The bill, which was approved by the full House on May 17, was heard by the Senate Revenue and Fiscal Affairs Committee on Monday, May 28, and now goes to the full Senate for debate. If the Senate version finally passed is different from the House version, the bill will go to a conference committee to hammer out a compromise and still must be approved by both chambers.

After final passage by both chambers, the bill will go to Gov. Bobby Jindal who, by line item veto, may eliminate projects he deems wasteful or which may obtain funding elsewhere.

At a time when the state is grappling with revenue shortfalls and budget deficits, this year’s construction bill is packed with more than more than $180 million in priority 1 local spending projects such as festivals, ball parks, sports complexes, community centers, professional sports facilities, groundwater reservoirs and golf courses.

Some of those include:

• $17.5 million for professional sports facilities in Jefferson and Orleans parishes;

• $1.17 million for New Orleans Zephyrs baseball facilities repair;

• $21.5 million for the New Orleans Sports Arena improvements;

• $17.2 million for an economic development award program for infrastructure assistance;

• $7.74 million for wet-lab business incubators statewide;

• $20 million for aerospace manufacturing infrastructure in New Orleans;

• $10 million for mega-project site preparation statewide;

• $4.6 million for renovations to the River Center Arena and Theatre in Baton Rouge;

• $1.4 million for baseball stadium improvements in Baton Rouge;

• $2 million for construction of a community center in north Iberville Parish;

• $6.7 million for improvements to the Bayou Segnette sports complex in Jefferson Parish;

• $8.6 million for land acquisition and additional cabins for Bayou Segnette State Park;

• $13 million for Bayou Segnette Festival Park land acquisition and construction;

• $600,000 for construction in raw undeveloped area of Parc de Families in Jefferson parish;

• $8.5 million for the Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame and Natchitoches State Museum;

• $6.6 million for improvements to New Orleans City Park golf course;

• $2 million for improvements to amusement area at New Orleans City Park;

• $2.4 million for Bayou Dechene Reservoir in Caldwell Parish;

• $1.7 million for real estate acquisition and improvements to Poverty Point Reservoir;

• $2.6 million for Washington Parish Reservoir study, planning and construction;

• $950,000 for repair and renovation of the Strand Theatre in Shreveport;

• $400,000 for a multipurpose evacuation shelter and community center in Avoyelles Parish;

• $4.2 million for a golf course development in Calcasieu Parish;

• $635,000 for the Woodmere Community Center in Jefferson Parish;

• $2 million for a governmental complex and jail upgrade in Lafayette Parish;

• $2.3 million for a multipurpose community center in Bienville Parish;

• $1 million for a fire station and public service center in St. Mary Parish;

• $1.6 million for a cultural center for the arts in Jefferson Parish;

• $250,000 for a Maurice civic center-post hurricane shelter in Vermilion Parish;

• $400,000 for Rosenwald Community Center in Orleans Parish;

• $200,000 for renovations to the Dansereau Harris Playground in Orleans Parish;

• $1 million for improvements to park land in Jefferson Parish;

• $215,000 for a Winnsboro community center in Franklin Parish;

• $4 million for Phase 2 construction of the West Calcasieu Community Center;

• $2.85 million for a public safety complex for the Lincoln Parish Sheriff’s Office in Ruston;

That comes to a little more than $182.4 million – and that’s just a small sampling of the $1.5 billion in projects included in the bill.

The bill passed the House by an 84-15 vote with 6 members absent.

Those voting against the bill were Reps. Richard Burford (R-Stonewall), Thomas Carmody (R-Shreveport), Simone Champagne (R-Erath), Brett Geymann (R-Lake Charles), Lance Harris (R-Alexandria), Bob Hensgens (R-Abbeville), Nancy Landry (R-Lafayette), Anthony Ligi (R-Metairie), Sherman Mack (R-Livingston), Jim Morris (R-Oil City), Steve Pylant (R-Winnsboro), John Schroder (R-Covington), Alan Seabaugh (R-Shreveport), Jeff Thompson (R-Bossier City) and Lenar Whitney (R-Houma).

Absent and not voting were Reps. Neil Abramson (D-New Orleans), Regina Barrow (D-Baton Rouge), Raymond Garofalo (R-Chalmette), Joe Harrison (R-Gray), Girod Jackson (D-Harvey) and Jerome Richard (I-Thibodaux).

