Politics for Dec. 14, 2008

• Advocate Capitol News Bureau
• Published: Dec 14, 2008 - UPDATED: 12:05 a.m.

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In a world of utility regulation where engineers and financiers speak to each other in a special language that, like twins, is comprehensible only to each other, at least one Public Service Commission member said last week that enough was enough.
“I didn’t understand a damn thing you said,” said PSC Commissioner Foster Campbell, of Bossier Parish, adding that he was not being critical,  just asking they use simpler language.

“Please explain it so that everybody can understand it,” Campbell told lawyers at the monthly meeting of the state’s utility regulators. “This is not Philadelphia. This is Natchitoches.”

Barbour hires ex-Times staffer
A former Shreveport Times staffer is Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour’s new press secretary.

Dan Turner succeeds Pete Smith as the governor’s spokesman. Smith now works for the Mississippi Department of Education.
Turner, 47, is a Philadelphia, Miss., native who worked as U.S. Rep. Jim McCrery’s communications director and district representative after leaving the Shreveport Times. He also worked as a reporter at the Ocean Springs Record, The Meridian Star, and The Natchez Democrat.

GOP spending doubles Democrats
Republicans spent more than twice as much as Democrats on independent expenditures during the just-completed U.S. Senate race in Louisiana.

That’s according to numbers compiled by Congressional Quarterly’s Moneyline.

The National Republican Senatorial Campaign spent $1.9 million through Oct. 15 on independent expenditures, mostly on negative ads against the Democratic incumbent, U.S. Sen. Mary Landrieu.

By contrast, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee spent $717,633 in independent expenditures, again mostly for negative ads against Republican challenger John Kennedy.

Landrieu prevailed 53 percent to 46 percent in the election and is ready to begin a third six-year term in January.
Independent expenditures, by law, can’t be coordinated with a candidate.

Placide takes flak on test reshuffling
Charlotte Placide, superintendent of East Baton Rouge Parish public schools, conceded that district plans to reshuffle test scores have triggered heavy controversy.

“We have been called a lot of things in the last few months,” Placide told an education advisory panel last week.

East Baton Rouge Parish wants to return test scores from students who attend magnet schools to neighborhood schools they otherwise would attend. Critics contend that will make schools that get the scores look better than they are in annual state evaluations.

Blanco has no plans to challenge Vitter
Former Gov. Kathleen Blanco said she is enjoying life too much to contemplate running against Republican U.S. Sen. David Vitter in 2010.