Gov. Bobby Jindal no doubt enthusiastically will go after some of these, as those particular ones are part of a reformist agenda that politically faces tough sledding. While of course Jindal wanted to see savings suggestions in this time of budgetary strain, his main goal was to find political for favored measures such as closing inefficient state institutions such as state-run developmental centers, reorganizing higher education (tangentially addressed by this body), reduction of dedicated funds, and reorganizing civil service personnel policies, to name some where he has articulated a need for change and actually has tried to foment some.

Legislative enthusiasts such as the commission’s chairman state Sen. Jack Donahue also can be counted on to run with these. In remarks related to the release of the report, Donahue urged the Legislature as a whole to review and act where appropriate on the report’s conclusions. That, however, even with Jindal’s assistance, will shape up as a tough sell for many items.

This is because they are frightening efficient and truly revolutionary in the context of policy in Louisiana today and historically. For example, the report advises giving no pay raises to state classified employees who garner a middle (“meets expectation”) rating, closing out almost all dedicated funds in the near future, that only accredited nongovernmental organizations receive state appropriations and cannot contract with the state for a year for functions similar to those vetoed by the governor, shifting of health care responsibilities away from state institutions, that elementary and secondary education spending follow pupils and not districts, that those able-bodied recipients of public housing assistance either work or train to do so, moving the state retirement systems from a defined-benefit to defined-contribution system (including the phasing out of the DROP system), and eliminating the state’s public insurer Louisiana Citizens Property Insurance Corporation and return that function to its previous quasi-governmental administration.

All of these alterations with the exception of the first would require legislation that might be difficult to extract from the Legislature. Individually, too many legislators have too many sacred cows – NGOs, the education establishment, state employees, the “poor,” contractors, etc. – which all together might add up to resistant majorities for true change. Despite Donahue’s plea, for these kinds of things, the leadership will not be forthcoming from the Legislature.

But it can provide for some success if it comes from Jindal. The governor has been excellent in getting unglamorous yet significant changes that promise substantial cost savings enacted in the executive branch. Yet it he really wants to go for the home run, he needs to go after at least some of these. He has shown that he will strategically use the inconvenient fact of budgetary stress to pursue a reform agenda that he articulated during the campaign, so there is reason to believe he will back visibly these kinds of improvements which is the only shot they have of becoming policy.

To date, this means that Jindal has done an adequate job of fulfilling his promise of making the state use taxpayer resources more efficiently. However, if he wants to earn the label as the governor who has had the most enduring impact on the state in history – along with Prisoner #03128-095 and Huey P. Long and unlike them for the better – his opportunity and moment have arrived with the political capital provided by this report.

Last month, Landrieu faced derision when revealed that she had dropped objections to a health care bill in the Senate that promises higher premiums and taxes with reduced quality of care when she had secured attachment to the bill of a provision that could bring the state as much as $300 million to next fiscal year’s Medicaid program. Despite the widespread criticism she expressed pride in her ability to extract this concession.

Apparently, one Stephanie Grace seems convinced by Landrieu. She writes that Landrieu followed the norms of expected legislative behavior and did it well enough to “solve” a particular problem. But as soon as the reader is informed of this, Grace senses something is wrong with her argument because she immediately goes on to write that, in the scheme of getting goodies tucked into the bill, what Landrieu did was “more defensible” than some deals made by her colleagues.

This semi-conscious realization illuminates the entire flaw with this argument. If deal-making for a particular bill emanated from a background of acceptable rectitude of the bill, the kind or amount of deal being made would not matter in defining that rectitude. That is, if policy-makers knew they had something that was good for the people to support yet were playing a bluffing game with party leaders for votes in order to mine extra benefits for their constituents, then the bigger the deal the more skilled the policy-maker – something not to defend, but brag about. The deal itself would not determine the acceptability of the bill, but rather would enhance it.

The problem in this instance is that the bill in question is so catastrophically bad. Here, the nature of the deal is not an add-on to make something good even better, but as camouflage to make a bad deal look less bad. Even if Grace believes Landrieu always thought the bill to be acceptable, the fact of Landrieu’s induced lagniappe denotes not skill, but cravenness. By her schizophrenic defense of Landrieu – it’s good because it’s what senators do, but also not bad because others’ deals are worse – at some level even Grace seems to get this. The issue is not quantity, but quality.

Landrieu, however, seems not to get this at all. So her actions simply cannot be defended in any way because you cannot make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear no matter how much gussying-up of it you do. That Grace even tried to do so illustrates for us the perils of focusing on the trees – senatorial dealing – rather than seeing the entire forest – the inherent rottenness itself of the subject of the dealing. No amount of apologizing for Landrieu can change that.

As noted previously, even with his long experience and family name, Landrieu could not be considered the favorite for the spot unless no high-quality black opponent emerged, somebody with elective policy-making experience in government. Several passed on it, but one who got in the chase was state Sen. Edwin Murray and seemed like the best bet to make a runoff against Landrieu, who unexpectedly entered the fray less than a month ago. If so, an enormous edge in black voting registration would have made it difficult for Landrieu to secure the win.

However, Murray with little warning pulled out of the race, leaving only three black candidates that have any real opportunity to make a runoff – former judge Nadine Ramsey, activist James Perry, and businessman Troy Henry. Only Ramsey has ever run and won a political office, unopposed in three terms as a judge so she really has no successful competitive campaign experience. Murray hinted that difficulty in raising funds since the entrance of Landrieu led to what he thought would be a personally too-expensive race for him as well as he cited the potential for “racially divisive” rhetoric becoming a feature of the race.

