Overboarded

Meet your new "Infrastructure Advisory Board" 

A new seven member board has been appointed to oversee spending of an influx of cash to the Sewerage & Water Board, the result of a deal cut with the state and hospitality industry during this year's legislative session, city officials announced Wednesday.

The deal, which involves a $50-million infusion to the S&WB and $26 million a year that will largely come from new taxes on hotels, was a major priority of Mayor LaToya Cantrell. It included an agreement that a board be assembled to oversee how the money is spent.

These are the guys who are supposed to.. um.. oversee (?) how the new but insufficient revenue from the "fair (but not really) share" deal is spent. It's the board that does, um, something with the money before the Sewerage and Water Board does whatever it will do with it. Looks like, write reports every now and then, mostly.  Anyway Neil Abramson is here so that's something.

Here's who else is in this club?

Chairing the Infrastructure Advisory Board will be Woodward Design and Build CEO Paul Flower, who was appointed by Edwards.

Yeah okay so a major contractor. Here is a story about how Flower conquered the engineering challenge of installing a new swimming pool at his Garden District home in 2012.  That's one. Who else?

Casey Tingle is the Governor's emergency preparedness guy so, okay, check. Bill Hammack owns restaurants so, who knows. Lewis Stirling lords over a massive commercial real estate empire and was therefore a S&WB member until his term expired this year.  Looks like the mayor found something else for him to do. Karen Raymond is, I am pretty sure this Karen Raymond  who currently works at Laitram, in which case, lol.  Elisa Speranza is an independent, um, resilience consultant, I guess? That's the best way I can summarize this.

I help purpose-driven organizations succeed so that people, communities, and ecosystems can thrive and prosper. I am passionate about improving the human condition through environmental stewardship and organizational excellence. I am a strategist, advisor, facilitator, writer, teacher, board member and water geek.

I don't really know what any of that means but the other "water geeks" vouch for her ability to do it. So, okay.  But I did want to point out that her bio is very heavy in CH2M experience which probably doesn't raise red flags immediately with everybody but maybe it should.  Neil is, of course, himself.

Anyway, that's your board over the board.  Hope they have fun signing all the checks or whatever.

Constitution can kicked again

One thing that seemed like a possibility going into the latest special session was a deal to pass the 4.5% sales tax in exchange for getting the ball rolling on a constitutional convention. We've already talked about why that would be a bad idea if you would like to review that. In any case we don't have to worry about it now because  it doesn't look like that's going to be the deal.

On separate 3-3 votes Wednesday, the House & Governmental Affairs committee, rejected two resolutions that would have organized a study commission to consider the feasibility and possible issues surrounding the possibility of changing the state constitution to better address the state’s ongoing fiscal problems.

Democratic New Orleans Rep. Neil Abramson said 13 mid-year corrections and a string of special sessions, including this one, to address ongoing budget problems underlined the need for fundamental changes in the way state government collects and spends taxpayer dollars. The most efficient way of accomplishing that goal would be to change the financial structure in the constitution that, among other things, locks away money for specific programs.

Don't worry. Neil will be back with more of the same ideas next year. But first he's sponsoring the least helpful of all the sales tax bills that came out of his committee today.

Bills now advancing to the floor, where they will need 70 House votes, a two-thirds majority of the chamber:

House Bill 10, sponsored by Rep. Paula Davis, R-Baton Rouge, would extend .4 percent of a one-cent sales tax set to expire June 30 and suspend some sales tax breaks.

House Bill 9, sponsored by Abramson, to extend .33 percent of the expiring sales tax and also suspend some sales tax breaks.

House Bill 4, sponsored by Rep. Stuart Bishop, R-Lafayette, to extend half of the expiring sales tax for the start of the next budget cycle but automatically drops to .2 percent over time. It does not address the sales tax breaks, commonly called "cleaning pennies" on existing sales taxes.

None of the bills that advanced out of the House Ways & Means Committee exactly matches the half-cent and "clean penny" proposal backed by Gov. John Bel Edwards and narrowly defeated in the last special session.

Bishop's bill would get most of the trick done, if you consider the trick just getting us out of this mess and into another one in a year or so unless some dramatic tax reform package gets done between now and then but I think the time is well passed for that kind of optimism.

