As state budgetary pressures continue, the Jindal Administration has
had to start pruning state spending, to the consternation of legislators who
are prone to taking more seriously than deserved interests with outsized
influence complaining about unanticipated cuts to, if not closures of, colleges,
state hospitals, indigent health care, and prisons. Maginnis speculates that
the situation created allows Jindal to have his cake and eat it, too, with the cuts
encouraging legislators to revisit tax exemptions next session that he has
promised to veto changes to and go around him. Already a special
panel is meeting to review the exemptions.
Constitutionally,
to repeal an exemption requires a two-thirds majority in each chamber, a
difficult standard to achieve. But Maginnis argues the Legislature could suspend an exemption with
a majority vote, because the Constitution allows suspension by the same vote required
for enactment, which in the case of any law that reduces taxes requires only a
simple majority (those that serve to increase them requires two-thirds votes). Further,
this could work for an extended period of time, as the Constitution permits the
suspension of a law to last as many as 60 days past the end of the next regular
session – if done next year, as late/long as early August, 2014. With governors
unable to veto concurrent resolutions like this, theoretically Jindal could try
to goad legislators into going for it, criticize the move, and then budget the
extra dollars with them, keeping his anti-tax increase credentials spotless
while getting budgetary breathing room.
However, this view ignores that the cutting opportunities to date Jindal has taken he long has advertised his desire to pursue the changes that went with them anyway, as parts of overhauls in how health care gets delivered, university governance, and in incarceration choices. In reality he has telegraphed multiple times over time that these things would happen regardless of the budget posture, where the only effect of the diminished budget picture has been to accelerate the pace of change. More likely, if he has used the difficulties for any purpose, likely that has come in subtle reminding that more extensive privatization might have saved some institutions.
Rather, Jindal might use the opportunity to stump for an idea floated the
session before last, loosening
up some of the strictures on use of funds in time of deficit. But if he’s bold,
he could go further and take up Commission
on Streamlining Government ideas that would produce regular review of dedicated
revenue streams with the intent of getting rid of some of those, both through
tax relief and redirection to general uses, that no longer serving a priority
public policy purpose. That would prevent money from forcibly going to low
priority uses at the expense of higher priorities, unless repatriated by a
funds sweep, and/or accumulating a surplus in these funds with no likelihood of
them being used for their intended purposes absent the fund sweep.
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