Newspaper Clippings 
Shortly after hearing that the Legislature and Gov. Bobby Jindal would form a commission to streamline state government, Jim Brandt headed to his policy research group’s library and started pulling reports from past efforts.
Brandt’s Public Affairs Research Council of Louisiana had collected many of the reports generated by the commissions over the years, and after a few minutes, they covered every inch of the conference room table, then filled all the chairs.
Brandt said that looking at the studies done over the years, he noticed the problems articulated and the recommended solutions were often repeated.
“There’s a lot of recycling of ideas and the same themes that continue to pop up in these things,” Brandt said.
But the counsel of earlier government efficiency committees was rarely heeded, he noted.
“It’s not a terribly impressive track record as far as implementation goes,” Brandt said.
In 1921, Gov. John M. Parker spoke of consolidating agencies and commissions and reducing the number of employees on the state payroll.
A dozen or so studies over the years expanded Parker’s list to include recommendations ranging from coordinating higher education to reducing the amount of state money used to provide bus service for private school students.
In 1940, Gov. Sam Jones — who earlier worked with Parker and would do the same later with Gov. John J. McKeithen — pushed through “streamlining” initiatives only to have the Louisiana Supreme Court rule them unconstitutional.
Since 1960, every governor has campaigned on making state government efficient, less costly and more responsive. Each governor from Jimmie Davis to Jindal has formed a study group similar to the current Commission to Streamline Government.
A new impetus?
The current commission is expected to have a package of recommendations for lawmakers to consider on Dec. 15. The final report is due Jan. 4.
State Sen. Jack Donahue, R-Mandeville, who chairs the effort, said he studied a major 1995 reorganization report, and read the March 2001 “Cut the Fat Report” drafted by a committee chaired by Jay Dardenne, then a state senator and now secretary of state.
“I had the benefit of looking at what had been recommended in the past and what worked,” Donahue said in a recent interview.
Donahue said his commission differs from those in the past because of the budget crisis.
State government is expected to run $1 billion short in the 2010-11 fiscal year, which begins in July. The budget outlook for the following years is even worse.
To balance the budget, legislators must raise taxes, cut services or find more efficient ways for government to operate, Donahue said. That stark fiscal reality should give his commission’s suggestions more traction than many past ones, he said.
Streamlining commission member Barry Erwin agrees.
“The question is can we do it in as smart a way as possible, finding different kinds of efficiencies, or are we going to do the same old thing?” said Erwin, president and CEO of nonprofit policy group Council for A Better Louisiana.
Erwin noted that implementing proposals is hard even when streamlining commissions have the support of the governor and the Legislature. Momentum is another problem, he said.
“This is one of the challenges you always face, that when you go from one administration to another things change, priorities change,” Erwin said.
“Yes, We Can!”
The biggest previous recent effort to revamp state government was in the mid-1990s.
Using the slogan of “Yes, We Can!”, the state Senate at the urging of then-Gov. Mike Foster convened the Select Council on Revenues and Expenditures in Louisiana’s Future — commonly called SECURE.
Twenty-seven members were chosen by the governor, legislative leaders, business associations and other groups. With the paid assistance of KPMG Peat Marwick, SECURE spent two years analyzing the systems of state government.
SECURE made hundreds of proposals — some large, such as reducing the state sales tax, and some small, such as limiting clerical staff to 15 percent of a unit’s workforce.
Some suggestions were adopted, but most were not, especially “the really tough ones,” State Treasurer John Kennedy said.
A member of the current streamlining commission, Kennedy carries the 6-inch stack of SECURE reports to speeches he gives.
Kennedy said he remains unsure whether any new streamlining proposals will win approval this time.
“I don’t know whether this commission has the courage to do what we all know needs to be done. And if it does, and it hasn’t yet, I don’t know to what extent the governor or the Legislature will embrace these ideas,” he said.
Even the SECURE ideas that did survive to become law haven’t always stuck.
SECURE’s findings on inequities in the state’s tax codes led to the sweeping changes made by the so-called Stelly tax swap, which voters approved in 2002.
