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Jindal Orwell uses vetoes of legislative oversight to make strong case for his being more equal than 136 lawmakers

Posted in Governor's Office, Health Care, House, Senate, Legislature, Legislators, Privatization, Transparency, Veto on July 4, 2011| 7 Comments »

George Orwell, writing in Chapter 10 of his literary classic Animal Farm, said, “All animals are equal but some animals are more equal than others.”

Never was that well-worn quote more obvious than when, on July 1, 2011, Gov. Bobby Jindal cast aside the civics class principal of the three equal branches of government by exercising his veto power over legislative oversight of one of his pet projects—privatization.

The vote was 36-0 in the Senate and 100-0 in the House but Jindal still pulled rank on the Louisiana Legislature and vetoed SB-207 by Sen. Willie Mount (D-Lake Charles), as well as three provisions of HB-1 that would have given the legislature some say into the governor’s privatization of the state’s Medicaid program.

The vetoes left no doubt as to the determination of the governor to move forward with his sweeping privatization of several state government programs even though one report said that the proposed privatization of the Office of Group Benefits it dead—at least for this year.

Jindal has already privatized one agency a year ago, the Office of Risk Management, but failed in his efforts to sell three state prisons earlier this year.

He was less than specific in giving his reasons for the vetoes, saying only that the three provisions that he stripped from HB-1would delay implementation of one program while eliminating the flexibility of the Department of Health and Hospitals (DHH) to initiate changes in two other.

In one case, he said that legislative involvement could delay implementation of a program that provides care for youth who have behavioral health problems that put them at risk of being institutionalized.

Language in HB-1 would have required DHH to submit a report providing details of the programs structure, service delivery provisions, population served, and estimated costs for budget committee review at least 30 days prior to awarding a contract.

The administration is presently evaluating a dozen private companies that have submitted proposals to establish networks of health-care providers, including physicians and hospitals with which Medicaid recipients would enroll in an effort to cut costs and better coordinate health care. Ten of those companies are insurance companies.

Jindal’s “coordinated care networks” would use state revenue to pay private insurance companies and other private entities to provide the medical needs for two-thirds of the state’s 1.2 million Medicaid recipients.

Mount, chairperson of the Senate Health Committee, said she was disappointed in the governor’s veto.

“This (Jindal’s privatization) is a significant change in the way we are offering health care,” she said, adding that the legislature should be an “active and engaged” partner to ensure that health care outcomes are both improved and cost-effective.

Jindal also cited “contingencies” in vetoing the proposals but legislators earlier this year complained that Jindal himself included “contingencies,” in his original budget proposal, including the proposed sale of three state prisons that would have required legislative approval before the funds could be appropriated.

Rep. Eddie Lambert (R-Prairieville) said Jindal apparently had a different perspective on contingencies when considering vetoes as opposed to drafting his budget.

“I’m somewhat surprised he would veto those things because the more oversight you have in government, the better taxpayer interests are going to be served,” said Lambert, vice chairman of the House Appropriations Committee.

“The governor is not too keen on legislative oversight,” said Sen. Lydia Jackson (D-Shreveport), who said she has long been a proponent of the idea that the Legislature should exercise more independence in budgeting. She is vice chairperson of the Senate Finance Committee. “Maybe these vetoes will be the kick in the pants for us to exert ourselves a little more,” she said.

Not only did SB-207 receive unanimous support in both the Senate and House, it also was endorsed by the Louisiana Hospital Association, the Louisiana State Medical society, and the New Orleans Metropolitan Hospital Council.

Jindal, in his veto message, said Mount’s bill “terminates Louisiana’s Medicaid reform initiative, Coordinated Care Networks, as well as the Community Care Program on Dec. 31, 2014.

“Coordinated Care Networks will provide a medical home for 800,000 Medicaid recipients, providing better access to primary and preventative care, improved health outcomes, with an anticipated savings of $24 million in the upcoming fiscal year and $135.9 million in state fiscal year 2013.

