BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) - Louisiana’s budget worries have lessened as the state’s income has started to rebound from the recession, giving lawmakers more breathing room to bicker over other issues as they kick off their annual legislative session Monday.
The three-month regular session is a free-for-all, with legislators able to consider most any topic - except taxes. High-profile disputes already are burgeoning over whether to change educational standards, legalize marijuana for medicinal purposes and raise the minimum wage.
More than 1,500 bills have been proposed, ranging from new abortion restrictions and loosened gun laws to renewed debates over Medicaid expansion, teacher tenure and privatization efforts.
Bills to toughen regulation of payday loans, to cut the costs of the state’s free college tuition program and to bring back the electric chair because of difficulties buying lethal injection drugs have been proposed.
“One thing I’ve learned over the last couple of years is don’t try to predict what’s going to happen. You have 144 legislators, and it’s always unpredictable,” said House Speaker Chuck Kleckley, R-Lake Charles.
Gov. Bobby Jindal’s agenda appears light as he enters the final two years of his administration, focused mainly on workforce training efforts to fill petrochemical and manufacturing jobs his administration has drawn to Louisiana.
He’s also seeking to undermine a southeast Louisiana levee board’s lawsuit against the oil and gas industry, whose drilling activities are blamed for coastal erosion. And he’s backing changes to the civil litigation system sought by business groups.
Meanwhile, lawmakers want to revisit Jindal’s education policies from years past, which created a statewide voucher program and changed teacher evaluations and job protections. That is putting the Republican governor on defense, trying to protect his signature achievements and his legacy in office as he eyes a possible 2016 presidential campaign.
“We will absolutely make it a top priority to fight back any efforts to undo or repeal the reforms that we worked so hard to put in place,” Jindal said.
The legislative session opens Monday at noon. Jindal is scheduled to speak to a joint meeting of the House and Senate an hour later.
After years of grim budget debates over how deeply to cut higher education and health care, lawmakers are seeing brighter financial forecasts.
Jindal proposed a budget for the fiscal year that begins July 1 that would plug new dollars into education, health programs, state worker pay raises and other favored legislative causes.
That has quieted some criticism, but the governor again is running into disagreements with certain House Republicans who dislike the patchwork funding Jindal wants to use to balance the budget.
But even critics acknowledge they’ll have trouble trying to rework the spending plans.
“It’s going to be politically difficult to do anything about it, because you’re going to be faced with the option of cutting popular programs or other sources of revenue,” said Rep. Brett Geymann, R-Lake Charles, a vocal opponent of Jindal’s budgeting maneuvers.
The governor defended the budget as responsible and balanced, saying it doesn’t raise taxes and allows the state to grow its economy.
Perhaps the most heated issue that has shown up since lawmakers adjourned last year involves the state’s use of the Common Core educational standards, grade-by-grade benchmarks adopted by most states of what students should learn in reading, writing and math.
The state education board agreed more than three years ago to phase in the standards to Louisiana’s public schools. Now that implementation is underway, lawmakers are questioning whether the efforts should be slowed, tweaked or scrapped entirely.
Common Core supporters, including Superintendent of Education John White, say raising expectations for students will better prepare them for college and careers. But complaints about the tougher standards hit both ends of the political spectrum, criticized by tea party organizations and teacher unions.
Some opponents say use of the Common Core standards is shifting Louisiana to a nationalized education system that will remove local control and have raised privacy concerns. Others say the transition to the standards happened with too little training and funding.
Senate Education Committee Chairman Conrad Appel said some adjustments could be made to address individual concerns, but he opposes efforts to stop Common Core entirely.
“I haven’t heard anyone present any viable alternatives,” said Appel, R-Metairie. “We’ve got to create rigorous standards and insist that they be implemented because that’s the only way we’re going to get everybody’s performance up.”
While the Common Core debate crosses parties, other issues before the Legislature are lining up as more traditional, party-line disputes.
Democrats want to expand the Medicaid program as allowed under the federal health law. They’ve also filed a series of bills that seek to raise the state’s minimum wage above the federal rate of $7.25 per hour.
Those proposals appear to be long shots, facing GOP opposition in a Legislature where both the state House and Senate are majority Republican.
Meanwhile, the Louisiana Legislative Black Caucus is seeking to lessen penalties for nonviolent crimes and provide more rehabilitation for prisoners.
“I agree that we must be tough on crime. But the element I believe that has been missing is being serious about re-entry,” said Rep. Katrina Jackson, D-Monroe, chair of the caucus. “If we haven’t rehabilitated them, the recidivism rate continues to climb and we continue to use dollars out of our budget to incarcerate a person another time.”
___
Online:
Louisiana Legislature: www.legis.la.gov
Please read our comment policy before commenting.