School Reform Movement Hits Bump in Calif.; Planned Parenthood Wins and Loses in 2 States

Here’s some of what we’ve been reading today…

LOS ANGELES, California: The anti-union school reform movement chugging away in the Golden State has hit a bump, reports the Los Angeles Times. The city teachers’ union asked the state’s labor board to halt alleged efforts to intimidate employees and block organizing at Alliance College-Ready Public Schools, the state’s largest charter school organization. The union has filed four unfair practice claims against Alliance. "It's an unambiguous message to the Alliance management that they need to stop their anti-union and coercive campaign,” said Union President Alex Caputo-Pearl. “The fact that it is just going to Superior Court is a signal that people who know labor law looked at the management's practices and are shocked at what they see." [Los Angeles Times]

BATON ROUGE, Louisiana: In case you missed it, a federal judge on Monday handed down what journalists can’t help but describe as a “blistering opinion”—and this is one of those—that blocks Gov. Bobby Jindal’s attempt to defund Planned Parenthood in his state, according to The Times-Picayune. Jindal is running for president and has been rallying anti-abortion supporters by telling them he has defunded the organization. U.S. District Judge John deGravelles has put an end to that. He wrote that the case brought against the organization by Jindal was based on a misreading of the law and that defunding the organization’s Medicaid services would unnecessarily disrupt health care for 5,200 patients and that no other organization is equipped to handle that case load. He also wrote that defunding the organization based on the alleged misconduct, said to have been captured in a series of headline-grabbing videos, would also be against the law. “It appears likely that [Planned Parenthood] will be able to prove that the attempted terminations against it are motivated and driven, at least in large part, by reasons unrelated to its competence and unique to it.”  [The Times Picayune]

Meanwhile, as the Texas Tribune reports, on the same day just across the border to the west, Lone Star State health officials announced they will no longer include Planned Parenthood in the state’s Medicaid program. Thousands of women will have to find other clinics to visit–clinics that don’t exist or can’t handle the load anymore in Texas than they do or can in Louisiana. Last year, the federal government paid $2.8 million in Medicaid reimbursements in Texas. The state paid just $310,000. The health department’s move will likely draw a lawsuit from Planned Parenthood or from the federal government. [The Texas Tribune]

HELENA, Montana: Linda McCulloch, the secretary of state in Big Sky Country, ordered county clerks to set up more election stations open for longer periods that provide more services on American Indian reservations, according to the Billings Gazette. There are a lot of reservations in the state, and access to voting has been a mixed bag. McCulloch’s order comes in the wake of a settlement in a 2012 case that saw the Crow, Northern Cheyenne and Fort Belknap reservations win the right for greater voting access and after the Rocky Mountain Tribal Leaders Council wrote to her demanding that all of the ten counties in the state that include reservations provide additional election offices. [The Billings Gazette]

TALLAHASSEE, Florida: Gov. Rick Scott’s Enterprise Florida jobs creation program hasn’t created a lot of jobs, but it keeps asking the legislature for money. Senators blasted the program on Tuesday, calling it an “almost hilarious” failure. The Tampa Bay Times reports that the legislature has set aside $398 million for job-creation incentives since 2011, when Scott came into office, but it has paid out only 10 percent of that amount to firms for actual jobs created. Senators say they would pay out more but that the program has to demonstrate it can lure jobs. "You've got money resting in a graveyard, practically," Sen. Nancy Detert told Enterprise Florida CEO Bill Johnson, who was at the legislature asking for more money. "When you've got that much money in the bank, we have trouble giving you another $80 million. … It's almost hilarious." Legislators want to dole out the award money on a year to year basis, holding the program more accountable. The governor says that would drive up uncertainty among potentially participating businesses and would drive them away. [The Tampa Bay Times]

NASHVILLE, Tennessee: The Volunteer State’s multi-million-dollar prison food business is a big mess, according to state auditors. The Tennessean reports that millions of dollars have been lost due to either incompetence or graft that snuck in while competing state departments wrangled over food service operations. The Tennessee Rehabilitative Initiative Correction Board and the Tennessee Department of Correction worked together to provide meals in Tennessee and to package for sale to prisons across the state. Inmates did the cooking and packaging, while state employees apparently bungled the finances. Also: Officials served prisoners smaller cheaper meals than the prisons guards ate. They also have been pitching a plan in which prisoners would eat cheaper less-nutritious fast-food style meals. [The Tennessean]