Louisiana Voice

Baton Rouge Advocate political reporter Elizabeth Crisp has reported that Gov. John Bel Edwards is in the process of renegotiating the state’s contracts with private partners that have taken over operations of the state’s system of charity hospitals. http://theadvocate.com/football/neworleansprepfootball/15861820-123/state-renegotiating-public-private-hospital-contracts

It’s too bad Crisp’s story was published when it was—last Saturday, May 21. Typically, stories published on weekends don’t get the attention they deserve and this was one of those cases.

You may remember the Jindal administration, working through its rubber-stamp LSU Board of Supervisors, inexplicably approved a contract for transfer of state hospitals in North Louisiana which contained 50 blank pages. https://louisianavoice.com/2014/05/04/jindal-lsu-board-civil-service-commission-must-share-the-blame-for-lsu-hospital-debacle-but-legislature-not-culpable/

That was way back in 2013—three years ago—and despite Jindal’s and his Commissioner of Administration Kristy Nichols’ insistence that everything was all right and that the 50 pages would be “filled in later,” things have only gotten worse.

Much worse.

First of all, predictably, lawsuits were soon filed of operation of the LSU Medical Center in Shreveport and E.A. Conway Medical Center in Monroe by the Biomedical Research Foundation of Northwest Louisiana (BRF). Who saw that coming?

It’s not that LouisianaVoice didn’t try to call attention to the obvious: that a contract isn’t a contract without a few specific provisions. https://louisianavoice.com/2013/06/04/lsu-board-of-stupevisors-gives-away-store-with-improbable-blank-contract-for-private-operation-of-four-state-hospitals/

Edwards, who as a state representative, was in regular contact with LouisianaVoice over the status of the approval or rejection of the deal by the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), now says as Governor that a savings must be achieved.

To that end, the administration is taking a hard look at the public-private partner contracts that Jindal touted as a savings of millions of dollars to the state. That quite simply, has not happened and the private partners recently testified that they are not making money off the state.

In what would appear to be a classic understatement, Edwards said the deals “were too hastily put together.”

And while Crisp wrote that most people agree that health care services have improved under the partnership but Rep. Lance Harris (R-Alexandria) says financials of the partners were never reviewed going into the deal. Harris says the state should be questioning the profit margin for the hospitals.

But a news story that never got any play anywhere in Louisiana has revealed that all is not well at LSU Medical Center in Shreveport or Lake Charles Memorial Hospital.

It’s bad enough that some now say the formerly state-run medical school no longer is considered among the nation’s elite. But Becker’s, an online news service geared to the hospital industry, released a story from the Leapfrog Group way back last Oct. 30 that listed 34 hospitals nationwide that received a grade of “F.”

http://www.beckershospitalreview.com/quality/where-are-the-34-leapfrog-f-hospitals-103015.html

Four of those are in Louisiana and two of those four are University Hospital in Shreveport and Lake Charles Memorial. University is being operated by BRF and Lake Charles Memorial took over operations of Moss Regional Hospital, formerly one of the state-run charity hospitals.

The grades were provided by the Leapfrog Group and calculated by patient safety experts and are peer-reviewed.

Leapfrog, founded in 2000, is a national nonprofit organization that collects and reports on hospital performance. The Leapfrog Safety Score, assigns letter grades to hospitals based on their record of patient safety, helping consumers protect themselves and their families from errors, injuries, accidents and infections.

Leapfrog, which releases safety score updates twice a year, said “D” and “F” hospitals have a 50 percent higher risk of avoidable death than those with a grade of “A.”

Approximately 33,400 lives could be saved if all hospitals had the same level of performance as “A” hospitals, Leapfrog says. http://www.beckershospitalreview.com/quality/a-grades-up-f-grades-down-in-updated-leapfrog-hospital-safety-scores-5-things-to-know.html

Perhaps those contract renegotiations should be stepped up a bit.

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“An honest politician is one who, when he is bought, will stay bought.”

—Financier, U.S. Senator, and Abraham Lincoln’s Secretary of War for one year Simon Cameron (erroneously attributed at various times to Lyndon Johnson and Huey Long, among others). Cameron resigned from Lincoln’s cabinet because of notorious corruption. When he demanded That Thaddeus Stevens take back his statement to President Lincoln in which Stevens said, “I don’t think he would steal a red-hot stove,” Stevens obliged by then saying to Lincoln, “I believe I told you he would not steal a red-hot stove. I will now take that back.”

