Our Legislators fiddle while Louisiana burns

It’s time to call it quits at Baton Rouge.  The legislators simply need to get into their cars and go home.  As a group they have, with the exception of the passage of a bill for the medical use of marihuana, done little to improve the quality of life for the residents of our state.  In fact even one bill that attempted to address a serious social issue, human trafficking by strip clubs, was turned into a joke when an  amendment was proposed on the House floor to add the requirement that all female exotic dancers who perform in the clubs must be between the ages of 21 to 28 and weight no more than 160 lbs.

And let’s not forget the bill to fully fund TOPS while decimating health care funding, the proposal to exempt certain individuals from prosecution under the concealed weapons law, the bill requiring the teaching of cursive writing, and the latest one requiring students to recite a section of the Declaration of Independence at the beginning of each school day.

On the other hand, they saw fit to defeat a bill that would require state wellness exams for children entering school, and reject a proposal that would require facilities that consistently violate state and federal environmental air pollution guidelines to line their fences with air monitors to detect leaked pollutants.  They scrapped a proposal to ban open burning of hazardous waste in Louisiana, rejected a bill intended to shift state-funded health care for the elderly from nursing homes to at-home care, and killed a bill providing equal pay for women. This session our legislators basically refused to pass laws that while beneficial to our citizens might alienate one of the large lobbyist groups soliciting at the Capital.

Just think of the state budget savings if we had put our legislators on ‘leave without pay’ during the current session time frame.

Let’s hope Governor Edwards proceeds with his special session and we get some realistic, long term budget solutions.  Let’s also hope that during that session our legislators will be less influenced by the lobbyists and remember who they truly were elected to represent. But that might take some divine intervention.

Students have options, the sick do not

The next time  your loved ones experience chest pains and have to travel twice as far to a hospital’s emergency room, can no longer receive proper care for their suffering from disabilities, or no longer receive hospice care, just take solace in the fact that all their suffering is worth it because TOPS is fully funded. 

Apparently, many of our legislators recently re-elected have decided it is paramount to fiscally protect TOPS, the largest middle class and upper income family entitlement program operating in this state.

Cameron Henry, R-Metairie, chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, boldly admitted this fact last week when he stated, “TOPS is a priority for a majority of the (House) members.   We are allocating money across the state from all agencies and departments to make sure that TOPS is funded and other priorities are met.”  Since  health care services are not one of the ‘sacred cows’ protected by legislative mandate, and our legislators have vowed not to further cut education, it now remains the only option available to produce the required funds necessary to fulfill Henry’s proclamation.

In previous commentaries I have suggested that our decision-makers retrace the origins of TOPS.  It was never intended to be a free ride for average students.  It was designed to reward high achieving students with limited family resources.  It now fulfills neither of these original intents.  There are no longer family income caps, the present ACT score requirement for TOPS requires simply average test score performance, and since there are no standards equating GPAs across school districts or even from school to school, the required C plus 2.5 GPA is also suspect as a measure of elevated student performance.  Additionally, it was initially privately funded.

The discussion about whether TOPS should even exist as a tax-payer funded program is best saved for another day.  Yet one thing is clear regarding its funding.  If budget cuts are truly necessary, they need to be distributed equally across the board, and that includes TOPS. 

College bound students have the options of college-funded scholarships , work study programs, and low interest student loans to cover their college expenses; the physically and mentally ill have no such options.

Yet again, thanks to the poor fiscal management of this state by Jindal and most of the same legislators still working in Baton Rouge, we continue to see further polarization of our citizenry in fighting each other over fiscal funding for the services important to them.  The political gamesmanship continues to operate at our state capital and we are rapidly approaching the legislative gridlock that now plagues our federal government.