Louisiana’s new “career diploma” continues to draw criticism. About a week after legislation creating the diploma became law, critics are still voicing their opinion.
Gov. Bobby Jindal last week signed legislation that would allow students who don’t want to attend college to pursue a less rigorous career track, a concept that supporters say will reduce the number of students dropping out of school.
Today, Washington, D.C.-based Campaign for High School Equity, a project of Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors, issued a press release critical of the diploma, calling it “a disservice to the state’s students.”
CHSE said only 62 percent of Louisiana’s students graduate from high school each year with a regular diploma. In 2005, only 40 percent of black students, 47 percent of Hispanic students and 49 percent of Asian students graduated from high school compared with 63 percent of their white peers, CHSE said.
“The new program in Louisiana will allow students 15 and older to opt out of the standard curriculum with parental consent and would allow students in eighth grade to advance to ninth grade without passing the state standardized tests,” CHSE said.
CHSE said lowering academic standards to increase graduation rates will disproportionately affect Louisiana’s low-income and minority students.
“If equality in education is truly a priority for this country, we need to admonish legislation that predetermines the future of a segment of students based on an idea that they cannot achieve,” CHSE Executive Director Michael Wotorson said. “Gov. Jindal’s actions are despicable. This law will lock students out of economic prosperity. Instead, we need to establish education policies in Louisiana and in every state that hold schools accountable for student success and provide every student with a high-quality education that prepares them for college and the modern workforce.”
CityBusiness reporter Stephen Maloney, in a story in this week’s edition, wrote about concerns that education and construction industry officials have about the career diploma, which was created by state Rep. James Fannin, R-Jonesboro.
Here’s what education officials said about the diploma. The excerpts are from Maloney’s story:
Capital One-University of New Orleans Charter Network CEO Andre Perry calls Fannin’s effort a short-sighted attempt to fix an education problem that has been plaguing New Orleans public schools for generations. Instead of encouraging struggling students to work harder, Perry said the notion that college is not for every student is often used as an excuse to avoid responsibility for high dropout rates, especially in urban and rural school districts.
Recovery School District Superintendent Paul Vallas said the career track diploma lowers standards for the students in most need of academic help.
“This would create a secondary enrollment track, a lesser track, the track of lower expectations, and I just think that’s criminal,” Vallas said. “There’s nothing more racist than the racism of low expectations.”
Here’s what Morty Branigan, apprenticeship director for the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local Union 130, said about the career diploma. These are more excerpts from Maloney’s story:
“Typically, people believe that the construction industry is a career choice for slow learners, and that’s absolutely not the case,” Branigan said. “Our industry is becoming more and more technical every day.”
“My biggest concern with this career path diploma is that the graduation requirements are going to be watered down to the point where many of them would not meet our minimum qualifications,” Branigan said.•
About a year ago, it appeared Gov. Bobby Jindal was not going to veto a pay raise for the Legislature, even though the proposal was controversial with many in the public. Indeed, talk radio stations were filled with angry callers who said the governor was ignoring the will of the people.
Jindal, in a surprise move, reversed course and vetoed the raise.
But does the governor regret his decision?
Here’s an excerpt from a piece that ran Monday on the Web site of The Town Talk, a newspaper that covers the Alexandria area:
Some lawmakers acknowledged that the governor recently told a meeting of the Republican legislative delegation that he regretted vetoing the raise.
“It was at a delegation meeting that I missed,” said Sen. Mike Walsworth, R-West Monroe. “But I heard about it.”
Asked about the governor’s comment that he made a mistake, Sen. Mike Michot, R-Lafayette, said “I believe he was talking the vetoes of members’ projects – and the pay raise, too.”
Today, I asked Melissa Sellers, communications director for the governor, whether the governor regrets vetoing the raises.
Here’s what she wrote in an e-mailed response:
Just as the Governor has said, vetoing the pay raise was the right thing to do. As he said the day he vetoed it, there were mistakes made in the process of initially telling legislators that the administration would stay out of the bill. But, most important, as he stressed yesterday, this is a time to look ahead and work together with the legislature to address the serious challenges facing our state.•
Bobby Jindal’s travels outside of Louisiana since becoming governor have earned him praise and criticism.
Some say the trips — some of which are for fundraising for himself and other Republicans, others for Louisiana business – are good for Louisiana, because the governor is spreading the word about the state.
Others say the governor — considered to be a rising star in the Republican Party — has his eye on the White House and should stay home and do the job he was elected to do.
Here’s a factoid that’s sure to fuel Jindal’s critics: Whenever the governor travels, no matter the reason for the trip, the state has to provide police protection for the governor and his family. That’s Louisiana law.
According to a story by The Associated Press, “The state has paid at least $52,000 in trooper costs for Jindal’s fundraising and political travel. That’s more than half the state-paid trooper expenses on all Jindal out-of-state travel.”
“It’s unclear, however, whether the state could accept reimbursement from Jindal’s campaign fund for campaign-related travel expenses. Neither Jindal nor the state police have sought ethics board guidance on the subject,” the story says.
This story comes at a time when the Jindal administration is proposing budget cuts for the fiscal year that begins July 1. Some of those cuts involve health care.•
The (Baton Rouge) Advocate newspaper published an interesting story a week ago today on a survey that ranked Louisiana low for online disclosure of state contracting information.