Spirit of Charity

Who will win the Charity redevelopment derby? We are down to three contestants already. 

LSU has selected three development teams it says are qualified to bid for the right to redevelop Charity Hospital, the downtown New Orleans facility that was abandoned after Hurricane Katrina.

The three selections were made after a process announced in April that opened up what's long been seen as a prime redevelopment opportunity to competitive bidders. LSU officials said last month that they would select developers that "have the vision, experience and financial capability" to complete a project.

Let's see who is in here. Well there's Pres Kabacoff which is not going to surprise anybody. There's also this guy who is sort of the Kabacoff of Dallas but with a larger, international portfolio. But this group is the true curiosity.

1452 Tulane Partners: This is an ownership group that includes New Orleans-based CCNO Development LLC and El Ad US Holdings, part of the Tshuva Group, a commercial real estate conglomerate based in Israel. El Ad's holdings are in Israel, Europe, Asia and North America. They include the Plaza Hotel in New York, and more than 10,000 rental units in 10 U.S. states. CCNO projects include the adaptive reuse of the former McDonogh 16 school building and a few multi-unit residential developments. Joseph Stebbins, a former Housing Authority of New Orleans official, architect Michael Lee Mattax and contractor Richard Mithun are the principals in CCNO.

Hey, it's a good thing the City Council made sure to reject the BDS movement, right?  Otherwise these guys would be out of the running for this big pot of money and that's the real injustice, right?

We're not yet to the stage of this where we get to see the actual proposals but if we're wondering what they will look like, all we have to do is check out what these same developers proposed the last time this was tried. 

Previous competitive bids outlined a vision for Charity Hospital in 2015 that included a bid from New Orleans developer Joseph Stebbin that proposed a 600-unit apartment building, an extended-stay motel and housing for medical students. The company formed to bid on the property offered $30 million for the 1 million-square-foot building; overall development costs at the time were pegged at $275 million.

Also bidding on the property was New Orleans-based HRI Properties, which proposed a $194 million renovation that included apartments and a medical research tower.

So, basically, they're going to do fancy apartments glommed on to whatever window dressing best flatters the public fashion and/or nostalgia.  Here is Andy Kopplin back in April illustrating that with some empty slogan salad.  I highlighted my favs.

"After more than a dozen long years, this effort to adaptively repurpose the iconic Charity Hospital building presents an exciting opportunity to bring back a place that is sacred to many New Orleanians," Kopplin said in a statement. "Even more exciting to us here at the Foundation is the potential for using this initiative to kick-start long-standing efforts to develop the neighborhood surrounding Charity into a vibrant, job creating, inclusive and equitable innovation district that celebrates the spirit of charity and that everyone in our region can claim with pride."

In recent years, the marketing strategy for these kinds of developers has also picked up the phrase "affordable housing" because they've learned that is something people worry about.  The Advocate quotes Stebbins hitting that note in this story.

“It’ll be a modern, vertically integrated development no matter who does it. You’re going to have residential pieces, and you’re going to have an affordable (housing) piece,”

Although, as we've seen, the developments themselves rarely contribute much in the way of actually addressing the housing crisis. Token set asides (the "affordable piece") are in there to mollify the growing public concern on the one hand and to qualify for various public subisdies and land use exemptions on the other.  The more juice housing gains as a political issue, the better our politicians and developers who fund them are learning to rebrand their schemes in ways that co-opt the language of activism without actually changing the course of public policy.

In a particualry strange episode of this kabuki last week, John Bel vetoed a bill that would have banned  local "inclusionary zoning" requirements.  That's fine. That bill, like most state-level attempts at preempting local political authority, should have been vetoed.   The Governor's  veto statement, though, was almost as nonsensical as the bill itself saying, basically, that local governments will have to use it or lose it. 

“If local governments in Louisiana do not actively pursue these policies over the course of the next year, I will conclude that it is not their will to utilize these strategies and I will be inclined to sign a similar piece of legislation in the 2019 regular session,” Edwards stated in his veto.

If cities aren't implementing this policy in the first place, why ban it?  I don't know.

Anyway, from the looks of things, our new mayor is something of a branding enthusiast herself.  And, as such, she is as on board as anyone with applying the new language of faux affordability and "vibrant, job creating, inclusive and equitable innovation" or whatever toward the same old program of  handing out money and favors... oh I'm sorry..  "incentives" to the real estate mavens who elected her.