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Baton Rouge attorney Jimmy Napper, originally from my old stomping grounds up in Lincoln Parish, has written an open letter to members of the Louisiana Legislature. His letter, in italics, is followed by some financial figures I obtained through public records requests.

Please, please, Legislators!

Quit changing the rules. Stop moving the goal line and keep your promises!

You are ruining the State, and we should not tolerate it anymore!

The State took less revenue for many years, intentionally, to build a new, much-needed industry in Louisiana, the film and television industry, and established a complete infrastructure made up of tens of thousands of our citizens to service it and make it flourish—to the great consternation of Los Angeles and others who have dominated and monopolized it in the past.

Now, in your wisdom, you have decided to change the rules and renege on your promises—probably the clearest and most decisive way to kill this formerly thriving business in our state.  Investment—intense businesses, like the film and TV industry (and Wall Street too)—abhor and are deadly allergic to uncertainty. And you have been and are creating blinding uncertainty with your actions. The resulting declines are already evident.

Can’t you keep your promises? especially to people who want to invest millions of dollars in this State? especially when they are the driver for a nationally successful new industry?

And then there is TOPS, one of the most important and successful things ever done in a State which has suffered terrible educational outcomes for decades.

You blindly followed Bobby Jindal and caused the cost of TOPS to sky-rocket the last eight years by slashing State appropriations to higher and education and then endorsing the raising of tuitions. The unavoidable and readily discernable result was increasing the cost of TOPS. Now you now scratch your collective heads and try to feign surprise, declaring that “we just can’t afford it anymore.”  Oh, really?

Then, you whine and tell how hard it is for you to do your job, as you tell us the only solution is to change the rules and break promises to the best and brightest young people in this State, thereby placing an unbearable financial strain on their parents.  You now tell us: No matter what was said before and what you relied upon, we have to move the goal lines and adversely affect your education and lives. We’re sorry, but you just cannot imagine how hard it is for us to do this to you.

Can’t you abide by and keep the rules, keep your promises, and do your job? especially for the best and brightest that are already in Louisiana colleges and who now face a loss of what they were promised (by you) they would get if they worked hard and earned it?

Please, please, Legislators, stand up and figure out how to be adults and to keep your promises!

After reading Napper’s letter, I thought it might be interesting to see just how diligent the House and Senate are in practicing pecuniary responsibility in light of all the budgetary cutbacks imposed on the rest of the state, higher education and health care at the forefront.

Traditionally, the legislature flies well beneath the fiscal radar year after year with no one in the media bothering to hold lawmakers accountable for their own spending habits.

Here’s what we found:

The Legislature is comprised of 39 senators and 105 representatives—144 lawmakers in all.

• Between them, the House and Senate have 252 employees—1.75 employees per legislator.
• The breakdown is 136 for the House and 115 for Senate (the number of Senate employees is 84.5 percent of that of the lower chamber even though its membership is only 37 percent of that of the House).
• The combined payroll for those 252 employees is $18.9 million—$9.6 for the House and $9.3 million for the Senate. Together, the two chambers’ per-employee average salary is $71,175 per year, far higher than the average state civil service employee makes. (Of course that average is bloated with top-heavy salaries earned by administrative personnel and attorneys who comprise nearly half the total number of employees.)
• The two chambers have 52 members (25 for the House and 27 for the Senate) who earn more than $100,000 per year—19 of whom (11 in the House and eight in the Senate) earn more than the governor’s $130,000 per year salary.

Has the legislature agreed to share the pain of other agencies who have been forced to endure deep budget cuts, resulting in layoffs? You can check that box “No.” Through the eight Jindal years and now into the Edwards administration, neither the Senate nor the House has once offered to cut their respective budgets.

Of course $18.9 million doesn’t represent much in the overall scheme of things but it would be a nice symbolic gesture if the legislature would at least offer to tighten its own belt.

