Bobby Jindal’s delusions continue

Several months ago the Bureau of Governmental Research invited President Obama’s education secretary, Arne Duncan, to be its guest speaker at its 2014 Annual Luncheon held in New Orleans last Thursday.

In Jindal’s usual rude, condescending style, he issued a press release interpreted by some as rather sophomoric in criticizing Mr. Duncan’s visit.  He tried to portray it as a political stunt by the president in light of Mary Landrieu’s recent defeat, when in fact it was BGR that extended the invitation months ago.

What was particularly amusing about Bobby’s verbal tantrum was the following statement:

“So we have to wonder- is the President sending Secretary Duncan here to double down on these failed policies and bully us into federal overreach and the Obama’s top-down education agenda?  Or is he going to reach across the aisle and offer to work with the majority of Louisianians who support Louisiana’s successful, (my italics) bottom-up approach to education…..”

Our Rhodes Scholar governor’s “ successful , bottom-up approach to education”  includes:

Cutting financial monies to higher education by $1 billion in six years

Students performing in reading and math skills at the 48^th and 50^th ranking, respectively, in the nation

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation awarding Louisiana an ‘F’ for how students fare academically based on dollars spent,  and  readiness for college and careers, and international competitiveness.

 

Louisiana given a ‘D plus’ by the same organization on the validity of its present state-developed math and English exams as compared to NATIONAL assessments

 

The state’s most recent average ACT scores, a national test of college readiness measuring English, math, science and reading skills given to both private and public high school seniors and juniors, dropping yet again, during Jindal’s tenure, with only North Carolina, Hawaii and Mississippi having lower scores

It’s too bad that Governor Bobby Jindal has drastically cut money for mental health services, for he is clearly in need of some sort of treatment for his mental delusions regarding his perceived successful educational reform in our state and his thoughts about the majority of Louisiana citizens supporting it.

 

 

Is Kristy Nichols over her head when it comes to fiscal management?

 

In October, 2012 Jindal hired Kristy Nichols as Commissioner of Administration for the state of Louisiana.

If you think that title is rather ambiguous, the educational qualifications for the job are even more confusing.  Apparently all one needs is loyal service to Jindal and a B.A. in business administration, with a master’s degree in communications thrown in for good luck.

Further adding to this confusion are the job responsibilities as defined on the state’s website. These include,  “(The) performing (of) a wide variety of legislatively mandated activities and other required functions of state government, including overseeing the general management of all state finances and financial operations; preparing the Executive Budget and the Comprehensive Annual Financial Report (CAFR); ensuring general fiscal accountability throughout state government; making purchases for state agencies when required by executive order; controlling and assigning state surplus property; providing and assigning state owned and leased facilities to state agencies; maintaining travel regulations for state officials and employees; conducting such planning activities as are necessary to maximize the present and future effectiveness of state government; and administering Community Development Block Grant Disaster Recovery Funds.”

Seems like a tough job for one person, requiring only minimalistic job qualifications, and so far our commissioner, Kristy Nichols, isn’t measuring up to the task too successfully.   Each year, since employed, she has presented unrealistic budget estimates which have resulted in our legislators passing budgets funded with monies that never materialized.  This has repeatedly lead to mid-year budget cuts for state entities, the latest one occurring in November of this year.

Apparently even our astute legislators don't trust her budget proposals because last year they questioned using hundreds of millions in property sales and other one-time money to plug the 2013-14 budget. However, Nichols casually assured them, "We have not put anything in the budget that isn't expected to fully materialize."

Well, that wasn't the case, which lead to Nichols having to borrow $70 million in so-called "seed money" from state Treasurer John Kennedy's office to help the state's universities survive the fiscal year.

Additionally, in January of this year, after state revenue projections dropped by $34.7 million, Nichols announced a government hiring freeze through June, 2015.  Ironically, this was followed by a no bid contractual hiring of Alvarez and Marsal for $4.2 million to find ways for the state to come up with $500 million. But the state's budget wasn't in trouble, Nichols promised.

"We are confident that the Louisiana economy is growing," Nichols said, "and we believe revenue will grow with it."   However, revenues didn't grow as she predicted and now the Jindal administration will have to reduce spending for the NEXT seven months by 171 million.  This dire edict announced after she claimed in May that the state had a $175.5 million surplus, which turned out to be unsubstantiated.

With the state facing even bigger financial problems,  due to the decline in the price of a barrel of oil, do we really want Nichols to continue to call the shots with the track record she has already amassed?

