Ganja gambit fails, hazy consequences remain

Call it the Ganja Gambit – a last-second desperation attempt to sway anti-tax Republican legislators to make permanent a 0.45 percent sales tax increase.

This week, Republican state Rep. Tanner Magee’s HB 391 won legislative approval and now heads to Democrat Gov. John Bel Edwards who has said he’ll sign it into law. It creates an extraordinarily relaxed process that allows members of the public to get their hands on over a hundred joints a week ostensibly for medical reasons so open-ended that in short order some doctor somewhere will “recommend” it for halitosis.

Don’t expect all the “patients” to sit tight on their stashes. Unused portions will filter out onto the street for those willing to pay more for less bureaucracy to get high. Watch over the coming years the state’s two producers, allied with two of its university systems, ramp up production to meet this demand (and they’ll get a piece of the increased action as well).

Loosen nearly all LA campaign finance limits

Let’s hope a quarter-measure to make election financing honest, transparent, and more reflective of a commitment to free speech marks the first step to finishing a much larger task.

SB 4 by Democrat state Sen. Ed Price would remove limits to the amount of money a candidate may receive from political action committees for state and local offices. Currently, statewide executive offices and committee for candidates running at the highest judicial levels can receive only $80,000, other state office candidates and a few local ones have a limit of $40,000, and all others can receive no more than $20,000. Unaffected are varying limits on how much a single PAC may give to a single candidate. The bill has passed the Legislature and awaits action by Democrat Gov. John Bel Edwards.

Donation limits never have made sense, even if constitutionally permitted as a means to reflect honesty in elections and governance. These caps ultimately conflict with the First Amendment that recognizes donations to candidates reflect political speech. Given the incompatibility of trying to limit campaign dollars while allowing unlimited amounts expressing speech for or against candidates, an unwieldy system that obscures more than reveals and therefore may hide accountability governs campaign finance.

Spendthrift LA budget shortchanges public

What’s the point in delivering a line-item veto-proof operating budget when you give the governor pretty much everything he wants?

Last week, the Louisiana Legislature signed off on the state’s fiscal year 2022 budget. Fueled by federal government largesse that would drive up the country’s relative debt to levels even higher than seen in World War II, the package crests over $38 billion dollars, or an increase of nearly 50 percent since Democrat Gov. John Bel Edwards took office.

Finishing well in advance of the Jun. 10 deadline, this means that if Edwards exercises his line-item veto power, the Legislature will have an opportunity to override any of these. Traditionally, the Legislature has passed the general appropriations bill so late in the session that a special, costly override session would have to take place to counter the governor, so governors use these vetoes as a threat to entice legislators to support their spending priorities and positions on other bills.

Memorial Day, 2021

This column publishes every Sunday through Thursday around noon U.S. Central Time (maybe even after sundown on busy days, or maybe before noon if things work out, or even sometimes on the weekend if there's big news) except whenever a significant national holiday falls on the Monday through Friday associated with the otherwise-usual publication on the previous day (unless it is Thanksgiving Day, Independence Day, Christmas, or New Year's Day when it is the day on which the holiday is observed by the U.S. government). In my opinion, in addition to these are also Easter Sunday, Memorial Day and Veterans' Day.

With Monday, May 31 being Memorial Day, I invite you to explore this link.

Edwards virus policy caused net loss of life

Finally, Louisiana Democrat Gov. John Bel Edwards (mostly) set the state’s people free. The Wuhan coronavirus pandemic public health emergency continues, but with the only restrictions left being face coverings required in public transportation, health care, and corrections settings – which should have been the regime all along except for the initial stages of the pandemic.

But because it wasn’t – because Edwards’ restrictions went far beyond that for an extended period time, human dignity suffered a major affront in that overly-restrictive rules needlessly attenuated people’s liberties. Worse, data show his heavy-handed approach probably cost more lives than saved them.

This is demonstrable both theoretically and empirically. For the first part of 2020 – the national and international pandemics were declared in mid-March – scientists and policy-makers knew little about the virus and the epidemiology associated with it. Scary scenarios predicated on a much broader conceptualization of transmission possibility, rushing in to fill the vacuum of knowledge, perhaps justified stringent measures.

LA Senate tax hike try may hang GOP out to dry

A late session sleight-of-hand stupidly supported by some of the Louisiana Senate’s most conservative members may provide the first test for the House of Representatives’ new Conservative Legislative Caucus.

