Political Horizons for April 5

• By MARK BALLARD
• Advocate Capitol News Bureau
• Published: Apr 5, 2009

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My family is spending the next couple of weeks deciding what college my 18-year-old will attend. We’re comparing aid offers to sticker prices, wondering if our 529 savings plan will ever regain its value.

Though the particulars differ, it’s a scenario being played across Louisiana as some 42,000 high-schoolers prepare to graduate. The state Department of Education estimates that roughly 23,000 of that number will go to publicly funded colleges and universities in Louisiana.

An uncounted number, like my daughter, is headed to a private school or will leave the state. The decision to leave stems, in part, from the instability at LSU — talk of layoffs, scholarship cutbacks and academic program closures — as state government continues to raid the flagship’s resources.

Though busy with the details of today, what continues to gnaw in the back of my mind is that, come August, my National Merit Scholar is going to move someplace up east and, like so many talented young people from Louisiana in search of better opportunities, never return.

It also brings to mind the “Spring 2009 Louisiana Survey,” which was released by LSU recently. The survey, said, basically, that taxpayers want to balance the state’s budget by cutting someone else’s pet projects. Meaning that after several years of easy decisions allowed by surplus money in state government, policy makers now face disappointing someone. Too little money requires focusing on what’s truly important.

One such decision is the $414 million megafund for economic development. Its original goal was to develop prospects that would keep Louisiana’s best and brightest from fleeing the state.

That didn’t turn out so well.

Unlike most commentators and legislators, I applaud Gov. Bobby Jindal’s effort to crack the megafund. He wants to use about $250 million on various projects, including helping a new buyer of a Farmerville chicken plant keep the business viable.

The chicken processing plant employs about a thousand people and keeps dozens of nearby chicken farmers in business. The loss of that area’s major employer also would create a cascading effect on local retailers, banks, grocery stores, etc.

Louisiana taxpayers would own half of the plant and legislators are right to question a strategy that smacks of socialism. A full debate is necessary and required. But the move also may just keep a few thousand of our neighbors from tumbling into a poverty in which 20 percent of the state already lives.

To open up the megafund, Jindal needs the Louisiana Legislature to change state law because the money is supposed to be used only when the taxpayer dollars account for less than 30 percent in the cost of project. The private beneficiary of taxpayer largesse must invest at least $100 million and must guarantee at least 500 jobs.

When she created the fund, then-Gov. Kathleen Blanco touted it as a way to quickly tap the dollars necessary to lure big out-of-state corporations to build plants here. She, and now Jindal, still hope to land some Japanese automaker or German steel plant or French chemical firm.

But like an overeager “cougar” prowling for young men in a college bar, all the makeup, lipstick and hairspray never seems to overcome this state’s obvious drawbacks: an aging infrastructure, a lack of support — in terms of an educated work force — and the scars of pervasive poverty. Louisiana just isn’t attractive, regardless of how much money the state waves around upfront.