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Archive for the ‘Education’ Category

Education MFP funding is elaborate legislative shell game

Posted in BESE, Education, House, Senate, Layoffs, Legislature, Legislators, Politicians, Revenue, Taxes, Transparency on March 8, 2011| 1 Comment »

Public school teachers at the bottom of the seniority ladder are being called in by their principals in parish school systems across the state to hear the bad news: because of budgetary cutbacks, their contracts will not be renewed next school year.

It’s bad enough when State Superintendent of Education Paul Pastorek insists that poor grades are the fault of the teachers and schools, not poverty or the lack of public support of education. The mindset in Pastorek’s office is not more funding, but more charter schools.

Teacher layoffs are something that should never happen in any society that pretends to make education a priority. But it is happening right now so perhaps we should take a quick refresher course in Louisiana history or civics or what some might prefer to call the Big Lie.

Think back for a moment to a campaign that took place 21 years ago. It was 1990 and Louisianans were being told that legalized gaming (that’s gaming, not gambling; gaming was the nice way to say gambling which, of course, was illegal and carried bad connotations) was the panacea for all the state’s fiscal problems.

We once thought the same thing about oil and gas but that myth was exploded in the eighties when the oil patches dried up with six-dollar-a-barrel oil (remember those days?). So legislators began looking around for other sources of revenue. Never mind computer technology, Fortune 500 businesses, or some other livelihoods with an emphasis on education and some modicum of intelligence. No, it had to be something that could be fed to the masses, something that would be in keeping with Louisiana’s third-world, banana republic image.

Presto! The idea of legalized gambling, er, gaming was born and the politicians nurtured the concept and they were oh, so slick in the way they did it. Casino gambling was too much to throw at their constituents from the get-go, so first came the Louisiana Lottery, approved in 1990 with the first scratch-off games going on sale in 1991. Skeptics immediately dubbed the Lottery as a tax for those who were not good at math.

The legislature passed riverboat gambling in 1991 once the Lottery was up and running and the following year approved a bill to allow New Orleans to build a land-based casino.

And just how did lawmakers sell the hard-nosed Baptists of north Louisiana on gambling? Why, education, of course. In December of 1986, The Louisiana Association of Educators agreed to support and work for the lottery, provided at least 75 percent of the proceeds are dedicated to education, a stipulation to which Gov. Edwin Edwards quickly agreed. That number now hovers somewhere around 35 percent, less than half of what was originally sought.

Politicians from the governor all the way down to local school board members were busy touting the financial windfall for education that was sure to come from gaming revenue. After all, hadn’t the Support Education in Louisiana First Fund been a good thing for state education?

The Support Education in Louisiana First Fund had its origins in September 1986 with a proposed amendment that would dedicate about $540 million from oil and gas leasing production in the outer continental shelf lands in the Gulf of Mexico. Known as the 8(g) fund, it has pumped more than $500 million into the state’s general fund for education since 1986. Or has it? In 2010, the Louisiana Legislature allocated $109.1 million in 8(g) funds to the Minimum Foundation Program (MFP) to fund public education in Louisiana. Or did it?

Since its inception, the Louisiana Lottery has transferred almost $2.3 billion to the state treasury but it wasn’t until 2003 that the legislature got around to passing a bill calling for a constitutional amendment dedicating lottery proceeds to the MFP. That law became effective on July 1, 2004. Last year, the legislature allocated $137.4 million in State Lottery proceeds to the MFP. Or did it?

And then there’s the $10 billion Education Jobs Fund passed by Congress last year. Also known as EduJobs, Louisiana’s share was $147 million and was supposed to be added to the MFP. But was it? Remember, this is Louisiana.

Even as many of the state’s local school boards had already factored their share of that $147 million into their budgets, Gov. Bobby Jindal on Nov. 11 announced plans to redirect the money. Just that quickly, at the whim of a “reform” politician, it was gone.

