Kathleen Blanco should be history by now. With the adjournment of the final legislative session of her term, with her last budget passed and last appointments confirmed, in an ordinary election year she would be all but irrelevant by now as the next governor’s race begins.
That day will come for her, but has been postponed until July 21, the last day to sign or veto bills or to let them become law without her signature. Between now and then, she will make decisions that could significantly affect what the next governor and Legislature are able to do.
Every year, a governor vetoes a handful of bills that might be constitutionally dubious or conflict with executive power or interests. But rarely do any or all vetoes in a given year amount to much across the board.
This year is different. Blanco has on her desk a stack of bills that would cut taxes—and state revenue—by more than $500 million, but not until the first and second years of the next governor’s administration. This is so because legislators, frustrated that the governor would allow only $180 million in tax reductions starting in this fiscal year, went on a tear in the final days of the session and passed one tax-cut bill after another to take effect in 2008 or 2009.
If all those bills become law, it would put the next governor and Legislature in a real bind. Before they could deliver on their own tax-cut promises, they would have to figure out a way to keep hers.
She could, but won’t, use her veto pen on the other side of the ledger, by lining out hundreds of millions of dollars in new recurring expenses she asked for, including the addition of 1,000 new positions to the state payroll. Historically low approval ratings have not stopped Blanco from directing more resources into new projects and programs—and thus leaving her lasting mark on government—than any governor before her.
Now she can make another massive mark—or hole—for the next administration by simply not vetoing the excess of future tax cuts. It is, after all, what Republican legislators clamored for as they tried unsuccessfully to make her trim her spending plan. Now she can pick and choose which of their tax cuts live or die.
Over a third of the amount of deferred tax reductions appear safe. She has signed off on a back-to-school sales tax holiday, to cost $6 million, and a state add-on to the federal earned income tax credit for poor people, to cost $40 million. The complete phase-back-in of excess itemized deductions on state income tax returns will remove another $110 million in revenues in 2009.
After that, she can wield or withhold her veto pen to suit her values, her politics, even her whim.
A prime veto candidate is a bill to provide a 50% deduction for private school tuition, up to $5,000, which would cost the treasury nearly $10 million per year. Blanco has stood firmly against private school vouchers in the past and is no more likely to allow this back-door approach.
The chemical industry is leading an all-out, letter-writing effort to save a bill eliminating one cent of the sales tax on utilities used by businesses, amounting to a $75 million break. Given that it was the business lobby that led the blockade against Blanco’s spending plans in the December special session, she might feel no qualms about zapping that bill.
Tax credits for Broadway productions in Louisiana and installation of wind or solar energy systems, repeal of the gift tax, deductions for retrofitting homes to meet the new construction code, sales tax exemptions for storm shutters and unique art works—the list goes on.
No matter what she does, don’t expect legislators to call a veto session to override anything. They are less willing to take responsibility for their actions than to let her do it, which makes them lamest of all.
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