18:443.1, which mandates that the SCC have 210 seats with its members elected from each of the 105 state House districts, where males run separately and females run separately. Two, R.S. 18:443.2 mandates broadly that a governor of the party must serve on its SCC but the rest of members selection is left up to the party so long as it’s not inconsistent with state law.

Left refuses to see its causing LA depopulation

A recent musing about Louisiana population loss contains a lot bathos, signifying the difficulty, if not unwillingness, that the state’s leftist institutions have in accepting what’s plain to everybody else.

Last week, the Baton Rouge Advocate ran a piece about the latest 2023 census numbers, which show most Louisiana parishes lost population. The state as a whole lost over 14,000 people in 2023, bring the total loss from compared to 2015 to nearly 120,000 even as the country as a whole, and most states, grew in numbers. In fact, the state’s 0.31 percent loss trailed in percentage terms only New York, and of the seven states that did lose population, four were among the largest blue states, with purple Pennsylvania barely slipping and only West Virigina among red states joining Louisiana.

Only Ascension, Beauregard, Bossier, Calcasieu, De Soto, East Feliciana, Iberville, Lafayette, Livingston, St. Bernard, St. Tammany, Tangipahoa, Vermillion, and West Baton Rouge gained – a few barely – and none over one percent. Metropolitan statistical areas were a mixed bag: energy-intensive areas Lafayette and Lake Charles and northshore Hamond and Slidell-Covington-Mandeville, plus Baton Rouge eked out gains but Shreveport-Bossier City, Monroe, Alexandria, Houma-Bayou Cane-Thibodaux, and New Orleans-Metairie shrunk. In fact, New Orleans led the country in MSA slumping at 1.15 percent, while Houma was fifth worst at 0.85 percent, Alexandria 16^th worst at 0.60 percent, Shreveport 36^th worst at 0.43 percent, and Monroe 46^th worst at 0.34 percent. Hammond’s 0.92 percent growth was best in the state and 92^nd best nationwide.