Mason Harrison, a spokesman for Cantrell, said stimulating development activity and business growth are priorities of the new mayor.

"A great deal of opportunity exists in returning vacant buildings to commerce, generating tax revenue," he said. "Businesses, however, must be offered the kinds of incentives that will make that possible, and the mayor-elect believes that we are losing to other parishes on that front."

Luckily, she has friends in Baton Rouge willing to help.  Cantrell has chosen State Rep Neil Abramson to serve as her point person in the legislature.  Last week, he introduced her (and New Orleans Saints mascot Gumbo) to the House so she could greet members with a brief speech about how much fun she had at D.C. Mardi Gras and congratulate them on the fine work they've done this year.  (This is really what she told them. I am not making that up.)

In addition to this service, Neil (on the days the House was not considering anything involving abortion) also managed to pass some legislation on the city's behalf.

For example here is HB 684 passed during the regular session.  What this does, basically, is remove a cap on the size of the tax break the city can give private entities who have entered into cooperative endeavor agreements with them. Previously, if a "private partner" were to donate "cash, equipment, goods, or services" to a city infrastructure project, then they could collect a tax break equal to one half the value of the donation or $500,000 whichever is less.

Say, for example, the management company running the St. Roch Market were to install a new sidewalk or something.  They could then recoup half of their investment in tax subsidies. Now, under Neil's version of the law, the "incentive" payment has no limit. So, in theory, a thousand dollar "donation" could merit a million dollar "incentive."

You go out and buy some new signage.. ooh.. or maybe some cameras...  and the city can more or less guarantee you're going to come out ahead.  That ought to get the ol' spirit of charity up and running. Especially if it applies to whatever deal governs the Charity development which I think it probably will.  But you can see the possibilities extend well beyond that too. 

Funny dreams

It's hard to decide if the Republicans in the legislature are sleepwalking or if they are just playing possum with their eyes open. Either way they do seem to  be treating the budget process like some sort of dream. How else does one justify a billion dollars plus worth of cuts to health care unless one doesn't believe any of this is real?

Both Harris and Appropriations Chair Cameron Henry said the state didn’t have enough money to fund promised services. Both said they would back “revenue-raising measures,” i.e. taxes, in a special session expected to be called in mid-May.

But this exercise was part of a process to give lawmakers a much firmer grasp on how much would be needed, both Henry and Harris insisted.

The size of the fiscal cliff has shrunk since the first special session. "The number is getting smaller and smaller," Henry said.

“This is what a responsible budget looks like — dealing with the actual figures, the actual money that's available to the state today,” Harris said after the vote. “While not perfect — there is still a lot of work to do — we passed a budget, and it’s on its way to the Senate to finish work on the budget using the funds that we have today.”

What happens in the state Senate is still up in the air. Senators could rearrange the funding and cut different programs. Or they could stall and wait for a special session.

See we're not actually voting on a budget here. We're just voting on a hypothetical idea of what a budget looks like. The actual budget will get done in the Senate or in the Special Session we kept screaming that we didn't want. Anyway somebody else will do it. This is a dream. In here we can do anything we want.

Of course it must tell us something that this horror show budget is the sort of thing the House radicals dream about.

More than 46,000 people who are elderly and disabled are expected to lose their nursing home slots and 24-hour home health care services in a little over two months if the House budget plan becomes law. The popular TOPS college scholarship would only be funded at 80 percent for the 2018-2019 school year.

Why would anyone want to live in that nightmare? If this is the dream budget, why not dream big? We're trying to pass a budget now with the knowledge that we will have to come back and fund it later, so let's shop for the things we actually need. That way, when we want to claw back some of the money we waste on things like enterprise zones we can say with some confidence that we're going to put that into hospitals.

The nice thing about a dream budget is that it gives everybody a chance to say what they really believe in without any of those nagging pragmatic political consequences to worry about, right?

The House budget passed with just two votes to spare in the Republican-controlled chamber. The vote fell mostly along political party lines. Only one Democrat, New Orleans Rep. Neil Abramson, voted for the budget with the Republicans. Eight Republicans voted with Democrats against the proposal. The three independents in the House split on the spending plan, with two voting against the budget and one voting for it.

