Governor John Bel Edwards tried to put a good face on it.
“I am extremely pleased with where we are, considering where we started. And while we may have come up short in a few ways, we made difficult choices and we made tremendous progress,” the Governor said, during a press conference a few minutes after the session’s close.
Yet when lawmakers adjourned the 2nd special session, they were still $350-million short of what was needed for the budget that begins July first, and the chasm between the House and Senate had widened.
At issue through most of the final day was HB 69, the supplemental appropriations bill designating how to spend the additional funds. Throughout the afternoon and evening spreadsheets flew back and forth, shifting a million dollars here, a million dollars there. But the real sticking point was an amendment directing the Administration to fully fund TOPS for the fall, and then cut it back in the spring –if necessary.
“We should not be held hostage to what they think, in putting this language in there,” Senate Karen Carter Peterson said.
Senator Jay Luneau called the House “bullies”.
“I don’t like bullies,” the Alexandria Democrat stated. “This amendment is more smoke and mirrors. This is not budgeting by what we have. This is budgeting by what we dream we will have.”
Still, less than three hours before mandatory adjournment, the Senate approved the amendment, and HB 69, 25-14. When the House took it up, nearly an hour and a half later, Speaker Pro Tem Walt Leger objected to the amendment.
“The policy is unwise and unconstitutional,” Leger said. “Now is not the time to create gimmicks or schemes.”
But GOP Caucus chairman, Rep. Lance Harris urged them to do the right thing, by passing the bill and going home.
“You want to risk us leaving this House without a supplemental budget, because at the last hour we got hung up on some politics about front-loading TOPS?” Harris asked House members.
The House ultimately said yes, 56 to 43.
The Governor admitted the continued friction between the upper and lower chambers was making it harder for the Legislature to function effectively, But I asked him if he was going to use his line item veto on the problem language of that final amendment.
“We are studying that language,” he replied. “I am not going to announce whether I’m going to veto it or not here tonight.”