When the apple falls far, far from the tree

Former U.S. Congressman and Louisiana Governor Buddy Roemer recently dropped his long-shot presidential aspiration to tackle an even more daunting goal: reforming our corrupt campaign finance practices.

Gov. Roemer even appeared before Congress last month to testify about the malign effects of unfettered campaign contributions on our political system. At a hearing entitled “Taking Back Our Democracy: Responding to Citizens United and the Rise of Super PACs,” Roemer complained that “Our institutional corruption places our elections in the hands of the mega contributors.”

Taking his argument just a bit further, the former governor said “The system is not broke … It’s bought.”

The theme of Roemer’s testimony, according to this article by Advocate Washington Bureau Chief Jordan Blum, was “the need to enact campaign finance reform and rein in runaway corporate spending in elections.”

It is a message apparently lost on his politically ambitious son, Chas, and other members of the state board of education who have thrown in with Gov. Bobby Jindal’s radical education agenda.

According to campaign finance reports, Chas Roemer was the beneficiary of $597,142.15 during last fall’s campaign for the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education.

The bulk of Chas’ contributions, more than $248,000, came from the Republican Party of Louisiana.

The Louisiana Association of Business and Industry, through its network of PACS, put $87,500 into the Roemer campaign.

The ABC Pelican PAC, the political arm of the Associated Builders and Contractors, contributed $20,000 to Chas’ campaign.

Gov. Jindal himself donated $15,000 to Roemer’s campaign.

The Standard Companies of New Orleans, a beverage company subsidiary of DS Waters of America, put up $14,000.

Publishing magnate Rolf McCollister gave Roemer $6,000, on top of invaluable column inches in his newspaper.

From its offices in Virginia, the pro-voucher Louisiana Federation of Children’s PAC sent another $6,000.

Roemer’s closest competitor, former Ascension Parish Superintendent of Schools Superintendent Donald Songy, raised a total of $56,660 for the race (full disclosure: the Louisiana Federation of Teachers contributed less than $6,000 Songy’s campaign).

Given that disparity in resources – nearly $600,000 versus less than $57,000 – Roemer was able to mount a very effective, and very negative, multi-media campaign that overwhelmed Songy.

Roemer was not the only candidate blessed by Jindal and his big business friends. Candidates allied with the governor amassed contributions of more than $2.8 million. Even New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg got into the act, donating $55,000 to Jindal’s candidates. The closest competitors to the Jindal ticket raised a combined total of less than $348,000.

The money fueled a tsunami of advertising that had never been seen in BESE races, guaranteeing a victory for Gov. Jindal’s forces.

The immediate result of the election was the anointing of John White as superintendent, followed by a BESE kowtow to whatever privatization scheme the governor proposes. Which, as blogger Mike Deshotels writes here, means that hundreds of millions of dollars will soon be siphoned away from public schools into the pockets of “course choice providers” linked to big business.

Buddy Roemer is right. Big money donors and their unlimited contributions are the major corrupting factors in American politics. When will he tell Chas?

Jindal says he will propose company schools

Governor Jindal's legislative agenda will include an expansion of charter schools, one which will allow an unprecedented intrusion of the business community into the charter school movement, according to this article by Times-Picayune reporter Ed Anderson.

Speaking at the annual meeting of the Louisiana Association of Business and Industry, the governor said he wants a new law allowing businesses to house charter schools on their property, to stack charter school boards with representatives of the businesses, and to give preferred attendance to children of the business' employees.

Lawmakers attending the meeting said they had no advance notice of the plan, and thus far no one has seen the actual language that will be proposed by the governor.

It is difficult to take a position on the plan before a specific bill, with details, is introduced. Just a year ago, Gov. Jindal said that his signature legislation for 2010 would be a Red Tape Reduction Act, aimed at easing the paperwork burden on teachers. But when the actual bill was introduced, it dealt with allowing school boards to opt out of state education law and policy, with no mention of teachers and paperwork.

The 2011 legislative session is supposed to be dedicated to fiscal issues, but each lawmaker is allowed to introduce up to five non-fiscal bills. The governor has no lack of allies who will be willing to bring his plan before the session.

Another explosive issue

Here's another bill to add to the list of incendiary devices being hurled at the capitol this spring. Rep. Steve Carter of Baton Rouge wants to take away the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education's authority to approve charter schools and give it to a panel mostly appointed by the governor.

As Advocate reporter Will Sentell writes here, the governor's appointees will come from lists provided by the Louisiana Association of Business and Industry, the Louisiana Association of Public Charter Schools and the Council for a Better Louisiana.

A LABI spokesperson says, with what can only be assumed to be a straight face, “This is an effort to somewhat depoliticize the process.”

Bobby Jindal's big school flip-fop

Just a year ago, Gov. Bobby Jindal and his minions seemed to believe that school boards were the root of all evil. So incompetent and intrusive were school boards that the governor and Superintendent of Education Paul Pastorek prevailed upon freshman legislator Steve Carter to introduce a package of bills that would have stripped local school boards of most of their authority. Joining Jindal and Pastorek in their crusade against local school boards were the Louisiana Association of Business and Industry and the Council for a Better Louisiana.

This year, Jindal and his cohorts are flipping like flapjacks. At a press conference attended by Pastorek, Carter LABI and CABL, the governor announced that there are too many restrictions on local school boards. His new legislative package seeks to empower school boards by allowing them to opt out of state laws and policies deemed "burdensome regulations ... that may hinder academic growth."

