Wednesday, May 19, 2010
Written by Jeremy Alford
House Bill 189 by Rep. Dee Richard, who has no party affiliation, is a proposal that was first floated last year, passed by both chambers of the Legislature and then later axed by Gov. Bobby Jindal. It would allow state retirees with at least 10 years of service who have reached the age of 50 to retire early.
Richard said the program will save the state money because the position left vacant “must be abolished; and may only be filled or reestablished under severely restricted circumstances,” according to the legislation. That’s the section that gave Jindal heartburn in 2009.
So when Richard returned to the House Retirement Committee with his bill Thursday, he offered up an amendment from the administration that makes the section permissive, meaning it would be up to agency heads to delete the open position or fill it with another state employee. The bill had been put on hold for weeks as the administration worked toward this compromise, Richard said.
“In my mind, it halfway guts the bill,” he told the committee, “but it’s still serves a purpose for the people who want to retire early.”
Rep. Joel Robideaux of Lafayette, the speaker pro tem of the House, apologized for the hold-up. “I think the administration came up with the amendments to prevent the veto from happening this time,” said Robideaux, who also has no party affiliation.
With that, the committee unanimously approved the changes.
The tide, however, started to turn with a curious line of questioning from Rep. Juan LaFonta, D-New Orleans. “I hope you had a witness and two notaries in the room when you cut that deal for those amendments,” he said to Richard.
“I was nowhere around,” Richard responded with a laugh.
LaFonta continued, “Because those people on the fourth floor speak with a forked tongue. I’ve seen a lot of people come through here saying they had the support and then they shoot you down in the field.”
Rep. Page Cortez, R-Lafayette, was the first lawmaker to point out that the amendment created a situation where you could end up having two people in the system, whereas under the original bill there was only one. “There’s no cost savings on this anymore. We need to change it back,” Cortez said. “We need to be fiscally responsible.”
Richard, again laughing, said, “I won’t object to that.”
“I think we all liked it better that way,” Rep. J. Kevin Pearson, R-Slidell, chairman of the committee, said of the original bill.
“Me too,” Richard said.
To that, the committee erupted in clapping and even more laughter. “You can’t beat them sometimes,” Richard added.
When committee members voted again to keep the amendments intact, only Rep. Frank Hoffman, R-West Monroe, who carried the changes for the administration, voted in favor. Rep. Jack Montoucet, D-Crowley, jokingly asked to skip the vote, but ultimately voted to reject the same amendments he had just minutes earlier voted to approve, joining the rest of the committee. HB 189 now heads to the floor for further debate — in its original form.
The decision to buck the administration runs much deeper than a few jokes, though. Many lawmakers started the session second guessing Jindal’s proposed cuts to the state’s workforce. With a $3 billion budget shortfall looming over the next two fiscal years, lawmakers, including several chairmen, wanted to cut more positions, and Richard’s bill creates a vehicle for that.
The hearing also revealed how some lawmakers view working with the administration and specifically Jindal. The Legislature appears hesitant to take anything from the mouth of Jindal at even face value after the governor backed down on substantive ethics reform, reversed course on a pay raise for legislators, supported taxes disguised as fees and used one-time monies to partially fix some budget woes.
It further shows that the Legislature continues to yearn for independence. It’s just too bad that the governor is going to crush those dreams with his veto pen as soon as the bill reaches his desk. Of course, lawmakers could always strike a deal among themselves now to challenge the veto should it come, but that would be an unprecedented move.
Hey, that’s politics, Richard told the retirement committee last week. More to the point, it’s legislative politics, where a deal is a deal until its broken to pieces. “I’m just trying to play the game,” he said with a chuckle.
Jeremy Alford can be reached at
This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
.
MAY 21 Gambit columnist Clancy DuBos writes about the Mother's Day shooting, and how the stages of shock and blame and healing mirror those traveled by the same city following Hurricane Katrina. The city will recover, just as it did following the storm, by reaching out to help the people injured most seriously by the event, DuBos writes. It's how we heal, he says.
MAY 21 Here's a post on the Advocate (but buried on a subpage, not on the front) that reports something Louisiana Voice reported some time ago: a top DOE official lives in Los Angeles and "commutes" to Baton Rouge. The positioning of the story caused a stir on Facebook Monday, with several posters asking if the Advocate was covering someone's hiney. Sentell's stories on DOE are notoriously soft, and this one is no different: don't expect any hard questions in here.
MAY 21 Here's another post from blogger Tom Aswell about the "course choice" program. He's already reported on kids being signed up without their consent or knowledge, and has more here: For example, he tells of a six-year-old who was signed up for high school Latin. He also digs a little deeper into the sister companies of the main one operating in Louisiana; all of them seem to have complaints against them. Stinky.
MAY 21 Given the 80 percent cut in higher ed funding since he's been in office, it's clear Gov. Jindal would rather give tax cuts to out of state companies than have a functioning system, blogger Dayne Sherman argues in this post. The cuts have been such a disaster, Sherman says, that it will take 30 years to fix what's been broken. He says he believes the aim is to shut down most of the schools before Jindal leaves in 2016.
MAY 21 Blogger CB Forgotston says there are too many elections in Louisiana, and they're costing us too much money. The proof is in the pudding: turnout for most of these nonsensical pollings gets worse and worse, CB opines, even as millions of dollars that could be spent on health care or higher ed go down the tubes. The legislature must take action to stem the tide of pointless elections, he says.
MAY 21 Here's an interesting investigative piece by WVUE on the retirement benefits of some Jefferson Parish public employees. According to the story, the taxpayers are paying 100 percent of the retirement contributions of employees who started work prior to a certain date in April 1986 -- and have done for more than 30 years. It costs the parish millions annually, and might not be legal, the story reports.
MAY 21 This post on Bayou Buzz provides insight from Louisiana's intrepid pollster, Bernie Pinsonat, on the winners and losers from this year's legislative session. But to hear Bernie tell it, there's almost nuttin but losers: Jindal, the Republican party, the Fiscal Hawks all get big goose eggs in his win column.
MAY 20 This post on The Lens takes a look at a huge (either $500K or $250K) bill that one NOLA charter now has for school lunches. The RSD says the charter group didn't fill out the proper paperwork for federal reimbursement, but the story details how the RSD didn't ensure the people running the charter had the proper training, despite requests from hapless charter employees trying to fill out forms. Either way, somebody's asleep at the wheel.
Most Read
in case you missed it
Subscribe to this comment's feed