The state Senate used to be the graveyard for reforms but these days it’s looking more like the birthplace of compromise, writes Jeremy Alford in his latest column.
“For longtime Capitol watchers this is not a shocking or newfound revelation,” says Alford. “There have long been noticeable differences between the House and Senate, with the latter becoming the backstop for the sitting governor in recent terms and the former striving for the kind of independence that was finally captured in January.”
Those dynamics still define the lower and upper chambers, Alford writes, but they’ve never been more striking than they are now, slightly more than two weeks into the first session of this four-year term. Alford admits it’s early in the new Legislature’s term. Still, he says the past two months have been anything but normal.
“The new House and Senate were married upon their swearing in on Jan. 11, and everyone knows marriage sometimes makes one day feel like two. Mix in a historic set of budget shortfalls; the House electing its own speaker, independent of the governor’s wishes; and the shortened timeline of this hectic special session and you begin to understand how the usual getting-to-know-you period became so compressed,” he writes. “There will be nothing pretty about how this special session ends on March 9.”
Alford says lawmakers, to a point, will have to come to an agreement, at least in terms of settling the $940 million shortfall for the current budget year.
“It will be a forced agreement, however, forged by a ticking clock and an anxious electorate,” he writes, adding an undeterminable amount of cash will also be thrown at the more than $2 billion budget gap for the next fiscal year that begins July 1—yet much like the structural reforms being discussed right now, it will be left unfinished.
“Don’t worry, though. The House and Senate will still have some additional time to address those issues. Just don’t expect those exchanges to get any easier for lawmakers,” Alford writes. “What’s happening now offers all of us a preview for how the other sessions to come, from the rest of 2016 through the end of 2019, might play out. It’s not necessarily about which chamber will be more receptive to Gov. John Bel Edwards’ plans. Instead, there’s something about this developing relationship that speaks to an uneasy political partnership.”
Jeremy Alford publishes LaPolitics Weekly, a newsletter on Louisiana politics, at LaPolitics.com. Follow him on Twitter, or on Facebook. He can be reached at JJA@LaPolitics.com.
