When asked if he thought there was any chance for a constitutional convention in Louisiana anytime soon, Lane Grigsby started off with a one-word answer: “No.”
The prominent and prolific Republican donor, who served on Gov. Jeff Landry’s transition committee, is a longtime supporter of rewriting the state’s constitution. He backed Landry’s push for a convention, which garnered supermajority support in the House before getting buried in the Senate without a vote.
“The Senate’s where everything dies,” Grigsby says.
He says that basically half of the state’s population depends on the government, whether through public assistance or public jobs. Too many people are too worried about losing what they have to be open to the possibility of something better, he argues.
But not every con-con supporter is ready to give up. Two bills dealing with a potential convention advanced out of the House this year before once again falling short in the Senate.
By the time Rep. Dixon McMakin’s House Bill 4 reached the Senate and Governmental Affairs Committee, it was basically a study resolution with teeth, calling for SGA and its House counterpart to hold joint meetings in the offseason to discuss the issue and see if they could figure out a path forward. Before voting down the bill, some members said that they thought it would have been more appropriate as a resolution.
McMakin says that if he tries again next year, the effort probably will take the form of a concurrent resolution. He authored a potential constitutional amendment this year that would eliminate the requirement that nonrecurring revenue dedicated to state retirement debt must be applied to the oldest debt first, and says he shouldn’t need to amend the constitution just to delete a single sentence.
While some members say the recent failure of constitutional amendments at the polls shows the public certainly isn’t in the mood to overhaul the entire document, McMakin suggests the opposite might also be true for some voters who are tired of being asked to make piecemeal changes.
“People I’ve talked to and people that voted for me want there to be a convention [and] some sort of rewrite of our constitution,” he says. “I think that’s the people telling us that we don’t want amendments anymore. We want a full rewrite.”
Of course, SGA and House and Governmental Affairs don’t need a bill or a resolution to hold a few meetings. HGA Chair Beau Beaullieu says he’s open to that, but says he hasn’t gotten any indication one way or the other if there is much appetite for it going into an election year.
“If it’s going to be a priority of the administration and the Legislature in the last year [of the term], we need to have some meetings to discuss it,” he says.
When Beaullieu carried the enabling legislation for Landry’s con-con push, many lawmakers and policy advocates objected at how fast things were moving. McMakin was trying to take the opposite approach and proceed slowly, Beaullieu says, which in theory could help to allay some of those fears.
Rep. Kyle Green’s HB244, which did emerge from SGA before getting shelved without a Senate floor vote, sought to address another concern, which is that the priorities of the minority party or other disfavored groups might get steamrolled by the majority in a constitutional overhaul. The proposed constitutional amendment didn’t call for a convention, but it would have set up the framework for one.
The bill set criteria for how delegates would be selected, which is a major point of contention in any con-con discussion, mandating that one be elected from each House and Senate district. It also would have required approval from at least two-thirds of the delegates to submit a new constitution to voters.
The constitution would only be enacted if it had enough broad support to win a majority of voters in at least three-fourths of Louisiana’s parishes.
“As Democratic caucus chair, I wouldn’t support any proposal to have a convention as it stands without safeguards in protecting who gets selected as delegates and the voting threshold required to pass a proposal onto the voters for ratification,” Green said.
SGA Chair Caleb Kleinpeter didn’t respond to inquiries for this story. Judiciary B Chair Mike Reese, who serves on SGA, says he is not aware of any discussions to tee up the con-con issue in the offseason and wasn’t sure what to expect on the subject in next year’s session.
But he suggests it should be a topic of discussion on the campaign trail next year. Candidates and officials could talk about the possibility of a convention with voters, he says, get a sense of their concerns, and bring the public feedback back to Baton Rouge for the next term.
Jeremy Alford publishes LaPolitics Weekly, a newsletter on Louisiana politics, at LaPolitics.com. Follow him on Twitter, or Facebook. He can be reached at JJA@LaPolitics.com.
Constitutional convention
