Amedee: Series of sessions, and still a looming deficit

State Rep. Beryl Amedee, Dist. 51, gave a legislative update to the St. Mary Parish Council Wednesday evening.
Amedee, of Houma, said many sessions this year ended when a “high-ranking official” in the state released (a statement) to the media that said, ‘We just witnessed an epic failure in leadership. The House leadership clearly chose to put party politics ahead of the people’s business, over the needs of the people of Louisiana.’”
Her response to that unnamed official was, “When the revenue estimating conference has been wrong 15 times in the last nine years, when you have mid-year shortfalls year-after-year, when you know that a billion dollar fiscal cliff is coming in just 12 months, if you’re responsible and it’s unrealistic to craft a budget that uses 100 percent of the forecast, that’s not party politics, that’s common sense.”
Amedee said “majority agreement took a little longer than the session would allow” and a special session began 30 minutes later.
The House passed a budget that spent only 97.5 percent of projected revenue, leaving a $200 million cushion to address a shortfall, she said. “The Senate spent a month revising the house version of the budget,” Amedee said. “Meanwhile the REC came back with updates that reduced our $200 million to $100 million. So we were already going downhill. We reached a stalemate.”
That stalemate boiled down to a disagreement on whether the word “appropriation” means “spending or not,” Amedee said. “The House leadership believes that if it’s appropriated it’s as good as spent. The Senate leadership believes that if departments are instructed to hold back some of their spending, that should be money saved.”
In the next special session, an agreement was forged, using 100 percent of forecast, but requiring Commissioner of Administration Jay Dardenne to reserve $60 million by asking some departments to withhold monies. “So we have not arrived at a deficit again,” she said. “This is good.”
The budget stands at $28.2 billion in operating expenditures, and $32.7 billion altogether when the judiciary branch, legislature and other areas. Amedee said $9.4 billion is general fund. “This is where we have to go looking when we have a deficit,” she said. “Of the $9.4 billion, $3.6 billion goes to K-12 education…there are 720,000 public school students statewide. We spent an average of $12,000 per year, per student. That’s from all sources, federal, state and local money. We spend about mid-range of all states.”
The state department of health gets $2.4 billion from the general fund; $1 billion to higher education, and the remainder “goes through a lot of smaller designated budgets.”
Amedee said in additional to “the usual color and variety in Louisiana politics” the legislature also debated the gas tax increase, hair-braiding, monuments, sunscreen and the name of a state high school.
The high school issue brought in more comments to her office than any other, she said.
Bills were passed allowing terminally ill patients with access to experimental drugs; addressing Medicaid fraud; and requiring driver’s education how to interact properly with police in routine traffic stops. Bills killed included those that would have raised taxes on small business, raised the prices of goods and services and made the state less competitive.
Amedee said the passage of fiscal reform was “very disappointing. Three bills passed, and one was vetoed. The only one left requires that 50 percent of statutorily dedicated funds are required to be reviewed every two years. We have 387, to the tune of $4 billion. We also passed an individual income tax credit for improvements to residences of individuals with certain disabilities…so if you suddenly become wheelchair-bound and if you have to hire a carpenter to widen your doors so you can get around, save those receipts you may qualify for an income tax reduction.”
TOPS is fully funded this year, but is not sustainable, she said. The program has blossomed from $30 million at its start to $375 million today. A task force has been charged with finding a solution to that.
A bill requiring residential contractors must provide homeowners with their names, contractor license number, classification, proof of liability insurance and worker’s compensation insurance.
In state capital outlay requests is $3.8 billion total; but the most that can be spent is $385 million this year, Amedee said. Reformation of capital outlay is in the works, she added.
St. Mary has several applications for funding with the state.
The legislature faces a $1.6 billion deficit in the next session set for March. This session is a non-fiscal one, and financial matters cannot be addressed.