In his latest column, Business Report Executive Editor JR Ball says we can be sure that TOPS is the most important entitlement program in the state, “because every year when Gov. John Bel Edwards and state House Republicans square off for a political game of budgetary chess the first pawn both sides threaten to sacrifice is the program that pays a huge chunk of the tuition bill for any mediocre-and-above high school graduate attending an in-state college or university.”
The program has improved high school performance, become wildly popular among middle-class families and grown incredibly expensive over the course of its 30-year life, Ball says.
But few seem concerned about the academic good TOPS is doing, Ball says, adding it’s the escalating cost of the program that makes it a constant target of Edwards and lawmakers. As Ball explains, the cost of TOPS—projected to hit $291 million this year—skyrocketed under former Gov. Bobby Jindal and “lapdog” legislators, who shifted higher education funding from a direct subsidy model to one depend upon tuition increases.
The public also has a love affair with the entitlement program, he writes. Everyone—rich or poor, black or white, Republican or Democrat—seemingly supports it.
“It’s the chicken no one wants removed from the gumbo pot of largesse. And that’s precisely the reason why both Edwards and House Republicans—like an alarm clock singing its song every morning at 6 a.m.—sound off year after year after year that funding for TOPS is in jeopardy unless one side bows to the fiscal will of the other,” he writes. “Put simply, both sides, unwilling to compromise, threaten the life of something we all like in the ongoing fight to sway public opinion over taxes, the size of government and what services are worthy of taxpayer funding.”
Read the full column. Send your comments to editor@businessreport.com.
