A press release the Angelle campaign put out yesterday…

Today, the Scott Angelle campaign previewed Angelle’s comments to be delivered at Thursday’s PAR gubernatorial forum in Baton Rouge.

1. Increasing Transparency in the Governor’s Office

Angelle will lay out several policy proposals that will seek to increase transparency in the governor’s office.

“I plan to post my daily schedule online and require all of my cabinet secretaries to do the same,” Angelle will say. “Currently, the only way you know where your governor is on a given day is if you get his press releases. I’ll change that.”

Angelle will also seek to increase transparency in the governor’s office by proposing balanced reforms to the deliberative process privilege saying we must “make sure government officials are not driven into a ‘smoke filled back room,’ but rather are able to think creatively and critically when making important decisions.”

“The governor’s deliberative process privilege is overly broad and should not be a catch all to deny the public’s right to know,” Angelle will say, “nor was it intended to be used to exempt state agencies from the production of records. Next year, I will seek legislation to make that abundantly clear.”

2. Strengthening Our Ethics Laws

Angelle also plans to discuss Louisiana’s historical political “culture of corruption.”

“Louisiana’s corrupt national image led to businesses who were not willing to ‘pay-to-play’ taking their investments and their jobs elsewhere,” Angelle will say. “As your governor, I won’t allow Louisiana to backslide into those dark days of our state’s history.”

Angelle will unveil three policy proposals at the forum related to strengthening transparency and ethics in government.

First, Angelle will support legislation to clearly define a “governmental function” in the law as it relates to privatizing services.

Currently, the loose definition allows many private companies doing business with the state to shield their information from public records law.

“We should never allow a governmental function, performed by a private contractor, to be an ethical loophole,” Angelle will say. “This clarification in the law would ensure that all subcontractors and private companies working with governments are subject to our open records laws and code of ethics.”

Second, Angelle would support legislation that would streamline the Board of Ethics to refine their process to reduce the time between filing a complaint and receiving its resolution.

“We must limit the amount of time between when a complaint is filed and when action is taken to demonstrate to the public that these matters will be taken seriously and dealt with swiftly,” he will say.

Third, Angelle would seek to strengthen Louisiana’s anti-corruption image by calling on the legislative auditor, the board of ethics and the attorney general to put together and collaborate on an annual report regarding our fight against public corruption.

“By evaluating our efforts to fight corruption each year, we can ensure that its specter never haunts our state again,” Angelle plans to say, “This annual report will show businesses looking to invest here and Louisiana residents that we have a zero tolerance policy for corruption and are doing all that we can to combat it.”

3. Bolstering Louisiana’s Healthcare Delivery Systems

At Thursday’s forum Angelle also plans to reaffirm his support for Louisiana’s public private partnerships and discuss ways to reform Louisiana’s health care safety net system.

“In an historic move, Louisiana merged its charity hospitals with private community hospitals which monetized an asset, generating critical state general fund dollars.” Angelle will say. “These partnerships have restored and in many cases exceeded the level of services formerly provided by the cash strapped state system and preserved graduate medical education for future generations.”

Angelle will also address his plans to lead the discussion on expanding coverage through a conservative market-based solution.

“We should focus on a solution that gives insurees skin in the game through deductibles, mandates a work requirement and makes sure that we aren’t having more people riding in the wagon than are pulling it,” Angelle will say. “Life should always be better for those who work hard everyday than for those that can work, but choose not to.”

The first batch of proposals is an attempt to break from Bobby Jindal, who Angelle is going to be accused of representing in the governor’s race as his former Lt. Governor and Secretary of the Department of natural Resources (as well as his legislative liaison at one time). Criticizing Jindal’s lack of transparency is a good way to do it, because even those friendly to Jindal have scratched their heads at his lack of availability. The second batch is a return to an old reliable campaign tactic in Louisiana – rail against corruption and therefore position yourself as not corrupt. Which isn’t to say Angelle is dishonest in any way, it’s just a mantle all politicians seek to don. And the third batch puts Angelle on Jindal’s team where health care policy is concerned; he supports the privatization of the Charity Hospitals. That’s a bit of a bold statement, given the recent folderol over the shutdown of the emergency room at Baton Rouge General Hospital’s Mid-City campus which has been far less of a public-health disaster than it was sold as but was still offered as evidence that Jindal had “destroyed” health care for poor people in Baton Rouge.

It sounds like Angelle is going to present a plan which develops Jindal’s Bayou Health idea, which put Medicaid clients on private insurance and focused on things like wellness and other proactive activities in order to try to manage costs. In that, he’s probably not alone – one imagines something along these lines is what we’ll see out of both Jay Dardenne and David Vitter as the campaign moves along.

What Angelle didn’t release was anything on the budget. That’s something Vitter has made more of a focus in his messaging, and given the prominence that budget and the looming deficit has in this legislative session, and the expressed desire of all three Republican candidates for a special session to deal with the state’s finances, one might think Angelle is going to have to present a list of solutions along those lines if he wants to move his campaign forward.