“Louisiana is among seven states listed as the worst offenders in full online disclosure of state contracting information, according to a survey issued today by Ralph Nader and the Center for the Study of Responsive Law,” the story says.
The six other states: Kentucky, Minnesota, Mississippi, Rhode Island, Wisconsin and Wyoming.
According to the story, the center looked at state government Web sites to determine how much information is published about contracts and processes.
It brought me back to Jan. 15, Gov. Bobby Jindal’s first day in office, when he held a press conference to announce his signing of four executive orders.
One order called for greater transparency in government.
Here’s a portion of his order for transparency:
SECTION 3: To insure transparency and accountability in state government, I hereby establish the following goals:
1. Issue annual public reports online of all state grants and contracts by funding source, agency, parish, and type of service provided;
2. Improve public access to the current grant and contract databases to make it a state-of-the art, easy to navigate resource that provides full disclosure of grants, contracts, and bond allocations of the state;
3. Improve transparency of Louisiana’s regulatory process;
4. Facilitate interoperable systems that enable Information Technology projects to expand among agencies;
5. Create an online state spending database;
6. Redesign Louisiana government’s web site with a focus on transparency.•
After his nationally televised GOP speech was panned, Gov. Bobby Jindal has been announced as the commencement speaker for Loyola University New Orleans’ class of 2009.
This should make for interesting conversation over lunch in the Orleans Room, Loyola’s main cafeteria.•
When Gov. Bobby Jindal gave the GOP’s response to President Barack Obama’s address to Congress, he briefly took aim at funding for “volcano monitoring” that was included in the nearly $800 billion stimulus bill Obama signed earlier this month.
“While some of the projects in the bill make sense, their legislation is larded with wasteful spending,” Jindal said. “It includes $300 million to buy new cars for the government, $8 billion for high-speed rail projects, such as a ‘magnetic levitation’ line from Las Vegas to Disneyland, and $140 million for something called ‘volcano monitoring.’ Instead of monitoring volcanoes, what Congress should be monitoring is the eruption of spending in Washington, D.C.”
Now those remarks are garnering Jindal criticism from a place where volcano monitoring is considered important.
According to a CNN story, Royce Pollard, the mayor of Vancouver, Wash., said, “Does the governor have a volcano in his backyard? We have one that’s very active, and it still rumbles and spits and coughs very frequently.”
CNN also quoted Marianne Guffanti, a volcano researcher at the U.S. Geological Survey, who said, “We don’t throw the money down the crater of the volcano and watch it burn up.”
Some might say it’s hypocritical for Jindal to question spending to make a community safe from volcanoes when his own state is vulnerable to hurricanes and has received billions in federal funding to recover from the 2005 hurricanes.
CNN says in its story that “Louisiana is no stranger to natural disasters itself, having been devastated by Hurricane Katrina in 2005. But Timmy Teepell, Jindal’s chief of staff, said the governor stands by his statement. ‘That was just one example of wasteful spending in the largest government spending bill in history,’ Teepell said. ‘The governor made it clear that we need to grow jobs, not government.’”•
There’s a lot of talk today about Gov. Bobby Jindal and his nationally televised response to President Barack Obama’s address to Congress last night.
Jindal, considered a rising star in the Republican Party, delivered the GOP’s response to Obama’s address. For a moment, Louisiana was in the national spotlight, as people from across the country tuned in to hear what Jindal had to say.
Today, Jindal’s speech is being met with mixed reviews. He is being made fun of for the way he spoke — National Public Radio political analyst Juan Williams described it as sing-song — and the content of his speech.
Sam Stein on huffingtonpost.com today wrote that “Both Democrats and Republicans alike panned Jindal’s rebuttal in terms that were decidedly harsh: ‘amateurish,’ ‘laughable’ and, most commonly, ‘a missed opportunity.’”
Here’s more from Stein’s piece:
And yet, much of the critique of Jindal’s address focused on his hokey, folksy, seemingly-forced tone and vernacular. The Governor, who has never held court on the national stage before — remember, his speech at the Republican convention was called off after Hurricane Gustav made landfall — showed a bit of wetness behind the ears. And the commentators let him have it, even on Fox News.
On the dailybeast.com, Max Blumenthal used the speech as an opportunity to tell America some “surprising facts” about Jindal. Here’s an excerpt:
As the country gets acquainted with the Bayou’s boy wonder, the stranger details of Jindal’s religious or personal background remain largely unknown, even among the Republican grassroots. How many Americans know that Jindal boasted of participating in an exorcism that purged the spirit of Satan from a college girlfriend? So far, Jindal’s tale of “beating a demon” remains behind the subscription wall of New Oxford Review, an obscure Catholic magazine; only a few major blogs have seized on the story.
But some are praising Jindal’s speech. David Brody, on The Christian Broadcasting Network’s Web site, wrote this yesterday:
Bobby Jindal is going to be a star. Correct that. He is a star already. His star turn came tonight when the Louisiana Governor gave the Republican response to President Obama’s speech tonight. Can anybody say 2012?
On humanevents.com, Jed Babbin wrote this in a column headlined “Obama’s On Path To An American Welfare State”:
Jindal spoke eloquently of the faith he learned in the power that derives from freedom. He told the story of a Louisiana sheriff — organizing rescue craft during the aftermath of Katrina — frustrated at some bureaucrat’s interference and how he stood with that sheriff to shut off the interference and get the rescues under way.
