Republican Gov. Jeff Landry is finding tricky navigating as he attempts to revolutionize Louisiana government.
Landry came into office on the back of a big election win and with a healthy supermajority of GOP legislators joining him. The playbook for chief executives under these conditions calls for striking while the iron is hot, especially at the start of a term in office.
His ambitious agenda reflected this. A special legislative session of his calling definitively put his imprint of increased accountability and responsibility onto criminal justice policy. Now a month from adjourning, the regular session already has sent to his desk some regulatory reforms for property insurance, with the issues of high premiums and reduced availability nagging ratepayers for years, with more on the way.
But that’s not all, and here he’s beginning to bump up against the limits of power shaped by the realities of the political environment. Landry had stumped for a huge injection of choice into education by proposing, over a few years starting next academic year, that the state subsidize children’s education options, except for home schooling, through education savings accounts. That makes sense since a significant portion of households with children in school pay into public education, yet because of its relatively low quality they end up paying again to have their children educated in nonpublic schools. Pursuing this over the long haul will improve public education through introducing competition as well as reduce public dollars going to nonpublic schools eventually as the proportion of children in public schools increases as a result.
The problem is the costs after phasing in for a few years would be substantial. While some alarmist numbers nearly twice the anticipated amount are overblown, it’s likely these early costs would be in the $300 million annual range. These would commence not long after a temporary sales tax increase of 0.45 percent rolls off the books. While both axing the tax increase and establishing ESAs are necessary to improve the state’s fiscal health – both lower taxes and a better-educated citizenry lead to increased economic development – in the long term, this makes for a tighter budget in the short term.
Thus, a state Senate panel has endorsed an alternative to a House bill encapsulating Landry’s approach that at present senators sit on. It basically would punt the matter of designing ESAs to the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education after a study, but give the Legislature ultimate control over any rules that BESE could promulgate to establish ESAs by making funding contingent on an annual appropriation.
A solid BESE majority supports ESAs so whatever comes from that probably wouldn’t look much different than Landry’s plan, and this approach more flexibly can respond to the sales tax hike expiration the year after next. Still, it risks momentum loss as district school boards and educrats fear losing power along with special interests wanting to keep things, so they already are fighting tooth-and-nail to derail the reform.
Fiscal matters also are driving, and threatening, another huge Landry initiative: putting the Louisiana Constitution on a diet. He wants in principle to transfer out from it into law a number of provisions dealing with taxes and spending, making these easier for legislators to adjust on the fly to respond to the varying fiscal environment, rather than face constraints and the necessity of a lengthy process to make changes. The state’s basic law locks in certain items most states have in statute.
Landry hopes to have this shedding done in time for fall elections as voters would have to approve of this. Approval by then would be needed in order have more options to tackle the sales tax hike expiration next year, in addition to creating more efficient government sooner.
However, he has run into skepticism from the Senate that this can be done on his preferred timeline of the last two weeks of the regular session, with as much as a month added on, as legislators mainly would comprise the convention delegates. A better option may be an August convention, up until the deadline for submitting ballot items for the Nov. 5 election.
Representatives also have removed some flexibility by proposing to keep from consideration of removal the state’s excessive homestead exemption or siloed Minimum Foundation Program, out of political pressure. That’s not necessary – delegates would divine that taking these out of the Constitution might cause voter rejection and so not do that in the first place – and emboldens opposition big government advocates who understand that the constitutional straitjacket in place artificially inflates the size of government.
Hopefully, Landry can keep as much on the table as possible for delegate discussion, and may have to accept a later date for review – perhaps a relief to legislators who have been in session most of the time since the first couple of weeks of the year, but which also gives special interests wishing to retain bloated government more time to rally opposition. Steering this into fruition from convention to ballot box success would score him a big policy win and provide better government for the citizenry.
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