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Archive for the ‘Higher Education’ Category

Notable Quotables (in their own words)

Posted in Education, Higher Education, House, Senate, Legislature, Legislators, LSU, Notable Quotables, Politicians, Revenue on March 19, 2013| 2 Comments »

“Many Legislators would rather get re-elected than make the right decision. They say they’re not going to raise taxes but they’re going to allow us to raise tuition.”

“Federal revenue for higher education is double what the states are doing now. I don’t have faith in legislators but I do have faith in them wanting federal money.”

“The power of Washington to hold states accountable may be the most important answer that we have. The more federal dollars are attached to state behavior, the less likely state legislatures are going to remove themselves from funding responsibility.”

—F. King Alexander, President of University of California Long Beach and more recently LSU President-designate, speaking on “Strategies for Fiscal Housekeeping” at the 14th Annual Travers Conference on Ethics and Accountability in Government Financing California, Feb. 11, 2011.

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LSU president-designate Alexander runs organization that capitalizes on Oxford University name despite no affiliation

Posted in Boards, Education, Governor's Office, Higher Education, LSU on March 19, 2013| 7 Comments »

Did the LSU Board of Supervisors opt for Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde in its selection of F. King Alexander, 50, as the next LSU president?

Will the LSU faithful, so alarmed at the prospects of an appointment of Secretary of Economic Development Stephen Moret to the position, end up wishing he had gotten it after all?

Most important of all, with academics, integrity and healthcare already sacrificed at the Altar of Jindal, will the LSU football program survive?

Perhaps these and other questions will be answered in due course but for the time being, let’s take a look at the paradox that is F. King Alexander.

The first issues that must be addressed are his credentials and his motivation for coming to LSU.

The politically-charged atmosphere in Louisiana in general and LSU in particular is such that one must question the wisdom of anyone wanting to walk into such a volatile situation. The mere fact that one would even apply for the position would seem to call his or qualifications into question.

The LSU student newspaper, The Reveille, was contemplating filing a lawsuit—and still might do so—to learn who all the applicants were. But considering who the winner was the paper’s editors may wish to reconsider its efforts to learn who the losers were.

On the one hand, there is the F. King Alexander who two years ago admonished state governments for “backing out of their responsibility” to keep public colleges working and affordable.

On the other hand, there is the F. King Alexander who operates what critics describe as a “vanity” conference operation that capitalizes on the Oxford University name without the benefit of its being officially affiliated with the English school.

The Baton Rouge Advocate describes Alexander as “a nationally respected up and comer” and his 28-minute speech in February of 2011at The 14th Annual Travers Conference on Ethics and Accountability in Government Financing California: Strategies for Fiscal Housekeeping was a direct assault on state governments’ failure to adequately fund state colleges, thus allowing private universities and for-profit colleges to syphon students away from public institutions.

His talk was a blistering attack on states that he said have taken federal funds for higher education while at the same time, cutting state appropriations by like amounts. Meanwhile, federal grants continue to increase for private schools.

It was the kind of rhetoric that college professors will embrace enthusiastically but the kind that got Alexander’s predecessor, John Lombardi canned by the Board of Supervisors—at the direction of Jindal who doesn’t like to be criticized by subordinates.

Then there is Alexander’s Oxford Round Table connection.

The Oxford Round Table is a series of interdisciplinary conferences that was founded by Alexander’s father, Kern Alexander but now run by F. King Alexander and his wife.

The purpose of the Oxford Round Table is “to promote education, art, science, religion and charity by means of academic conferences and publication of scholarly papers,” according to an online profile.

The organization has incorporated, dissolved and reincorporated several times in different states, including Kentucky, Illinois and Florida—both as a for-profit and as a non-profit. In 2008, the non-profit Oxford Round Table, Ltd. was established in the United Kingdom.

A 2009 report was critical of the organization because, the report said, it does not make its lack of academic connection to Oxford University clear.

Two years earlier, Times Higher Education reported that the organization had been criticized because it was trading on the name of Oxford University and failed to properly inform invitees that it had no formal academic links to the university.

The Oxford Round Table also has attracted controversy in at least three states, including Louisiana, over the cost of school boards’ paying for administrators to attend its conferences. This led to a successful legislative effort to tighten travel rules for school board members statewide, according to a 2003 New Orleans Times-Picayune story.

It remains to be seen if Alexander will bring his pro-funding rhetoric with him or whether his Oxford Round Table will set up shop in Baton Rouge—or both.

Either way, it should be interesting—like perhaps a reprise of the old Carol Burnett Show skit As the Stomach Turns.

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Notable Quotables (in their own words)

Posted in Ethics, Governor's Office, Health Care, Higher Education, LSU, Notable Quotables, Privatization on March 18, 2013| 1 Comment »

“These sections of the code generally prohibit Board of Trustees members from receiving anything of economic value for any transaction involving any of the colleges and universities that are under the jurisdiction of the Board of Trustees.”

