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Archive for the ‘Budget’ Category

Bobby is for immunizations but two years ago he discontinued health unit vaccinations for the poor

Posted in Budget, DHH, Economy, Exemptions, Incentives, Governor's Office, Health Care, Higher Education, Incentives on February 10, 2015| 19 Comments »

Well, at least Bobby took a stand. Sort of.

As an aside, we have arbitrarily decided to cease referring to Bobby Jindal by his elected title of governor. His behavior far more closely resembles that of his adolescent namesake from The Brady Bunch sitcom than a political leader. So we’ll just refer to him as Bobby from now on.

He repeatedly told us his big lie: that he had the job he wanted, yet he doggedly pursues a much higher prize—that of president. He long ago abdicated any of the responsibilities that go with that title—like performing his duties with the best interest of his constituents as a top priority.

Those duties would include seeing to fiscal well-being of the state. His persistent refusal to seek additional revenue to meet repeated shortfalls in the state budget have created a projected $1.6 billion budget hole for the 2015-2016 fiscal year. To address the problem, he is proposing yet another cut to health care and higher education—cuts that are certain to gut entire academic programs but almost certainly not athletics.

His giving away the state treasury in the form of corporate and industrial tax incentives have not paid off with desperately needed revenue. Quite the reverse has happened as companies have received five-year Enterprise Zone tax credits for locating Wal-Mart stores in affluent areas in open contravention of the EZ program’s intent.

Ten-year property tax exemptions have been granted in wholesale numbers to companies as they implement plant expansions but create no new jobs.

Movie tax credits return about 30 cents to the state for every dollar given in credits, certainly no bargain for Louisiana taxpayers.

There are others, like employee salary rebates and inventory tax rebates, all of which add up to billions of dollars deprived of the state treasury.

The health care of all citizens is another area of considerable responsibility that he has chosen to betray. Bobby’s decision to close Southeast Louisiana Hospital shut off mental health services to low income residents of the state’s most densely populated area. Then he privatized the state’s charity hospitals, a move which resulted in nothing short of personal and financial disaster. Baton Rouge Medical Center Mid-City is closing its emergency room next month because of the overflow from the closure of Earl K. Long Medical Center which will now place an additional strain on Our Lady of the Lake across town.

But while he has been chasing Islamics in Europe and chasing the presidency at home (using the term “home” loosely, as his base now appears to be somewhere in Iowa), Jindal has finally taken a stand in Louisiana, for Louisianans. Sort of.

Earlier this month, he took our collective breath away with his courage in saying he has “no reservations about whether or not it is a good idea and desirable for all children to be vaccinated.”

His courageous stand came out of growing concern over a measles outbreak at Disneyland in California because apparently one or more families who don’t believe in the measles vaccinations took infected children to the park, spreading the disease. A debate immediately followed as to the advisability of immunization because of belief in some quarters that the measles shots can cause more harm than good.

“There is a lot of fear mongering out there on this,” Bobby said, apparently referring to immunization rather than Islamic “no-go” zones in Europe. “I think it is irresponsible for leaders to undermine the public’s confidence in vaccinations that have been tested and proven to protect public health. Science supports them and they keep our children safe from potentially deadly but preventable diseases. Vaccinations are important. I urge every parent to get them. Every one.”

Again, let us stress that he also said “all children.”

But let us now flash back nearly two years to Feb. 22, 2013, when Bobby, acting for a change as governor, submitted his executive budget.

His proposed budget included his announced intentions to cease immunizing the state’s indigent children at parish health units throughout the state.

Instead, he said, private pediatricians would take over the duties of immunizing children under the state’s Vaccines for Children (VFC) program through which vaccines are made available at no charge to enrolled public and private health care providers for eligible children.

“Under the proposed restructuring, children who received immunizations at parish health units would be transitioned to receive immunizations by their private pediatricians or health care providers, where 92 percent of children already receive their immunizations through the program,” said a statement released by the Department of Health and Hospitals at the time.