At the start of Wednesday, HB 514 by Republican state Rep. Tanner Magee applied sales tax to medical marijuana. But when it hit the floor that afternoon, Magee allowed its hijacking by amendment to make permanent the sales tax hike instituted first in 2016 and supposed to expire over two years later, but which in part got extended to 2025. Over the next three years its avails gradually would be diverted to roads construction until by the time it would have expired the entirety would go to that object. It also delays giving back the entirety of a tax on manufacturer use of utilities.

The bill lists several projects that would receive priority, which have appeared as distinct line items in several bills this session, to where three-quarters of the avails should go until these reach completion. This larding of pork appeared to appease several senators, particularly GOP state Sen. Barrow Peacock who was mentioned as a collaborator on the radical change and whose SB 1, stalled in the Senate, would take a much more reasonable approach of diverting the tax increase for roads but with it expiring as intended.

LA Supreme Court expansion wasteful, useless

No constitutional or legal reason exists to justify the waste of taxpayer dollars on the altar of increased employment of elected officials by expanding the size of Louisiana’s Supreme Court.

SB 163 by Republican Sen. Patrick McMath would amend the Constitution, in a vote next year, to increase the size of the state’s Supreme Court from seven to nine members, provide for decennial reapportionment, and create roughly equiproportional districts in population. Changing the size would be comparatively the least radical of the bunch, recent history reveals.

Louisiana hasn’t reapportioned any judicial districts in over two decades. The last time that happened, it came as a consequence of the unwieldy Chisom v. Roemer consent decree, the 1992 case that the resolution of which committed the state to draw a judicial district explicitly on racial lines to produce a majority-black district in the hopes it would elect a black justice. Before the 1997 law that did so, the last redistricting came as a consequence of the new 1974 Constitution. And since then, the Legislature passed on doing so both after 2000 (sticking with the 1997 lines used) and 2010 (despite both House and Senate pledges to do so).

Conservative bloc needs to usher out Schexnayder

For the good of Louisiana, House of Representatives conservative Republicans need to have an intervention with GOP Speaker Clay Schexnayder.

Last week, Schexnayder forced out Education Committee Chairman Ray Garofalo for backing a bill Republicans have passed out of legislative chambers in several states. The bill would prohibit unchallenged instruction or training that deliberately demeans students or trainees on the basis of their immutable characteristics or political views – often protecting racist behavior disguised as anti-racism.

He did this by failing to support Garofalo’s ability to function as committee chairman after complaints from the Louisiana Legislative Black Caucus, who manufactured outrage by blowing way out of proportion an offhand remark to allege Garofalo’s unfitness to lead. The LLBC has unusual leverage over Schexnayder because he won the speakership with only minority GOP representative support, with the plurality of that support coming from the LLBC, and a threat to withdraw that support means Schexnayder likely would lose his spot and full-time job with its salary.

Preserve fiscal bonus to pay looming LA debts

So, you get handed around nearly $700 million and are told you can spend almost half of it on anything over the next year starting Jul. 1, and the rest you can spend now on capital items and/or defeasance of various obligations. Louisiana has encountered such a bonus, and must act wisely with it to avoid future fiscal catastophe, which runs against type.

Last week’s Revenue Estimating Conference meeting approved fiscal forecasts of a $357 million surplus for this fiscal year and of $320 million for the next. The lagniappe came from better-than-expected, even if relatively weak, revenue collection from very conservative past estimation taking into account the impact of the Wuhan coronavirus pandemic.

The Democrat Gov. John Bel Edwards Administration wants to speak for the sums, but at least doesn’t want to fritter away all of it. As the larger amount can’t go towards recurring items, it recommends adding it to $45 million already apportioned by the House to make an initial $400 million payment on a hurricane and flood protection rebuild and enhancement in the southeastern part of the state. In the aftermath of the hurricane disasters of 2005, the state pledged to pay for 35 percent of the cost of repairing this system that would be interest-free for another year if making a payment of that amount by the end of September.

Local bills to create more responsive govts

Citizens on both sides of the Red River appear on the way to bringing more responsive government, despite opponents to that using misdirection in failed attempts to date to derail legislation.

HB 630 by Republican state Rep. Dodie Horton uncontroversially would update state statutes from the 1950s regarding the Cypress Black Bayou Recreation and Water Conservation District. Much more controversially, it would create a process to remove members of the agency’s governing commission, appointed for five-year terms by local Bossier governments, with the governing authorities of four being directly elected and the other filled with gubernatorial appointees. At present, no removal procedures exist beyond the constitutional impeachment provision, which limits that to malfeasance or gross misconduct.

It also changes filling a vacancy from the remaining commissioners to the appointer. And, it allows commissioners to have one of their own removed for specific causes listed.