Rep. Jones comments on run of special sessions

By ZACHARY FITZGERALD
Louisiana has a budget in place for the upcoming fiscal year, but it’s one that some legislators say will force uncomfortable cuts if the Legislature doesn’t approve new taxes before the end of June.
So far in 2018 the Legislature has convened for three sessions, two special sessions and a regular session, and appears headed for another special session beginning June 17. Without any action, about $500 million in proposed state spending won’t be funded, the Associated Press reported.
Legislators passed a budget to close out the most recent special session Monday for the state’s fiscal year beginning July 1. However, that budget includes significant cuts due to the Legislature’s failure to replace temporary taxes passed in 2016 that are set to expire at the end of the month.
“It does fully fund health care,” state Rep. Sam Jones, D-Franklin, said Wednesday of the budget during a Louisiana Municipal Association district meeting at Patterson Area Civic Center.
Concerns that some nursing home residents may face eviction have been quelled as the budget keeps nursing home funds intact. Hospitals and public schools were funded in the budget as well, Jones said.
But other areas face deep cuts.
“We have a number of agencies that still are 25 percent diminished,” Jones said.
Among those agencies that face cuts in the budget are sheriff’s prisoner funds, district attorneys’ offices and higher education. The Taylor Opportunity Program for Students, commonly known as TOPS, faces a 30 percent cut, he said.
Karen White, executive counsel for the Louisiana Municipal Association, said during the meeting that part of the group’s mission is to lobby the Legislature on behalf of municipal governments in the state.
“Our main concern is protecting the interests of municipal government. And the biggest fight at the Capitol now has to do with the state operating budget,” White said.
“We try to make sure that the state doesn’t fund its needs on the back of local government, that it doesn’t take money, vital funding away from municipal governments to plug the holes in the state operating budget,” she said.
During the most recent special session, legislators considered a bill, which Jones supported, to extend half of the additional 1 percent state sales tax passed in 2016. But that bill didn’t pass.
The extension would have lowered the sales tax rate from 5 percent to 4.5 percent for five or six years. That temporary 1 percent sales tax will expire June 30 if the Legislature takes no action.
Another bill would’ve given the state a 4.3 percent sales tax rate, but that didn’t pass either.
“The one with the half-cent really was the one that fixed the problems for the next several years, which would also help us to have a steady funding stream,” Jones said. “We would get rid of the fiscal cliff conversation for a long time.”
In the next 10-day special session, Jones said the main way to avoid severe cuts for the new fiscal year will be to pass that 0.5 percent sales tax extension.
The session will “come to a conclusion one way or another,” he said.
“Either they’ve got to fund these items that I’m talking about or not,” Jones said. “Either higher ed matters or it doesn’t. Either district attorneys and keeping the prisons funded are important or they’re not. I think they are.”