(Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, even if they didn’t know they were doing so.)
DID YOU KNOW?
HB 156 hit the Senate floor with only a few substantial changes from the Senate Finance Committee. One was a direct poke at Gov. Kathleen Blanco’s decisions to close off the Urban and Rural Funds, by forcing her to lay off employees involved with the funds. Sen. Noble Ellington brought an amendment to retain three positions in Rural Development’s office that disburses these funds to close up matters by the end of the fiscal year. Sen. Charles Jones said Urban needed extra people to be fair, but neither should be cut in the first place. “We base what we do in this Legislature on what the newspapers and editorials tell us, not what we need to do.” In a vote cutting across typical divisions, it failed.
Jones wasn’t through. He almost put his money where his mouth and came back with an amendment to reduce positions only in Rural Development and to bring back all Urban funding. However, this was withdrawn.
But most controversially, Rep. Troy Hebert’s floor amendment to get agencies to cut upper-level managers by 10 percent had been dropped on the complaint that it was against RS 39:75 to cut out these jobs. Sen. Nick Gautreaux brought an amendment essentially to restore that requirement by changing wording for it to reflect salary costs, rather than positions. Sen. Francis Heitmeier claimed big enough cuts already were there. The amendment failed.
Sen. Jay Dardenne also took a poke at Blanco with an amendment that changed phrasing to assert Legislative dominance in the matter of making cuts. This one faced no opposition.
He also took up Rep. Peppi Bruneau’s jab at the Senate to reduce its expenditures, as the House did. But Sen. Pres. Don Hines stated this cut would be difficult to handle, although he joked that “the governor said she’d take care of this, trying to help out our Republican friends.” Despite Dardenne’s plea that the Senate should not be the only major part of government not to make a sacrifice, the amendment barely failed with most Republicans voting for it. Shortly thereafter, Dardenne complained the timing of closing of the vote was inexact, which brought a testy response from Hines that he closed it when he had all the votes.
The bill passed 35-3.
DID YOU KNOW?
The House didn’t perform the necessary maneuvers to deal immediately with with SB 95, which means unless it suspends its rules to skip committee this late in a special session the bill is unlikely to get dealt with in time to pass. The same fate may await SB 105 as well, with it dying by omission of action.
QUOTE OF THE DAY:
“We’ll take it out of the rainy day money.”
Hines, when an amendment went through correcting a funding mistake in the Minimum Foundation Program that would cost an extra $3 million, about how to handle this hit on the budget.
SCORECARD:
Total House introductions: 168; total Senate introductions: 114.
Total House good bills: 6; total Senate good bills: 6.
Total House bad bills: 12; total Senate bad bills: 7.
Total House good bills heard in committee: 5; total Senate good bills heard in committee: 5.
Total House bad bills heard in committee: 10; total Senate bad bills heard in committee: 6
Total House good bills passing committee: 5; total Senate good bills passing committee: 3.
Total House bad bills passing committee: 5; total Senate bad bills passing committee: 2
Total House good bills passing House: 4; total Senate good bills passing Senate: 2
Total House bad bills passing House: 0; total Senate bad bills passing Senate: 1
Total House good bills heard in Senate committee: 2; Total Senate good bills heard in House committee: 0
Total House good bills passing Senate committee: 2; Total Senate good bills passing House committee: 4
Total House good bills passing Senate 1; Total Senate good bills passing House: 0
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