—Former State Board of Ethics Chairman Gray Sexton, in a July 1996 ruling that the Natchitoches Times could not provide printing services for the Northwestern State University student newspaper because Times Publisher Lovan Thomas was a member of the Board of Trustees for State Colleges and Universities, the governing board for state colleges and universities, including Northwestern. The LSU Board of Supervisors is preparing to accept a memorandum of understanding from a Shreveport foundation to take over two LSU-run hospitals in Shreveport and Monroe even though the foundation’s incoming CEO is a member of the LSU Board of supervisors.

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LSU Board member named CEO of foundation taking over two LSU hospitals; ethics violation? What ethics violation?

Posted in Boards, Ethics, Governor's Office, Health Care, Higher Education, LSU, Privatization on March 18, 2013| 11 Comments »

This week’s civics lesson will take a look at how ethics for public officials, much like the Golden Rule, is based in large part on who has the gold.

And apparently, if you are appointed to the LSU Board of Supervisors by Gov. Bobby Jindal, you are considered golden.

Now, with the pending approval of the takeover of two LSU-run hospitals by a Shreveport foundation, it’s déjà vu all over again—except different.

On Jan. 16, 1996, the State Board of ethics issued an opinion that Lovan Thomas, owner and publisher of the Natchitoches Times newspaper and of Springhill Press printing company, violated state ethics laws when his printing company printed a tourism brochure promoting the Cane River through the Kisatchie National Forest.

Though Thomas was a member of the Natchitoches Parish Tourist Commission, the printing project was not initially a project of the tourist commission and Springhill Press, in late 1993 charged $10,000 for printing the brochure, a practice the ethics board more than two years later ruled was an ethics violation.

On July 17, 1996, the State Board of Ethics issued a second opinion that the Times could not provide printing services for the student newspaper at Northwestern State University in Natchitoches because Thomas was a member of the Louisiana Board of Trustees for State Colleges and Universities, the governing board for the university.

Three months later, on Oct. 25, the Board of Ethics struck again. This time the board ruled that the Times was prohibited from publishing an NSU legal notice for bids on a printing contract despite a state law which required that public notices by public bodies “shall be published in a newspaper of general circulation printed in the parish in which the budget unit (NSU) is situated.”

The Times was the only newspaper of general circulation in Natchitoches Parish. Moreover, the Times was the Natchitoches Parish Police Jury’s official legal journal and it was generally understood that NSU was required to publish its legal notices in the parish’s legal journal.

The ethics board ruled that Thomas was prohibited from assisting the Times in its contract with Northwestern while receiving compensation through his publishing company.

So, instead of printing its paper at home, NSU was forced to travel 70 miles to Shreveport for the service. And instead of paying $4 a square (100 words), NSU was forced to place its legal advertisements in the Shreveport Times at a cost of about $25 per square.

Disgusted with the entire process, Lovan resigned from the Board of Trustees and the parish tourist commission.

Even then, the Ethics Board continued to thwart Thomas in his attempts to do business with Northwestern.

On May 21, 1997, the board ruled that because state law required a two-year waiting period from the date of his resignation from the Board of Trustees, Thomas and the Natchitoches Times were still prohibited from bidding on and receiving advertising contracts with the university.

But now, not quite 16 years later, and with a State Ethics Board that has been gutted by Gov. Bobby Jindal, it is somehow okay for a foundation to enter into an agreement to take over two LSU public hospitals in Shreveport and Monroe even though the vice chairman and incoming president/CEO of the foundation slated to take over the facilities also sits on the LSU Board of Supervisors which currently oversees the hospitals.

The LSU Board of Supervisors on Monday tabled until March 27 approval of a memorandum of understanding (MOU) between the board and the Biomedical Research Foundation (BRF) that would call for the foundation to enter into a partnership with LSU Medical Center in Shreveport and E.A. Conway Hospital in Monroe.

Willis-Knighten Health System and Christus Health Shreveport-Bossier had expressed interest in the Shreveport facility when LSU first started seeking partners with available cash in 2012.

In Monroe, negotiations had been ongoing between E.A. Conway and St. Francis Medical Center but those talks were broken off by the state last week when LSU officials suddenly decided that the grass was greener on BRF’s side of the fence.

State Sen. Francis Thompson (D-Delhi) called the BRF model “the innovative, forward-thinking model that would elevate what are already the best hospitals of their kind in Louisiana and beyond. It also keeps both hospitals under the same management umbrella, which is appropriate,” he said.

Biomedical Research Foundation currently leases research labs to the LSU System. The annual lease payments of $4 million to $5 million paid by LSU represent a major source of income for the foundation.

