Illegal Payments for Vouchers Should be Recovered

Last year when LAE, LFT and the School Boards' Association filed suit against the Jindal Vouchers, claiming that the payments taken from the MFP were unconstitutional, Superintendent John White representing the State decided to start making quarterly payments to the voucher schools anyway, instead of making the payments contingent upon the pending court ruling. LAE attorney Brian Blackwell warned against this practice at the time, and even sent letters to the voucher schools warning them that they may be required to return the money should the courts rule against the state. This is an action which was severely criticized by many (mostly voucher proponents).

Now it turns out that Blackwell was 100% correct, (see the Advocate story here) but we see no indication that the state will try to recover the illegal payments or at least find another source of funds for the payments that have already been made. Also, according to White there is a remaining 6 million dollar payment for the 4th quarter of the year that has not yet been made to the voucher schools. It would be a  blatant violation of the Supreme Court decision if White decides to make the payment at this point.

There is the added issue that the new MFP for 2013-14 approved by the rubber stamp BESE is also in violation of the court ruling. You can fully expect White and Jindal to come up with another "creative" way to circumvent the law so they can keep their precious vouchers to questionable private religious schools and rip off course choice providers going and growing. How is Louisiana supposed to pay for this insanity?

I have to repeat something you have seen in this blog before. This is what you get when you bring in an amateur from outside the state with no qualifications to run our public school system. White and Jindal have gotten the State of Louisiana into a "fine mess", to paraphrase Laurel and Hardy.