State Legislature looks at banning cell phone use while driving The Louisiana Legislature – more specifically, the House’s Transportation, Highways, and Public Works Committee – gave us a good example of the craziness that the legislative process can produce Monday. The Committee spent over an hour debating HB 407 which started as a bill to prohibit the use of cell phones for drivers of public/commercial transportation. Gradually it got whittled down by allowing all hands-free devices (for example, modules in ears that could be turned on or off by the flick of a finger) and attempted exemptions. Eventually, it foundered over the question of Councils on Agings’ van drivers using cell phones and whether mandating the law would put an intolerable financial burden on them (despite the fact that Blackberry-capable headsets sell for under $50). Then it spent less time and seemed to forget all of this when it passed HB 822 which would forbid cell phone use unless in the hands-free mode or in “emergency” situations. While this bill has great intentions, it likely overreaches on both grounds of necessity and in enforcement. While it’s true some people drive much more idiotically when holding up and talking on a cell phone – driving well below speed limits, making rude lane changes and merges, etc. – others don’t inconvenience other drivers. And while statistics in committee were trotted out to show cell phone usage was associated with a couple of thousand accidents in each of the past coupled of years and even a few fatalities, there was no demonstration that they caused those accidents. Enforcement will be a nightmare, particularly with the exemptions put in. Only inattentive drivers to the presence of police (what is law enforcement going to do, pull up beside a driver holding an animated discussion and flash the lights in the middle of heavy traffic?) will get caught, and the smart ones of them will immediately dial their doctor’s office and claim that was their call. (Adding to the festivities was committee chairwoman Nita Hutter’s usually pleasant, but sometimes stern, reminders to members about just how to properly conduct business – all but four members of the committee are freshmen – as well as some of the stumbling as a result of that, such as with Dorothy Sue Hill – wife of term-limited ex-Rep. Herman Hill who defeated another ex-senator trying to get back his old House seat last fall – who would refer to the cost estimates produced by the Legislative Fiscal Office as “physical” notes.) This bill serves as a typical example of some products that come from the Legislature – addressing an issue that really isn’t much of a problem with a solution uncertain really to work. We’ll just have to see if protection of personal autonomy and concerns over enforcement or regulation of obnoxious, perhaps even slightly dangerous behavior takes precedence as the bill moves …
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Thursday, April 10th, 2008 Baton Rouge, Louisiana ? GOV. BOBBY JINDAL FOR VICE PRESIDENT ARE YOU KIDDING? Well, no. The new Louisiana Governor is very much in the mix, as more focus took place this week on who Sen. John McCain will pick as his republican running mate. And when you consider the alternatives, and the balance McCain both needs and is searching for, Jindal stands toe to toe with any other candidate being discussed. First, who’s on the front burner? Former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney is at the head of a number of Republican lists following his strong second-place finish in the earlier republican primaries. A leading republican cheer leader for Romney is former White House Chief of Staff Andy Card. "He's attractive, he is knowledgeable, he didn't stumble too many times, so I don't think that he suffers from foot in mouth disease," Card says. But there are also a number of detractors lining up against Romney. In a full-page ad that is running in a number of newspapers around the country, leading social conservatives are warning Senator John McCain not to pick Romney as his vice presidential running mate. As national talk show host and author Greg Jackson (WRKO in Boston) is telling the news media: “I know Romney to be a very dangerous and deceitful person. He is the only one to establish abortion on demand for $50 as part of his very own socialist health care plan," Jackson said, referring to the plan put into place in Massachusetts when Romney was governor of the state. Romney also carries the label of a "flip – flopper, “on issues like gun control, abortion and gay marriage. Simply put, this has McCain is more liberal on social issues, Romney does very little to shore up the Republican conservative base. Throw into the mix his Mormon religion, and there are just too many downsides for McCain to consider Romney. How about Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice? Speculation over a Rice candidacy stirred up a good bit over the weekend during a discussion on the ABC program “This week with George Stephanopoulos." Fox news analyst Dan Senor, who was a former military spokesman for coalition forces in Baghdad, told the Sunday morning panel that Rice "has been actively, actually in recent weeks, campaigning for this." (Senor, by the way, just happens to be my son-in-law) But Rice also has too many negatives. She is perceived to be an orchestrator of the present Iraq problem. Even though McCain is strongly supporting the Iraqi occupation, he has continually charged that until recently, the war was woefully mismanaged. A McCain/Rice ticket would be a one- issue ticket: the war. Too much baggage here. And Rice also is pro-choice on abortion, and in support of affirmative action. Again, this will not set well with the more conservative Republican base that feels McCain is too liberal to begin with. So just what are the attributes McCain needs to look for in balancing off his ticket? …