John F. George, Jr., M.D. is Vice Chairman of Biomedical Research Foundation and is slated to become BRF President and CEO on March 27, the same date as the scheduled vote on the foundation’s takeover of the two hospitals. The Jindal administration has dismissed any talk of a conflict of interest by pointing out that George will not receive a salary as president and CEO of the foundation, thereby allowing him to remain as a member of the LSU Board of Supervisors.

George, who made two contributions of $5,000 each to Jindal’s campaign in 2007 and 2008, according to campaign records, said he will recuse himself from the LSU board’s action on March 27.

But that Oct. 25, 1996, Ethics Board opinion would seem to indicate that recusal was not sufficient to avoid a conflict. That ruling, in addition to saying that state ethics laws prohibited Thomas from participating in the Board of Trustees’ decision to contract with the Natchitoches Times for printing services, also said the participation question “cannot be cured by recusal since (state law) prohibits an appointed member of a Board from curing a participating problem through disqualification.”

Salary or no, recusal or no, the appearance of impropriety should be sufficient in some quarters as to demand George’s resignation from the LSU Board of Supervisors in light of his cozy relationship with BRF.

But appearances, like beauty, appear to be in the eye of the beholder—in this case, Gov. Bobby Jindal.

And Jindal wrote—that is, re-wrote—the ethics rules within weeks of taking office in January of 2008, prompting the mass resignation of nine of the board’s 11 members, including board administrator Richard Sherburne, in July of that year.

So now, with watered-down rules and a puppet board, there appears to be no one left to challenge the administration’s claim of no conflict of interest.

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LouisianaVoice offers joke for Jindal as a replacement for his ‘stupid’ Eric Holder bomb he recycled from Gridiron to CPAC

Posted in Education, Governor's Office, Health Care, Higher Education, Legislature, Legislators on March 18, 2013| 8 Comments »

Let’s review.

Back in January, at the Republican National Committee’s winter meeting in Charlotte, N.C., Gov. Bobby Jindal called on the Republican Party to “stop being the stupid party.”

Fast forward to the first week in March to the National Press Club’s annual Gridiron Show. Jindal is the speaker and scores with a couple of zingers that get the intended laughs. Then he prepared a jab at the Attorney General when he said, “I see Eric Holder is with us.”

Nothing wrong with that. Decent set up line. But any stand-up comic will tell you that you must know your audience. You don’t tell nightclub jokes at a church social and vice-versa.

So what does he do at last week’s CPAC meeting in Washington, D.C.? The same line. “I see Eric Holder is with us.”

Crickets chirping.

“Hello, is this mike on?”

Eric Holder wouldn’t be caught dead at a CPAC meeting.

And neither should Jindal. If the man doesn’t have the presence of mind to edit a recycled speech, he needs to come back home to Lake Corne.

Forrest Gump would have something appropriate to say about stupid.

But if opponents are looking for a silver lining, consider this: With all the court reversals he has undergone with some of his programs on education and retirement reforms, the luster appears to be fading on his once shining star.

With the continuing reports of his creating new positions like that of Assistant Commissioner in Procurement and Technology—a job title that never existed before—that was recently handed to Jan Cassidy, sister-in-law to Cong. Bill Cassidy at a cool $150,000 per year, that star may have flickered just a tad.

After his public scolding of his political party and his subsequent bombing at CPAC, it’s for certain that his star is no longer rising.

With the backlash he’s certain to get from his tax reform proposals in this year’s legislative session he may no longer be able to shove his agenda down the legislature’s throat.

With his record of absenteeism from the state, it’s questionable if the electorate will ever be in the mood to return him to any political office. State employees, teachers, the working poor who are being deprived of adequate health care and debt-ridden college students who are being told to pony up ever-increasing tuition because of higher education cutbacks, comprise a fairly sizable voting bloc.

But if Jindal insists on continuing to prattle on with his self-righteous lectures to fellow Republicans, here’s a joke he can tell that should lighten the mood:

A man walking along the beach at Grand Isle comes across a lamp. He pulls it out of the sand and starts to rub the sand off the surface of it.

Poof! Out of the lamp pops a genie in a cloud of smoke. “Oh, Master, you have freed me from the lamp. You get a wish.”

“I thought I got three wishes,” protests the man.

“I’m not that genie. I got only one. Take it or leave it.”

The man thinks for a while and finally says, “I wish to live forever.”

“C’mon man, I can’t grant you that wish. That’s absurd. Be reasonable and make another wish.”

He thinks longer and harder before he finally says, “Okay, I wish to live until Gov. Jindal shows compassion and empathy for public school teachers, the poor and state employees.”

The genie looks down at the man, smiles, and says, “You crafty devil.”

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