“Inserting a termination date for this important reform and preventing Louisiana from improving the performance of outcomes in our current Medicaid system sends the wrong message, that we are incapable of providing better care to our people, and we can do no better than our ranking of 49th in the nation for health outcomes. I am not content with the outcomes of our current Medicaid program and am committed to reforming our Louisiana health care system.”

Now that’s making a case for being more equal than others.

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Notable Quotables (in their own words)

Posted in Charters, Education, Governor's Office, House, Senate, Legislature, Legislators, Notable Quotables, Retirement on July 4, 2011| 2 Comments »

“Unabashed power trip without a road map. Where he’ll throw us off the bus, no one knows.”

—State Sen. D.A. “Butch” Gautreaux, on Gov. Bobby Jindal’s veto that protects charter schools that leave the Teachers Retirement System of Louisiana from being required to repay the state for their pro rata shares.

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Jindal veto rescues charter schools that opt out of TRSL

Posted in Education, Governor's Office, House, Senate, Legislature, Legislators on July 4, 2011| 1 Comment »

It’s been a quarter-century and still lawmakers continue to tinker with the Support Education in Louisiana First (SELF) Fund, originally established ostensibly to bolster salary expenses for K-12 and higher education but realistically was only a political shell game.

The most recent attempt was by Rep. Walt Leger (D-New Orleans) whose HB-516 would have diverted the first $1.8 million from the SELF Fund to a new Casino Support Services Fund.

Gov. Bobby Jindal vetoed the bill, which was approved in its final form by the House on June 21 by a 78-3 margin with 24 absences. It passed the Senate by a margin of 25-11, with three absences.

Jindal also vetoed SB-6 by Sen. D.A. “Butch” Gautreaux (D-Morgan City) and in doing so, may have tipped his hand on his intentions to continue his push for more charter schools and continued contracting and outsourcing of jobs presently being performed by state employees.

SELF had its origins in September of 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 since 1986. The money was supposed to have been used to augment state education revenue. Instead, before money from 8(g), the State Lottery, or EduJobs , is added to the $3.1 billion Minimum Foundation Program (MFP), a formula used to determine the appropriation for education, it is first subtracted from the MFP, resulting in a zero net gain for education.

Leger’s bill would have taken an additional $1.8 million from SELF in order to fund the City of New Orleans’ casino support services contract, Jindal said in his veto message. The casino support services appropriation, Jindal said, “has already been achieved through HB-1,” the state’s general appropriation bill.

SB-6 by Gautreaux would have provided that any employing agency that terminates its participating in the Teachers’ Retirement System of Louisiana (TRSL) be required to remit to the retirement system its share of any unfunded accrued liability (UAL) of the retirement system existing on the June 30 immediately prior to the date of the agency’s termination.

Gautreaux’s bill was apparently targeting charter schools that opt out of the teachers’ retirement system. “If a charter school participates for three years and opts out, I felt they should repay the three years for which they received funding for the retirement system,” he said. “With the veto, they get to participate for three years, pull out, and not have to pay anything back into the system.”

In his veto message, Jindal revealed that his agenda to create even more charter schools and to further privatize the state’s educational system remains unchanged.

He said Gautreaux’s bill “unnecessarily ties the payment of state retirement debt to much-needed reforms such as greater autonomy for public schools through charter conversions and better fiscal management through contracting and outsourcing. In doing so, this bill creates a significant deterrent to educational reform efforts.”

“Jindal wants to expand the charter school system to the benefit of those children who are going to perform well to the detriment of low-income children,” Gautreaux said. “I have no problem with good charter schools, but if a school decides to terminate its participation in the state teachers’ retirement system they should be required to repay the money they received from the state.”

The bill passed the House by a 57-28 margin with 20 members being absent. It passed in the Senate by a 38-0 vote.

