Harrison: Buget session necessary to deal with current fiscal crisis

State Rep. Joe Harrison said Wednesday that there will have to be a special legislative session on the Louisiana budget.
He spoke to members of the St. Mary Chamber of Commerce at a Legislative Breakfast at the Forest Restaurant in Franklin.
Harrison, R-Dist. 51, said the state can’t keep doing the same thing in fiscal matters. Only higher education and health care are open to cuts; other funds are protected.
“We’re not building the kind of systems, the kind of curriculum, that meets the needs of all the people sitting in this audience today,” Harrison said of education. “We’re dedicated to that.”
He praised the vocational-technical system in Louisiana and particularly St. Mary Parish.
The recent decline in oil prices has hobbled the industry. “I sit on the national board of directors for the National Energy Commission,” Harrison said. “Nine months ago they told us that the Saudis were going to make a move to shut down our domestic oil. They are more concerned about fracking than anything and sending oil into the European nations and shutting down their markets.”
He said the United States is supplying aid to many of those Middle Eastern oil-producing countries and “so don’t take it out on us on the economic side of the page because there has to be that balance between people that are supposed to be friends.”
Predictions are 16-18 months of continued low oil prices, Harrison said.
Harrison said he will attempt to move St. Mary Parish into the South Central Planning District, a development district that is the strongest in the state and most of the southern United States, he said. “They’re not going to take over things,” he said. “They’re going to coordinate with local governments on what services you want.”
He also intends to introduce legislation on gaming revenues collected by the state because it is unclear where those revenues end up in the budget. “It’s time to demand that we support our higher education system” through gaming revenues, Harrison said, as it was intended when approved by voters.