His most important points — that Democrats want to expand the power of government over American life while Republicans want to empower Americans to help themselves — were couched in the terms his father taught him: that Americans can do anything. And we can.
Jindal appears a mild man, one who inspires confidence as a leader must. His solid conservative core was reflected again and again in arguments that we shouldn’t spend money we don’t have on things we don’t need. Which, he said, was what the trillion-dollar spending spree the Democrats legislated as a “stimulus.”
Gov. Bobby Jindal reportedly has not made up his mind about how much in stimulus funding Louisiana will accept from the federal government.
Blogs and media outlets across the country have picked up the story. A search for “Jindal” and “stimulus” in Google pulls up a long list of results.
One of those is a posting on thinkprogress.org with the headline “Jindal may reject recovery package money.” The posting had generated 121 comments as of 1:50 p.m. today.
Here’s one comment:
So the question is, who does Jindal serve by rejecting the money?
Himself. GOP — Party before country. Now you can add — career before constituents.
The commenter is not alone in having that viewpoint. Others are being critical of Jindal and other GOP governors for considering not accepting the money.
“No community or constituent should be denied recovery assistance due to their governor’s political ideology or political aspirations,” U.S. Rep. James Clyburn, D-S.C., said in a story by The Associated Press.
Jindal, for his part, has expressed concerns about strings that may be attached to the funding, according to a story on cbsnews.com.
“We’ll have to review each program, each new dollar to make sure that we understand what are the conditions, what are the strings and see whether it’s beneficial for Louisiana to use those dollars,” Jindal said in the story.
The question is: If Jindal, a Republican, turns down the stimulus funding, will President Barack Obama, a Democrat, fulfill any future requests from Jindal for more Katrina recovery dollars?•
When it comes to nature, it’s all about survival of the fittest, as Mr. Darwin would say.
When it comes to retaining science conferences, Louisiana has learned it’s all about survival of the states who don’t enact science education laws that national scientific organizations disagree with.
On Feb. 5, in a letter to Gov. Bobby Jindal, the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology, which has more than 2,300 members, told the governor that the society was canceling plans to hold its annual meeting in New Orleans in 2011. The reason, according to the society, is the 2008 Louisiana Science Education Act, which Jindal, who has a biology degree from Brown University, signed last year. Basically, the law allows public schools to teach alternatives to evolution, which opponents say opens the doors to the teaching of creationism. The society says the law “undermines science education and attacks teaching evolution.”
The society has posted the announcement on its homepage. The headline: No Thanks, New Orleans.
Salt Lake City will get the conference, instead.
The Louisiana Coalition for Science wrote about the loss of the conference on its Web site Saturday.
Here are some excerpts:
The repercussions that were expected from the Louisiana legislature’s passage and Gov. Bobby Jindal’s signing of the creationist 2008 LA Science Education Act have begun. Louisiana taxpayers and schoolchildren are now reaping what the legislature and governor have sowed: the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology, one of the nation’s leading scientific societies, is boycotting Louisiana.
The legislature and the governor cannot say they weren’t warned. They were, but they ignored the warnings. Indeed, they ignored everyone except the creationists at the Discovery Institute and the Louisiana Family Forum.
The governor’s office this morning issued this two-sentence response when asked what the governor thought of the news that New Orleans was losing the conference:
“That’s too bad. New Orleans is a first-class city for a convention,” Kyle Plotkin, Jindal spokesman, wrote in an e-mail.•
While updating the CityBusiness Web site this weekend, I came across an Associated Press story about Gov. Bobby Jindal traveling to Arkansas for a fundraiser.
In talking to GOP members in Fayetttville on Saturday night, he discussed his push to put a new set of ethics rules in place in Louisiana, which the AP pulled the following comment from, a state where he said “half of it is under water and the other half is under indictment.”
I can only hope — and I’m sure they were — that the people Jindal was speaking to were educated, follow the news and understand he was joking.
But if not, that’s the kind of publicity we don’t need outside of Louisiana — especially so close to our busiest tourism season.
When I spoke with a business leader several weeks ago, he said that during a recent trip to New York City, a cab driver asked him where he was from. When he replied “New Orleans,” the cab driver asked how things were going because he had been told we were still under water.
Comments like these, even in jest, are not what we need to be using outside Louisiana, Mr. Jindal.•
When it comes to losing residents, Louisiana is at the top of the list compared with other states, according to new data from the U.S. Census Bureau.
According to the data, between 2000 and 2008, the state lost 58,000 residents, or 1.3 percent of its population. North Dakota was the only other state to suffer a loss — 0.1 percent — during the same period.
Demographers say Louisiana is having a problem retaining young, educated people, according to a story by The Associated Press.
Here’s more from the AP story:
A string of monster hurricanes — Ivan, Katrina, Rita, Gustav and Ike — exacerbated the slide.
“Louisiana leads the nation in outmigration,” said Elliott Stonecipher, a Shreveport-based demographic analyst. “Going on 30 years, we’ve had a steady flow of people out the door.”
One root cause is the oil bust of the mid-1980s, which sucked jobs and employers out of the state’s oil and natural gas dominated economy. Since then, population gains have been mostly flat and now downward.
“This is something we’ve been barking about for a long time,” said Greg Rigamer, a New Orleans-based demographer.
So what does the state’s elected officials have to say about this?
