Jones, Amedee reflect on 'unprecedented' sessions

St. Mary Parish Council members received a report on the financial status of the state of Louisiana at their meeting Wednesday from two lawmakers who were directly involved in what was described as a positive, if not arduous, process to try and dig the state out of a financial hole.
Representing Louisiana House Dist. 51, Rep. Beryl Amedee was the first to speak to the council about the effort at the state level to deal with a budget crisis and faltering economy that has been felt in St. Mary Parish and has also been closely monitored by parish officials.
Amedee said it took no less than three legislative sessions to begin the process of figuring out where the money would come from for the state budget.
“This has been described as unprecedented,” Amedee said. “I kept hearing that word over and over. It may be because many things we did and many things we had to handle were unprecedented. We were called in to handle an almost $2 billion deficit which was unprecedented and we handled that deficit by generating an unprecedented amount of revenue.”
Amedee also said the 19 straight weeks of deliberation was historic in the state of Louisiana.
“We’ve never met for 19 weeks in a row before,” Amedee said. “It is my hope, that in the next three years that we have left, we will hear that word ‘unprecedented’ one more time and it will be used in this way. ‘They passed unprecedented budget reform.”
Amedee said, despite the fact that lawmakers in Baton Rouge still face a budget deficit that will be dealt with at the next session beginning in April, there were efforts being undertaken during the break to prepare for the hard road ahead. She said one thing she plans to do is consult with other states that have an economy similar to the one in Louisiana and in particular to areas such as St. Mary Parish.
“How do we compare to other states that are oil dependent like we are?” Amedee asked. “If we can find other states that are able to do government cheaper, then those are the budgets I want to look into and I’m going to go there and get some advice.”
Amedee was not the only lawmaker in attendance to weigh in on the report to the parish council. Rep. Sam Jones, Dist. 50, took to the podium following Amedee to reinforce to the council the amount of work that had to be done to repair the damage left behind, according to Jones, from the previous governor’s administration.
“We inherited a budgetary train wreck,” Jones said. “But, one of the best changes that has been made is we got a new governor. What we have is a governor that brought us an honest budget. This budget had revenue raising which is hard to do.”
Jones was, in the previous quote, referring to current governor, John Bel Edwards.