It turns out that the Support Education in Louisiana First Fund, the State Lottery proceeds allocated to education in Louisiana, and the EduJobs fund are nothing but part of an elaborate shell game and skullduggery, the political equivalent of a stage magician’s misdirection tactic. Smoke and mirrors.

Instead of allocating the full $3.3 billion to the MFP from the state’s General Fund as it had before the existence of 8(g), the State Lottery, or EduJobs funds and then adding those allocations to produce the education windfall Louisiana voters had expected, they were first subtracted from the General Fund. Only then were the combined $393.5 million in 8(g) funds, State Lottery proceeds, and EduJobs funding added back to the legislative appropriation which by that time, had shrunk to less than $3.1 billion.

The net gain to education from 8(g), EduJobs, and the lottery?

Zero. It was all a big con. Mission accomplished. Politicians 3, Louisiana 0.

So now, after the 2010 legislature gave top priority to pet projects, appropriating more than $500 million on non-governmental organizations (NGOs) such as councils on aging, golf courses, tennis courts, and community centers, and projects that should have been financed by local governments, the state has run out of money and teachers are being laid off.

And instead of budget cuts, Superintendent of Education Paul Pastorek sees the problem as bad teachers and failing schools. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

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Louisiana Voice introduces Jindal Bingo

Posted in Civil Service, Education, Ethics, Governor's Office, OGB, Office of Group Benefits, Privatization, Taxes, Transparency, Vitter on February 17, 2011| 1 Comment »

Okay, readers, LouisianaVoice is introducing a new game for everyone to play. It’s called JINDAL BINGO.

You play it just like you play regular bingo except instead of letters and numbers, Jindal catch-phrases will be called out and when you have a square that is labeled with the catch-phrase that is called, you cover it with a kernel of pure corn. The first person to complete a vertical, horizontal, or diagonal line with five straight kernels is the winner. The prize, we’re sorry to say, is another four years of Jindalisms.

Okay, get your cards ready and let’s play:

We’re in the state 90% of the time

Transparency

Stop whining

I have the job I want

Do more with less

Will be forthcoming

Veterans’ medals

A great idea!

Privatize

Three things:

Leadership and Crisis

Absolutely

BP

Merge UNO and SUNO (No one in New Orleans voted for me anyway)

Berms

No pay raise for classified employees

More berms

Gustav

Merge Tech and Grambling? No way. North Louisiana loves me.

Screw up State Employee Health Insurance Contract

Blame the moratorium for everything

Will not take stimulus money

Took stimulus money but didn’t tell anyone

FREE SPACE: DID NOT ENDORSE VITTER

Most ethical administration

Student-based budgeting

Building a better Louisiana

Race to the Top. No, wait. TOPS. I meant TOPS.

Chicken plant

Vitter who?

North Louisiana Protestant church testimony

Veterans Honor Medals

Deep Water Horizon

Photo-op

Hands-on leadership

Accountability

Tax breaks

No tax increase

P.S. Please feel free to log on and add any other Jindalisms you can recall. We need as many as possible to make the game competitive.

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State contracts continue to proliferate

Posted in Campaign Contributions, Contract, Contracts, Education, Governor's Office, Higher Education, Legislature, Legislators, Lobbyist, Public Records, Transparency on February 6, 2011| 2 Comments »

The big news out of the nation’s capital last week was a Feb. 3 Washington Post story trumpeting the fact that the federal government spent $15 billion less on contracts for outside products and services during fiscal 2010, the first reduction since 1997.

The $15 billion cutback in contracted services will barely show up in the federal budget but the decrease from $550 billion to $535 billion is a start for those seeking ways to reduce the federal deficit.

The $550 billion spent on contracts during fiscal 2009 was more than double the amount awarded in federal contracts as recently as 2001. Federal contracts have gone unchecked for so long that the practice spawned its own organization. The Professional Services Council is a trade association (read: lobbyist group) formed specifically for the government professional and technical services industry.

Gov. Bobby Jindal and the Louisiana Legislature might be wise to take their cue from Washington for a change instead of continuing to snipe at the Obama administration—at least on this one issue. Obama’s fiscal 2012 budget will propose an additional reduction of 10 percent in federal contracts. That’s another $50 billion or so in cuts, something that should make fiscal conservatives weep for joy.