“I got into politics because I was tired of seeing so many people leave our state,” Gov. Bobby Jindal said in the AP story. “We absolutely have to change this.”
Some in the public, though, don’t see the loss as a problem. They say the state doesn’t need the people who left, because they probably weren’t major contributors to the state’s economy.
Here’s what someone called 27addresses wrote on nola.com on Christmas Eve:
Lower population, less need for federal assistance. I don’t think there’s much of an error here. Many people are comfortably living elsewhere. That is the bottom line. Let them stay where they have settled in.
The future of city services in New Orleans just got a lot grimmer.
Today, Mayor C. Ray Nagin said he has ordered a hiring freeze for all departments, including public safety, a reduction in sanitation services to “basic garbage pickup” and a spending cut of all departments except for public safety.
The cuts are needed in order to close a budget gap of $18 million budget in 2009, Nagin said. (To read a CityBusiness story about Nagin’s announcement, click here.)
Nagin said he has not choice but to make the cuts. He also said: “We expect that there may be future cuts … in the very near future.”
Residents can expect to see a loss of services, the mayor said. Two things residents — and tourists, for that matter — can say good-bye to: street sweeping and power-washing in the French Quarter and downtown.
“The majority of these cuts bring with them a reduction in services to be provided by the city,” Nagin said. “However, we are taking the actions necessary to live within our means and to ensure that our city remains in the best position for today and the future.”
The City Council can still override Nagin’s budget actions. But it’s unclear what the council will do.
If Nagin’s cuts prevail, and city services decline, what do you think will happen to the city’s recovery from Katrina?•
I’ve been hearing a lot lately about Gov. Bobby Jindal’s sojourns.
For example, Jindal, apparently a rising star in the Republican Party, last month was the main speaker at the Iowa Family Policy Center’s Celebrating the Family banquet, according to a CityBusiness column written by political commentator Jeff Crouere. While there, Jindal was scheduled to visit the Cedar Rapids area to see recent flooding damage.
Jindal’s trip fueled speculation that the governor has his eye on the White House. As Crouere puts it, “For presidential candidates, no state is more important than Iowa.” Jindal, though, has maintained that he is not running for president. Rather, he reportedly plans to seek re-election in 2011.
Jindal will leave the state again, this time to go to Texas to boost his campaign funding. Tonight, he’s scheduled to have a fundraiser in San Antonio, followed by one Friday afternoon in Houston.
The governor’s travels are starting to draw criticism.
Here’s what someone with the screenname shadow08 wrote today on nola.com:
Is Bobby still our Gov.? He has been spending so much time away from louisiana I thought he had resigned!
Now, I wonder how can anyone do an effective job
while being away? Must be all the new technology that allows Bobby to do whatever it is he is doing from far away places.•
Recent national reports have scored Louisiana very low on business indicators, news that should have economic development officials and leaders in high gear.
Today, a report put Louisiana second-to-last on a list of states ranked for attracting and retaining businesses that contribute to economic growth. Only Mississippi, which is at the bottom of the list, scored worse than Louisiana in the eighth edition of Beacon Hill Institute’s Competitiveness Report. Mississippi officials should be hanging their heads today; their state ranked last in 2006 and 49th last year.
If that’s not enough bad news for Louisiana, last week CityBusiness reported that the 2009 Urban Land Institute and PricewaterhouseCoopers Emerging Trends in Real Estate report ranked New Orleans among the worst American cities for commercial and multifamily investment in 2009. New Orleans was third to the bottom of a list of American “markets to watch.” On a ranking scale of one to nine, with one being an “abysmal” place to invest and nine being “excellent,” New Orleans scored a 3.33.
The grim news for Louisiana does not end there, though. The American Community Survey says Louisiana’s population last year was 4.29 million, down from 4.5 million in 2000, according to a story by The Associated Press this month. According to the AP story, Gov. Bobby Jindal said it would be a mistake for state officials to blame Hurricane Katrina or any other storm for the migration, which he said goes back almost 15 years.
Here’s more from the story:
The reason people are leaving, Jindal says, is because of the lack of educational and economic opportunities in Louisiana. And Jindal says his administration is seeking to address the problem.
Officials say the Census Bureau numbers show that in the past 27 years, Louisiana has lost about 84 residents each day, or about four per hour.
Sounds like Louisiana economic development officials and elected officials have their work cut out for them.•
Barack Obama hasn’t even taken office yet and some are already looking ahead to the 2012 presidential race.
The name many are talking about for the next election would be familiar to Louisiana residents: Gov. Bobby Jindal.
Indeed, since Democrat Obama’s victory, and the loss of Republican John McCain, the Internet has been a flurry of news stories and blog postings about whether Jindal is the one to rebuild the GOP, almost making him sound like a real-life Neo from “The Matrix” who will save the Republican Party.
On Friday, just three days after Obama was elected, a story headlined “Jindal for President 2012?” was posted on the Web site of an NBC-affiliated television station in Baton Rouge. Here’s an excerpt:
The next election is four years away, but thousands of Facebook users have already made their decision; they want Bobby Jindal for President in 2012.
He’s denying he’ll make a run for the White House, but insiders say Governor Bobby Jindal is the future of the Republican party. Later this month Jindal will deliver the keynote address to a conservative group in Iowa.
