Harrison: Jindal blocks his key bills

State Rep. Joe Harrison, R-Gray, blasted Gov. Bobby Jindal’s administration for blocking several bills from passage that were designed to help the elderly, education and Native Americans so far during the regular legislative session, Harrison said.
Though Harrison has passed bills so far during the 2014 legislative session, a few of his key bills have failed, he said.
House Bill 246, which would have created a Department of Elderly Affairs, was among the bills that failed, Harrison said. “The governor’s office has been very disingenuous in fighting it all the way through,” Harrison said of the Jindal’s administration effort to keep the bill in committee so that Jindal would not have to support it.
Jindal has been against the Department of Elderly Affairs legislation from the beginning of the session, Harrison said.
Harrison has one bill left in the Senate, HB 1256, that could save the Department of Elderly Affairs, he said. The bill was scheduled to be heard in the Senate Health and Welfare Committee today, he said. “If that doesn’t pass, it pretty much kills it from being a department again this year,” Harrison said.
The “Bet on Louisiana” bill, which Harrison has worked on for four years, did not get out of the appropriations committee after being deferred. The bill would have made sure 100 percent of state gaming money goes to education, Harrison said.
“We did not vote for gaming money to go to anything but education,” Harrison said.
HB 125 and HB 127 would have provided for the election of the state superintendent of schools if other bills got shot down. HB 125 was a constitutional amendment.
“It’s an indication of where education is with this administration in that they’ve had two people run the department of education that were not qualified for the position neither of which could have applied for an assistant principal’s job,” Harrison said.
HB 441, the Department of Indian Affairs bill, got out of committee, out of the House, into the Senate and then the governor’s office killed the bill at the last minute, Harrison said. The state has not had anyone running the Department of Indian Affairs, and the bill would have created a council comprised of representatives from the 15 tribes in Louisiana. The department could be working with Native American associations across the U.S. if the state had a recognized structure, Harrison said.
HB 125 and HB 127 got out of committee but not out of the House, Harrison said.
Harrison has other bills still on the table that are attempting to lower insurance rates because Louisiana has the highest rates in the country in both automobile and home insurance, he said.
Harrison did get House Concurrent Resolution 137 out of committee that lets judges determine whether a lawsuit was egregious or frivolous and, if the person who brought the suit loses, the judge can award attorney fees and loss of income to the defendant, he said. “It might stop some of these lawsuits that are out there for anything and everything,” Harrison said. The governor cannot veto an HCR bill, he said.
The state legislature became the 24th state to pass a balanced budget amendment during the session in the form of HCR 70, Harrison said.
“We’re not very far from getting a constitutional convention called that the U.S. Senate and the House of Representatives in Washington would then be forced to have a balanced budget because they’ve been writing bad checks for many, many years now,” Harrison said.
The country is on track to get to the 36 states required to call a Constitutional Convention, he said.
Harrison wrote HCR 99, which passed, mandating the medical examiner’s office do case studies on prescription drug abuse and get law enforcement to crack down on that problem, he said.
Harrison’s bill to reform TOPS, HB 1153, which he proposed for the sixth year, did not get out of the education committee, he said. Harrison called the education committee “the committee from Hell.”
Harrison does not know where the state is going to get the $323 million for TOPS in 2015, he said. “I do believe if they (students) fail to go to class, that their parents should responsible to pay the money back,” Harrison said.
The legislative session ends June 2.