In other words, Murray may have been a victim of national political trends that may have made Democrats look bad. Given his entrance just prior to his sister Sen. Mary Landrieu’s crucial votes to allow health care legislation that would raise premiums, taxes, and lower the quality of care to advance, it’s theorized that part of Mary’s motivation for supporting the bad legislation was promises for Democrat fat cats to contribute to Mitch and not to Murray. Then, Murray fell on his sword to prevent Democratic infighting that might damage the already rapidly-souring Democrat hopes later in 2010.

Unless one of the remaining black candidates can hurriedly demonstrate some major fundraising prowess, the election environment otherwise will create momentum for some blacks, who almost double up on whites in the electorate, to go with Landrieu and discourage others from turning out, giving Landrieu the ability to win. Henry might be the best placed, being an outsider of government with a successful business background to contrast with the insider Landrieu and the current regime running the city into the ground again.

The problem is, the one who is encouraging the present follies in city government was before assuming the city’s top job was an outsider with a business background, Mayor Ray Nagin. New Orleanians historically put insiders into the position so the chance they took on Nagin, twice, may have soured them on the kind of candidate that is Henry.

Regardless, Landrieu’s biggest obstacle is out of the way and unless something happens soon where support suddenly coalesces around a black candidate, he has established himself as the most likely to collect eventually on his dream post.

With roughly 40 percent of general fund money going into health care, the $248 million total general fund cut was going to make a significant impact on its operations as well as produce the single largest area of fiscal relief for the state Yet when the dust settled, particularly in the area of care of the indigent elderly and developmentally disabled, the Administration made exactly the best moves to induce increased efficiency into the system.

Most prominently, it has accelerated plans to close state-run development centers – in other words, publicly-owned nursing homes for the developmentally (meaning mentally and/or physically) disabled. Their operating expenses are much higher than comparable facilities in the private sector, and some of their clients could be cared for adequately in home- and community-based settings. Also, the state again has scaled back payments to the politically-powerful nursing home industry which for decades has benefitted from extra largesse that has bred wastefulness and inefficiency. This may encourage more transfers from institutional settings into alternatives at cost savings to taxpayers. Yet at the same time, the Administration preserved funding for the very home- and community-based programs that will be expected to take up the slack from the impact of these other changes.

What distinguishes these changes from those of the greater crisis of a year ago is back then alterations to produce savings largely were procedural, while this time they are more reallocation. This is a key and (given political forces) more difficult step in policy evolution but absolutely necessary if savings are to be realized. Some efficiency gains get realized through changing the way tasks are performed, but the real savings come from pulling money from less efficient uses and putting it into activities that produce the same or better outcomes for fewer dollars.

At least it has a title sponsor which may allow it to last longer than the dubious previous one which defaulted on its commitment. Essentially going a couple of years without a sponsor and then with one that quickly stopped paying its money forced the entity that runs it, the Independence Bowl Foundation, to dip into reserves and led Shreveport to make a controversial and secret gift/loan to the organization to keep the game afloat.

But the problem is these follies did not go unnoticed by college football. This game will be the last matchup between teams from the premier power conferences in the land, the Big 12 and Southeastern Conferences. This decade, they have produced six of the nine mythical national champions and every year but one put one of their teams in the national championship game, They are so powerful that they have agreements with various bowls to place as many as eight teams (of 12 each) in bowl games (a team must have six wins against the top division’s opponents in order to qualify). Better still for the bowl game, geographically the Big 12 was the closest conference to it and the SEC had a natural affiliation with the area courtesy of LSU’s membership in the conference and also many fairly geographically proximate teams.

However, because of the game’s lack of prominence it was essentially last in the pecking order for both conferences, meaning some years enough teams would not qualify from either or both conferences and teams from other, less (and sometimes far less) prominence would end up playing in the game. That status has slid further, no doubt triggered by these monetary difficulties, with affiliations changing and beginning next year automatic bids will go to the third place finisher in the Mountain West Conference and seventh place finisher in the Atlantic Coast Conference, presumed to be the seventh and sixth best conferences, respectively. Regrettably, the ACC sometimes has trouble qualifying teams and the MWC is not very deep.

Making matters worse, the closest institution to Shreveport from them is Texas Christian University in Ft. Worth a couple of hundred miles away. After that, the next is over 500 miles distant and some as many as over 1300 miles away (by contrast, 14 Big12 and SEC schools are within 500 miles of Shreveport and the furthest is less than 750). Finally, the average school size and fan base of these 20 teams is smaller than the present 24.

All of this means the game in the future probably will draw fewer people from outside the area – this tourism impact being the main reason the city continues to subsidize the game (to the tune of $90,000 proposed in 2010; the state has ceased its direct subsidy of all bowl games) even in this era of forced budget austerity. Less attractive contests also likely will draw fewer local people to the game as well.

Therefore, even as it is the tenth-oldest game around, its struggles will intensify. As the second-smallest metropolitan area that hosts a game (and perhaps with the worst weather typically) with its local, indigenous corporations being bought up by larger, distant conglomerates, sponsorship dollars will get scarcer. More than ever, its sustainability is in question.

Which means the time may well come when the Foundation looks for extensive taxpayer dollars to stay afloat. This must be resisted as the coming dynamics are such that it is unlikely to bring in more monetary benefits to repay tax coffers than would go out. It’s a great jewel for the city and state, but perhaps beyond its means.