Could Jindal galvanize young voters the way Obama did? Some might think so. Here’s more from the story:
Chuck Fontenot is the President of College Republicans at LSU and a member of a Jindal for President group. Fontenot says what Obama did for young Democrats Jindal is doing for young Republicans.
“Bobby’s such a charismatic figure. A lot of conservative youth can identify with him and go forward with him into the future.”
Then, yesterday, on cbsnews.com, columnist David Brooks of The New York Times said this about the Republican Party in the aftermath of the 2008 presidential election:
“Now it’s just a circular firing squad, with everybody attacking each other, and no coherent belief system, no leaders. You’ve got half the party waiting for Sarah Palin to come and rescue them. The other half is waiting for Bobby Jindal, the Louisiana governor, to come rescue them. But no set of beliefs. Really a decayed conservative infrastructure. It’s just a world of pain.”
According to a source cited by the Hindustan Times on Thursday, “Jindal is going to be one of the big gainers from a full-scale Republican defeat.”
Jindal is part of a younger generation of Republicans who retain the conservative values but combine it with high levels of administrative efficiency and a squeaky-clean image. It helps that Jindal made his mark in the field of healthcare, one of the issues that led many working class Americans to defect to the Democrats. Jindal is scheduled to visit Iowa next month, a pilgrimage that all presidential hopefuls make.
On a side note, according to a posting today on The Washington Post’s politics blog, Jindal was never vetted as a vice presidential pick for the 2008 election.
Here’s more from that posting:
Jindal was approached by McCain forces to gauge his interest in the vice presidency and told them he was not interested in being vetted due to his desire to continue on with his current job, to which he was elected just one year ago.
While the official reason that Jindal took his name out of contention was his lack of a desire to leave the Louisiana governorship, there was also real trepidation within his political inner circle that Jindal might wind up as the pick — McCain was attracted to his comprehensive health-care knowledge — and be caught up in what they believed to be a less-than-stellar campaign that could pin a loss on Jindal without much ability to change or control the direction of the contest.•
First there were the hurricanes that destroyed the company’s infrastructure, followed by complaints from politicians and the public about the pace of power restoration.
Now, a New Orleans councilwoman is taking shots at the company.
The company found itself the subject of much criticism following Hurricane Gustav, which at one point knocked out power to 850,000 of the company’s customers. Entergy described it as the second-most damaging storm in the company’s 95-year history.
Then came Hurricane Ike. The two back-to-back storms in less than two weeks left nearly 1.7 million Entergy customers without electricity in four states.
Some were patient as the company restored power. Others weren’t.
Gov. Bobby Jindal on Sept. 3, two days after Gustav hit Louisiana, called the pace of power restoration “unacceptable.”
“There’s simply no excuse for it to take weeks or months to get the power back,” Jindal said.
The Internet is filled with comments about Entergy’s post-hurricane performance.
On Sept. 4, three days after Gustav, nola.com’s Web site lit up with remarks about Entergy:
“Bunch of whiny babies, you just had a hurricane and you expect to come home to instant electric. Here in Florida it is quite common to be without power for a week or two after a storm. It’s almost expected. Entergy is working as hard and fast to get the power back on in your area, with the help of out of state crews too,” wrote lamiamaya.
“My deepest thanks to all the Entergy people who are working long hours in undesirable conditions to get the power back on. May God be with you and also with your families – who have to deal with the same devastation from this hurricane as everyone else – except without you there,” wrote ernesttgirl.
On the other end of the spectrum were comments like these:
“We are getting solar panels on our roof. My last bill was $750.00. So screw energy! The entire house will be turned on by the SUN. We are getting an estimate next week probably 10-15k. It will be well worth it in the long run.,” wrote nola99.
“I am tired of hearing Entergy state they are assessing the situation. The have been assessing for 4 days. They should have had a plan to quickly do the assessment and begin the repair. Also, do not state all Entergy crews are working long/hard hours,” wrote DPB.
On Thursday, tensions rose in New Orleans City Council chambers between Councilwoman Shelley Midura and Entergy New Orleans CEO Rod West. Midura said Entergy wasn’t doing enough to keep rates low for its customers and that the company was withholding information from the council.
“I find it extremely irresponsible on the part of (Entergy New Orleans) not to take an aggressive approach to protect citizens, its customers,” said Midura. “If the company won’t, this regulatory body will.”
“There have been only a few times I’ve been embarrassed as a New Orleanian,” West said at the council meeting. “Do you actually believe we’re sitting around all day doing nothing for ratepayers?”
“I actually do believe you’re sitting around all day doing nothing for ratepayers,” Midura said.•
Unlike in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in 2005, there hasn’t been much criticism of the government’s response to Hurricane Gustav.
But not everyone in government has been immune to post-Gustav finger-pointing. Ann Williamson, secretary of the Louisiana Department of Social Services, resignation today, following complaints about her agency’s handling of a disaster food stamp program to help Gustav victims.
Last week, people waited in the heat for hours to receive the food stamps at distribution sites across the New Orleans area. At one point, residents and even DHH workers were given incorrect information about the location of food stamp sites.
Some speculated that Gov. Bobby Jindal , who last week promised to make “significant changes” in DSS, was going to fire Williamson, who also worked as DSS secretary under former Gov. Kathleen Blanco. So, her resignation does not really come as a shock.
Meanwhile, Williamson did not mention Gustav or why she was resigning.