Then again, maybe Nichols is just what we need to finally undermine Jindal’s chances for a presidential bid.  If she ends up helping to bankrupt the state, that wouldn’t reflect too well on Bobby’s national image.

But until that happens legislators had better get used to our communications major’s catch phrase, “La. Revenues not as high as anticipated.”

Jindal continues to waste taxpapers' money

Friday, Bobby Jindal announced how he will once again deal with budget shortfalls totaling over $171 million. We should be immune to this behavior by now for it has been repeated 5 of the 6 years Jindal has been in office.

What Bobby did not tell you is how this shortfall could have been eliminated if he and his legislative minions hadn’t wasted taxpayers’ monies in pursuing one of his privatization of health care services deals, just to save face.

In 2012, the Jindal administration decided to reorganize the way behavioral health services were being delivered to our citizenry.  He privatized the services with a company known as Magellan Health Services for an initial two year contract totaling $357.6 million.  In August, 2013 a state audit report determined that the company had not complied with the contractual terms.  As part of that contract the state Department of Health and Hospitals had the right to impose financial sanctions for non-compliance, but the auditors also found that the state had imposed NONE.

Despite the negative audit of the Magellan privatization plan, Jindal and our astute legislators in February, 2014, extended the Magellan contract another year to February, 2015, and increased it by $187.2 million without any supportive justification.  This to a company deemed out of contract compliance by state auditors a year earlier.

Fast forward to November 21, 2014, when the media reports that the Magellan Health Services contract is being terminated with the state.  Kathy Kliebert, the director of the state Department of Health and Hospitals claims the reason for this action is that, “(Magellan) was not an acute health-care provider.”

I guess that means Magellan couldn’t provide the services as mandated in the initial contract.

However, it appears that all involved parties at the state level already knew this after the initial audit report in 2013, and instead of not renewing the contact in 2014, extended the contract and increased the amount to $544.8 million.

Why would our esteemed leaders make such a blatantly obvious poor business decision?

Perhaps, if they had logically acted on the supportive evidence and killed the contract, this would have highlighted the fact that part of Bobby’s privatization plan of health care services was a failure. Consequently, to avoid such an embarrassment, Bobby and the legislators just dumbed more taxpayers’ money into the contract in hopes that things would improve and Bobby’s plan would ultimately prevail.

Friday, I couldn’t wait to see where Bobby would cut back to address the latest shortage.  However, the $171 million that he seeks was already available in February in the amount of $187.2 million, the additional funds given to a company not in contract compliance.

But, as in the past, Governor Jindal will use funding sweeps, a practice in which he and state lawmakers take monies that are dedicated by vote of Louisiana residents for a specific purpose and use it instead to address the state's general budget, and further reduce supportive services for Louisiana residents, to plug his budget holes.

The really sad part is the present proposed cuts would not be necessary if the majority of our legislators had shown some fiscal responsibility and not assisted in protecting Bobby Jindal’s national image.

Jindal shouldn’t bite the hand that feeds him

 

These days Bobby Jindal spends most of his taxpayers’ paid working hours serving himself rather than Louisiana residents.  He crisscrosses our nation advocating the tea party chant about government waste and the need to reign in all, what he and his political friends term, the liberal left handout programs that have ballooned over the years.

What Jindal conveniently side steps is that his own state budget ranks the SECOND highest in the nation in its dependence on these federal funds.   Approximately 44% of the state budget is composed of federal  dollars.

According to the Wallet Hub, Louisiana is one big American freeloader, ranking 48^th (1= least dependent) in its dependency on federal monies.  Wallet Hub also reports that this pattern of freeloading is greater nationwide among Republican controlled  states vs Democrat controlled states.

However, our Republican governed state also has the distinction of being one of the states with the largest deficits in terms of what they get in federal help versus what they give back in tax dollars (Approximately $3 for every $1 in federal taxes paid).  So while Jindal continually touts the conservative banter about how U.S. citizens are over taxed by the Feds for federal hand out programs, this certainly isn’t true economically in his own state.

The interesting part of this seemingly hypocritical behavior of Bobby is his professed positon on cutting federal support dollars will most likely become a reality with the recent shift in the political climate thanks primarily to the Koch brothers.  However, this will completely devastate the state, due to Jindal’s budgetary practices which continue to substantially rely on federal hand out dollars. 

Looks like our esteemed governor has set up Louisiana for failure by not practicing what he preaches, but then again he has greater aspirations and could care less about the future of our state.  We all need to feel sorry for the next governor of Louisiana.