–Former LSU System President John V. Lombardi in his internet blog, “Governance: A Fable.”

While we offer no opinion on Lombardi’s tenure at LSU, we nevertheless feel this should be required reading for not only Gov. Piyush Jindal but members of the Legislature as well. Accordingly, we offer it for your edification.

By John V. Lombardi

Imagine a small, developing country of perhaps 3 million people. Like many other small developing countries, our imaginary nation is rich in natural resources, its economy has prospered on the export of agricultural crops and benefited from the revenue generated by petroleum production, refining, and support services. Its history, like some of its counterparts in the developing world, reflects a constant structural economic weakness covered by a colorful culture, truly creative and charming people, and an often dramatic sequence of past events. Civil wars, civilian uprisings, and the failure to compete with more dynamic and successful nations have left our country with a small, wealthy, interbred, and interconnected elite, a growing entrepreneurial middle class, and a large much less prosperous population of rural residents and urban poor.

Riven by cultural conflicts generations old and struggling with an archaic political system, the country periodically falls into the hands of populist demagogues and petty tyrants. In between, often when prosperity strikes, the country’s significant group of responsible leaders seeks to enhance legal and institutional structures to improve its ability to attract and retain internationally competitive economic enterprises, but the periods of responsible leadership fade fast, and the nation reverts to a pattern of clientele government, backroom deals, and populist rhetoric.

Over all, its population remains significantly less educated relative to its peers in nearby nations, although a structure of incentives and subsidies support good education for the children of the growing middle class and the political and economic elite. Other groups of citizens struggle through underfunded and inadequate schools, and those who survive often find themselves excluded from post-secondary opportunities by weak academic preparation and high cost.

Periodically, reformers achieve significant positions, supported by responsible citizen leadership, and demonstrate major improvements in translating the nation’s extensive resources into true economic change and transformational progress. Their efforts, often promising at first, can collapse when confronted with a structure of privilege, relationships, and politics that remains powerful in spite of the considerable achievements of reform-minded citizens. The reformers, confronted by a resurgence of clientele politics, leave the national stage and return to private life, sometimes abroad in more receptive national climates.

In its current incarnation, this small republic operates with a populist authoritarian government led by individuals in search of advancement to more prosperous and internationally significant posts. Their skillful combination of populist rhetoric, economic manipulation of a state dominated economy, and first-world media management has maintained them in power. The regime has taken every opportunity to create illusions of progress by continuously bleeding the nation’s treasury to buy the participation of foreign companies that receive tax-supported subsidies. Their arsenal of management also includes the use of state resources to conclude beneficial contracts with favored national business interests.

When confronted with opposition, the regime mobilizes its sycophantic adherents and paid partisans to discredit, isolate, and eventually drive out any people with an ability or opportunity to address the real issues and consequences of the regime’s behavior. The technique, developed with great political skill, involves three fronts.

The first is the effort to co-opt anyone with an independent perspective. These individuals receive coveted appointments to government boards, association with the regime’s powerful people, and assurances that the regime will protect their business and personal interests. This works quite effectively with some people, although others choose not to participate, and normally responsible individuals become dependents of the regime, bound to provide whatever support the regime requires.

When this strategy fails, as it often does with independent agency officials of some visibility, the regime turns to a form of more direct engagement. In this second mode, representatives of the regime explain to the official that the better tactic for success during these years would involve a collaborative arrangement with the regime. That collaboration would provide support and regime protection for the official, permitting continued leadership of the agency. But to achieve this protection and collaboration, and to ensure that the agreement to work together is of substance, the regime requires a test of loyalty. This loyalty test requires the official to dispose of close associates whose work the regime dislikes. Absent those associates, the regime’s messengers promise but do not guarantee the official a secure role as a significant leader under the regime’s protection.

This message of threat disguised as offer is usually delivered by reputable business leaders associated with the regime who also maintain a relationship with the non-conforming official. Should the official appear at all reluctant, the regime then reinforces the message by mobilizing their most trusted direct political operatives to echo the message.