For fiscal year 2008-09, the latest data available, Louisiana had 6,304 contracts for goods and services worth a whopping $5 billion, according to the state’s annual report for that year. That figure is somewhat misleading in that nearly $3.2 billion was in the form of 1,083 cooperative endeavor agreements ($2.9 billion), 468 interagency contracts ($213.4 million) and 495 intergovernmental contracts ($79.4 million). In other words, it was money simply shuffled between agencies.

But that still leaves 1,292 professional services contracts ($178 million), 160 personal contracts ($7.4 million), and 1,275 consulting contracts (an eye-popping $1.4 billion).

Like the federal contracts, state contracts have increased by 153 percent in dollar amount since fiscal 2005-06 when a paltry $2 billion in contract work was on the books. That amount made a quantum leap to $3.3 billion the very next year (a 64.6 percent increase), and jumped to $4.7 billion in 2007-08, an increase of another 44.5 percent.

Granted, much of that increase in 2006-07 was for contracts for recovery from two devastating 2005 hurricanes—Katrina and Rita—and granted, much of the money was from the influx of federal disaster relief dollars. But once the genie is out of the bottle, it’s hard to put her back. In 2008-09 the dollar amount nudged up another $337 million, helping to set the stage for the budgetary disaster now being faced by the Legislature and the Jindal administration.

The state has a $37.2 million interagency contract with the office of the attorney general for legal representation to various state agencies, boards, commissions, and departments but still sees the need for scores of private legal firms across the state to “provide legal services to various state agencies.” Only the top 50 contracts were listed in the report, but 41 of those totaled an additional $33.4 million. Eight of those contracts were for legal services totaling $18.3 million on behalf of indigents statewide, the report said.

Contracts, particularly professional service and consulting contracts are handed out by the state like so much candy on Halloween night and there appears to be little oversight. Fully half of all state contracts awarded during 2008-09 were not approved by the Office of Contractual Review (OCR).

The $5 billion for the 6,304 contracts approved by OCR is only part of the problem. Hidden away among all the numbers spewed out so far is another $655.5 million for 6,341 contracts that were awarded in fiscal year 2008-09 which were approved not by Contractual Review, but by the individual agencies awarding the contracts.

These contracts, awarded under an obscure state law that allows the OCR director to delegate authority to state agencies for approval of professional, personal, consulting and social services contracts. Typically, such contracts are for $20,000 or less but the statute also grants leeway to the OCR director to delegate that authority to any state agency as deemed appropriate.

Accordingly, 5,334 of those contracts awarded under the delegation of authority were for amounts below the $20,000 threshold. Those 5,334 contracts totaled $51.7 million, an average of $9,700 per contract. Another 1,007 contracts totaling $603.7 million, however, were also awarded under the delegation of authority.

More than half of that amount, $330.9 million, was accounted for in 383 contracts awarded by the Office of Group Benefits.

Group Benefits had another 32 contracts totaling $898 million approved by OCR. Other contracts approved by OCR included 282 for the Office of Economic Development ($629.6 million), and 1,080 awarded by the governor’s office through the Division of Administration ($2.3 billion).

One contract, for $68.9 million was apparently a major windfall for Cypress Realty Partners of Baton Rouge. The contract was for an alternative housing pilot program for the Louisiana Recovery Authority. An internet company profile of Cypress Realty said the company employed six people and had annual revenues of $410,000.

Two other contracts, both intergovernmental, were with out-of-state universities and totaled more than $900,000. Jackson State University of Jackson, Mississippi, was awarded a contract in the amount of $536,435 to “recruit, select and train teachers for placement in high need local education agencies/school systems.”

Clemson University of Clemson, South Carolina, was awarded a $375,000 contract to develop “active, selective catalysts for the conversion of natural-gas derived syngas (synthetic gas) to ethanol.”