Named after former state Rep. Vic Stelly of Lake Charles, its chief legislative sponsor, the plan phased out the state sales tax on groceries and home utilities.
To offset the loss in revenue, state income tax brackets were compressed to generate more tax revenue.
But beginning in 2004 during Gov. Kathleen Blanco’s administration, the Legislature started rolling back provisions of Stelly.
And during the Jindal administration, the Legislature in 2008 further dismantled the Stelly plan and in 2009 refused an opportunity to slow the continuing cancellation of changes enacted on SECURE’s recommendations.
Some changes made
But the commissions do have impact.
Merging the Louisiana School for the Visually Impaired and the Louisiana School for the Deaf, a move regularly pushed by government efficiency reports since the 1980s, finally happened earlier this year.
On a larger scale, the present structure of state government tracks advice that was offered for a half century before finally being implemented in the mid-1970s.
Prior to the reorganization, which was made part of the 1974 Constitution and enacted in 1976, Louisiana’s state government consisted of about 250 administrative agencies headed by 1,448 top-level administrators, many of whom were elected.
Speaking to the Rotary Club of Baton Rouge in January 1967, former Gov. Sam Jones said government had become so unwieldy that it would take a governor two years to visit every agency if he focused on one a day.
“This complexity, confusion and lack of order and coordination cries out for correction,” Jones said.
As governor in 1940, Jones hired private consultants, who along with LSU, studied state government and made recommendations. Forms were sent to each department asking for estimates on expenditures, including travel, heating and office supply costs. The circulars stated: “The state must practice the most rigid economy in view of the serious financial condition facing this state.”
Jones pushed legislation that consolidated 174 administrative agencies into a compact government of 20 departments, plus five independent agencies. Voters approved.
But the Louisiana Supreme Court overturned the changes, ruling Jones and the Legislature did not follow constitutional procedures by failing to specify a date when the amendment was to be submitted and by wrapping the overhaul up in one amendment instead of two.
Throughout the 1960s, various efficiency commissions made the same consolidation recommendations.
Lt. Gov. C.C. “Taddy” Aycock chaired the Management and Efficiency in Government committee, which in addition to agency consolidation suggested enacting a code of ethics and coordinating the various universities and colleges.
But Gov. John McKeithen dismissed the committee’s findings in 1969. He was quoted as saying that as good as the recommendations were, they realized nowhere near the $100 million in extra revenue needed by the state.
Edwards consolidates
Edwin W. Edwards made sweeping government reorganization a cornerstone of his 1971 campaign for governor.
And in 1972, he said he wanted to pull government together.
“I want it to be compact,” he said. “I want it to be responsive and to be able to give the services the people expect at minimal cost.”
Edwards’ plan abolished 70 agencies, boards and commissions and reorganized another 200 into 19 departments — 11 headed by secretaries the governor appointed and eight by elected officials.
After the legal framework was approved, Edwards had the Special Committee on Reorganization of the Executive Branch hammer out the details of moving personnel around and trimming costs. But realizing efficiencies proved difficult as department heads proposed minimal cuts in personnel, office space and financing.
Edmund Reggie, who chaired the committee, in March 1978 said: “We’re finding a discouraging and appalling lack of imagination and ingenuity on the part of some secretaries in the plans for implementing reorganization.”
Wildlife and Fisheries, for instance, presented a plan that would cut its work force from 930 jobs to 914, Reggie’s committee documented.
In December 1978, Brandt’s predecessors at PAR summed up the state’s most extensive restructuring effort by saying that further improvements “will require in-depth analysis of functions and evaluation of performance — areas in which Louisiana has been sadly lacking.”
Even though many past government efficiency efforts stalled, were reversed or never really got off the ground, such periodic reviews do have merit, Secretary of State Dardenne said.
“Particularly in a creature as large and voracious as government,” he said. “Anything you can do to self-examine the way you’re spending money and how you are setting priorities is an appropriate exercise for policymakers.”