Louisiana Voice

BATON ROUGE (CNS)—A few random notes worth sharing in the wake of the most recent legislative session and Gov. Jindal’s ongoing love affair with north Louisiana:

Because Jindal and the legislature have seen fit to play fiscal shell games with education in Louisiana, considerable but unnecessary—and certainly unfair—financial strain has been placed on local school boards around the state.

Even as Jindal, when he was not drumming up campaign contributions in other states by telling Republican supporters in Wisconsin, Illinois and elsewhere what a fine job he has done in Louisiana, was telling actual constituents and state workers they would have to “do more with less.”

Except when it came to golf courses.

Ah, yes, the golf courses, that old bugaboo we talked about last year.

And let’s not forget the other sports venues and pet projects that took priority over education in Priority 1 capital outlay appropriations this year:

• City Park Golf Complex improvements in New Orleans—$6.6 million;

• Junior Golf training facilities for Jerry Tim Brooks Lakeside Golf Course in Caddo Parish—$200,000;

• Golf course development in Calcasieu Parish—$6.1 million;

• Zephyrs baseball facilities in Jefferson Parish—$1.2 million;

• Professional sports facilities and lease hold improvements in Jefferson Parish (provided that $8.5 million is used to improve the New Orleans Hornets’ training center—$17.5 million;

• Recreational complex in Iberia Parish—$1 million;

• Baseball stadium Improvements in Baton Rouge (which has no baseball team)—$1.4 million;

• Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame/Natchitoches State Museum—$7.7 million;

• Bayou Segnette sports complex improvements in Jefferson Parish—$9.2 million;

• West Ouachita Youth Sports Association site renovations—$25,000;

• Poverty Point Reservoir State Park conference center in Richland Parish—$250,000;

• Poverty Point Reservoir (real estate acquisition)—$1.7 million;

• Washington Parish reservoir feasibility study—$2.6 million.

Meanwhile, in Livingston Parish, the local school board has found it necessary to freeze all salaries and to eliminate three work days from the 2011-12 school year in an effort to cut costs.

Three days may not seem like much but why would we want to cheat our kids out of even 10 minutes?

Union Parish schools operated on a four-day week last year and at least one school district, Caldwell Parish, will follow suit this year.

But the state somehow found the money for $50 million in projects for golf courses, reservoirs and recreational facilities.

And we barely scratched the surface. Local projects were down from last year, but they still could be found crammed into this year’s budget.

Jindal, meanwhile, makes use of the tax-supported state web page to post what comes dangerously close to being a political ad for his re-election.

Go to http://www.louisiana.gov and then move your cursor to “Government,” click first on “Executive Branch,” and then on “Governor,” and voila! Up pops a series of photos of Jindal shaking hands with truck drivers, construction workers, National Guardsmen, etc. The accompanying text to the side reads:

“More than 39,500 new direct and indirect jobs will be created from the economic development wins we have announced since taking office in 2008, along with more than $8.5 billion in capital investment in our state. These figures represent thousands of opportunities for generations of Louisianians—Louisianians who will not have to leave our state to secure a great education or find a rewarding career.”

Like plucking chickens in Farmerville, perhaps?

Not that we have anything against chicken pluckers but it seems the really good jobs were handed out by Jindal to folks from out of state—including his Deputy Commissioner of Administration (New Hampshire), his press secretary (New Jersey), the Secretary of Health and Hospitals (Washington State).

Well, you get the picture.

Of course, it’s going to be rather difficult to remain in the state when programs of study at colleges and universities have been cut to the bone, college tuition increased, teacher pay cut, and state agencies privatized, forcing state workers into a virtually non-existent job market.

Our friend Don Whittinghill observed recently that Jindal convinced local school boards that the 2.75 percent growth factor of the Minimum Foundation Program (MFP—the formula used to fund public education in Louisiana)—would not be funded for the third straight year; that the state passed to the local school boards the cost of transporting private and church school students; that the state-promised $5,000 stipend for teachers who achieve the rigorous National Board Certification would have to be absorbed by the already-shrunken MFP, and that local school boards’ state retirement system contributions would jump to 22 percent.

But, hey! We got our golf courses and Baton Rouge has its baseball park improvements, just no team to play on it.

And Jindal continues to commandeer the state helicopter to fly to north Louisiana churches to give testimonials that are really little more than thinly-disguised efforts to raise still more campaign funds.

In something like five months, Whittinghill tells us, Jindal spent more than $45,000 flying to exotic places like Downsville, Dry Prong, and Shongaloo to give witness to adoring Protestant congregations.

As recently as Friday, July 8, he boarded that helicopter and flew north to the First Baptist Church of West Monroe. There, he took the occasion of signing into law HB-636 by Rep. Frank Hoffmann (R-West Monroe).

If something as blatantly political as that single action doesn’t cost the First Baptist Church of West Monroe its IRS tax-exempt status, nothing should.

How the governor could do something so ill-advised as to put the church’s tax-exempt status in jeopardy or why the church officials would allow it is a mystery.

Moreover, it’s another of those mindless laws that is almost certain to be contested in the courts at considerable cost to the taxpayers of Louisiana and it’s just as certain that the state ultimately will lose the case.

What is this bill? It’s a measure that would require women to be informed of their specific legal rights and options before they undergo an abortion procedure.

Whatever your position on this emotional issue, a church is no place to be holding a ceremony signing it—or any other bill, for that matter—into law.

Abortion providers will be required to post signs around their clinics stating that “it is illegal to coerce a woman into getting an abortion, that the child’s father must provide child support, that certain agencies can assist them during and after the pregnancy, and that adoptive parents can pay some of the medical costs.”

The law also creates a Department of Health and Hospitals (DHH) website and a mobile platform to deliver information “about public and private pregnancy resources” for avoiding abortions.

The first question that comes to mind is how are fathers going to be forced into providing child support given the current deadbeat dad caseload backlog?

Second, just who is going to be around to enforce the child support laws after Jindal gets through gutting DHH as part of his far-reaching obsession with privatization of state agencies?

The most bizarre statement yet was uttered by Jindal while signing the bill into law when he compared women who receive abortions to criminals:

“Now if we’re giving criminals their basic rights and they have to be informed of those rights, it seems to me only common sense (that) we would have to do the same thing for women before they make the choice about whether to get an abortion,” he said.

Common sense?

Indeed.

That would seem to be the rarest of commodities with this governor.