When this second more direct approach fails, the regime moves to the third stage and mobilizes its dependents, especially those connected in one way or another to the non-conforming official, and identifies a method to remove the dangerous behavior of regime independence. This involves a conspiracy to exile the offending official, preferably to another nation. Recognizing the transparency of this maneuver, the regime activates its media experts and develops a slanderous rationale for the forced exile. A few courageous people object, but others fall silent, for the price of failing to cooperate with the regime is now clearly revealed.

Once the offending official goes into exile, the regime moves quickly to place a reliable regime loyalist in the agency’s leadership role to consolidate control over the formerly independent entity. Its purchased adherents, careful of their economic and personal relationships with the regime, cover the transactions with bureaucratic formalism while creating opportunities for regime favorites to find a home in the now domesticated agency. This completes another cycle of institutional failure.

In the end, of course, the regime’s time is finite due to national restrictions on re-election, and the regime leadership seeks elevation to more significant and visible international settings. However, to make the move to international position, the regime’s key members must desperately manage to cover over the impact of structural inequality, the destructive effects of mismanaging the economy, and the constant need to feed the purchased business and other elite participants who live from government subsidies and contracts.

The challenge is one of timing. Will the regime escape to higher international office before the consequences of their bad management crash the state?

Such fables as these may not match any known reality, but the moral of the story may well be real.

–Cliff Probst, from “What to Eat in Louisiana.”

If you are a fan of the grand old game and you are into baseball lore, this book is for you.

Published by the University of Louisiana at Lafayette Press, Dirty Rice (306 pages) http://www.ulpress.org/ tells us the story of Gemar Batiste, who is recruited from the Alabama-Coushatta Indian Reservation in Texas to pitch and play outfield for the Rayne Rice Birds in 1935.

Gemar, we learn soon enough, is a spiritual player who clings to his cultural lore but who also possesses all the odd superstitions that are peculiar to baseball players (step over the line, never on it; do not cross the bats, lay them side by side; at all costs, avoid speaking to or making eye contact with a pitcher who is pitching a no-hitter).

All but one of the characters is fictional. The lone exception is Roderick “Hookey” Irwin, a right-handed pitcher who in 1934 led the Evangeline League with a record of 21-4. Irwin just happens to be the uncle of author Duff.

Duff, a native of the Texas Gulf Coast, has taught literature and writing at Vanderbilt University, Kenyon College, Johns Hopkins University, and St. John’s College in Oxford. He also served as Academic Dean at Rhodes College, Goucher College and McKendree University.

The Class D Evangeline League, Duff tells us, was also known as the Hot Sauce League. Cajun humorist Justin Wilson referred to it in his stories as the Hot Pepper League. Its teams were spread out all over Louisiana, from Morgan City to Monroe, from Lake Charles to Hammond during its history from 1934 (when Rayne was the Red Sox) to 1951. Depending on the year, foreign teams from Port Arthur, Texas, and Natchez, Mississippi slipped in and out of the league. Rayne’s last year of competition in the league was 1941.

Batiste and another rookie, Mike Gomez, share a room in a local residence owned by a “Miz Doucette.” Gomez, an African-American from Mobile, Alabama, is officially listed as Cuban but to the locals he is considered a redbone, a racial mixture indigenous to South Louisiana. That was the only way he could qualify to play on an otherwise all-white team during the pre-Jackie Robinson years. And of course, his situation leads to problems near the end of the 1935 season, a season in which Rayne chases Opelousas for the league championship.

The real Evangeline League was hit by a betting scandal in 1946 and four members of the Houma Indians and one from Abbeville Athletics were suspended though the allegations of throwing games was never proven.

A professional gambler with ties to Sen. Huey Long (the Kingfish) moves in and out of the fictional Rice Birds’ locker room with apparent ease and Gomez is soon entangled in his web and predictably, makes key throwing errors that cost his team games in order to supplement his $50 per month salary.

Gomez knows his career is fated to never advance beyond the Evangeline League because of his color so he determines to take advantage of any financial opportunity presented him. We will leave it to you to discover whether or not Gomez is suspended, allowed to play, or if he ultimately costs his team the championship.

Duff is obviously a student of baseball; he simply knows too many of the nuances for him not to possess a deep understanding of the game within the game that is baseball. He approaches the game with the same mentality of a seasoned player—even down to anticipating what the pitcher will throw in a given situation and how to play a batter based on his batting stance and what the pitcher is throwing.