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Jindal less than consistent in couple of curious vetoes

Posted in Governor's Office, House, Senate, Legislature, Legislators, Transparency, Veto on July 4, 2011| Leave a Comment »

BATON ROUGE (CNS)—Among the 16 bills vetoed by Gov. Bobby Jindal thus far was one that must have raised a few eyebrows, especially with four members of the Louisiana House of Representatives.

HB-533 by Rep. Richard Gallot (D-Ruston) would have made various, mostly cosmetic changes to the election code, including one that Jindal said he found “problematic.”

“House Bill No. 533, provides that a candidate who is neither a Republican nor a Democrat and who does not belong to any other unrecognized party shall be listed as ‘Independent’ on an election ballot,” Jindal wrote in his veto message.

Gallot said some Republicans are fearful of right-wing conservatives campaigning as being “more conservative than they are” and that many unaffiliated voters and candidates believe it unfair that they can only be called “No Party.”

“Nonaffiliated voters are the fastest-growing segment of registered voters,” Gallot said. To ignore the fact that some people are fed up with all the parties is doing them a disservice,” he said.

Three members of the House are listed on the state legislative web page as Independents: Jerome Richard of Thibodaux, Joel C. Robideaux of Lafayette, and Ernest Wooten of Belle Chasse. Additionally, Rep. Michael Jackson of Baton Rouge now may have to change his plans to change his registration from Democrat to Independent.

Jindal said in his veto message that state law stipulates that candidates who do not belong to any unrecognized party shall be listed as “No Party.”

He said that state statute says, in part, “No political party shall be recognized in this state which declares its name solely to be ‘Independent’ or ‘The Independent Party.’”

Therefore, the governor said, that provision in Gallot’s bill was “in conflict with current law.”

That may leave some voters wondering what the law says about a candidate choosing his first name from a network television sitcom and running for governor under that nom de plume.

Piyush Jindal selected his Americanized first name of Bobby from the television show The Brady Bunch and has run for office under that alias–twice for Congress and twice for governor, winning all but his first run for governor.

If he were to apply the same logic to his own candidacy as he did to Gallot’s bill, then shouldn’t he run as Piyush and not Bobby?

Equally curious and more than a little inconsistent was Jindal’s veto of SB-21 by Sen. Neil Riser (R-Columbia) that would have exempted from state sales taxes water, mineral water, carbonated water and flavored water sold in containers.

Jindal said the exemption would result in state revenue losses of $8.3 million in the upcoming fiscal year and a total state revenue loss of $52.7 million over the next five years.

“I am concerned this could cause our budget for the upcoming year to be out of balance,” he said. “It is important that we protect scarce resources for priorities like healthcare and higher education.”

The veto of a tax break is unusual enough, given Jindal’s propensity to offer tax incentives whenever and wherever possible. Of course, he prefers giving those breaks to political allies of the corporate stripe as opposed to individuals.

Riser was somewhat confused by the governor’s actions. “Most people don’t realize there are zero taxes on soft drinks, but yet we tax water,” he said.

“Water delivered to the home through pipes is already exempt from sales tax,” Jindal said.

But still, as noted earlier, the veto was curious and inconsistent. On June 12, Jindal vetoed a renewal of a 4-cent cigarette tax that would have meant $12 million additional to the state in direct tax revenue, plus another $36 million in federal Medicaid revenue. Annually.

That’s $48 million per year the state stood to lose because of Jindal’s bull-headedness over his promise not to impose “tax increases.” The only problem with that is it wasn’t a “tax increase,” it was a tax renewal. College tuition increases? Now, that’s a tax increase. But apparently he’s okay with making it even more difficult to afford a college education.

And that $48 million per year is almost six times the $8.3 million he was so concerned about losing to the tax exemption on the sale of water. He said the water tax exemption would have cost the state $52.7 million over five years. Try a five-year loss of $240 million over failure to renew the cigarette tax.

