Seems bad

I don't really know what else we're supposed to say about the legislative session.  Every week is just gonna be a new load of very bad ideas cruising right on through.  Today, the latest scheme for de-funding public education passed out of committee without objection. 

Elected school board members also are starting to speak out against ESAs. On Thursday, just hours after the pro-ESA rally in Baton Rouge, the Livingston Parish school board discussed the bills at a special meeting.

One board member warned that a reduction in state funding could force the district to close schools and lay off teachers. Superintendent Joe Murphy said that an ESA program open to all families could guzzle up tax dollars, leaving less money for the “minimum foundation program,” or MFP, the state’s public school funding formula.

“I think this absolutely has the potential to devastate our schools from an MFP standpoint,” Murphy told the board. After all, money for the ESA program “has got to come from somewhere.”

The money coming out of the public schools' MFP will be at least half a billion dollars a year, in fact. But that's far from the only way in which our "fiscally conservative" legislature has determined to bankrupt the state this year.  Keeping in mind the already much talked about half billion dollar "fiscal cliff" that approaches in 2025, lawmakers spent the special session on "crime" adding tens (growing perhaps to hundreds) of millions of dollars to the budget for throwing people in prison and keeping them there. And the current session may expand that further. Bills are advancing that would jail people for panhandling on the streets or perhaps attending professional conferences. Maybe those are the same thing. Or at least one leads to the other. I haven't quite worked it out. 

Anyway, the legislature has the big checkbook out. But we know how much these fiscal hawks like to talk about prudent budgeting. So they must have some pretty great expectations of future revenues. Wonder where that's going to come from.  One things for sure, it won't come from the oil companies. 

The state House on Monday passed a bill that would cut the oil severance tax rate by 4 percentage points, a measure that aims to revitalize Louisiana’s oil industry but could leave an $80 million gap in state tax revenue.

House Bill 259, sponsored by Rep. Beau Beaullieu, R-New Iberia, faced virtually no pushback on the House floor, passing the chamber 86-13. It now heads to the state Senate.

With a vote of 96-6, the House also overwhelmingly passed a second Beaullieu bill, House Bill 418, which would halve the tax currently levied on oil and gas produced by wells that have been orphaned and inactive.

The Louisiana Budget Project.. or whatever the hell they call themselves now.. these NGOs "re-brand" themselves all the time for no reason..  estimates the severance tax cut could end up costing the state $80 million year.  Seems bad.