Opinion: How covering the Legislature was transforming

A year ago, I would have told you higher education and TOPS scholarships should be fully funded at all costs — raise taxes, cut other programs, sweep other state agency monies, rob banks, launder money. Just do it.
A year ago, I led a 700-person march on the Louisiana State Capitol to protest budget cuts to LSU and other colleges. With fist in air, I called for legislators to do the right thing or their elected positions would be in jeopardy.
A year ago, I didn’t know what I was talking about.
Then I switched hats.
Nineteen weeks of reporting for newspapers during the Legislature’s longest consecutive session put my idealism in perspective.
Should higher education be fully funded? Should TOPS recipients receive their full scholarships?
A lovely thought, but only a fantasy.
In Louisiana’s reality, funding those programs means closing hospitals, taking families with disabled children off the state’s medical waiver program, and further cuts to public schools.
Today, I would sacrifice TOPS.
Human lives are more important than a Republican version of Bernie Sanders’ free-college pledge or more money for the state’s 15 four-year higher education institutions.
It would be nice if Louisiana had the revenue it had before former Gov. Bobby Jindal took office in 2008, when federal money from Hurricanes Katrina and Rita disappeared, the national economy tanked, and Jindal injected steroids into corporate tax credit and exemption programs within the context of a tax system that was not pulling in enough money to counter what the government spent.
Those post-Katrina times are gone and not coming back anytime soon.
Today we have budget deficit after budget deficit, a constitution that restricts the Legislature’s options for selective spending cuts and a tax code that is more complex than a Les Miles explanation of Saturday’s football game.
In the past two special sessions, legislators raised billions of dollars in taxes (which sunset in 2018, setting up another doomsday barring major structural changes to the state constitution or tax code). That additional revenue went to funding the ailing health care system and higher education systems, among other programs.
Even with an overhaul of state tax laws and constitutional restrictions, TOPS remains unsustainable in the current fiscal environment.
TOPS has become more of an entitlement than a scholarship program. It is similar to Bernie Sanders’ vision of what free college looks like except that lower-income students in the state don’t benefit from the money as originally intended.
So what are the attempted reforms to the program? Legislators suggested increasing the academic requirements, cutting the awards across the board, and assessing who gets the scholarship through income.
The across-the-board cut won out during this past session. As time goes on and more deficits are realized, the effect of the scholarship will dwindle as tuition rates continue to rise. Eventually the students from low-income families won’t be able to attend college because it has become too expensive and the scholarship is barely enough to buy a year’s worth of textbooks and fees, let alone tuition and housing.
Republicans would never allow income based scholarships and Democrats would refuse to raise the standards that would leave behind those whose K-12 education system fails to prepare, which happens most often with children in lower-income households.
The solution lies in compromise. Students in financial need would qualify for tuition scholarships, and exceptional academic performances would be awarded with merit-based scholarships to prevent a brain drain from weakening the state’s economic future.
Combine this with reducing Louisiana’s 15 colleges by closing or merging institutions with six-year graduation rates under a set percentage. Along with reducing the number of institutions, those which make the cut should be directed to consolidate programs across the state and eliminate duplicate specialized areas of study. Academic departments not producing more than, say, 40 majors a year need to go. In this time of continued fiscal crisis, the luxury of low-producing programs is expendable.
These measures would increase higher education funding and, in turn, stop universities from having to increase tuition rates.
The three systems (LSU, UL and Southern), along with the Legislature, would investigate how to cut and consolidate the state higher education system. One of the indicators would be graduation rates. Here is a look at the latest rates at Louisiana’s public institutions of higher learning:
LSU Baton Rouge, 67 percent; Louisiana Tech, 54 percent; University of Louisiana Lafayette, 48 percent; McNeese State, 41 percent; University of Louisiana Monroe, 40 percent; Northwestern, 37 percent; Southeastern, 37 percent; Nicholls State, 37 percent; University of New Orleans, 34 percent; Southern University Baton Rouge, 32 percent; Grambling, 31 percent; LSU Shreveport, 30 percent; LSU Alexandria, 25 percent; and Southern University New Orleans, 14 percent.
In today’s budgetary crisis, Louisiana hospitals and education programs spar for funding. It’s unpopular but necessary. A solution to this annual bickering must be found.
The targeted four-year schools would transition into two-year institutions and feed into the remaining full universities.
A year ago, I would have argued to fund them all. I would have argued that college students deserve 100 percent of their TOPS money. But after seeing the threat of closing four hospitals in the state and families losing the money needed to pay for essential services to care for their disabled children, I can’t continue blind cries for full funding. (Full disclosure: I was a TOPS recipient for four years.)
In a deeply conservative state, there will never be enough tax revenue to fund programs as they were funded eight years ago.
And when Sen. Eric LaFleur, D-Ville Platte, fails a legislative report card created by higher education students because he didn’t vote for giving more money to higher education at the cost of taking medical waivers away from disabled children, I remember how idealism blinded me to the tough, gritty legislative process.
A year ago, I would have supported that report card. I would have supported the critics calling legislators cowards for not fully funding Higher Education and TOPS.
Today, I’m no longer an idealist. I understand the political realities and complications. The conflicting priorities forced to duel within the state constitution for enough funding to stay afloat.
Today, I am a realist.
To mix fairy-tale lines: We aren’t in Neverland anymore, Peter Pan. It’s time to grow up and locate basic solutions to politically convoluted issues. Tapping our heels three times and singing “there’s no place like fiscal solvency” won’t produce those solutions.
Yes, Louisiana needs tax reform. Yes, Louisiana needs a constitutional convention.
But since those reforms didn’t exist in this year’s legislative sessions. Most legislators worked hard to make the most of what they were given. Don’t condemn them just because they didn’t fund your program as much as you thought necessary.
Instead, support realistic compromises.
Justin DiCharia is a 2016 mass communications graduate of Louisiana State University, a reporter for the Manship School News Service during the 19 weeks of legislative sessions this year, and will enter the LSU law school in August.