Bobby’s most recent proclamation in support of immunization seemed more of an effort to set himself apart from the GOP frontrunners than any real concern for the welfare of Louisiana children. After New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and U.S. Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky questioned the wisdom of mandated immunization, Bobby’s utterance seemed contrived, almost comical.

But it wasn’t funny. In fact, given the state of critical mass into which the state’s finances have fallen, nothing Bobby does is funny anymore.

The national media have finally caught on with several extremely critical analyses of Bobby’s performance just in the last few days, a couple by usually conservative columnists.

Bobby, we aren’t really all that stupid down here. We well remember glib line of yours: “I have the job I want.” Seriously? You repeated it ad nauseam during your first term. We got sick of hearing it because we knew you were lying.

You lying to us, weren’t you, or do you really have the job you want?

If you were telling us the truth, then for God’s sake stay in Louisiana and do your damned job. If not, get the hell out and let someone who cares do it for you.

Resign, Bobby. Just resign. You quit a long time ago so now just make if official. We’ve grown weary of your adolescent Bobby Brady adventures. Like the sitcom itself, your act has grown stale.

 

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Notable Quotables (in their own words)

Posted in Budget, Governor's Office, Higher Education, Legislature, Legislators, Notable Quotables, Revenue on February 9, 2015| 2 Comments »

 

“As states prepare their budgets for the coming year, they face the challenge of reinvesting in public higher education systems after years of damaging cuts — the product of both the economic downturn and states’ reluctance to raise additional revenues.”

—From story by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, March 19, 2013.

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Louisiana colleges facing sports dilemma in ‘paper courses’, general studies with massive cutbacks in academic funding

Posted in Budget, Finances, Governor's Office, Higher Education, Layoffs, Legislators, Legislature, LSU, Politicians, Revenue on February 9, 2015| 8 Comments »

 

Louisiana’s colleges and universities are facing some difficult choices.

With the latest round of budget cuts to higher education announced by Gov. in Absentia Bobby Jindal, college presidents have been thrown into deep crisis mode in trying to figure out how to keep their schools afloat in the wake of another $350 million slashed from their cumulative budgets.

The LSU campuses are facing cuts of 35 percent to 40 percent, or about $141.5 million which translates to the elimination of 27 percent of faculty positions, 1,572 courses, 28 academic programs and 1,433 faculty and staff positions, according to Associated Press reporter Melinda Deslatte. http://theadvocate.com/home/11535937-125/lsu-outlines-dire-budget-scenarios

Because of Jindal’s disastrous fiscal policies over the past seven years, repeated budget cuts have been imposed on both health care and higher education.

Conspiracy theorists might attribute that to the goal of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) and its objective of “taking the state out of state colleges,” or including public colleges and universities in its stated drive toward near total privatization of government.

And those conspiracy theorists, in this case at least, might not be too far off.

As has already been reflected in tuition increases of 90 percent for state colleges and universities in Louisiana since Jindal took office (with more undoubtedly on the way), it’s rather easy to see what such privatization would mean: soaring tuition costs putting college out of reach for all but the wealthiest Americans absent the securing of ever-rising student loans from private banks with debts guaranteed by the federal government (ALEC wants privatization to go just so far, it seems).

The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities has conducted an exhaustive state by state study of cuts to higher education which show Louisiana has undergone some of the deepest cuts (fourth highest in the nation) at 43.6 percent from Fiscal Year 2008 (the year that began six months before Jindal assumed office in January of 2008) through FY-13 (2012-2013). There have been two additional cuts since then in Louisiana. The $4,714 per student cut through FY-13, for example, has increased to more than $5,000 since then in Louisiana. http://www.cbpp.org/cms/?fa=view&id=3927

The center’s report said state could have reduced the size of the spending cuts by enacting “significant new revenues, but many (including Louisiana) chose not to.”

It is an understatement to say that Louisiana colleges and universities are going to have to make some hard decisions, but the one issue that has flown under the radar thus far is intercollegiate athletics.

