So Democrat Gov. John Bel Edwards
wants to change
the way the state has dealt with capital outlay projects, does he? We’ll
see if this doesn’t end up part a bow to reality, part wishful thinking, and
whether the idea ends up on the scrap heap.
Traditionally, when the Legislature
sends its laundry list to the State Bond Commission
in the capital outlay bill (and some other items could wind up in the general appropriations
bill or even elsewhere), that instrument contains a larger request for dollars
than the state’s bonding capacity permits. Then the SBC must decide which
projects to fund, and the governor historically has had outsized influence in
this process because of the panel’s composition – the treasurer (chairman),
governor, lieutenant governor, secretary of state, attorney general,
commissioner of administration, leaders of both legislative chambers, committee
chairmen of the two “money” committees in each chamber, and one other legislator
from each chamber, or representatives of any of these individuals. As in the
past the governor had considerable informal input into the process of selection
of these legislators to their posts and usually the other minor state
executives came from the same party as he, therefore he could command majorities
on it.
Nonrecursivity if not incest marked
this relationship. In part, he wielded this influence because of the governor’s
line item veto power; he could use that against projects favored by a
legislator in exchange for support for his initiatives before they even got to
the SBC without fear of the Legislature overriding those (it never has). Thus,
governors backed legislative allies into key positions by telling them their
items would survive, thereby earning them spots on the SBC where they and the
governor (and his employee the commissioner) would roll plenty of logs so that everybody’s
projects got the green light. Note that acquiescence by the Legislature in not
only stuffing too many requests into the bill but also then not rebelling
against this custom made it work.