His dialogue between characters tends to drag to the point of becoming a distraction but we can attribute that to the differences in the culture of South Louisiana Cajuns, African-Americans and Native Americans.

Throw in the doomed would-be romance between Gemar Batiste and Teeny, Miz Doucette’s daughter, and you have the complete novel.

Duff has done a masterful job of capturing the unbridled enthusiasm that minor league baseball enjoyed in Louisiana during the heyday of the Evangeline League. Regrettably, all he can give us is the memory of that wonderful bygone era of Louisiana professional baseball.

But at least we have that.

–Sen. Elbert Guillory (D-Opelousas), commenting on the possibility that retirees may spend all of their lump-sum pension benefits being proposed as part of Gov. Piyush Jindal’s retirement reform package. He went on to say that retirees may have to apply for food stamps, welfare and other government programs. Still, he somehow managed to insist that the retirement reforms would save the state money.

Guillory, the poster boy for ALEC and Piyush Jindal lapdogs, was the lead author of the gaggle of state retirement bills, including Senate Bill 740 which assures state retirees they will not be getting a cost of living adjustment for 10-15 years.

Despite Guillory’s efforts to put the best spin on the retirements which wound up being a general hodgepodge, he was trumped by Jindal Deputy Chief of Staff Kristy Nichols who insisted the administration “got what we wanted.” It was a classic example of mutual one-upsmanship in an effort by both to save face.

The only part of the retirement package to be approved in its original form was a provision to base retirement incomes on employees’ best five years income instead of three years as is presently done.

Jindal’s effort—through Guillory—to force state civil service employees to work to age 67 before qualifying for retirement—was amended drastically. Only employees with zero to five years experience would be required to work to 67 while those with six to ten years will be required to work to age 62. All others will remain the same.

Guillory in a particularly self-serving email to Capitol News Service, said, “Now that you have had an opportunity to review the Senate Retirement Committee’s work, I’m sure you appreciate the hard work and responsible outcomes produced by those seven men. No “fix,” no “buyout” by ALEC (American Legislative Exchange Council). No underhanded tactics. Just hard work addressing a serious fiscal problem in careful responsible manner.”

Perhaps. But it would have been nice if the legislator had been working that hard the past 25 years to live up to its self-imposed requirement to pay down the unfunded accrued liability (UAL) of the state’s four retirement systems. Because of typically bad political policy, the legislature, in its infinite stupidity, decided to use those funds for other things, in the process allowing the UAL to grow unabated.

Now, though, state employees are being called on to make good on the legislature’s promise a quarter-century later. What’s more, the onus of the entire amount has been placed on the Louisiana State Employees’ Retirement System (LASERS) and higher education members of TRSL even though the LASERS share of the UAL is only about $6.3 billion. The balance of the UAL belongs to the Teachers Retirement System of Louisiana (TRSL), the Louisiana School Employees Retirement System (LSERS) and the Louisiana State Police Retirement System (LSPRS).

Guillory was asked why the pension reform changes are only being applied to LASERS and higher education employees in TRSL, he said state police and hazardous duty workers, who are exempted (fo far), “put their lives on the line. They face bullets every day. They have special disability issues. They have special survivorship issues, so they are in a special category. Their situation is more special. The same is true with K through 12 teachers. I’m not sure I want to see a teacher at age 67 still trying to handle the young students of today. There are just some special circumstances for teachers.

Two things are somewhat revealing in those comments. First of all, what he said about “young students of today” would seem to refute Jindal’s blanket condemnation of teachers while ignoring discipline problems and uninvolved parents as the root of most of public education’s current problems.

Second, as a reader recently wrote, if we are to believe Sen. Guillory, rank and file employees are not “special” or any particular value or importance. “We are also to believe that rank and file jobs do not involve any hazardous duties.

“Try telling that to employees of state psychiatric hospitals who are injured in the line of duty on a regular basis. Or tell that to Department of Transportation and Development (DOTD) employees who are struck by vehicles while repairing our highways. Or worse yet, try telling that to the families of the two Department of Insurance employees who were murdered recently while doing nothing more than gather routine regulatory information from an insurance broker.

