As the special session draws to a close, Jeremy Alford says there’s still time for the Louisiana Legislature and Edwards administration to “throw down all shields in a grand display of cooperation”—but don’t hold your breath.
“By all indications, however, the special session is expected to come to a close without new friends won inside the rails of the Legislature and without that delicate touch of diplomatic influence that has been so badly needed,” Alford writes in his latest column.
The tension between the House and Senate in particular was palpable during the closing days of the special session, Alford says.
“So was the bad blood that was brewing between some members of the House and the administration,” he writes. “There were divisions and subdivisions to behold and fractions of factions to unravel. Very little in the way of communications, in regard to policy negotiations, has changed since the tumultuous sessions of 2016.”
During a late night press conference, Alford notes, Gov. John Bel Edwards suggested the House leadership wanted to halt conversations with the Senate altogether—and was keeping its own members in the dark.
“Leaders in the House GOP shook off the suggestion and countered that the governor was only trying to create controversy,” Alford writes. “Not that anyone needed to create it; drama and controversy climbed into public view regularly during the special session.”
Alford says the most important takeaway from all of this—and the one most feared by politicos involved in the process—was just how excruciatingly tough the regular session will be.
“That cannot be overstated,” he writes. “The regular session that convenes on April 10 will be more pressure-filled than anything this current Legislature has seen, with $1.5 billion in temporary taxes that need to be addressed and another budget shortfall of a few hundred million dollars. There was only one question that mattered in the special session: Who will bend first? It’s also the key question to the entire legislative term.”
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.
