Dardenne: “The $615,000 increase in State Employees’ Retirement System’s UAL resulting from my appointment sends message that JBE wanted the best possible person for Commissioner, and that’s what he got.”……..Concurs with Kennedy’s $720 million in DHH wasteful spending on E. R. abuse but slams him on asserted “Stat Ded” savings.

Jay_Dardenne
Louisiana Commissioner of Administration Jay Dardenne

John_Kennedy
Louisiana Treasurer John Kennedy

Sound Off Louisiana viewers may recall a previous post in which we lambasted the $615,000 increase to LASERS’ Unfunded Accrued Liability (UAL) resulting from the Jay Dardenne appointment. At the meeting of the Baton Rouge Press Club of Monday, February 1, 2016, Sound Off Louisiana’s Robert Burns asked Dardenne what kind of message he feels that it sends to average citizens entailing his $615,000 increase to the UAL when those citizens are being asked to endure budget cuts and/or tax increases, and Dardenne’s response follows:

Burns asks Dardenne to assess the message it sends to the public
for his appointment to result in a $615,000 increase in the State
Employees’ Unfunded Accrued Liability, which presently stands
at around $18 billion (or $4,000 for every man, woman, and child
residing in Louisiana).

Although lambasting Treasurer John Kennedy during his presentation, as demonstrated by the following question posed by Burns (after a brief clip outlining Kennedy’s asserted waste in Louisiana’s Medicaid system), Dardenne did NOT challenge Kennedy’s assertion that DHH wastes, conservatively, $720 million a year in abuse of emergency room visits rather than instituting a Patient Navigator System similar to a Houston hospital:

 


Dardenne concurs with Treasurer Kennedy’s assessment of
(conservatively) $720 million in wasted DHH spending via ER abuses.
Interestingly, at the
2:20 mark, Kennedy flatly says that neither
Federal nor State law requires the treatment of NON-emergency aliments
just because someone shows up at the ER.  In contrast, at the
7:35 mark,
Dardenne flatly says that hospitals “have to treat anyone who arrives
at the emergency room.”

 

Regarding statutory dedications, the following video readily contrasts the sharply divergent views of Treasurer Kennedy versus those of Commissioner Dardenne, and Dardenne lambasts Kennedy for, as he characterizes it, “not being honest about our budget and instead politicians telling the people what they think they may want to hear.”


Kennedy & Dardenne outline sharply contrasting viewpoints on
statutory dedications and the level of savings that can be obtained by
removing their protection from potential cuts.

There are the contrasts, folks.  You’re free to make up your own minds on who may be right.

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