The Special Session of the Louisiana Legislature that was designed to tackle the looming fiscal cliff ended two days early on Monday. The session featured more finger pointing that carried over from last year’s sessions and resulted in no deal being reached by the House of Representatives.
According to WVLA-TV in Baton Rouge, “The House failed to pass any revenue-raising measures after 15 days of discord. Democratic members favored a bill to cut tax breaks for those who itemize their income tax deductions, while some Republicans supported extending a quarter of the revenue expiring July 1. Neither proposal survived, as lawmakers accused one another of backing away from compromises.”
The stalemate leaves funding of TOPS, public safety, and healthcare in limbo until a budget deal can be reached. “Over the next several months, we are going to have so much uncertainty in Louisiana that we could have, and should have, avoided,” Governor John Bel Edwards said Monday. “The Legislature has failed those students, failed those parents, failed that single mom and countless others across the state of Louisiana.”
Governor Edwards then cast blame on Speaker of the House Taylor Barras (R-New Iberia) for not garnering enough support to get any package out of the lower chamber. “The session started two weeks ago, and it didn’t take long for the speaker to go back on his word,” the governor said. “The very first day.”
WVLA reported, “Barras and ranking House Republicans claimed Edwards was the one who didn’t rally enough Democrats behind the revenue bills considered.”
According to the television station, “The governor should have really done a better job on his numbers, meaning making sure he had the support he actually said he had,” said House Appropriations Chair Cameron Henry (R-Metairie).
Since the special session ended sine die, or without an appointed date for resumption, legislators will convene for another special session later this year after the regular session comes to an end. This is pursuant to state law that bars the legislature from fiscal measures in even numbered years. Another special session means spending more taxpayers’ money because each day of special session costs between $50 and $60 thousand.
Watching the dysfunction in the House of Representatives from the upper chamber was Senate Finance Committee Chair Eric LaFleur (D-Ville Platte).
“We should be ‘honte’ at what the legislature did over the last 17 days,” Senator LaFleur told The Gazette. “I find that the goal today of many legislators is not to succeed, never to fulfill their promise of reform. In this session, they chose to fail and blame the governor or anyone else they could find instead of themselves. It’s classic Washington, DC style politics. The approach that is most hated by Americans, including myself.”
He continued, “There will be a big change in the status quo in the things that the State of Louisiana provides us. On June 30, 2018, when the state’s one-cent sales tax expires, the state will lose one billion dollars in revenue. Cuts from the loss of that revenue would range from the almost elimination of the most successful educational program that the state has ever implemented, TOPS, and large reductions in funding in the recent implementation of health care reforms.”
Senator LaFleur explained that the one-cent sale tax was intended to be a temporary measure and “was suppose to be replaced with the adoption of one of the many revenue measures proposed by the tax reform blue ribbon commission.”
“Instead, the legislation rejected every recommendation of that blue ribbon committee. They clearly reneged on their promise to the taxpayers to make the 1 cent tax temporary and replace it with a long term and more equitable tax measure,” concluded the senator from Ville Platte.
Image
TONY MARKS