Two Louisiana lawmakers admitted today that more could have been accomplished during the recent fiscal special session if not for gridlock and feet dragging in both chambers.
State Rep. Kenny Havard, R-Jackson, said the 1-cent sales tax increase should have been approved one week earlier than it was passed, which would have given lawmakers more time to examine some tax exemptions. State Sen. Regina Barrow, D-Baton Rouge, added that the budget deficit was a moving and constantly growing target, which made it harder to trim.
“Had it been $750 million, I’m here to say that we would have solved it,” Barrow told the roughly 40 people gathered today for the monthly Leaders With Vision luncheon, one day after the Revenue Estimating Conference told lawmakers a roughly $70 million shortfall remains for the rest of the fiscal year and more than $700 million next year. That’s despite all the new revenue created and budgets cut during the 25-day special session.
Havard and Barrow were joined by LaPolitics publisher and Daily Report contributor and columnist Jeremy Alford; Dawn Starns, state director for the National Federation of Independent Business; and Louis Reine, president of the Louisiana AFL-CIO. The discussion centered around what happened in the special session, what challenges lawmakers will face in the anticipated second special session sometime in June and whether legislative term limits are a good or bad thing.
As chairman of the House Transportation, Highways and Public Works Committee, Havard says he went into the special session expecting to see some gas taxes sent before the committee. He says he thinks they were not proposed because of the fatigue from all the other taxes lawmakers had to digest.
Starns said she hopes legislators revisit in the anticipated special session a sales tax increase that is front-loaded at a high level, before being reduced and phased out.
Term limits were also a hot topic of discussion. Havard says he favored term limits before he was elected. However, he now feels term limits remove an office’s institutional knowledge and could hurt the district that representative or senator serves.
Alford agreed with Havard about institutional knowledge, adding term limits were put in place because there was a perception that lawmakers found ways to stay in their offices for life.
Barrow called term limits a double-edged sword, but reminded everyone that the real term limits come on election day when voters choose who to represent them.
Reine said he feels term limits hurt the public during the special session because some freshman legislators were being asked to fix the state’s budget without even knowing where all the bathrooms are located.
“Once you learn your job and become experienced at it, you have to go somewhere else,” Reine said.
—Ryan Broussard