This is going to get some push back from the more rabid sports fans, especially at LSU which plays in the big leagues of the Southeastern Conference. Not to slight the other schools, but the reality is (as Jindal is fond of saying) the LSU athletic program is the only one in the state that is self-sustaining—but athletics could be adversely impacted in another key area: keeping players academically eligible.

You see, there is something out there called Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 which was written to protect the rights of individuals with disabilities.

Section 504 is employed by elementary and secondary schools to help students with learning and other disabilities but is especially popular in college athletic programs, according to one former high school coach who is familiar with the program.

Because any school receiving federal funding (which is all Louisiana colleges and universities) is mandated to provide extra assistance to those with learning disabilities. Section 504, therefore, is protected and exempt from any state cutbacks—much to the appreciation of college athletic programs.

Athletes with learning disabilities, and let’s be honest: there are a lot of college jocks who can’t read or write above fifth or sixth-grade levels and some have comprehension skills that fall lower than that, are provided special tutors. These tutors, our source tells us, not only do much of the students’ academic assignments for them, but even sit with them during testing, coaxing them on when they provide an incorrect answer and often even pointing to the correct answer.

(Had I had that kind of help at Louisiana Tech, I could have made the dean’s list other than the one I found myself on most of the time.)

There has been much written about Mary Willingham, the former academic advisor at the University of North Carolina who finally had enough and blew the whistle on so-called “paper courses,” or “counterfeit classes” for 18 years involving more than 160 student-athletes.

Willingham said athletes were literally funneled into the program as a means of keeping them eligible at the sacrifice of any semblance of a real education. The “paper classes” produced boiler plate papers that were shamelessly plagiarized. Professors in those classes rarely, if ever, bothered to read the papers but instead relied on counselors who simply advised the professors as to the grade an athlete needed to remain eligible, a practice they called “GPA boosters.”

Willingham said the “paper classes,” many of which were African and African-American studies, were openly discussed as a way to keep athletes eligible to participate in sports. One email from a counselor to a professor advised, “Yes, a D will be fine; that’s all she needs. I didn’t look at the paper but figured it was a recycled one as well, but I couldn’t figure out from where.”

Willingham called the system “corrupt because many of these young men are passed through the system without really being given what they’re promised, which is a real education.”

She said universities have lowered their admissions standards for athletes and the NCAA allows it to keep the revenue-producing sports going.

That’s because NCAA-level college football alone is a $16 billion (with a B) business for tax-exempt, “non-profit” universities which ostensibly are focused on research and education.

No wonder that subsequent to releasing her research on the poor literacy levels, UNC officials went to extreme of hiring outside academics in an attempt to discredit her findings.

We attempted to learn how many LSU athletes are currently participating in the Section 504 program. We submitted the following public records request:

Please provide any and all documents and/or public records that provide the following information;

The number of learning-disabled student athletes currently enrolled at the LSU Baton Rouge campus;

The percentage of learning-disabled student-athletes to the overall student population currently enrolled at the LSU Baton Rouge campus.

Please understand I am not asking for names—just the raw numbers and percentages of overall student population.

LSU responded that it had no record of such data, a claim we find extremely difficult to believe. Nevertheless, we tried once more, making the same request of Louisiana Tech. This time we received not so much as even a response to our request.

Never wishing to leave part of the story untold, LouisianaVoice did a little research of its own into some of the degree programs into which athletes may be “funneled,” to borrow a phrase from Willingham. We should preface what follows by stressing the samples of classes come directly from the LSU 2014-2015 catalog: http://catalog.lsu.edu/index.php?catoid=6

General Studies:

Semester 1: Gen. Ed. Analytical Reasoning MATH Course; “C” or better in ENGL 1001 . Semester 2: Gen. Ed. Natural Sciences; Gen. Ed. Social Sciences or Gen. Ed. Arts; Declare a Degree Program. Semester 3: Gen. Ed. Analytical Reasoning or Gen. Ed. Arts; 2.0 LSU and cumulative GPA.
African & African American Studies: Black Popular Culture (3); African Diaspora Intellectual Thought (3); Topics in History of Africa and the African Diaspora (3) (non-U.S.); Topics in Pre-Colonial Africa (3) (non-US); Special Topics in African & African American Studies (1-3); Black Music in America (3); Folklore of the African Diaspora (3); African American History (3); The New South (3)
Child & Family Studies: General Education course – Humanities (3); General Education course – Natural Sciences (3); Electives (6) or Fundamentals of Communication (3) or Introduction to Performing Literature (3); Public Speaking (3) or Introduction to Agricultural Economics (3)
Kinesiology: KIN 3513 Introduction to Motor Learning (3); KIN 3515 The Physiological Basis of Activity (3); PHYS 2001 General Physics I (3); KIN 3525 Laboratory Techniques in Exercise Physiology (1); KIN 1801 Movement Fundamentals for Physical Activity (2) or KIN 1802 Individual/Lifetime Activities (2) or KIN 1803 Team Activities (2)Sports Administration: History and Philosophy of Kinesiology (3); Sport in Society (3); Introduction to Management Information Systems (3); General Education course – Natural Sciences (3)

Sports Studies Minor: To graduate with a minor in sports studies, students must complete 18 semester hours from the following: KIN 2530 , three activity courses and 12 semester hours from the following courses: KIN 2502 , KIN 2511 , KIN 2525 , KIN 2526 , KIN 3507 , KIN 3800 , KIN 4513 , KIN 4515 , KIN 4517 , KIN 4800 , MKT 3410 .

Okay, you get the picture. Obviously, these are important courses. The beast must be fed so we can continue to kneel at the altar of intercollegiate athletics. Some things, after all, are sacrosanct. The option of cutting these programs is not even on the table.

So the cuts must be made elsewhere. But where?

Oh, such non-revenue producing programs as English, Arts, Physics, Engineering, Medical School (after all, who needs doctors after Jindal’s cuts to health care?), Business, Economics, History, etc. After all, who ever heard of TAF selling tickets to a science lecture?

Loss of accreditation of the business and engineering colleges? Hmpf, we don’t need no stinking accreditation when there’s a national championship to be won.

The alternative could be to sacrifice some of the courses we listed above in an effort at maintaining some semblance of academic integrity.

Of course, that would mean all athletes would have to take real courses—and pass. The lack of academic funding of the university and the resulting cancellation of the courses required for athletic eligibility will deal the death blow to athletic programs as we know them.

And that could have LSU playing Baton Rouge Community College in flag football next season.

Efforts to contact Les Miles and Johnny Jones for confirmation of the mothballing of the 2015 football and basketball seasons were unsuccessful.

We can only conclude that although Jindal, who has exhibited nothing but disdain and contempt for Louisiana’s education systems, knew of the consequences of his administration’s budget cuts on college and university athletic program, this was an “unintended consequence” by the legislature. To that, we can only say to legislators: “You should have done your homework and not sold your soul to Jindal for personal and political gain.”

(Thanks to Ruston High classmate John Sachs for the idea for this post.)

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Louisiana Tech ranked 8th Most Underrated College by USN&WR but with more budget cuts, what will it mean?

Posted in Budget, Higher Education, Jobs, Revenue on February 9, 2015| 2 Comments »

LOUISIANA TECH COLLEGE OF BUSINESS

U.S. News & World Report, known for its overall rankings of America’s best colleges and universities as well as their law schools, has a new ranking and one state school, Louisiana Tech, made the top 10, the only Louisiana higher education institution to do so.

But with yet another round of deep (as in $350 million) budget cuts anticipated for higher education, any rankings of Louisiana colleges and universities will likely remain in a constant state of flux.

The ranking of the 50 Most Underrated Colleges in America places Louisiana Tech as number 8 in the country and number 1 in Louisiana (obviously, since we’ve already established that no other school in the state made the list).

The USN&WR study includes only two Southeastern Conference schools, the University of Arkansas (no. 40) and Auburn (tied for no. 41) in the top 50 most underrated schools.