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Legislature, Jindal spar over spending Interestingly political angles and motivations concerning Louisiana’s operating budget now being debated may result in much farther-reaching policy changes than originally appeared to be coming from Gov. Bobby Jindal this year. Last week on Inside New Orleans with Eric Asher I remarked how it seemed the state’s media hardly were addressing an obvious disconnection within the operating budget proposed by Jindal: increased spending, with a big relative boost in some questionable areas, even as his administration predicted huge budget deficits over the nest few years. I had argued for shifting priorities, particularly out of a $307.1 million boost for an incentive fund to draw large employers to the state and $60 million additional going to nursing homes even though the system already is too heavily biased towards institutions for efficient use of existing dollars. Lo and behold, even as I spoke, news was becoming public about the House sending along a request, due that day, to state agencies about how they would handle a five percent cut in revenues in anticipation of looming budget deficits. Further, in the Senate more vocal criticism was being expressed about the use of the money for the recruiting megafund. Referring to the latter, the debate sharpened when Jindal proposed as part of an overhaul of the capital outlay process that no new projects be funded this year. One proposed use of some or all of this additional money scheduled for the megafund would be on capital projects, and Jindal appeared to partially relent by allowing that if the fund did not spend itself away by Oct. 1, some of that funding would head in that direction. That would be a mistake. In light of looming deficits, this money needs to be sequestered into the Budget Stabilization Fund to provide a cushion for future revenue loss and/or a tax cut that would eventually recoup the loss. Even though the House seems agreeable on this approach, it’s going a step further by looking for ways to reduce spending. That task is made more complicated in that it is unclear exactly from where the cuts could emanate. Many agencies would be protected in part of in full because their sources of funds which minimally or not all use general fund revenues – for example, all the revenues for the Department of Insurance come from fees, statutory dedications, and grants. But the two largest recipients of discretionary funds outside of the Executive Department (almost all of which revenues are federal pass-through dollars for disaster recovery) are health care, where about half of its funding is of that nature, and higher education, where almost all of it is. As a result, Louisiana State University system president John Lombardi cried foul at this request, noting the disproportionate impact that request could have, making dire predictions. There was a bit of truth to his protestations, but such cuts would not be nearly as drastic as …
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Health-care revamp faces Senate criticism Battle lines have become clearer as a result of testimony in front of the Louisiana Senate’s Health and Welfare Committee regarding the future of indigent health care, starkly illuminating the direction of this policy the decision about which could provide better health care at reduced costs if vested interests don’t get in the way. A group of private health care providers and insurers argued for a modified money-follows-the-person system to replace the current money-goes-to-the-institution indigent care model that, unique among the states, Louisiana follows. Its plan calls for steering 61,000 uninsured adults into managed-care "medical homes." The group said the premiums would average $194 a month for an annual cost of $156 million, which would come from the "disproportionate share" of Medicaid dollars that now pays for most of the care in the Louisiana State University-run charity system. But members of the committee were unimpressed, and their comments are instructive in terms of how opponents will try to attack this reform if instituted statewide – policies that more states are adopting to improve outcomes often at reduced costs for the indigent. State Sen. Cheryl Gray remarked the idea didn’t seem to have an endorsement from LSU nor the state’s Department of Health and Hospitals. As far as the latter, its Secretary Alan Levine made approving noises about the plan but stopped short of endorsing it. This reluctance should prove temporary on theoretical and practical grounds. Levine probably is looking to roll out a plan similar to that he helped institute in Florida which would skip the “medical home” concept and go straight to the vouchers, but he is not yet ready to do so and tactically probably would wait until the next fiscal year after the legislative session has ended (the state needs no legislative action on this, just approval of a waiver request to the federal government). Also, Levine needs to finish a recommendation on the size of the new “Big Charity” hospital in New Orleans. Simply, a plan along these lines would mandate a decrease in the size of the palatial facility envisioned by the Kathleen Blanco Administration, and would make sense only if Levine and his boss Gov. Bobby Jindal backed a smaller-sized hospital. And, of course LSU never would endorse such a plan because it would be taking money from that agency, so Gray shouldn’t hold her breath on this one. The fact that temporary facilities currently serve the New Orleans-area indigent is why the plan envisioned just starting in that area; politically speaking, it wouldn’t threaten existing LSU resources in other areas of the state. State Sen. Sherri Smith Cheek thought that wasn’t good enough and said she couldn’t justify that to her constituents, that it was unfair. But if Levine rolls out a similar plan to go statewide, watch for Cheek to change dramatically her tune, to sound like state Sen. Joe McPherson. McPherson, who operates …