Looking down the roster of employees, a few things jump out:

• The House has an Assistant to the Speaker ($68,600), a Special Assistant to the Speaker ($93,250), an Aide to the Speaker/Inmate Coordinator ($56,800), and an Executive Counsel to the Speaker ($181,200).
• There is a Director of Human Resources ($157,000), a Human Resources Manager ($83,000), two Human Resources Analysts ($75,000 and $72,000), and an Executive Assistant to Human Resources ($62,800).
• Deputy Fiscal Directors? The House has two of them ($136,800 and $101,700).
• No fewer than 12 Legislative Analysts ($141,700, $134,700, $130,800, $121,400, $114,900, $114,000, $110,000, $91,250, $88,300, $65,600, $44,200, and $35,800).
• Five Division Directors ($162,200, $137,500, $117,000, $113,600, and $103,000).
• Six Budget Analysts ($94,145, $86,700, $51,100, two at $46,800 each, and $45,000).
• Six Caucus Administrators ($121,500, $102,800, $82,150, $78,100, $56,650, and $42,100).
• And an Executive Director ($185,100).
• Clerk of the House ($220,000), a Secretary to the Clerk, two Assistant Clerks ($84,800 and $72,800), and several assistant clerks.
• Seventeen attorneys and a gaggle of Sergeants at Arms to go with communications specialists (2), a Television Audio Engineer, a Communications Director and a Deputy Communications Director, and a Communications Office Administrative Assistant.

While we’re not at all certain what those five Division Directors do, you’d think with two Deputy Fiscal Directors, 12 Legislative Analysts, six Budget Analysts, those Aides to the Speaker, and all those attorneys, the House would have a little better grasp of the state’s fiscal affairs.

The Senate likewise has:

• Six budget analysts ($140,340, $137,000, $111,500, $104,600, $100,000, and $72,500) and a plain vanilla budget analyst ($61,700).
• Two Senate Counsels ($134,300 and $104,300) and 12 Senior Attorneys (from $121,500 to $79,200).
• Five Directors ($188,900, $170,900, $148,400, $128,200, and $120,500).
• Special Counsel to the President ($118,600), Senate Counsel ($96,200), a Chief of Staff ($223,100), a Deputy Chief of Staff ($185,600), First Assistant Secretary of the Senate ($168,600).
• A Chief Legislative Researcher ($112,000) and a researcher ($53,000).
• A Chief Legislative Counsel ($130,800).

And all those researchers, lawyers, analysts and fiscal directors don’t even include offices, telephones, copiers, expense allowances, legislative salaries, per diem, and staff members for legislators in their home districts—all courtesy of state taxpayers.

With all that support staff, you’d think that members of the Senate and Governmental Affairs Committee would have requested a little background on Mike Edmonson before it held Wednesday’s confirmation hearing on his nomination for another term as Superintendent of State Police. But if you watched the proceedings, it was evident that they simply did not want any critical discussion of Edmonson’s professional record.

After hearing reports of senators and representatives assigning legislative staff to do research, homework and to even write school papers for legislators’ children in the past, perhaps staffers were just too busy performing those personal tasks for lawmakers to waste time on such petty matters as professional qualifications to lead the state’s law enforcement agency.

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I had a book signing at the Winn Parish Library in Winnfield Thursday (May 19). It was arranged by Tom Kelly (right), Publisher of The Piney Woods Journal.

It was fifty years ago this year and with zero experience that I walked into The Ruston Daily Leader to apply for a job opening as advertising salesperson. I was sick of climbing telephone poles for what was then Southern Bell (a little too much like work for my taste—plus I was a lousy telephone repairman).

Tom Kelly was publisher of The Leader then and he hired me at $65 per week—a $5 per week cut from what I was making for the phone company. It took him about a day and a half to realize he’d made a terrible mistake. I couldn’t sell so he made me sports editor where my crowning achievement was taking a trip with Tech assistant coach George Doherty to Shreveport where he signed Terry Bradshaw to a scholarship in the Bradshaw living room. (I wish I still had the photo—Terry had hair back then.)

But this man took me under his wing and taught me that all news is about people and the three most important times in a person’s life is when he is born, when he marries and when he dies. Everything else is just filler, he used to drill into my brain.

I would eventually leave for larger dailies but I always returned—at a higher position: news reporter, city editor and finally managing editor. Somewhere in between, I did manage to return to Louisiana Tech and obtain my degree. If he had not had the patience and a steady hand to provide the guidance that my meager skills demanded, there would be no books, no LouisianaVoice, and I would likely would have  been permanently maimed in a fall from a telephone pole. (Safety was not my strong suit in my younger days.)

But most important was a lifelong friendship that developed over those years (some of them admittedly tumultuous because we were both hard-headed) and an undying respect and admiration for tk, as we knew him from the signatures on his scathing memos admonishing us for sloppy reporting or a badly posed photograph. “Never take just one photo; take several and then pick the best one,” he would say. “We have lots of film.” (Who remembers film?)

(Photos courtesy of Brian Salvatore, Ph.D.)

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