The report took into consideration two factors: reputation and future earnings on the premise that the students of schools otherwise flying under the rankings radar made high salaries would be underrated.

By combining the two factors, 316 universities and liberal arts colleges appeared in both the USN&WR and PayScale rankings.

Louisiana Tech was ranked as the 201st best overall school and 234th in mid-career salary at $83,000 (Someone was really raking it in to pull my average up), ranking Tech among the top 25 in the U.S. for the best return on investments in college education.

By comparison, the University of Arkansas ranked 135th overall and 222nd in pay scale rank ($83,600) and among the top 50 in public research universities while Auburn ranked 103rd overall and 151st in PayScale rank ($87,900).

Obviously, other statistical data factored into the underrated rankings, such as tuition costs, etc.

There was one other school that made the top 50 underrated schools, one which LSU baseball fans should remember with some trepidation.

Stony Brook University, a space grant university in New York eliminated a heavily-favored LSU team in the LSU Super Regional in a best of three series in 2012 to advance to the College World Series. Stony Brook, which also ranked as one of the top 40 universities overall by USN&WR, was the 34th most underrated school with its graduates earning an average mid-career salary of $94,300.

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State Rep. Jerome ‘Dee’ Richard to offer ambitious bills he says will ‘re-establish’ legislative branch of state goverment

Posted in Budget, Contract, Contracts, DHH, Economy, Exemptions, Incentives, Finances, Governor's Office, Health Care, Higher Education, House, Senate, Legislature, Legislators, NGOs, Revenue on February 3, 2015| 4 Comments »

State Rep. Jerome “Dee” Richard (I-Thibodaux) has revealed an ambitious set of bills he will be pre-filing preparatory to the 2015 legislative session, a couple or which are almost certain to be vetoed by Gov. Bobby Jindal should they survive both chambers intact.

The 60-day 2015 session convenes at noon on April 13 and will adjourn at 6 p.m. on June 11.

Vetoes are nothing new to Richard and in fact, one of his bills rejected by Jindal last years in hindsight represents a moral victory for Richard and something of an embarrassment for Jindal.

House Bill 142 (HB-142) passed both the House and Senate unanimously last year and was vetoed by Jindal only to see Jindal find it necessary to implement at least part of the bill through an executive order last month.

Passing 84-0 in the House (with 20 members not voting) and 37-0 in the Senate (with two not voting), HB-142 would have provided for a 10 percent reduction of all state professional, personal and consulting service contracts. The bill further provided that the savings from the cuts be deposited into the Higher Education Financing Fund.

State Treasurer John Kennedy, Richard was quick to point out, has been recommending slashing state contracts for several years and has been all but ignored by the administration but now even Jindal has ordered that state contracts be cut but not so higher education could be funded but instead to attempt to plug the growing chasm that is the state budget deficit.

Jindal, for his part, says he will offer legislators “suggested solutions” to ease the budget crisis which now is projecting a deficit of $1.6 million. http://theadvocate.com/sports/preps/11454861-123/jindal-says-hell-suggest-options

First of all, wasn’t that why he hired Alvarez and Marsal (A&M) Consulting for a cool $7 million? We were under the impression that A&M was going to find all these wonderful ways for the state to save money.

Second, the governor is the state’s CEO and as such, is charged with the leadership of the state. After all, Gov. Kathleen Blanco came under withering criticism for the manner in which she handled the crisis of Katrina. Jindal appears no less befuddled and clueless in his approach to the state’s budgetary crisis and now, after seven years of telling lawmakers what he wanted done, he punts to them.

Of course, it’s difficult to fight Islam in Europe, run for president and hold prayer meetings that fail miserably in filling all the seats in the venue while governing the state.

Only yesterday (Monday, Feb. 2), Kennedy broke the news that Moody’s Investors Service had issued a warning that reductions in revenue estimates by the Revenue Estimating Conference constituted a “credit negative for the state” and that the ratings service may downgrade the state’s credit outlook from stable to negative.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/7el18uxosj11pi1/Louisiana%20Oil%20Plunge%2002%2002%202015.pdf?dl=0&utm_source=Moody’s+Press+Release++020215&utm_campaign=Moody’s+2-2-15&utm_medium=email

Kennedy said the next procedural step would be a rating downgrade that would make it more difficult for the state borrow money and cost the state higher interest for money it does borrow.