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Jindal proposes more limited construction budget for next fiscal year Gov. Bobby Jindal’s declaration that the capital projects he wants the state to pursue are only those approved in prior years and constitute nothing new casts optimism and uncertainty into the reform process. Under the current process, far more items are stuffed into the capital outlay budget each year than constitutionally the state can spend money on. The items that pass muster really emanate from the governor’s office when the State Bond Commission is brought spending proposals and then approves, a body lined with gubernatorial allies. As a result, roughly three-quarters of authorized spending annually lies on the table where, maybe, in future years it might actually get funded. Jindal has said for this year’s round, he’s going to take previous years’ choices and not introduce anything new. He can say legitimately that he is not ignoring any new broad needs because the state spent over a half billion dollars last month in a special session on such needs. Impressively, Jindal also issued an executive order with new guidelines to determine spending priorities. A more formal ranking system would be imposed, and anything local would have to have some commitment from local governments. Jindal also backs reform bills that would stop the state from making future commitments that do not have a scheduled appropriation attached to them. This sets the state up well for reform of the process, but questions remain. For one, until the process reform becomes law, nothing stops the Legislature from doing the same thing again, loading up this years capital outlay bill with three times the authorized amount – except for a committed governor, willing to use a line item veto on items that he thinks will bust that budget and, most importantly, telling legislators he will do that. Also, the interim procedures established in the executive remain hostage to politics. The Jindal Administration still will have to choose if all goes well, just one out of three dollars instead of one out of four, and make sure these are the best choices. And the Legislature will have to be sufficiently under control not to pass instruments overriding the executive order. Most importantly, Jindal’s crew must choose wisely. It’s assumed the order’s standards will be used, and Jindal must resist political ploys to bend them. Finally, even if the reform bill gets through and moots much of this interim strategy in the future, nothing about this addresses the nagging problem of earmarks that appear in the general appropriations bill, where only stern threatened use of a line item veto can rid it of projects that almost uniformally are of very low priority and really do not help the state as a whole. Especially the executive order ratifies Jindal’s pledge of reform of state spending priorities. Now he needs to follow through by getting the reform bill into law and holding fast …
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Bill allows teaching creationism as science All the fire and brimstone surrounding SB 561 on the docket of the Louisiana Legislature tells more about the paranoia and insecurities of those trying to create a controversy than the bill’s language actually suggests. Sen. Ben Nevers introduced this bill to increase academic freedom in Louisiana schools. It asserts that it is to create an environment within public elementary and secondary schools that “encourages students to explore scientific questions, learn about scientific evidence, to help students develop critical thinking skills, and respond appropriately and respectfully to differences of opinion about controversial issues.” Also, it is to prohibit the state or its officials from interfering with this. But the innocuous language has gotten some people very upset. People associated with organizations that claim they are interested in education have spoken publicly and sent out e-mail messages calling the bill essentially a “backdoor” for the teaching of creationism in schools. Interestingly, they base this interpretation (one which, in its reading, is exceptionally broad in taking selected passages) not on the actual language of the bill, but on the bill’s digest. A bill’s digest is written by a legislative staffer and has no legal importance. The actual wording, if these alarmists would care to read it instead of dispensing with it because it doesn’t fit their agenda, contains the following section what that the law is to do: “protects the teaching of scientific information, and this section shall not be construed to promote any religious doctrine, promote discrimination for or against a particular set of religious beliefs, or promote discrimination for or against religion or non-religion.” It couldn’t be less ambiguous that the bill does not in any way endorse that creationism or any other religious or non-religious (like the imperfect theory of evolution) idea be advocated uncritically in the classroom. It simply buttresses the academic freedom of instructors to explore the merits and demerits of any particular scientific theory. The reaction of those who argue against academic freedom in this instance is telling, however. One wonders whether they see the theory of evolution itself as a religion, given they are so scared of any critical examination of it. Any educator at any level should support this bill for the protection it gives the concept of academic freedom – the pursuit of which seems to make some who call themselves educators very nervous. (If you'd like to have Prof. Sadow's column mailed to you, go to http://www.between-lines.com and click on "Join the mailing list!" on the left-hand side.)