Several contractors were paid to represent the state in other countries. Pathfinder Team Consulting received a $690,000 contract to provide foreign representative services in Europe while Access Marketing got a $234,000 contract to serve as a foreign marketing representative in Ontario Province and western Canada for the Office of Tourism.

A contract for $148,500 was awarded to Louis Bowden, dba Asia Capital to provide foreign representative services in China. Steve Lee and Hernan Gonzalez each received $75,000 contracts to provide foreign representation in Taiwan and Mexico, respectively. Ofihotel S.A. had a $60,000 contract to provide foreign representation in Central America.

Following is a partial list of contracts for fiscal year 2008-09:

• V- Vehicle Company, Ouachita Parish ($87 million);

• Foster Poultry Farms, Union Parish ($50 million) as inducement to purchase and operate poultry production and processing plant and provide 1,100 jobs;

• Lafourche Parish Council ($24.8 million), repair, rebuild, replace hurricane-damaged infrastructure;

• Bayou Lafourche Fresh Water District ($17.5 million) to clear debris from Bayou Lafourche;

• Lafourche Parish School Board ($480,000) to provide academic assistance in literacy and/or math, enrichment, recreation, technology, tutoring parental involvement and family literacy activities;

• Lafourche Parish Council, Office of Community Action ($319,964) to provide services and programs in accordance with the Community Service Block Grant Act of 1981;

• Terrebonne Port Commission ($10 million) for bulkhead, land improvements and other related infrastructure improvements, planning and construction;

• Terrebonne Parish Consolidated Government ($2.2 million) to provide intensive residential treatment program, provide funding to assist with design of a ring levee to surround Chabert Medical Center;

• St. Mary Parish Government/Council ($3.55 million) to operate a 52-bed inpatient treatment programs to individuals with addictive disorders; to operate a 12-adult bed and 21-children’s bed for TANF-eligible women and their dependent children;

• Vermilion Parish School Board ($9.2 million), rebuild, repair, replace hurricane-damaged primary and secondary public school infrastructure;

• Vermilion Parish Police Jury ($5.5 million) to repair, rebuild, replace hurricane-damaged infrastructure;

• St. Martin Parish School Board ($302,784) to provide comprehensive/preventive services to registered students;

• Jefferson Davis Parish Police Jury ($310,821) to complete strategic prevention framework planning process for substance abuse;

• West Feliciana Acquisition, LLC ($6 million) for acquisition, improvement, and operation of a paper mill in St. Francisville, creating 200-375 jobs;

• City of Ville Platte ($675,000) to provide juvenile delinquency prevention/diversion services to youth;

• City of Hammond ($367,728) to provide juvenile delinquency/diversion services;

• Southeastern Louisiana University TIP Comptroller’s Office ($2.1 million) to provide a continuum of family preservation, community based family support services;

• Lallie Kemp Regional Medical Center ($785,000) to provide Ryan White Care Act Aids Drug Assistance program;

• Grambling State University ($106,601) to provide educational opportunities for persons committed to entering or continuing in the field of child welfare;

• Louisiana Tech University ($1.2 million) to provide lessons to youth ages 11-14 to prevent/reduce addictive disorders;

• Southeastern Louisiana Area Health Education Center ($5 million) to provide system point of entry services for St. Mary, Terrebonne, Lafourche, Tangipahoa, and Washington parishes;

• First Steps Referral and Consulting ($2.8 million) to provide system point of entry services and provide site development workshop training to school leadership and teachers in Acadia, Evangeline, St. Martin, and Vermilion parishes;

• Families Helping Families at the Crossroads of Louisiana ($2.7 million) to provide point of entry services in LaSalle, Avoyelles, and Winn parishes;

• Youth Empowerment Project ($1.3 million) to provide system point of entry services for reintegration services for youth and counseling for families in Acadia, Evangeline, St. Martin, Vermilion, Jefferson Davis, and Allen parishes.

