Edwards says lawmakers can fix budget and offer tax relief

LAFAYETTE -- In an unusual setting for a session-opening speech – the University of Louisiana at Lafayette campus – Gov. John Bel Edwards seemed unusually optimistic Tuesday after a legislative year full of tax fights and partisan rancor.

“We’ve still got a long road ahead,” Edwards said before large crowd at UL Lafayette’s Earl K. Long Gymnasium. “But we’re moving.”

The special session opened Tuesday in Baton Rouge as the long-feared fiscal cliff – the expiration of temporary sales taxes June 30 – approaches. That expiration leaves Edwards and the Legislature with a $648 million hole to fill.

Edwards last week vetoed the compromise hammered out between House and Senate versions of the fiscal 2019 state budget.

The governor described the two budgets as “one that decimated health care in Louisiana, and the other one that decimated everything else. …

“In my opinion ... that budget wasn’t worthy of Louisiana. The cuts were too deep, too broad, too catastrophic.”

Edwards drew attention to the effects the House budget would have on health care by ordering the Department of Health and Hospitals to send notices to nursing home residents that their state benefits could end with the current fiscal year June 30. Republicans criticized the move as political grandstanding.

Edwards said the Legislature has a chance to re-enact only a portion of the temporary taxes, fill the $648 million budget gap and still reduce the tax burden by $400 million.

A portion of the speech was devoted to positive economic developments, including news that the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics pegs Louisiana employment at an all-time high. Wage growth last year in Louisiana was at 2.9 percent, better than the national rate of 2.4 percent.

And there turned out to be a another reason to have the session-opening speech in Lafayette. Edwards announced that CGI, the high-tech firm housed in the UL Lafayette Research Park, has fulfilled its promise to create 400 jobs and extended its commitment another three years and by another 400 jobs.

Among the people attending the event Tuesday were Lt. Gov. Billy Nungesser and former Gov. Kathleen Blanco, who has been fighting cancer.

Also in attendance were St. Mary Parish President David Hanagriff and Patterson Mayor Rodney Grogan.

(This story was changed to correct the period of added CGI commitment.)