Unlike the first action-packed days of the legislative session, today seems more like how sessions used to start at the Capitol. The House comes in at 4 p.m. and the Senate at 5 p.m., with no apparent controversial bills on either calendar, and only two Senate committee meetings. The pace picks up as the week goes on. The first so-called legacy lawsuit bill, pitting oil companies against landowners and their lawyers, will be heard in Senate Judiciary A Committee. Though the full week’s committee hearing schedules have yet to be released, the highly controversial retirement bills are also expected to start soon on the Senate side.
—The state constitution posits that the budget-framing Revenue Estimating Committee can act only by a unanimous vote of all four members. No doctor’s note accepted. That could pose a problem because the board’s economist, LSU professor Jim Richardson, is still recuperating at home from quintuple bypass heart surgery. Since state budget hearings usually don’t begin without the latest revenue estimates, the Senate Finance Committee hears a bill today to allow the economist to participate via telephone conference or to name a college faculty member with “expertise in forecasting revenues” to sit as an ad hoc member. The REC’s other members are the Senate president, the Speaker of the House and the commissioner of administration as Gov. Bobby Jindal’s designee. That next REC meeting is not expected to offer good news. Though current projections show a growth of $350 million in revenues in the next fiscal year, tax collections so far have been flat, and Senate President John Alario, R-Westwego, has been warning colleagues that projections might have to be lowered by $150 million or more, which would put a serious hickey on a budget already balanced on shaky contingencies. Meanwhile, get well, Jim.
(John Maginnis will publish a daily update throughout the legislative session on Daily Report PM. The report is also available to LaPolitics Weekly subscribers on the Subscribers Only page at LaPolitics.com. Registration is available on the homepage.)
Louisiana Public Broadcasting is providing a daily video update featuring highlights of the session, which you can see beginning at 6 p.m. here.
