The Legislature faces major budget decisions as it continues today to try and wrap up the final week of its fiscal session. The Senate rewrote critical parts of the House-passed $29 billion spending plan, and expected House rejection will mean a conference committee will have to try and find a compromise.

House leaders wanted to hold back spending $206 million in expected state revenues in order to cope with another potential mid-year budget deficit. However, senators said that would cause too many reductions in state services and they used all of that to fashion a budget they believe is more realistic.

Speaker of the House Taylor Barras, R-New Iberia, said he thinks a compromise can be reached to avoid a special session that Gov. John Bel Edwards has called to begin 30 minutes after the current session ends at 6 p.m. Thursday. The governor said it was a “just-in-case” call.

The compromise Barras is talking about is whether the two chambers can agree on some figure between holding back no revenues and not spending the full $206 million.

Both houses agree the TOPS scholarship program should be fully funded, but they disagreed on other issues. Included among those are child protective services, the prison system and veteran services.

State agencies will still face 2 percent budget reductions and mental health services will still lose funding. The Senate did include $18 million for pay raises for 38,000 state employees in classified civil service jobs who have not received any merit raises in years. Beginning salaries are low and turnover rates are high in many agencies, costing more money to train new workers.

Sen. Eric LaFleur, D-Ville Platte and chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, said the House also failed to fund an $80 million shortfall state agencies face in the current fiscal year.

Speaking of the Senate-approved budget, LaFleur said, “We thought it was a bit more responsible that what was sent over.”

The budget wasn’t the only Senate change. Its Revenue and Fiscal Affairs Committee also rejected income tax reform measures that would have lowered corporate and individual rates in exchange for voters giving up federal tax deductions on their state income taxes.

Reps. Barry Ivey, R-Central, and Julie Stokes, R-Kenner, were authors of those proposed changes.

Ivey said, “But if we don’t get it done now, we won’t get it done in a special session.”

Stokes said, “This would be a small step to setting Louisiana on a better trajectory.”

“I appreciate your hard work,” Sen. J.P. Morrell, D-New Orleans and committee chairman, said, but he didn’t like the idea those bills weren’t part of a comprehensive package.

Voters would have had the final word on those changes, but senators on the committee decried the failure of the House to deal with an expected $1.3 billion budget deficit July 1, 2018, when temporary taxes go off the books.

Morrell said, “That massive reform that was supposed to happen this year has not happened.”

If an immediate session doesn’t take place, another one next year is almost certain because of the looming $1.3 billion deficit.

Lawmakers did make one progressive move. They are expected to give final approval to a package of criminal justice reform bills favored by Democrats and Republicans. The goal is to reduce the state’s incarceration rate that is the highest in the country.

Legislators failed to increase the state’s gasoline tax to deal with crumbling roads and bridges and it will be 2021 before anything like it can be tried again. The next fiscal session comes in 2019, which is the statewide election year when taxes are definitely taboo.

Nearly three dozen business, civic and economic development groups supported the tax increase, calling it essential to entice industry to Louisiana. They said existing companies are  having trouble getting their goods to market because of the state’s failing infrastructure.

The Advocate summed up the session in a headline that said, “Rough 2017 session likely remembered for ideas discarded than bills passed.”

Louisiana CapitalMGN Online