Panels Brainstorming Smaller Government

One could sense the collective yawn and rolling of the eyes when Gov. Bobby Jindal urged two separate commissions on down-sizing state government and higher education to be bold, to think big and to come up with recommendations that won't just gather dust on a shelf, as has happened in the past.

Skepticism abounds, for these advisory panels, like those before, can think outside their boxes all they want, but it's the governor and the Legislature who have to follow through to make government institutions any smaller, as has not happened in the past.

This time, however, with state revenues in steep decline for years to come, change is going to happen, the only question being if and how government and higher education will work when it is all done.

One would think Jindal, with his big-picture vision and laser-like focus, would not need a couple of blue-ribbon commissions to tell him what needs to be done. Nor is the Legislature clueless.

What they both need is outside validation and broad-based public support for the hard political choices to curtail government services and shrink universities.

For that, the Commission on Streamlining State Government and the Postsecondary Education Review Commission could prove useful, not to mention quick and cheap for government work.

With only four months to report back, the streamlining commission is taking a broad look at state government instead of drilling down into each agency. "We want to make sweeping recommendations," said its chairman, Sen. Jack Donahue, R-Mandeville, with the aim of saving of hundreds of millions of dollars.

Off the top of his head, he suggests centralizing human resources and technology support instead of every agency having its own staffs for those functions. The governor urged the streamliners to look at merging some state agencies and privatizing and outsourcing the work of others.

Comprised mostly of state officials and with minimal operating expenses, if the streamliners come up with one $10 million idea that the Legislature buys, the effort won't be wasted.

The higher education commission, however, needs to do better than that, given the serious and growing shortfalls for college budgets. There are those who won't be satisfied with anything less than the closure of three or four of the state's 14 four-year universities. That's not going to happen.

According to a web site that tracks universities that have closed, since 1945, the number of public four-year colleges in the country to shut down is three: in South Dakota, North Dakota and Minnesota. More four-year colleges have become two-year schools, but as major economic engines of any community, they don't just go away.

Instead, the governor asked the commission, comprised mainly of out-of-state experts and Louisiana private citizens, to look at right-sizing the schools we have. In Louisiana, 75 percent of college students attend four-year universities and only 25 percent go to community colleges, while nationwide, it's closer to 50-50.

The governor proposed a solution straight out of Economics 101: raise admission requirements at four-year schools in order to divert more marginal, less-prepared students to community colleges, where the cost per credit hour is far cheaper, both for the state and the student.

The economic impact of the poor graduation rates of Louisiana universities is seen in students who flunk out or quit after a few semesters, but are saddled with their student loans for years. If the same students start at community colleges, they would borrow less with far greater chances of earning associate degrees, which lead to better jobs or admission to four-year schools.

Enticing unprepared students to take out loans to go to universities where they will fail morally equates to the worst practices of the sub-prime mortgage industry.

The idea of raising admission requirements is not new, but neither has it been embraced by university leaders and their local legislators, who fear losing enrollment on which funding and jobs are based. Fortunately, the colleges have a voice but not a vote on the college commission. That will make it easier, or at least possible, for the panel to make and validate the kind of bold recommendations the governor will need to build public support around. It's going to take a lot.

Both Sides Hit Landrieu on Healthcare

Sen. Mary Landrieu plans to host a town-hall meeting on healthcare reform later this month somewhere in the river parishes. Bring a helmet.

That would be the advice of Democratic congressmen around the country who have been booed, heckled, shouted down and threatened while trying to explain and/or defend their positions on health insurance legislation, particularly the 1,017-page bill that will be on the House floor when lawmakers return from August recess.

Republican operatives and conservative talk show hosts have been blamed for or credited with whipping up the masses, but they didn't wholly manufacture the genuine anger, fear and confusion over an omnibus bill that people felt was being jammed down on them.

Even before the facilitators got involved, one of the first such outbursts of public wrath took place in Reserve, La., last month, when a national rural listening tour of federal Cabinet secretaries, particularly Health Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, received a hostile earful from a loud and angry crowd. The prospect of walking into another raucous town-square shout-out doesn't seem to rattle Landrieu, who has been attacked already over national healthcare--not by conservatives but by liberals in her own party.

Last month, advocacy groups MoveOn.org and Change Congress ran radio and TV ads, respectively, that painted Landrieu as a toady for the insurance industry because she opposed a government-run health insurance option. She was urged to get in line with other Democrats supporting the government plan that would compete with private insurance.

One month later, the worm it is a-turning. Even before the town-hall riots of August, the notion of a federally-run insurance program, the centerpiece of the House bill, was starting to founder in the Senate.

