Four Louisiana universities are in poor financial health and have been placed on a “fiscal watch” by the state Board of Regents. All public universities in Louisiana were graded on a 0-5 scale. Faring the worst were Southern University at New Orleans, Louisiana State University Health Sciences-Shreveport, Grambling State University and Southern University at Shreveport. Gannett’s Leigh Guidry looks for answers.

Likely contributing factors are declining state funding, a 26-percent increase in mandated costs to the state since 2008 and drops in full-time enrollment at some institutions. Since 2008 SUNO has seen a 13-percent drop in enrollment; Grambling has seen a loss of 19 percent, (Board of Regents policy analyst Matt) Adams said. “Obviously enrollment is not the only reason an institution would be in fiscal stress,” Adams said. “As we know right now, it’s a combination of things.” To better understand, the board will look to the corrective actions plans, he said. “We’re going to find a little more insight (into the schools’ situations),” Adams said. “Right now it’s based on mathematical financial ratios.”

It’s not all doom and gloom. Several Institutions in the state scored a 4 out of 5, almost reaching “excellent financial health” status.

…LSU Health Sciences Center-New Orleans (4.3), McNeese State in Lake Charles (4), Baton Rouge Community College (4.5), Bossier Parish Community College (4), Delgado Community College (4), Nunez Community College (4.5), Fletcher Community College (4), Northshore Technical Community College (4), River Parishes Community College (4.5) and South Central Louisiana Technical College (4).

State reworks hospital deals

State officials insist they have no plans to move the LSU medical school from Shreveport to Baton Rouge, as some state legislators suggested earlier this week. But the school’s financial future remains in flux as the stalemate continues between LSU and the private foundation hired by former Gov. Bobby Jindal to manage its affiliated teaching hospital. The AP’s star reporter, Melinda Deslatte, reports that Commissioner of Administration Jay Dardenne will make a final contract offer today to the Biomedical Research Foundation of Northwest Louisiana. The contract is one of several new deals being offered to the private organizations that have been operating the former LSU charity hospitals since 2013.

And if some of the hospital operators don’t agree to the new terms? “Then they won’t be our partner any longer and we’ll cross that bridge if we come to it,” Dardenne said…”None of the partners are happy. They all wanted more money, and they’re not getting as much as they wanted,” Dardenne said of the renegotiated proposals. But he insisted the terms being offered by the Edwards administration are fair. Dardenne said he hopes to unveil those terms sometime next week, if the hospital and clinic operators have agreed to the contract changes in principle by then. The north Louisiana deal has been the most difficult to negotiate, Dardenne said, “because there is a history and there is a contentious relationship and there are a lot of strong feelings” between the research foundation and LSU leaders.

Caddo parish loses millions through ITEP
Caddo Parish is losing millions of dollars in property taxes each year through a state program that allows manufacturing firms to escape taxes for up to 10 years. The Shreveport Times’ Segann March reports that the Industrial Tax Exemption Program (ITEP) cost the parish $17.2 million last year, and leaders say the revenue loss has slowed their efforts to implement a universal pre-k program.

State Sen. Jean-Paul “JP” Morrell said every parish is losing a significant amount of money. Louisiana manufacturers have been 100 percent exempt from taxes since ITEP was implemented, he said…The initial purpose of ITEP was to fuel industrial expansion and job creation by offering manufacturers certain tax breaks and exempting participating manufacturers from paying local property taxes for five to 10 years, depending on renewal. It was originally used as an incentive for manufacturers to upgrade their facilities and create new jobs. While reforming ITEP, the state is discussing the future of the inventory tax, Morrell said. “Schools get a smaller percentage of sales tax than property tax, so even when the inventory taxes are being collected, it’s not a one-for-one replacement of those lost property taxes,” Morrell said. “Any reform the governor does that makes the education part non-exempt would generate probably millions of dollars for schools across the state and millions of dollars for individual school districts. That is one of the big legs of this Industrial Tax Exemption reform.”

Full disclosure: LBP Director Jan Moller is a member of the state Board of Commerce and Industry, which oversees the ITEP program. The Board is working to implement a June 24 executive order by Gov. John Bel Edwards that makes important reforms to the program and will give local authorities greater say in how their tax dollars are used.

New Orleans tackles segregation, gentrification
The city of New Orleans has released a plan aimed at increasing access to affordable housing in prosperous neighborhoods and increasing  job opportunities for residents in low-income, majority-black neighborhoods. The Advocate’s Jessica Williams has more.

The plan, mandated under a new U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development rule, seeks to ameliorate the woes of minority communities by investing in neighborhoods that have long been less well off than others. Separately, it seeks to make it easier for residents of those areas to move to whiter, more affluent areas that have prospered. When complete, New Orleans’ effort could be a model for other cities across the nation, said Ellen Lee, the city’s director of housing policy and community development. Although all cities that receive federal housing grants must eventually comply with the new rule — which requires cities to try to make wealthy neighborhoods more diverse and to pump more money into poor ones — New Orleans and about two dozen other U.S. cities are among the first trying to address it. “We cannot continue to allow prosperity for only a few at the expense of many, particularly those people who make New Orleans the great city that it is,” Lee said of the need for the plan. Critics decry the new federal mandate as a huge residential affirmative-action program that will strip states and cities of their right to spend housing grants as they see fit. Supporters, however, say it simply forces governments to comply with the Fair Housing Act of 1968, which they say bans housing discrimination in theory but often doesn’t work in practice.

Number of the Day
1,300 – Extra days of probation or detention time given to black children by juvenile court judges in Louisiana in the weeks after LSU’s football team suffered an upset loss. (Source: Study by LSU economists cited in Washington Post)