Greater Baton Rouge Business Report: Little steps: Blanco took opportunities to build on a modest ag

Now that the Legislature has adjourned, Gov. Kathleen Blanco can concentrate on running only one branch of government after three months of trying to manage two.

Early on, Blanco established her control over the legislative branch as firmly as did her predecessors. She ordained the Legislature's leaders and then made an example of rebel Rep. Troy Hebert, D-Jeanerette, by stripping him of his committee chairmanship for not voting her way on the business tax renewals in the special session.

Yet she appeared to do little with that power when she presented a very modest legislative agenda, more suitable for a do-nothing election year than for an administration taking its first crack at changing Louisiana.

It could be that state government was not as badly in need of rapid change as past reform governors had found it. Think about it: Blanco is the first governor since John McKeithen in 1964 not to succeed Edwin Edwards (unless you count Edwards himself in 1972). She benefited from ex-Gov. Mike Foster's heavy lifting on tort law changes, gambling regulation, school accountability and replacing the temporary sales taxes with more stable income taxes.

Blanco's promise to reform public health care defied a quick solution, so she wisely put it off a year. That left a light package of bills, highlighted by some mild ethics reforms.

But as she proceeded through her first session, she took opportunities to build on her agenda by adding her support to some initiatives and co-opting others. An unintended benefit of her small package was that it freed her to deal with unexpected issues that heated up and could have blown up had she been preoccupied with her legislative knitting.

She didn't want to get involved in the river pilots regulatory reform, but the issue would not have been resolved, and would be left to fester, had she not steered the negotiations toward a major overhaul of the system.

She also stepped in with full force behind the backers of the New Orleans school superintendent when the local school board was moving toward firing him. The bill to address that dysfunctional schools system by giving the superintendent more control could have been compromised had Blanco been less resolute.

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With the help of spiraling oil prices, she and Commissioner of Administration Jerry Luke LeBlanc managed to balance a shortfalling budget without the feared massive.

Not to endorse all that Foster had done, two late moves reversed high-profile pet policies of her predecessor. A bill to require motorcycle riders to wear helmets was considered dead until legislators began receiving blue cards from the administration urging their support. So too with Sen. Joe McPherson's stalled campaign to wrest control for the state of the 71,000-acre White Lake Preserve in coastal Vermilion Parish from the self-perpetuating private board that Foster had set up.

The high point of Blanco's first session, however, had nothing to do with lawmaking, but came when she surprised legislators with her announcement that the planned Union Tank Car Co. manufacturing plant, which appeared lost to Texas three months ago, was indeed coming to Louisiana.

The result of persistence by Blanco and $65 million in incentives, the turnaround marked a first big step toward meeting the economic development challenge that she set as the standard by which her administration will be judged. That also served to seal the success of Blanco's first encounter with the Legislature, which, in terms of bills passed and budgets set, will be scored in a range from not bad to pretty good--a hopeful start with much room for improvement. To get on with that, she at last has what she's lacked since election night: a bit of time to think, to plan, to act, with only one branch of government in town.

JOHN MAGINNIS is a Baton Rouge-based syndicated political columnist. Reach him through his Web site, www.lapolitics.com.