“Thank you for the opportunity to serve this State of Louisiana and its citizens within your administration. I believe in this state and in the honor of public service. My leadership in state government and with the Department of Social Services has been a privilege,” she wrote in her resignation letter.•
Louisiana was the loser last year as it competed to lure a steel company. Alabama beat out Louisiana for the $3.1 billion ThyssenKrupp mill.
Kathleen Babineaux Blanco was governor then. Now, Gov. Bobby Jindal is in pursuit of luring a steel company to the same site in St. James Parish that ThyssenKrupp was interested in.
Jindal took a trip Wednesday to South Carolina to lure Charlotte. N.C.-based steelmaker Nucor Corp. to Louisiana to build a $2 billion plant.
Here’s an except from an Associated Press story:
Jindal said he met with Nucor Corp.’s chief executive Dan DiMicco and others, and took a tour of the Charlotte, N.C.-based steelmaker’s South Carolina plant. Jindal called the meeting “very productive” and involved negotiations over financial incentives, as he tries to persuade the firm to build the plant in St. James Parish instead of a location overseas.
“We’re very competitive with these other locations,” Jindal said in a telephone interview with The Associated Press before his return flight to Baton Rouge.
The company has said it will announce its plans by the end of the year. Jindal said he was told a decision could be made within months.•
Gov. Bobby Jindal, who took office this year, gave his veto pen a workout this month when he scratched 258 items totaling more than $16 million from the state’s budget.
Jindal’s office proudly pointed out in a July 14 press release that his 258 vetoes “are more than double the vetoes for all the state’s previous 12 budgets combined.”
“For too long, state government has spent and spent, with little regard for taxpayer’s money,” Jindal said in the press release. “Today, we are taking another step toward that New Louisiana by vetoing unnecessary non-governmental and governmental spending to reduce our state budget and send a signal that we will not settle for business as usual.”
But some lawmakers and members of the public aren’t happy that Jindal cut funding to pet projects and charities in their districts. They can’t understand why the governor thought their programs did not deserve state funding.
For example, according to KSLA-TV in Shreveport, Cleo Fields, a former congressman and state senator, is upset that Jindal slashed all funding for his organization, the Louisiana Leadership Institute, a nonprofit that serves about 1,200 children.
Then there’s state Sen. Derrick Shepherd, D-Marrero, who is angry that Jindal vetoed a bill that would have created a third minority judgeship in Gretna’s 24th Judicial District Court.
Those are just two examples of people mad about the vetoes. There are many more.
To be fair, though, some people have long criticized state lawmakers for the pork they insert into the budget, such as funding for a hot air balloon festival. Those people might support Jindal’s cuts.
Regardless of whether Jindal was right or wrong to veto the spending, it’s clear he has damaged his relationship with some members of the Legislature. Even before Jindal cut the 258 items from the budget, he vetoed a pay raise for lawmakers after promising them he wouldn’t. But Jindal, yielding to mounting public opposition, surprised everyone when he announced he would veto the raises.
Lawmakers are now feeling betrayed by Jindal. They backed his legislation, such as a controversial plan to pay private school tuition for New Orleans children, only to have him veto their pay raise and then cut funding for projects and charities in their districts.
Lawmakers aren’t holding their anger back. Following Jindal’s veto of the 258 items, lawmakers are considering what would be the first veto-override season in the state’s history.
So Jindal, who’s only been in office about half a year, finds himself in a precarious situation with the Legislature, which he relies on to get his bills passed. Can he rebuild the trust he’s lost with lawmakers, or will Louisiana’s legislative branch make life hard for the executive branch as long as Jindal remains in office?
Skeptical people would think the public doesn’t have any control over their elected officials. “Once they get in office, they just do whatever they want,” the skeptic might say.
But if Gov. Bobby Jindal’s veto of the legislative pay raise taught us anything, it’s that when enough people speak, the government has no choice but to listen.
When Sen. Ann Duplessis, a New Orleans Democrat, introduced her bill to boost lawmakers’ salaries, there was little to no reaction from the public. Perhaps people thought the bill would not be passed, so there was no need to worry.
Then the bill gained momentum in the Legislature, and the public started paying more attention. Even though residents grew more vocal as the bill seemed more likely to get passed, lawmakers ignored them and passed the bill anyway. As if that wasn’t enough to anger the public, Jindal said he would not veto the bill, even though he said he was opposed to it, too.
That’s when the public went full throttle: Local talk radio shows were flooded with calls from residents demanding Jindal veto the bill before it was too late, and bloggers and writers to Op-Ed pages railed against Jindal and the Legislature.
In the end, Jindal had no choice but to bow to public pressure and break his promise to the Legislature, even though he ran the risk of angering lawmakers who might later make fight legislation Jindal may introduce.
The experience should serve as a reminder to the public of the power they have over their elected officials. But it should serve as a lesson to public officials, too. Maybe next time they won’t be as willing to ignore the voices of the people who elected them into office.
The Louisiana Secretary of State’s Office has clarified how many signatures would be required to force a recall of elected officials.
Ever since state lawmakers voted to give themselves a pay raise, some of those lawmakers and Gov. Bobby Jindal have become the objects of recall efforts.
Less signatures would be needed than initially thought.
Jacques Berry, spokesman for the secretary of state, said that one-third of the signatures of “active” voters is needed, not one-third of the signatures of registered voters.