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Former Louisiana Budget Director says little has changed: politics still wins out over pragmatism

Posted in Budget, Contract, Contracts, Education, Exemptions, Incentives, Governor's Office, Higher Education, House, Senate, Legislature, Legislators, Politicians, Taxes, Transparency on January 27, 2011| 1 Comment »

The former state budget director says little has changed in the Louisiana Legislature’s spending mentality in the decade since he retired.

Stephen R. Winham, who served as the state’s budget director from 1988 to 2000 and as a budget analyst for the Department of Corrections budget, is also a vocal critic of the proliferation of professional service contracts.

“Back when the State Budget Office actually had some clout, budget analysts did a common sense review of professional services contracts,” he said. “But then Governor (Dave) Treen decided that the budget office had too much power and that no one should be questioning things his cabinet appointees did.”

Winham said after that, central oversight of state agency expenditures began to decline “and now nobody routinely second-guesses the need for professional services contracts above the agency level.”

The State of Louisiana Annual Report for 2008-2009, the latest report available, shows that the state issued more than $5 billion in contracts, fully 20 percent of the state budget. That figure is somewhat misleading because 1,083 contracts for $2.9 billion, nearly 60 percent, were in the form of cooperative endeavor agreements with other public agencies; $213.4 million was for interagency contracts, and $79.4 million was for intergovernmental contracts.

Still, the report showed there were 1,275 consulting contracts in the amount of $1.4 billion; 1,292 professional contracts totaled $178 million, 160 personal contracts came to another $7.4 million, and 1,531 contracts for social services came to $288.9 million.

Winham said during his tenure, his office presented an annual budget to the Legislature that cut funding to programs “below the line” of available funds. He said that list was a best effort at a fair representation of what people want and need from state government. “Every year the program ranked dead last on our list was funded,” he said. The program consistently ranked last by his office was an appropriation of about $3,000 for CODOSPAN (the Council for the Development of Spanish). It was the Spanish equivalent of CODOFIL (the Council for the Development of French in Louisiana),” he said. “Always last on our priority list and always funded.”

He said there were other local subsidies (now called Non Governmental Organizations, or NGOs) that were always funded, like basketball tournaments and festivals.

He said his worst experience was coming to realization that “when it comes down to a choice of politics and what makes the most sense, politics always wins. In a political environment, you can’t avoid that but when politics always supersedes everything else, it’s always frustrating.” His best accomplishment, he said, was getting the budgetary process automated and available on line. “We made the budget more accessible to the citizens.”

Given a choice, he said he would make a different career choice. “I felt I was spinning my wheels,” he said. “I would not do it over. I felt I was accomplishing things early on but I became less and less effective. The Joint Legislative Committee on Appropriations just started ignoring my presentations. Everything was just a formality,” he said.

“They say all politics are local, and they’re right,” he said. “That’s why (Gov. Bobby) Jindal goes all over the state handing out those little checks to local governments. It’s the same reason legislators want to protect their turf with those local appropriations and it’s also the reason Jindal won’t veto any of those appropriations.

“Jindal is always thinking about the next thing,” Winham said. “We need a governor who will think about the now.”

He said government is not a business. “When a candidate says he is going to make government operate like business, it’s just rhetoric. Government and business do not exist for the same purpose; government exists to serve the people and business exists to make a profit.”

Still, he expressed concerned about the Legislature’s apparent inability to rein in pork spending. He said he agrees with State Treasurer John Kennedy’s assessment that until individual legislators, working together in large numbers, begin to take their responsibility seriously, funding decisions will remain irrational, irresponsible, and reckless.

Winham said former Gov. Buddy Roemer was a strong fiscal conservative but where he cut in some areas, he added in others, so he never got credit for any cuts.

“I was surprised once when I did an analysis and found the least budget growth occurred during one of Edwin Edwards’s terms, his third term, I believe,” he said.

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Appropriations chairman opposed to selling state buildings

Posted in Budget, Contract, Contracts, Education, Governor's Office, House, Senate, Legislature, Legislators, OGB, Office of Group Benefits, Prison, Privatization on January 26, 2011| 1 Comment »

State Rep. James R. “Jim” Fannin (D-Jonesboro) says he is opposed to Gov. Bobby Jindal’s proposal to sell state buildings as a means of raising needed one-time revenue in an attempt to offset a projected $1.6 billion state budget deficit this year.