And lest Jindal attempt to blame the latest fiscal woes on the drop in oil prices, Moody’s pointedly noted that the state’s problems pre-date the fall in oil prices—by several years. “As the U.S. economy picked up steam,” the Moody’s analysis said, “Louisiana had muted job growth even before the oil price decline.”

“This is what happens when you spend more than you take in,” Kennedy said. “Moody’s is telling us that we’d better get our fiscal house in order or we are going to be downgraded, which will cost taxpayers dearly in higher interest rates on our bonded indebtedness.”

The Moody’s news comes on top of earlier reports that health care and higher education will probably suffer even deeper cuts than the $180 million in reductions made over the past two months. The state’s colleges and universities have been told to expect at least $300 million in further budget cuts during the next fiscal year even as the Department of Health and Hospitals is expected to have $250 million slashed from its budget.

Jindal has even had to renege on his pledge last year to create a $40 million incentive fund to pay for college programs that provide graduates for high-demand jobs in Louisiana. Once considered one of his highest priorities, he has yanked that money away before the ink was dry on the bill that created the program.

All this has had a cumulative effect leading up to what promises to be a tumultuous legislative session as lawmakers grope for ways to keep from cutting services while at the same time being able to keep the lights on.

One trial balloon, already rejected by Jindal, would be for the state to roll back some of the billions of dollars in corporate and industrial tax breaks but Richard is not ready to accept the governor’s dismissal of that idea just yet.

This year, Richard has an agenda even more ambitious than his across-the-board 10 percent cut in contracts last year. Remember, that bill, HB-142 was passed unanimously in each chamber but vetoed by Jindal because, the governor said, the bill “could hinder the state’s efforts to continue to provide its citizens with timely, high quality services.”

In hindsight, however, it would appear his signing that bill into law would not have hindered the delivery of services nearly so much as not having the funds to pay for the services in the first place. The only thing not hindered by his veto was uninterrupted payments to the contractors.

Among Richard’s bills to “re-establish the legislative branch of government” are bills:

  • For an automatic veto session. Currently, legislators are mailed forms to complete and return indicating whether or not they want to hold a special session to consider overriding the governor’s veto(es). “If a bill passes with a two-thirds vote or better and the governor vetoes it, there would be an automatic veto session convened and legislators wouldn’t have to vote for it,” he said.
  • To eliminate the line item veto. “This will be a hard row to hoe,” Richard admitted. “But the governor has always held the line item veto over legislators’ heads as a means of getting what he wanted. This bill would change that.” Former President Bill Clinton pushed through a bill giving him the line item veto during his administration but the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that law unconstitutional.
  • To establish a capital outlay oversight committee. “We need to eliminate all NGOs,” he said, referring to the tradition of the legislature appropriating funds for NGOs, or non-government organizations such as baseball parks, golf courses, local court houses, city halls, councils on aging, etc. “These should be financed at the local level. If the local people want these things, they will pass bond issues to pay for them. That should not be the responsibility of the legislature. Before we look at raising more revenue, we need to cut spending,” he said. “John Kennedy has said many times that we don’t have a revenue problem, we have a spending problem, and he’s correct.”
  • To change the makeup of the House Appropriations Committee. “Appropriations has 27 members. That’s way too many,” he said. Richard said he would like to see it reduced in size to 15 members with three members from each of the five Public Service Districts in the state. “That would guarantee representation from each area of the state,” he said.
  • To eliminate the Homestead Exemption. “We need to get rid of all tax exemptions,” he said. “We give away $2 billion a year in industrial and corporate tax exemptions.”

Richard said he knows his bills will be fought by special interests and by the governor. “But Jindal has done nothing in seven years,” he said. “It’s time the Legislature re-asserted itself as an equal partner in governing this state.”

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