Rep. Jones: 'It's embarassing'

State Representative Sam Jones attended Tuesday evening’s commission meeting of the Port of West St. Mary.
In his first public comment since the state legislature’s passing of a contentious general budget, earlier that morning, Jones said, “Two of the three sessions we had this year were almost complete failures. It’s embarrassing.
“The Senate is where the grown-ups are. They are bi-partisan. They work for the good of the state. They just want solutions to problems.
“In the House there was a ton of political posturing. We have a group of people who just want to make the governor look bad. So, they’re doing Washington-style politics and it’s a shame.
“The budget we passed last night did fully fund healthcare.
“What’s been left out is TOPS at only about 70 percent and higher education took a 100 million-dollar hit. District attorneys’ offices throughout the state took a 25 percent hit, the sheriffs’ per diem for keeping prisoners was cut 25 percent; and it’s not a livable budget, so he’s (the governor) going to have to call another special session.”
Jones went on to cite a major legislative sticking point as that of getting rid of a temporary penny sales tax, which he called “a bridge to overcome the destruction Bobby Jindal left us with the way he spent his budget, operating to near bankruptcy.”
According to Jones, Governor John Bel Edwards’ plan was to cut the one-penny sales tax to one half of a penny, recovering $450 million in tax cuts, and then maintain the other half-penny sales tax for five years, pending prospective economic recovery rendering the duration, shorter.
Jones said the opposition to that plan has been the issue in Baton Rouge, and that without revenue, the state will not be able to make grant monies available, fix roads, fund schools or do what it takes to come back from economic disparity.
“The question is,” he said, “what is reasonable, and what is not reasonable; and Senator (Bret) Allain and I agree on this: we need a reasonable amount of transitional budgetary resources to get us to where we need to get.
“So, we’ll go back.”