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Monday, April 7th, 2008 Baton Rouge, Louisiana WHERE ARE THE PRIORITIES IN LOUISIANA? When national companies search for new locations around the country and look at Louisiana, how important is ethics reform? A timely question to ask, since newly elected Governor Bobby Jindal is staking a major part of his reputation on bringing ethics in government to the forefront. Michelle Millhollon addressed the issue in a Morning Advocate story this past Sunday. National business consultants were quoted saying ethics reform was not nearly as important as more emphasis on early educational training. Industry consultant Andrew Shapiro, form Princeton, New Jersey, said Louisiana’s educational problems begin at the elementary level and build from there. “To have a skilled labor force, preparation must begin the moment future workers enter the school system. Louisiana is not creating a capable workforce that can compete," Shapiro said. He went on to say that Louisiana has no foothold in the growing high - tech field, and the job creation is suffering due to a lack of early learning the skills. What makes this all the more disturbing is that in the recent gubernatorial election, there was virtually no discussion of education in general, or particularly any renewed interest in pouring money and commitment into preschool and elementary programs. Name this state…. More wealth than any other state in America The home of the American cotton exchange Home of the first Opera House in America The center for trade of American goods worldwide One of America’s highest standards of living. Louisiana In 1850. New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman writes about early learning skills in his national bestseller, "The World is Flat.” He points out that the reason countries throughout the Far East are making such giant leaps in productivity is the emphasis placed on teaching the internet to young learners. A child in a small mountain village in China has just as much access to information as a student in any Louisiana public school. How many legislative candidates or those aspiring to lead the state did you hear talking about computer access for our young people in the most recent election? What we have not learned is that there is a great disparity in learning accessibility throughout Louisiana. Middle and upper-class kids have laptops they can take home at night, and have full access to the Internet. But Louisiana has the highest underclass of poor kids in the country. And by and large, they have little exposure to the world of computers. Our educators have made little effort to bring cheaper laptops into the classroom. A number of other states are actively seeking grants to give laptops to students who can't afford to purchase one of the new cheaper laptops. A national organization called the $100 Laptop Project will ship between 50 and 100 million laptops a year to children in underdeveloped countries. So if there is a will, we can help kids throughout the world, but are elected officials are reluctant to make the same …
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Pressure on La. superdelegates to make presidential choice There’s much confusion about the role Louisiana’s Democrat Party Leaders and Elected Officials (PLEO) delegates (“superdelegates”) will play in the party’s nomination of either Sens. Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton for the presidency. Having taught how the Democrats’ system works for almost two decades, let me be of assistance. Initially, it must be understood that the complicated system of the Democrats – no unit rule decisions by state or territory or Democrats Overseas (that is, no winner-take-all), the presence of the PLEOs, and the diversity mandates (for example, half of delegates must be female) – came as a result of the disastrous 1972 nomination of former Sen. George McGovern. Simply, the existing system permitted popular passions of the party’s most liberal members to be translated into an unelectable candidate. Thus, the reform efforts beginning with the party’s 1974 meeting and tweaked several times since was to give those with a substantial stake in party affairs – officers and elected Democrats – significant weight in the nomination process while balancing that with grassroots representation of all meaningful parts of the party. It was believed the superdelegates would use good political sense in their choices to vote for the candidate most capable of winning in the fall. In short order, they almost became critical deciders of nominations. Both in 1980 and 1984 the eventual nominee barely squeaked out enough “pledged” delegates to have an absolute majority (note: technically, no delegate is officially “pledged” among Democrats – delegates apportioned as a result of primaries essentially are chosen by the candidate’s campaigns themselves, and of course pledged caucus delegates already have promised, and are expected to be loyal to that candidate, but any delegate can vote for any nominee although defection is very rare). Both Obama and Clinton will fall far short in 2008, making the superdelegates, who represent almost a fifth of the total nomination votes, in fact the critical deciders. So, in analyzing what superdelegates intend to do as a matter of course it is mistaken and facile to assume generally they’ll follow some standard such as how a state’s vote turned out. Some who have been early backers of a candidate out of loyalty will continue that support regardless of anything else, and those who rate the candidate’s chances and equal for November victory might use a popular vote standard. (Note also that not all superdelegates are yet picked – each state gets anywhere from one to several picked by the party’s leadership, usually at the state chairman’s discretion; Louisiana’s singleton will be chosen May 3). But the large majority of these officials will use a very parsimonious decision rule in making their choice (hopefully from the national party’s perspective by a self-imposed Jul. 1 date): who has the best chance of beating presumptive Republican nominee Sen. John McCain? That’s regardless of any other consideration, especially since both candidates can …