At the same time, Fannin, chairman of the House Appropriations Committee said he is not averse to some other plans floated by Jindal, among them the sale of two state prison facilities in Winn and Allen parishes. Both facilities are state-owned but are privately managed by Corrections Corp. of America (CCA) of Nashville, TN., and the GEO Group of Boca Raton, Florida, respectively.

“I am willing to discuss the selling of the two prisons because they have been operating of a cost of $8 million to $9 million less than what it would cost the state to run them,” Fannin said. He added that if similar cost savings could be duplicated, he would be willing to consider similar actions with other state prison facilities.

He said selling state buildings would amount to the state’s having to pay for them twice. “We would have to pay off the bonded indebtedness on the buildings and the tenants, state agencies, would have to continue paying rent to the new owners,” he said. “That would put the state in the position of paying for the buildings twice for the benefit of receiving one-time money.”

Jindal has estimated the sale of the buildings, all built during former Gov. Mike Foster’s administration, would bring the stat approximately $400 million in one-time revenue.

Fannin also serves as Chairman of the Joint Legislative Committee on the Budget and is a member of the House Executive Committee, the Joint Legislative Committee on Capital Outlay, the Legislative Budgetary Control Council, and the State Bond Commission.

A resident of Jonesboro, his district includes all or parts of the parishes of Jackson, Bienville, Winn, and Ouachita.

Other proposals that he said he is willing to consider include privatizing the state’s PPO health care plan and borrowing from future proceeds (securitization) of the state lottery. He said news accounts that quoted him as saying he would support the use of $100 million of one-time money to help plug the anticipated budget deficit were inaccurate. “I am willing to use as much one-time revenue as the Revenue Estimating Committee sees in growth for Fiscal Year 2012-13,” he said.

“The state is projected to have $400 million in growth this year,” he said. “Even with a budget deficit, there is projected growth but that’s a far cry from making up a $1.6 billion deficit. The state has just come through what we call in business a flat year. But in business, when you have a flat year, you don’t simply close the business, you adjust. I wish we didn’t have to be where we are but the process (economy) has brought us to this point. I hope there will continue to be future growth so that we won’t have to keep kicking this can down the road.”

Fannin said Louisiana has been compared to Alabama because of the similarity in population. “Alabama has far fewer state employees than Louisiana,” he said. While acknowledging that Louisiana has a state-run charity hospital system and Alabama does not and many of Louisiana’s state workers are employed by that system, he said, “Maybe Alabama has managed to address its health-care needs without the necessity of a charity hospital system.”

He said one of his biggest concerns is in the area of professional contracts awarded by the state, particularly by the Department of Education. “It’s absurd to have so many professional service contracts out there,” he said. “Kennedy (Treasury Secretary John Kennedy) has been raising this as an issue. Many agencies get around the requirement to obtain approval of contracts of $50,000 or more by awarding a lot of contracts for just under the required reporting level. There’s a tremendous amount of waste in those contracts. I understand (Sen. Ben) Nevers (D-Bogalusa) has been critical of state contracts, too,” he said.

The Department of Education, meanwhile, has responded to recent articles about contracts awarded by that agency.

Education Department spokesperson Rene’ Greer said the printout of department contracts provided by Kennedy was misleading because many of the contracts were multi-year contracts. One, for example was a five-year contract for $193,000 for a warehouse lease but when listed it appeared to be the amount for a single year instead of being spread over five years.

Moreover, she explained, many of the contracts were federal dollars and were contracts required by the federal government. Others were paid with moneys that went to local school districts and were not direct expenditures of the department. Still others, she said, were inter-agency transfers. “By the time you calculate salaries, expenditures for the Recovery School District, and other mandated expenditures, there was really very little left in the way of discretionary funds for the department to spend,” she said.

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