Better Government Association

Priorities overlap, differ for gubernatorial candidates

Economic health, education, ethics part of agendas

By:Mike Hasten
mhasten@gannett.com
September 30 2007

BATON ROUGE - The four major gubernatorial candidates' plans for the state aren't that different, but their top priorities and how they would accomplish their goals vary widely.

Public Service Commissioner Foster Camp-bell, a Democrat from Elm Grove who formerly served in the state Senate, sets passing a 6 percent tax on imported oil and gas processed at Louisiana refineries as his top priority. He says it would provide the funding to solve numerous problems plaguing the state.

None of the other candidates back the idea. Campbell said his plan, which would enable elimination of personal and business income taxes, also would supply funds for his other priorities - improving roads and bridges, funding coastal erosion projects, restructuring the health care delivery system and improving the education level of Louisiana citizens.

Although his tax plan repeatedly failed when he served in the Senate, Campbell said that as governor, it would not be difficult to get lawmakers to approve a constitutional amendment authorizing the fee.

"Changing the political culture in our state is job one" if he is elected governor, says U.S. Rep. Bobby Jindal of Metairie, the only Republican among the top four candidates. "If we fail to do this, we fail. It is that simple."

Jindal relates many of the state's problems to weak ethics laws, so he considers imposing stiffer requirements his top priority. Statistics roll off his tongue: State ethics laws ranked 44th overall according to the Center for Public Integrity; Louisiana ranks 46th overall in the Better Government Association's Integrity Index; third most corrupt state in the country in the 2004 Corporate Crime Reporter study; and "getting F grades on our disclosure laws."

"What we need in government now is great managers," said independent candidate John Georges, a New Orleans businessman who has never held elected office. He maintains that the state would be in much better shape if it had better people managing the money and the departments that spend it.

Georges' goal is to "put experienced people in charge" of handling what he considers the state's priorities, including economic development, which is his top priority, crime, health care, education, ethics and transportation problems. "If I've got a choice between people with big ideas and experience, I'll choose experience every day."

State Sen. Walter Boasso, a Democrat from Chalmette, said he doesn't really have a top concern because "you can't just pick one thing to do at a time. You've got to multitask to get the state moving. Everything ties in together."

Here's how the candidates addressed different issues facing the state:

Economic development

Campbell says the state should help small businesses survive and prosper and "quit trying to rope the biggest Brahma bull in the pasture" - referring to the state's efforts to secure a German steel mill that went to Alabama. He says his plan to eliminate all business and individual income taxes would set off an economic boom.

To Georges, economic development covers a huge area. It includes a variety of things, from completing the northern and southern sections of Interstate 49 and consolidating ports to incorporating the assistance of the lieutenant governor in recruiting new businesses and the treasurer in developing a tax revision plan to help existing businesses.

It also includes improving vocational education, making universities specialize in their degree offerings to meet job demands, eliminating taxes on business utilities, equipment used in manufacturing and business debt, paying "special attention to the Delta parishes in northeast Louisiana" and offering incentives to locate along the I-49 corridor.

"Economic development needs to be coordinated," Georges said. "We should not take all of our money and put it in one project, like a steel mill. My platform for economic development is not a 'Hail Mary' steel mill project."

Boasso said he would immediately call in every economic director in the state and do a survey of businesses, asking "what can we do to keep you in the state and what incentives do you need to expand. Long term, I'd go after the Asian trade."

Since the West Coast trade lanes and ports are clogged with business, Asian companies are coming through the Panama Canal and going to the East Coast with goods, he said. Drawing them to Louisiana ports would "light it up like a Christmas tree."

Jindal said the state should "get rid of the taxes our neighboring states don't have" and focus more junior high and high school students on learning a profession so they can fill many of the skilled labor jobs that companies can't fill.

By funneling students who don't want to go to college into job training programs at community and technical colleges, Louisiana could offer a "Day 1 Guarantee" that graduates are ready to go to work, Jindal said. If they don't measure up, "we would re-train them for free."

Health care

To improve health care, Campbell said the state needs to build a new teaching hospital in New Orleans and new public hospitals where facilities are decrepit. He said they should be patterned after the LSU Health Sciences Center in Shreveport and have excellent staffs that will attract paying patients, as well as the indigent.

He also supports the state plan to have "medical homes" that will provide community care so people won't go to hospital emergency rooms for minor problems.

Boasso said he would push a "hybrid program" that would offer a chance for insurance for the working poor but keep a charity clinic and hospital system operating for the indigent.

"We've got to get people out of emergency rooms and get them in the posture so they can get primary care," he said. New public hospitals would be constructed with "Shreveport absolutely the model."

Georges supports the move to provide more localized care through public and private clinics to reduce the number of people using hospital emergency rooms. He favors building new public hospitals in New Orleans and Baton Rouge, "using the LSU Health Sciences Center in Shreveport as a model."

Jindal said health care problems could be addressed by offering insurance coverage to families who can't afford it. The state could secure federal Health Insurance Flexibility and Accountability waivers to pay for it and "if an employer is willing to help, the state could pay some of the cost" of providing insurance to lower-paid employees.

Education

Campbell wants to use some of the processing tax money to bring teacher salaries to the national average, put more money into classrooms and to get more use out of schools. He says schools should be open during the summers and at night offering education and job training to adults and drop-outs seeking to better themselves.

"Don't tell me it can't be done," he said. "Instead of pet projects, we'll put money into big projects."

Georges' priorities include improving education as part of economic development. His plan includes improving vocational education and making universities specialize in their degree offerings to meet the demands of the job market.