In Louisiana, there are about 2.87 million total voters, Berry told me today. Of those, 247,000 are inactive.
So, based on 2.62 million active voters, signatures would be needed from about 874,333 voters for a Jindal recall.
For state Sen. Ann Duplessis, D-New Orleans, a major backer of the pay raise, signatures would be needed from one-third of a 36,416 active voters in her district. That’s the lowest number of active voters in any Louisiana Senate district, because of Hurricane Katrina, Berry said.
It came as a shock to many today when Gov. Bobby Jindal said he plans to veto a controversial pay raise that would have doubled the salary of state lawmakers.
That’s because, during the past week or so, Jindal held firm to a pledge that he veto the raise even though he opposed it.
There was no shortage of opposition to the raises: Blogs, talk radio and newspaper were overwhelmed with public criticism to the idea of raising lawmakers’ salaries.
Jindal reversed course today, after recall petitions were filed against him, saying he is “correcting my mistake.”
What happens to Jindal’s reputation with the public now? Does he regain your respect in the wake of his veto? And how will his veto affect his relationship with the Legislature?
The Louisiana Secretary of State’s Office today confirmed that a recall petition has been filed against Gov. Bobby Jindal, The Associated Press reported.
Recall petitions have been filed against members of the Legislature ever since they passed a pay raise for themselves. But this apparently is the first recall petition to be filed against Jindal since the raise.
The public has been outraged over the raises. Jindal, though, has said he will not veto it, even though he is opposed to it.
Meanwhile, the pay raise controversy has attracted the national media’s attention, from well-known outlets such as The New York Times and Forbes to lesser-known publications such as India-West.
When it comes to his relationship with the Louisiana Legislature, Bobby Jindal is hands-off compared with past governors, some lawmakers say.
“We have a young governor and, in my mind, he doesn’t have the old-line Louisiana mind-set,” said state Sen. Buddy Shaw, a Shreveport Republican, in a story by The Associated Press.
Jindal’s approach to the Legislature goes something like this: I will let you know if I disagree with your ideas, but I am not going to use my veto power to kill your legislation.
For example, Jindal disapproved of Shaw’s bill to give residents a $300 million income tax break. But the most criticized example of Jindal’s hands-off approach during the recent legislative session was the controversial pay raise lawmakers gave themselves.
What do you think of Jindal’s approach to the Legislature? Is better that he maintain a working relationship with them, or should he use his veto pen when he thinks legislation is not good for the people of Louisiana?
Today, The Associated Press reported that the Louisiana secretary of state’s office has been getting calls from people who want recall petition packets.
According to the SOS’s spokesperson, the office has received about 10 calls requesting the packets since Monday, the day state lawmakers passed a bill to give themselves a raise that many residents are opposed to.
So who are people trying to get recalled? Is it the governor? State lawmakers? Both?
And are people angry enough about this raise to actually recall elected officials?
The state Senate today OK’d raising the salaries for legislators from $16,800 to $37,500. The bill now goes to the governor for his approval.
The legislation to give the raise has enraged residents, who have come out in opposition to the proposal in letters to the editor and on talk radio.
Gov. Bobby Jindal said he is against the raise. Despite his opposition, Jindal said he will not veto it, because he fears it will make it tougher for him to win the Legislature’s support for other bills.
Today, a blogger on firedoglake.com issued a tirade about Gov. Bobby Jindal, who has been in office for about six months, saying the governor “is on a path to finish the job Hurricane Katrina started.”
The blogger said Jindal is “destroying the public infrastructure that served, however imperfectly, poor and working-class New Orleans residents.”
There’s much more to his rant. Go to the site to check it out.
What do you think? Is Jindal moving our state in the right direction? Is it unfair to criticize him less than a year into his administration?
With Gov. Bobby Jindal taking a trip to Sen. John McCain’s ranch this weekend, many are once again speculating that Louisiana’s new governor is in line to become McCain’s running mate.
So what is this trip really about?
According to The Associated Press, a McCain aide said the visit has nothing to do with presidential politics. Jindal’s press office says the governor is using the trip “to discuss issues important to the future growth of Louisiana.”
Jindal, a Republican, has repeatedly denied rumors that he’s considering running with McCain, also a Republican.
So, it sounds like Jindal will not be running with McCain, although, of course, anything can happen.
But what if Jindal became vice president?
Would he be considered a traitor to Louisiana, considering that he took the governor’s office in January, just a handful of months ago? Or would it be a great move for Louisiana, which is trying to recover from the 2005 hurricanes?
After being passed over last year as a site for a presidential debate, New Orleans is not giving up.
Mayor C. Ray Nagin and Gov. Bobby Jindal appear in a video posted Tuesday on YouTube inviting the presidential candidates to a debate that will involve Google and YouTube.
The event is scheduled for Sept. 18 at the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center. Using Google’s technology and YouTube’s video platform, people from across the country will be able to ask the candidates questions during the forum.
Jindal said the forum will spotlight “the top issues facing our nation.”
So far, no candidates have accepted the invitation.
On Tuesday, the Louisiana Senate voted unanimously to do away with state income taxes, according to a story by The Associated Press.
What started off as a bill to reverse changes in tax brackets resulting from the “Stelly Plan” five years ago turned into a proposal to eliminate state income taxes altogether.