There, negotiations over an elusive bipartisan bill have been moving away from the government option toward coverage offered by a network of non-profit member-owned cooperatives, which would be subsidized by the feds but run by the states. Though the bipartisan Senate bill has not taken full shape, it alone among the major bills under consideration would rein in the growth of federal healthcare spending over ten years, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

The notion of more local control diminishes fear of Big Brother with a needle. Yet critics point out that under a subsidized co-op plan, like with a government plan, cheaper rates would lure many businesses who now offer insurance to employees to drop their private plans for the public model. So when the president says that if you like your insurance policy you can keep it, he should add, "unless your boss chooses the government option or co-op for you."

Landrieu has similar reservations about the government and employers determining the coverage for workers. She and 11 colleagues--six Democrats, six Republicans--have co-sponsored the Healthy Americans Act, which would grant individuals, instead of employers, substantial tax deductions to use to purchase insurance in the marketplace.

Everyone would be required to have insurance, but the government would subsidize those with low incomes. Employers would be required to increase wages to replace what they were spending on health insurance. And insurers could not deny coverage based on pre-existing conditions. It sounds too reasonable and straightforward to be taken seriously in Congress, and it hasn't been yet.

A large number of Democrats will not let go of the government option, while many Republicans still oppose required coverage and more government rules. Frustrated Democrats, angered by the mobbish disruptions in the heartland, might urge the president to pass a bill without any GOP votes.

They would do so at their peril, for passing a law is only the first step. Making that much change work, at what cost, and getting the people to like it, will be how healthcare reform is won, or lost. Sen. Landrieu, meanwhile, seems comfortable on the middle ground she has staked out, though she is scorned on the left and distrusted on the right.

Yet the longer she stays there, the closer the debate seems to move toward her. Down home later this month, armed only with her centrist plan, she will stride into the valley of the town-hall meeting, where, who knows, both sides might stop shouting long enough to listen.

Personal Spats Hold Back School Change

By John Maginnis

Whatever success Gov. Bobby Jindal may claim in the recent legislative session does not extend to his K-12 education agenda, which lawmakers trashed. Not only did the administration-backed package of bills to rein in the power of school boards fail to go anywhere, but passage of a controversial career diploma bill, which Pastorek opposed but the governor signed, could mark a big step backwards from the gains made in student accountability over the past decade.

So it's not surprising that the session barely ended before the blame games began—with emphasis on games, as played on schoolyards.

Legislators complained that state school Superintendent Paul Pastorek was abrasive and talked down to them.

Pastorek said the teacher unions and school boards badmouthed him in order to defeat bills that threatened them.

The governor said one of his appointees, Tammie McDaniel, was stirring up trouble on the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education and he asked her to resign.
She said no, because the constitution said she didn't have to.

McDaniel requested and was granted a meeting with the governor at the Mansion, but when she arrived, she found deputy chief of staff Steve Waguespack sitting in, which made her "uncomfortable." The governor explained that's how things are done in his office. She decided not to stay and drove back to Oak Ridge. The governor's staff leaked word to columnists that she walked out on him and that she was rude. Was not, she said.

Thankfully, the bell rang: recess over.

Now can we have a reasonable conversation about what needs to be changed with schools and school boards and how to get that done? Personalities will always play a role in how public policy is formed, but too often they are the excuses rather than real reasons for failure.

Whether or not Pastorek treated legislators and school board members with the deference they think they deserve obscures the point that he's right: that local school boards should stick to policy and let superintendents and principals run the schools, without the politicians' advice and consent on which school bus drivers must be hired or cafeteria workers promoted.

If micromanagement was the biggest problem that needed correcting, it should have been the main focus, if not the entirety, of the education change agenda. Instead, that issue was sidetracked by debate over term limits and pay limits for school board members, which made it easier for school board and teacher lobbyists to mobilize opposition to the whole package of bills, all of which failed.

Pastorek points out that it took seven years for education advocates to pass a bill against micromanagement in the Texas legislature, and that, despite attempts, a school board term-limits bill never passed there. So why even try a term-limits bill here if the distraction makes it harder to pass a micromanagement bill? Let's hope that lesson has sunk in.

As for the spat between Bobby and Tammie, the governor is now resigned to the fact that he appointed a loose cannon and now can't get rid of her. He has three appointments to BESE and eight members are elected, so her independence poses a challenge for the administration, but hardly an insurmountable one. McDaniel, a former teacher and principal, denies that she is for the status quo and insists that she most often supports Pastorek's policies in principle. She has the chance to prove it, especially now that Jindal has singled her out.

If personal differences can be set aside, BESE has work to do. An immediate challenge is to fashion a curriculum for the new career diploma track that doesn't make hash of the hard-won improvements in student accountability and ending social promotions. While the career track could help in reducing the dropout rate, it will hurt if it also reduces the graduation rate for the academic track. The danger is that many marginal students, who would otherwise tough it out for a real diploma, will choose the path of least resistance, toward a dead end. The Legislature didn't address those details; BESE must.

For their part, the governor and legislative leaders must play a stronger role on future legislation to change how public schools are governed and managed. Otherwise, they will just be spectators when the education community gets into another schoolyard brawl.