He wants to make pre-kindergarten available to all 4-year-olds, create a special needs program for students with disabilities, maintain teacher pay at the Southern average with incentives for doing a better job, speed up high school redesign and offer laptop computers to all students at reduced rates.

Jindal said he would push legislation spelling out what teachers could do to discipline students and require administrators to support them. Also, "we need to be more aggressive with using alternative learning centers," he said.

Boasso is the only candidate who says he wants to do something with the state's accountability program, a system that is ranked one of the best in the country. He said many people have misinterpreted him.

Boasso said he would prefer to administer a test based on the curriculum at the beginning of the year to see where students are, then administer the same test in the middle of the year. That would show teachers where they are succeeding and where they need to work more. Then the same test would be administered at the end of the year to determine how much the students learned during the year.

Critics have charged that Boasso's plan eliminates the pass-fail power of the LEAP exam in fourth and eighth grades and would go back to social promotion.

"I'm not going to promote a child just for the sake of promotion," he said. "I just want to put everything on the table to see what can be done to improve education. I want to focus on students and not statistics."

Ethics

Implementing tougher ethics laws is Bobby Jindal's main priority but other candidates say that's not the most important thing that needs to be done.

Jindal says he wants to impose "real penalties so you not just lose your job, you go to jail. We're making it clear that we expect leaders to serve the state, not themselves." He wants a "full-time independent ethics administrator with power to enforce the laws."

He said he wants to outlaw legislators working for lobbying firms (which already is against the law), require full disclosure of legislators' finances, prohibit lawmakers doing business with the state (which is currently allowed if lawmakers file a disclosure form), strengthen lobbyist disclosure laws and impose laws that require offenders to lose their positions and be subject to jail time.

Asked about ethics, Campbell said all the emphasis Jindal is placing on the issue is "baloney. I know how to change ethics: Get the lobbyists off the floors of the House and Senate and limit the number of bills that can be introduced."

Lobbyists are allowed to sit in seats set aside for the public, pass notes to lawmakers and talk to them during debates. Campbell wants them removed from both houses of the Legislature so they can't influence votes.

Georges said his plan calls for imposing stronger financial disclosure requirements, known as "glass pockets," prohibiting candidates for governor from accepting contributions from anyone who does business with the state, closing the loophole that allows legislators to receive free tickets to events and adopting stronger lobbyist reporting laws.

Boasso said he would push the Legislature to approve the same "glass pockets" bill he supported in this year's session, requiring legislators to show all their income sources.

Transportation

All of the major candidates for governor support completing the construction of I-49.

Louisiana needs to spend at least $1 billion a year improving its roads and bridges and building new ones if the state is to even make a dent in the current $14 billion backlog, Campbell said.

Georges says completing I-49 all the way from the Arkansas border to New Orleans would be a major boost for the state's economy. He wants to implement incentives for businesses locating along the corridor.

Besides I-49, "We need a loop in Lafayette," he said. "It's a thriving economy. We don't need to wait until it's like Baton Rouge before we do something."

To better fund road construction, Jindal said he favors the proposal to transfer all transportation-related charges - like fees on car and truck registration, driver's licenses and sales tax on vehicle purchases - to the Transportation Trust Fund.

"Voters expected those taxes to go to the highway construction fund when they approved them," he said, and the anticipated continued revenue growth would more than cover that reduction in the state general fund.

Boasso also said he would shift transportation-related taxes and fees to highway and bridge construction and use the $600 million to finance about $7 billion in bonds to make a major cut into the $14 billion construction backlog.

CAN CUT HERE

Crime

Some of the candidates list crime among their top five priorities.

Georges proposes to redirect state police so it puts more troopers on the road and fewer in office jobs, especially in the gaming division, where 153 of the 1,022 officers are employed.

That proposal has drawn criticism because although Georges sold his interest in his video game distribution business to his partner the day he qualified for governor, he is allowing his partner to pay it out over time. Critics said that makes him still involved in the business.

Georges said he also wants to put more emphasis on rehabilitating and training first-time offenders and to stop mixing them with longtime criminals in jails.

Jindal said the state must do something to address the rising crime rates in cities, even though "crime will continue to be a local problem. We're the second most dangerous state in the nation."

Increased funding to crime labs would help speed up getting cases to court, he said, and a statewide criminal database is needed so criminals can't move around undetected.

Louisiana has had a statewide criminal database tied into the FBI National Crime Information System and linked to every sheriff's department and police force in the state for more than 20 years, said State Police Sgt. Marcus Smith.

Boasso has a plan to "end the revolving door" of inmates by treating their drug, alcohol or psychological problems, educating them and training them for guaranteed jobs when they are released. He said inmates who pass a battery of testing to make sure they are suited for such a program would go through intense sessions in a compound separated from other prisoners.

"Just locking people up is not going to solve the problem," he said.

Insurance

Boasso said he wants to give homeowners a break on their high insurance premiums by granting a tax break he tried in this year's session. A credit would be granted for the difference between premiums paid before and after Hurricane Katrina hit the state.

"I'm trying to make it affordable for people to live here," he said.

He also would push his "cherry-picking" legislation requiring insurers in Louisiana to offer all kinds of insurance and not just auto and boat policies that they know will make money for them and pass a law against companies underpaying claims and dragging out settlements.

Coastal restoration

"It's time to do something about it," Boasso said about restoring Louisiana's coastline.

He is proposing that the state purchase its own dredges and equipment to do coastal restoration projects "and not wait for the federal government to do it." Since the state must pay for a portion of the work, it would use the money for equipment, train inmate labor to operate it and "move dirt 24-7."

Boasso said he would work with oil companies to supply the fuel for the equipment.

Georges said he would sell the remainder of the tobacco settlement and use the cash to back bonds to pay for coastal restoration projects.