An out-of-state government consultant testifying before the Streamlining Government Commission was asked what he thought of Louisiana's new ethics laws being ranked best in the country.
"It said you had the best rules," the consultant deadpanned. "It didn't say you always followed them."
Well put. Beyond bragging rights, it is hard to identify what Gov. Bobby Jindal's signature initiative, the overhaul of state ethics laws, has achieved, other than clearing out Ruth's Chris Steakhouse during legislative sessions by way of the $50 limit on what lobbyists can spend entertaining lawmakers.
In many cases, the difficulty with obeying new ethics rules has been understanding them.
For instance, current ethics cases involving two legislators and one sheriff stand to be decided not on their merits but on whether the Legislature intended for a change in the law to be retroactive or prospective, which could have been but wasn't cleared up with one sentence.
In the interest of fair play, the Legislature shortened the time period from two years to one for the Board of Ethics to bring charges after receiving a complaint.
The near mass resignation of the old board and the appointment of a new one ate up several months before the new members could get around to old cases. They eventually brought the charges within the old two-year window but beyond the new one-year deadline.
The accused officials argue that the new limit applies to them, while the Ethics Board holds that the old rules govern old cases.
Depending on how state courts eventually rule, the first dozen or so cases under the new ethics regime could be thrown out because the Legislature and the governor's lawyers screwed up the drafting of the laws.
The new procedures have other problems, which make justice needlessly elusive.
Ethics charges are no longer decided by the Board of Ethics but by panels of administrative law judges. It's been claimed that because the head of the Division of Administrative Law is appointed by the governor that she can be leaned on to protect Jindal's friends.
That's a twisted stretch.
The director, Ann Wise, first appointed by former Gov. Foster, is as ethical and independent a public servant as this state has. The administrative law judges who work for her are mostly career civil servants who hear thousands of cases each year involving employee-management disputes in state government.
They are as fair and capable as the governor's ethics board appointees in deciding cases. But that doesn't mean they should be doing so.
Legislators came up with using the ALJs in order to get away from having the ethics board act as prosecutor, judge and jury. But they should have thought that through more. Under the new law, the ethics board acts as kind of a grand jury in charging defendants, but once the ALJ renders a decision, the board is required to ratify the ruling, even if members don't agree with it.
Board chairman Frank Simoneaux intends to ask the Legislature to return decision-making to the board, but to have a separate department within the agency investigate and prosecute cases. That would clear up conflicts while restoring the board to its proper adjudicatory role instead of that of a ceremonial bystander.
Also, should the governor and Legislature revisit ethics, they might as well change those three troublesome words, "clear and convincing," that make the new process anything but.
The words were inserted into legislation to set a new standard of proof, meant to fall somewhere between "preponderance of evidence" in civil cases and "beyond reasonable doubt" in criminal cases. Trouble is, no one is quite sure where that somewhere is.
The standard-of-proof wording does not, as some critics claim, make ethics laws unenforceable, but neither does it make them clear. In most cases, the facts are not in dispute so much as is the interpretation of the law. So returning to "preponderance of evidence" would not change outcomes as much as it would re-instill some confidence in the system.
The governor need not worry that clarifying ethics laws would tarnish the gold standard he professes for them. But it sure would help make our best-ranked rules easier to follow.
Monday, September 21, 2009
Thursday, September 3, 2009
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 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.
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 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.
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