“The simple lesson here is that Gov. Jindal has employed a very old and frequently successful ploy of divide and conquer with his so-called pension reform,” the reader said.

But Guillory’s most unabashed display of arrogance came during Senate debate over House Bill 61, which would create a new “cash balance” retirement plan for new hires, beginning July 1, 2013. Guillory said the plan would reduce state costs while containing the growth in long-term liabilities of the pension systems involved.

Sen. Sherri Smith Buffington (R-Keithville) said she was concerned over the provision for retirees to take a lump-sum pension benefit. She asked what would happen if a retiree spends the pension income to which Guillory incredulously replied, “We cannot protect people from making bad decisions in their lives.”

Guillory went on to say that a retiree might then have to apply for food stamps, welfare and other government programs.

Right. That’s going to save the state a boatload of money, right Senator?

That prompted one person to refer to Guillory’s plan as the “Cat Food Retirement Plan.”

National pension law expert Robert Klausner, representing LASERS and TRSL attempted to warn legislators against the bill’s passage, saying the proposed bill breaks employee contracts. “There’s no reason to pass an unconstitutional law,” he said. “All it does is create a field day for lawyers.”

Several weeks ago, with the Legislative Auditor hired a Dallas law firm to analyze the proposed retirement bills, the law firm came up with much the same response as Klausner.

To counter the auditor’s expert, the Division of Administration hired Buck Consultants of Boston at a cost of $400,000.

A LouisianaVoice public records request for a copy of the Buck report resulted in the release of a six-page document—about $66,667 per page. That report had just a three-paragraph narrative at the end. The rest consisted only of actuarial notes which projected a reduction of annual state contributions (the portion the state contributes to employee retirement funds) to LASERS and TRSL if enacted.

Jindal’s proposal—through Guillory’s bills—to move from a defined benefit to a defined contribution pension plan was a virtual clone of the “Defined-Contribution Retirement Act” model bill as drafted by ALEC at its New Orleans national convention last August, Guillory’s claims in his email to LouisianaVoice notwithstanding.

But that was just one of the bills proposed by ALEC.

A copy of ALEC’s complete proposed retirement reform legislation was obtained by Common Cause of Washington, D.C., which filed Freedom of Information Act requests for ALEC records.

The ALEC proposals and those of Guillory in the Senate and Rep. Kevin Pearson (R-Slidell) in the House are nearly identical in most aspects.

So, all things considered, it’s a little difficult to buy into Guillory’s braggadocio about his committee’s “hard work, no buyout by ALEC.” Nor do we agree that a “serious fiscal problem” was addressed in a “careful, responsible manner.”

–from bid specifications contained in Louisiana Division of Administration’s invitation for bids on the purchase of condoms by the state.

It seems that the Division of Administration recently solicited bids for the purchase of condoms. In retrospect, the word “solicited” in the previous sentence could understandably be misconstrued, considering the fact that there was no clear-cut explanation as to how the condoms would be distributed and to whom.

Normally, it might be said there was no explanation as to the proposed use of the merchandise, but that might elicit unnecessary snickers and giggles, if not chortles and guffaws.

Nor is the quantity exactly clear. The invitation to bid asked for “52MM” of lubricated latex, reservoir end, smooth surface, assorted colors and “52MM” of non-lubricated latex, reservoir end, smooth surface, transparent color condoms.

The term 52MM is normally considered to mean 52 thousand-thousand, or 52 million. Using that standard definition, that would mean the state solicited (there’s that word again) bids on 52 million condoms of assorted colors and another 52 million of transparent color. That’s 104 million condoms.

If the MM had been in lower case, that would have been a completely different definition. If the bid had been for 52mm, that would have meant 52 millimeters. At approximately 25.4 millimeters per inch, 52 millimeters would convert to a little more than two inches. But again, that prompts the question of length, diameter, or circumference.

A more likely definition would be 520,000 because of a paragraph in the bid specifications that said, “Condoms are to be shipped to various sites throughout Louisiana [approximately 250 (sites)]. Minimum order shipped to any single location shall be two cases of 1,000 condoms per site. That would be 2,000 condoms shipped to each of 250 sites, or 500,000 condoms total.

The contract for the purchase of the condoms is for one year but at the option of the state, “may be extended” [stop laughing] for two additional twelve month periods at the same price.