Judging from the governor's press release, it looks like one big target of the legislation is teacher tenure. That is another big flip-flop. The state's Jindal-approved application for federal Race to the Top funds aims to ensure that tenure “is a meaningful and active process” with “respect and value.”

The administration is no stranger to hypocritical flip-flops, though. This is the same bunch that touts education as the key to economic development while simultaneously stripping higher education budgets, eliminating programs and whole departments.

Fear strikes out: Few takers at anti-union press conference

Big business, fronted by the Louisiana Assocation of Business and Industry, failed to draw a big crowd at a fear-mongering press conference, according to this item in The Daily Report.

The idea was to create an impression of mass resistance to the proposed Employee Free Choice Act, which would make it easier for employees to win the protections of a collective bargaining agreement.

But the "sparsely attended event" apparently fizzled even as LABI mouthpiece Jim Patterson characterized the proposed law as "a coercion of workers into the union fold."

As Louisiana AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Julie Cherry accurately stated, workplace coercion is generally a function of management, not labor.

Said Cherry about the failed effort to picture workers as bogeymen, “There’s a lot of fear out there about what (employee free choice) means to the employer. We see it as an incentive to sit at the table and bargain reasonably.”

Where is the leadership?

From the left and the right, there is a call going out in Baton Rouge: Where is the leadership? Lack of that most important character trait is dragging this legislative session to a most unsatisfactory close.

In this BayouBuzzcolumn, Louisiana Weekly editor Christopher Tidmore focuses on a couple of issues, including the bogus claim that little can be done about Louisiana’s budget woes because so much of the budget is off limits: “We continue to hear Bobby Jindal, the leges and the media opinion writers declare that the state constitution forces cuts to higher education and health care whenever there is a shortage of revenues because all the rest of the money is dedicated.”

That, Tidmore points out, is nonsense. “Of the $30 billion in the current state budget,” he writes, “$3.9 billion, or 13%, is constitutionally protected…the remainder of the budget, 87%, is NOT constitutionally protected. Only statutes, simple laws, prevent access to these areas.”

It is convenient to blame protected funds like public education’s Minimum Foundation Program for our leaders’ inability to adequately fund higher education and health care. But it is dishonest. As Tidmore puts it, “Willful ignorance has led to a quarter of billion dollar sledgehammer to our colleges and hospital care for the poor.”

Strong and honest leadership would scour the budget, but that would mean taking a hard look at pet projects and the hundreds of millions of dollars spent on private contractors. Nobody seems to have the hueves to take that step.

Then there is an Advocate editorial critical of state “leaders” for their slavish obedience to anti-tax ideology. It’s an allegiance that frames even a reasonable and necessary levy like the tobacco tax as a rape of the Constitution and a dagger in the heart of freedom-loving citizens everywhere.

As Advocate’s editorial writer put it,

Jindal’s opposition is astonishing, given his background in health policy.
Raising taxes on tobacco is a way to deter its use and avoid the heavy treatment
costs of cancer and other smoking-caused diseases.
Still, remember 2012. That fiscal year will begin on July 1, 2011. This Legislature will have to face shortfalls of an estimated $1 billion or more that year, after significant cuts will be made this year to health care and higher education.
Members might be more reasonable when they’re up against that wall.

Even Dan Juneau of the Louisiana Association of Business and Industry is getting in on the leadership act. In this column, he takes note of the gut-fight between the Senate and House over tax and spending issues, and faults Jindal for not taking command of the situation.

Writes Juneau, “Fiscal disputes such as the current one are somewhat rare. Why? Because the Legislature usually follows the governor's lead on budget matters…The outcome could be resolved fairly quickly if Governor Jindal sold the public on exactly what he thinks the solution to the problem should be–and why.”

As four former Louisiana governors recently put it: “Lead governor, we are prepared to follow.”

Strange bedfellows

What idea can be so bad that it brings together such disparate groups as the Louisiana Federation of Teachers, Louisiana Association of Business and Industry, Council for a Better Louisiana and the City of New Orleans?

You can read the answer in this editorial in today's Shreveport Times. Here's a hint: it's increasing the homestead exemption.

Leges look at property taxes

On the same day that Lt. Gov. Mitch Landrieu told the Press Club of Baton Rouge that the state economy is on the brink of disaster because of overly generous tax cuts, a legislative committee began consideration of more tax cuts that could devastate local governments.

As Robert Travis Scott of the Times-Picayune reports here, the House Ways and Means Committee is looking at some 28 plans that would affect property taxes. Since there is no state property tax, these bills would only have an impact on local governments such as school boards.

Gov. Bobby Jindal supports at least some of the property tax cuts, which would increase the homestead exemption for home owners. That puts him at odds with some of his loyal supporters, the big businesses represented by the Louisiana Association of Business and Industry. LABI is concerned that local governments would increase taxes on business if revenue from homeowners falls.

Details emerging on school board overhaul

The political world was disappointed on Friday, when Superintendent of Education Paul Pastorek failed to reveal the details of his plans to overhaul state school boards.

But a shortened speech doesn't stop a determined reporter. Today, Advocate reporter Will Sentell has some details about the proposals, one of the legislators who plan to introduce them, and a couple of the powerful interests backing them.

As for the details, Sentell writes,

Aside from redefining board authority, the package would also:

• Limit board pay to a maximum of $200 per month for rank-and-file members,
  down from $800 now.
• Limit the service of local members to 12 years. There is no cap now.
• Toughen nepotism laws.

The author is State Rep. Steve Carter (R-Baton Rouge), and the interests backing the bills are the Louisiana Association of Business and Industry and the Council for a Better Louisiana.