With the state deriving more than 30 percent of its revenue from income taxes, this bill is sure to be amended or killed by the House or Gov. Bobby Jindal, AP reported.
Louisiana’s work force is on the brain of Gov. Bobby Jindal, who is proposing an overhaul of the Louisiana Department of Labor.
Jindal’s proposal comes as the state reportedly faces an estimated 100,000 vacant job because of a lack of skilled workers.
Jindal’s overhaul idea is not new, though. The Associated Press reported that former Gov. Mike Foster also revamped the labor department in 1997 but, 11 years later, “the complaints remain unchanged and thousands of Louisianians remain too unskilled to fill the 100,000 estimated jobs in the state.”
What do you think? Will Jindal’s administration get more done that Foster’s did in overhauling the labor department?
(Photo from http://www.mbi-inc.com/images/timeclock.jpg)
This morning, I read the speech Gov. Bobby Jindal gave to open the special session that began Sunday. In the speech, Jindal details what he wants the Legislature to accomplish during the session.
Many of Jindal’s ideas, targeted toward improving the state’s business climate by doing away with a list of business taxes, seem like common sense, and I wondered why Louisiana hasn’t made these changes already.
For example, why didn’t Louisiana long ago do away with the tax levied on businesses for new equipment and machinery? According to Jindal, Louisiana is one of only three states that do this.
The state must become more competitive, especially now as we try to recover from the 2005 hurricanes.
You can read all of Jindal’s speech by clicking here.
The Associated Press reported today that Gov. Bobby Jindal is seeking to pay Stephen Moret, secretary of the state Department of Economic Development, $320,000 a year.
That would be a nearly $75,000 raise from what his predecessor earned under former Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco.
Hopefully, with pay like that, Moret will be an economic development godsend for Louisiana. We need it.
Gov. Bobby Jindal is calling for sweeping ethics changes, including more financial disclosure for elected and appointed officials, during the ongoing special session that began Sunday. Yet Jindal apparently is opposed to transparency in his own office.
According to a story by The Associated Press, Jindal’s top lawyer said the governor’s office is against a bill that would make many of the governor’s office records available to the public.
The lawyer, Jimmy Faircloth, said the governor’s office takes issue with the bill “because it would create problems for the governor to freely receive ideas, policy recommendations and communications from legislators and others,” the AP story says.
But some lawmakers aren’t buying Jindal’s exemption request for his office’s records. On Tuesday, a state House committee approved the bill, by state Rep. Wayne Waddell, R-Shreveport, over the objections of Jindal’s administration.
Do you agree with Jindal’s objection, or should transparency start from the top down?
Gov. Bobby Jindal’s special session on ethics, which is in full swing and runs until 6 p.m. March 1, is likely to be anything but a cake walk.
Jindal, trying to deliver on campaign promises, wants to reverse Louisiana’s reputation of corruption. But Jindal admits that tackling 60 areas of ethics law changes has the potential to be an uphill battle.
“There will be those who want to see this fail,” he said. “But failure is not an option.”
Perhaps the most friction will be felt when legislators begin considering changes to ethics laws concerning financial disclosure. There is a push to expand disclosure requirements for various elected and appointed officials, including judges.
Another likely point of contention is a call to ban lawmakers and their family members from competing for state contracts.
Then, of course, there’s Jindal’s own ethics, which became an issue after it was reported that the governor did not immediately report a campaign contribution from the state Republican Party. Lawmakers, especially Democrats, could drag that issue to the forefront and use it to delay forward movement in the session.
Speaking of forward motion, it will be interesting to see just how much gets accomplished in this session. With 60 areas of ethics on the table, and only three weeks to get it all done, will the Legislature get through it all?
Gov. Bobby Jindal made ethics a large part of his campaign. So, it came as a shock when Jindal recently became the subject of an ethics complaint over the failure to report about $118,000 in contributions from the state GOP.
The ethics complaint stems from what is known as “in kind” contribution from the state Republican Party. Last year, to help Jindal in his gubernatorial bid, the Republicans sent direct mailings on Jindal’s behalf.
The Republicans listed their donation on a campaign finance disclosure report. But Jindal initially did not disclose the donation. Enter Chris Stow-Serge, former president of the Tulane University College Democrats, who filed a complaint with the Louisiana Board of Ethics in August. Jindal later amended his report in September.
When news of the ethics complaint broke last month, Jindal’s press secretary, Melissa Sellers, said Jindal would “pay the fine and move on, move forward.”
But now it’s not clear who will pay Jindal’s fine. That’s because Jindal’s campaign treasurer, Rolfe McCollister, said he will pay the fine, according to The Associated Press. Also, Jindal will raise the question of who should pay Ethics Board fines during an upcoming special session of the Legislature on ethics.
Who do you think should pay Jindal’s fine? Leave a comment.
Ethics and New Orleans government are not terms generally associated with each other, unless of course you’re talking about a lack of ethics.
The City Council, it seems, is trying to change the city’s image of corruption. Yesterday, the council said that it supports not only the upcoming special session on ethics in the Legislature but also the extension of the ethics policies from the session to New Orleans.
It’s a nice thought. But I’ll be surprised if the council adopts the recommendations from the Jindal session without adding some changes to them. Do you think the council will wholeheartedly adopt the ethics changes without any debate or alterations?
By Deon Roberts, Online Editor
By Deon Roberts, Online Editor
By Deon Roberts, Online Editor