And how was the cigarette tax revenue to have been used? Healthcare. And what was his expressed concern over the tax exemption on the sale of water? “It is important that we protect scarce resources for priorities like healthcare and higher education.” His words, not ours.

At least the House, while not possessing the stones to override his cigarette tax veto, did include the tax renewal as an amendment to the TOPS bill that will be put to voters this fall in the form of a Constitutional amendment.

And, as he hits the campaign trail in the weeks leading up to October’s election, he can truthfully and oh-so-sincerely tell voters that it was not he who opted to attach that 4-cent tax to the TOPS bill.

After all, it apparently is all about saving face.

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ORM TPA downsizes only long time Baton Rouge employee

Posted in Contract, Contracts, Governor's Office, ORM, Office of Risk Management, Transparency on June 30, 2011| Leave a Comment »

Chalk up another casualty to Gov Bobby Jindal’s drive to privatize.

It was one year ago on July 1 that F.A. Richard & Associates (FARA) began its phased-in takeover of the Louisiana Office of Risk Management under a contract whereby the state was to have paid FARA an amount “not to exceed $68,119,710” to assume operations of the agency. Normally, we would round that off to $68.1 million in the interest of brevity but the reason we don’t here will become evident soon enough.

Approximately 10 months later ORM and FARA came before the House Appropriations Committee to explain the Division of Administration’s approval of a contract amendment of $6,811,971, bring the new contract total to “a maximum amount of $74,930,868.

For those adept at math, that equates to precisely 10 percent of the original contract amount. ORM Assistant Director Patti Gonzales, when questioned as to why approval of the Appropriations Committee was not sought for the amendment, informed members that The Office of Contractual Review may approve a one-time amendment of up to 10 percent without committee approval.

That was bad enough, but then Gonzales let slip that it was anticipated that only about $2 million of that $6.8 million amended amount would actually be spent.

Apparently no one on the committee had the presence of mind to ask why the contract would be amended by $6.8 million if only $2 million was to be spent. The answer became apparent a week later when it was learned that FARA had been bought by an Ohio company named Avizent.

Could it be that $6.8 million amendment bolstered FARA’s bottom line sufficiently to make the company more attractive to Avizent?

Better yet, why did ORM Director Bud Thompson and FARA CEO Todd Richard sit in that committee hearing with Gonzales and never open their mouths about the pending sale that had obviously been in the works for weeks, if not months? With another $6.8 million at stake, lawmakers deserved to know that.

A plea of confidential negotiations is a cop-out. By the time of that hearing, the sale was all but final, needing only the extra $6.8 million to sweeten the deal.

Avizent has 35 offices in 25 states but its Baton Rouge office had only one employee at the time of the purchase of FARA.

That employee was Ramsey Horn, a claims adjuster with both adjusting and supervisory experience dating back 19 years to when he was originally employed by ORM in 1992.

On several occasions, Horn informed Avizent’s home office that he needed more personnel in the Baton Rouge office to assist him with the office workload. His pleas went unanswered. On Thursday, one day before the one-year anniversary of FARA’s takeover of ORM, Horn was sacked.

No reason was given for Horn’s being given his walking papers other than the pending merger of FARA with Avizent. In short, his salary, likely higher than those being offered incoming ORM employees, was a distraction the new owners didn’t need. After all, why pay Horn X dollars when he can be replaced by an incoming ORM adjuster at X minus 15 or 20 percent?

Perhaps FARA and/or Avizent were listening when Jindal said state to “do more with less.” Perhaps they wish to carry that philosophy over into the private sector. After all, with two years of frozen salaries, the Jindal administration has certainly made the idea work in the public sector.

With more of ORM’s coverage lines due to be taken over by FARA/Avizent, it would seem there would be a need for more, not fewer, employees to efficiently make the transition.

But, if one adheres to the administration mantra of doing more with less and doing it without salary increases for two consecutive years, perhaps Ramsey Horn was simply expendable.

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