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.