The unintended humor doesn’t end there, however.

“The bidder must submit samples of each of the products to be supplied under the contract along with product literature for each of the types of products bid,” the bid specs said. “Samples of successful bidder will be retained at the purchasing office of the using agency. Any part of merchandise received that does not meet the quality standards and construction of the sample will be rejected and returned at vendor’s expense.”

Finally, the crowning punch line: “Any other samples received, if not destroyed in testing, may be returned at the bidder’s expense.”

Destroyed in testing?

Who wants to open that package?

No word, by the way, on the identity of the winning bidder.

The expenditure of more than half a billion dollars is never inconsequential, but in times of budget crunches necessitating deep cuts in health care and higher education, such waste takes on even greater significance.

The purchases were made by the state, parishes and municipalities through participation in a consortium called Western States Contracting Alliance (WSCA). WSCA was formed in 1993 by the state purchasing directors of 15 states.

Membership has since expanded to 18 states: Alaska, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Delaware, Georgia, Hawaii, Iowa, Louisiana, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, Nevada, New Mexico, New Jersey, South Carolina, South Dakota, Utah and Wisconsin.

A designated lead state negotiator issues the solicitation and awards contracts based on each state’s statutory requirements and processes. WSCA receives one-twentieth of one percent of all sales to cover its administrative costs, according to WSCA Program Manager LeAnn Pope.

WSCA, however, does not participate in the actual sales but serves only to negotiate agreements with companies to serve as vendors. Since 1999, WSCA has negotiated contracts that resulted in sales totaling $18.6 billion—sales that earned $9.3 million for WSCA.

While Louisiana is a member of WSCA, purchases are not made through the consortium but instead are made directly from the computer company, in the majority of cases, Dell Computers, and without the necessity of taking competitive bids as normally required with major purchases.

While the idea of a consortium to serve as a clearinghouse for major purchases such as computers might be a good idea, it works only if the members are able to negotiate the best discounted price available.

Such does not seem to be the case with the state of Louisiana.

In October of 2010, the state purchased 640 Dell Model E6410 laptop computers directly from Dell for the State Library system at a unit price of $1640.86, or $1,050,150.40 total.

The same model was found online, available directly from Dell, for $669, a total of $428,160 for 640 laptops. That would have been a savings to the state of $621,990 or 59.2 percent.

In February, LouisianaVoice learned that a state agency requested quotes for two Dell E6420 laptop computers and received quotes from Dell of $1,448.71 each even though the same model was available from Dell online at a cost of $670.

That prompted an email to LouisianaVoice from a Baton Rouge information technology (IT) salesperson and former tech company owner that was highly critical of the manner in which the state locks out competitive bidding on computers, computer equipment and peripherals.

The content of his email is as follows:

As a local technology provider for over 20 years, I have watched this practice go on for over a decade. It’s time to take a really hard look at the millions of dollars spent each year on no-bid purchase orders for IT equipment. There is zero oversight in this area and no regulation. According to the current WSCA/NSPO contract website Louisiana spent almost $90,000,000 in 2010 on Dell computer equipment off the WSCA state contract which includes PCs, servers, and other miscellaneous equipment. This does not include networking or other types of gear either. In other states such as Mississippi, there is legislation in place that requires Dell to resell their gear through local tech firms but, not here. WSCA is not a contract it is a catalog, so basically there is no contract.

It would be very helpful to our economy and our future if someone would do something about this. There would be no need for layoffs or spending freezes if the state would just get bids—and I mean real bids that are published on LAPAC for PC products. At least level the playing field. I love competition so I am happy to play and I am betting so are all the PC manufacturers in the state—if given a chance.

LouisianaVoice made a public records request for a Dell price list used by the state. The Division of Administration responded with a web link to Dell’s price list, a document consisting of 30,524 pages.

Computer purchases are not the only problem; sometimes there are problems keeping track of those already purchased. At one school in the Recovery School District in New Orleans, for example, the school began the school year with 94 computers and at the end of the year, it was 94 computers short. No one could explain to state auditors what happened to the computers.

Likewise, when the Office of Public Health in New Orleans moved into the Benson Towers, nearly $1.3 million in state property turned up missing, including computers valued at nearly $400,000.