3 governor candidates won’t sign Blueprint Louisiana ‘contract’

(AP) Three of the major candidates in the governor’s race said they won’t endorse a statewide policy platform pushed by business leaders for the fall election.

Candidates Walter Boasso, Foster Campbell and Bobby Jindal have declined to sign off on the Blueprint Louisiana agenda – which includes positions on ethics, health care and education -before the Oct. 20 primary election.

A group of business leaders is spending $1 million to promote the Blueprint Louisiana platform, asking about 250 state and local political contenders to sign “contracts” in support of the group’s five-point agenda.

So far, more than 150 candidates have signed the pledges, said Brad Lambert, spokesman for the group.

The group plans Wednesday to begin listing candidates who have endorsed the agenda.

Only one of the four major gubernatorial candidates, businessman John Georges, a registered Independent, has signed up to support the plan.

Jindal, a Republican congressman, said through a spokeswoman that while many of the group’s goals mirror his own, he will not sign Blueprint’s one-page contract.

“Bobby is focused on releasing his own detailed policy plans and is not signing onto the plans of any other groups,” campaign spokeswoman Melissa Sellers said in an e-mail.

Campbell and Boasso said they disagree with the main health care position in the Blueprint plan, a reshuffling of nearly $1 billion that now pays for health care for the poor and uninsured at the state’s charity hospitals so that more of those dollars flow to private and community health care facilities.

“I can’t agree with them on the hospital system,” Campbell, D-Elm Grove, a member of the Public Service Commission, said during a campaign stop in Houma.

“They want to get rid of the charity hospital system,” he said.

The group says Louisiana’s health care system is unique – and broken – in the way it funds 10 state-run charity hospitals, noting the state’s quality of care ranks 48th nationwide.

Campbell said privatizing indigent care, however, would cost about $2 billion more than the state currently spends and would leave some people without access to care.

Boasso’s campaign also cited health care differences as his reason for refusing to back the Blueprint agenda.

“Until representatives of Blueprint Louisiana can convince us that their health care ideas do not constitute a dismantling of the charity hospital or Louisiana health care system, then we are not inclined to sign it,” the Democratic state senator’s campaign said in a prepared statement.

Campbell also differs with Blueprint Louisiana in its plan to move vehicle-related revenue, now used for a wide range of state services, into a fund for highway and bridge improvements only. That plan is part of an effort to boost state highway spending by $570 million per year.

Blueprint leaders also want candidates to back their calls to toughen ethics laws, provide universal public pre-K classes for Louisiana’s 4-year-olds and make community and technical schools the center of efforts to improve the state’s work force.

Lambert said beside Georges, other candidates for governor who have signed the Blueprint contract are T. Lee Horne III, a Libertarian from Bunkie, and Anthony “Tony G” Gentile of Mandeville, who is listed as “other party” in candidate qualifying papers.

The Blueprint group’s steering committee includes political and business figures from around Louisiana, including chairman Matt Stuller, CEO of a Lafayette jewelry manufacturer; vice chairman Sean Reilly, a Baton Rouge advertising executive and former state lawmaker; former Senate President Randy Ewing, D Quitman; Dan Packer, former president and chief executive of Entergy New Orleans; Chet Morrison, CEO of a Houma contracting firm; Virginia Shehee, a Shreveport insurance executive; and New Orleans bankers King Milling and Suzanne Mestayer.