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Jenkins, Cazayoux to face off for 6ht District seat Runoff elections for Louisiana’s major party candidates for the two U.S. House seats recently vacated produced a congressman-in-waiting, but have left the other indeterminate. State Sen. Steve Scalise bested state Rep. Tim Burns to win the Republican nomination in the Second District. Barring incredibly unlikely circumstances, Scalise will join the long line of GOP representatives in this seat next month. The Sixth District is another matter. As expected since he was less than a hundred votes from avoiding a runoff last month to secure the GOP nomination, former state Rep. Louis “Woody” Jenkins grabbed that slot. And the results on the Democrat side, with state Rep. Don Cazayoux prevailing over colleague Michael Jackson, give Jenkins the edge in the upcoming general election. Jenkins assuredly would have beaten the liberal black Jackson, but the white liberal Cazayoux would have an easier time of masquerading as a conservative making this a closer contest. Cazayouz is vulnerable on many issues as his voting record in the state Legislature demonstrates, so Jenkins’ optimal strategy is to turn this into a contest about ideology especially in the use of tax dollars. For example, just last session, Cazayoux voted to bust the state’s spending cap that facilitated using a lot of one-time money for recurring, now entrenched spending, to authorize building a palatial new charity hospital in New Orleans even as Baton Rouge struggles to get money to build its own new charity hospital, and to fund pay increases for “ghost” workers (vacant positions) in state government as well as to not cut those positions and continue funding them instead of allocating the money elsewhere.. While Cazayoux is not as liberal on social issues he can’t top Jenkins in conservatism on that. By contrast, Jenkins can tie Cazayoux into the biggest whipping boy among (at least among the public) concerning Congress, earmarks. In 2007 alone, Cazayoux steered $131,000 in state taxpayer dollars directly to New Roads and Pointe Coupee Parish, and perhaps more to more obscure nongovernmental organization. Cazayoux, by contrast, will keep clear of ideology and try to make the race turn on personality. But even here, his upside is limited. His best card, saying Jenkins got fined in 2002 by the Federal Elections Commission for not reporting he got a phone bank list in his 1996 very narrow loss to Sen. Mary Landrieu, will be relevant only to his likely supporters and Jenkins can turn it around by asserting he was the victim of corruption in the 1996 contest (even as a U.S. Senate investigation could not definitively demonstrate enough fraudulent activity cost him that election). Cazayoux might draw a false sense of security from the fact that over ten thousand more voters participated in the Democrat primary than Republican, but that would make him fall into the trap, as historically has been the case, of underestimating Jenkins’ support. …
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Education hasn't done its job Gov. Bobby Jindal has made clear his primary emphasis in the regular session of the Legislature in 2008 is workforce development, identifying the problem needing solving as disconnection between the kinds of skills graduates have coming out of public secondary and tertiary institutions and what the economy demands. But to correct this, we need first to understand the true nature of the problem which many have failed to correctly grasp. If one is to argue there is too many offerings for bachelors’ degrees and not enough for associates’ degrees or vocational training, to say it is because of the whims of higher education officials largely misses the point. Louisiana’s problem in this regard is not there are too many people getting bachelors’ degrees and beyond – far from it, as the state ranks among the lowest in terms of the proportion of its population with these degrees which are the backbone of any economy that wishes to develop. Nor is it accurate to maintain that passing control of tuition from the providers who ought to know something of the costs of education delivery, the universities, to largely uninformed politicians would not improve the situation. Louisiana is the only state that is backwards enough to leave tuition decisions in the hands of the Legislature. In fact, it is this very politicization of education that has skewed education needs from workforce needs. It was politics that gave Louisiana too many four-year institutions in the first place. Note that Illinois, with three times-plus the population of Louisiana, has just about as many four-year institutions (public and private) as does Louisiana, while it has more than four times the number of two-year schools. Simply, schools outside of areas of real need, often in smaller cities or too many in bigger cities, were allowed to exist and grow to grant bachelors’ degrees and graduate degrees, usually at the behest of area legislative delegations looking for prestige. Unfortunately, the overbuilt nature of senior institutions just isn’t going to go away. Bluntly (and sorry if it hurts the feelings of my colleagues at these institutions, but they know the veracity of this statement), there’s no reason to have such institutions 60 miles from both Baton Rouge and New Orleans, or 70 miles from Shreveport, or historically black institutions within 10 miles of large institutions in New Orleans, Baton Rouge, and Ruston. But that’s the situation the state must live with. Thus, if the problem is too few two-year degrees or less offered relative to four-year degrees – which, again, are relatively too few in Louisiana already – the problem rests on the shoulders of the leaders of the four-year schools and their governing bodies only insofar to the extent that they themselves do not offer more in the way of associates’ degrees and certain certificate programs to meet this need. Practically, this is the quickest and most effective way to use resources to …
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