Amedee recalls session of firsts

State Rep. Beryl Amedee, R-Gray, told Tri-City area residents during a town hall meeting Monday at the Morgan City Municipal Auditorium that she often heard one specific word about the recent regular and special sessions.

“The word that I kept hearing was ‘unprecedented,’” Amedee said. “Everything that went on seemed unprecedented. An unprecedented deficit, we passed an unprecedented amount of revenues to try to correct that deficit.

“We met for an unprecedented number of weeks. But right from the beginning, we did some things that made headlines around the whole country.”

The first day of the session, the speaker of the house was elected.

“I just thought that’s what we’re supposed to do,” Amedee said. “Apparently, that’s not how it’s been done and that was unprecedented. It is what is written, it just hadn’t been done that way.”

Because of big projected budget deficits, “we met through three sessions in a row,” Amedee said. “We handled a total of 1,882 bills and 80 constitutional amendments . Only six survived to make it to the November ballot.”

The Constitutional amendments up for vote on Nov. 8 are:

—Act 677/HB 459, setting the appointment procedure and qualifications of registrar of voters must be set in law.

—Act 680/SB 80, allows college boards to set tuition and fees.

—Act 31/HB 31, removes state tax deduction for federal income taxes paid by corporations.

—Act 678/HB 505, a property tax exemption for surviving spouses of military, law enforcement officers and firefighters killed in the line of duty.

—Act 679/HB 603, creates the Revenue Stabilization Fund.

—Act 681/SB 201, allows constitutionally protected expenditures to be reduced under certain budget deficit circumstances.

“We met for 19 consecutive weeks, which is a record,” Amedee said. “The state of Louisiana’s legislature has never met for 19 consecutive weeks until this year. So, it was record-breaking.”

Needless to say, with little down time, Amedee and her colleagues were tired at the end of three special sessions.

“I’m hoping that this 2016 through 2020 class of the state legislature arrives at the end of our term using the word unprecedented one more time to say that we’ve passed an unprecedented amount of budget reforms so that we don’t have to go around this mountain again,” Amedee said.

In the first special session, Amedee recalls opening the House session in prayer on the first Friday.

“And I prayed according to my faith,” Amedee said. “A prayer, I thought, was very necessary, which was a prayer of repentance for decades and generations of not using the state’s funds wisely.

“Money comes from taxpayers. I believe that makes it sacred. Somebody had to earn that by the sweat of their brow by their sacrifice.

“And I believe as legislators we’ll have to answer to God for what we do with that money, for right or for wrong.”

Amedee states the cause of the $1.9 budget shortfall was due to a combination of things. A lot of one-time money was used to balance the budget.

“We’re not supposed to use one-time money for recurring expenses,” Amedee said.

Another big item affecting the budget was a decline in tax revenues.

“And we also faced Medicaid increases,” Amedee said. “The governor signed an executive order that we would now participate in Medicaid expansion. We had to come up with the money for that.”

Also, during last fiscal year, the former administration only made 11 payments to Medicaid instead of making 12. One of the payments was extended into the next fiscal year.

“Well, that was great last year,” Amedee said. “But that meant this year, we had to come up with extra so, all of these things combined into a perfect storm, which caused this unprecedented budget deficit.”

The main point she wanted residents to know is the funding margins did not change much.

“In the big picture of things, revenues have been steady,” Amedee said. “And that was just to illustrate that we don’t see one huge decline or major dip. It’s been fairly steady.”

Some of the revenue-raising measures mentioned were paying an extra penny on sales tax and making modifications to tax exemptions.

Another increase was cigarette tax, which increased 22 cents a pack. Taxes were also increased for beer, wine and spirits. It was the first increase on wine in 50 years.

There were many revenue raising measures.

One to note, House Bill 29, is a flat 6.5 percent tax rate for corporate income tax, Amedee said. Also, collecting sales tax from internet sales is another measure.

“This is going to be pretty hard to enforce, but it’s a step that we’re taking because local businesses are competing with internet sales,” Amedee said. “As a state, we can’t do a whole lot about it until the federal government jumps in.”

Amedee is in favor of fiscal control.

“I am a person who thinks the government can and should live within its means just like the rest of us have to,” Amedee said.

“So I was a big fan of introducing and promoting fiscal controls and accountability measures to try and control government spending. And we didn’t get a whole lot of that done because there was not a lot of enthusiasm for it yet.”

On the education front, there are 690,000 students enrolled in schools statewide. Per student funding is in excess of $12,000, which includes federal, state and local money.

The cost is more for students diagnosed with special education needs.

Last year, the minimum foundation program was fully funded at $3.7 billion. And last year’s supplemental MFP was $44 million. This year, only $26 million allocated for funding.

Outside the MFP, the early childhood development program was fully funded for more than 17,000 preschoolers. The voucher program was appropriated $40 million for the current school year.

“Supposedly, those students who received vouchers last year should be able to receive them this year,” Amedee said. “There was no expansion.”