Neil has got some funny funny dreams.

This week in state preemption

City council passed an ordinance yesterday that will keep the city from booting your car until you've racked up three unpaid tickets. That's nice of them to do.  We could all stand to see the city be a little less brutal in its regressive approach to revenue generation by nickel-and-diming everyday citizens.  The new mayor sounds less inclined to that sort of thing than the outgoing one is. It was a popular campaign plank of hers, anyway. We'll see how long that holds up after she takes office. I am highly skeptical. For now, though, it's a step in a better direction. 

But the key thing to note here is that this decision was made at the municipal level only after State Senator JP Morrell was convinced to pull a bill that would have imposed the same policy change from Baton Rouge. State preemption of local issues is another matter of concern for the new mayor. Asking to have this booting ordinance happen in the council and not the legislature is one small way of asserting this principle.

They're also interested in keeping local zoning regulations local but that's going less well.

A Louisiana House committee on Wednesday (April 18) voted to approve a ban that would forbid local governments from requiring developers to include affordable housing in new developments. The bill was staunchly opposed by New Orleans City Council members, affordable housing advocates and Mayor Mitch Landrieu.

The committee's lopsided vote -- it passed by a margin of 11-4 -- could eventually be seen as a major defeat for Landrieu, the City Council and Mayor-elect LaToya Cantrell. Opponents of the bill had hoped to kill the bill before it reached the full House of Representatives, where it is expected to pass easily.

There had been some speculation that the committee where this was assigned would have been more friendly to the city.  Turns out, this wasn't the case.  Now it's almost certain to pass the full House.  Although, maybe LaToya's point man in the legislature can do something. What's he got to say? 

Abramson, a New Orleans Democrat, who has been designated by Cantrell to help steer legislation on behalf of the city, didn't return a message seeking comment about what he could do to assist Cantrell's cause on the House floor. Asked to outline how Cantrell has directed Abramson to handle the bill in the House, a transition spokesman, Mason Harrison, said, "We are presently working with Rep. Abramson, other members of the Orleans Parish delegation, the mayor's intergovernmental relations team and the city's lobbying team to determine next steps."

Oh okay.  Let's hope the next steps don't involve just going along with whatever the Republicans want again. That's how Neil voted on the budget this week.  But, to be fair, that was only a matter of slashing something like 2 billion dollars worth of health care services nobody will miss.  This other fight over a largely symbolic and ineffective zoning tool, though, maybe he can help with that.  He'll let us know, I guess.

Neil's briefing book

It may be that LaToya has too much to do right now to be too involved in the legislative session. None of the articles citing her "defensive" strategy with regard to the city's agenda in Baton Rouge this year say that explicitly. But the implication is that she's choosing not to focus too much on it. She definitely still wants to boot your car, though.

For the most part, Cantrell has avoided getting deeply involved in Baton Rouge this year. She has, however, worked with state Sen. JP Morrell, D-New Orleans, on modifications to his bid to change the Sewerage & Water Board’s governing board, and separately she asked him to withdraw a bill that would have made it harder for the city to boot residents’ cars.

Cantrell made a lot of noise during the campaign about taking down traffic cameras. I don't think anyone has asked her about that lately. The cameras are definitely still causing problems.  The boot bill isn't exactly the same thing. But it's worth noting that the new mayor is already taking a more favorable stance toward fee generation through petty enforcement.

Also it's worth noting that she isn't taking her cues from JP.  Instead, she has repeatedly singled out Neil Abramson as her legislative lead. She reiterated this in a recent interview with Gambit, in fact. 

Who will be your point people in the state Legislature?

Right now, I'm looking to Rep. Neil Abramson, who has been very helpful in this transition period. He loaned me his legislative aide, who has created a briefing book for me with every piece of legislation that has an impact on Orleans Parish. But it's the entire delegation, both on the House and Senate side. I lean very heavily on Sen. Karen Carter Peterson as well on the Senate side.

Wonder what's in that briefing book.  Does it say anything about sales taxes?

The phone conference was abruptly ended by Cantrell’s staff during follow-up questions by FOX 8 News about whether Cantrell had a position on whether the soon-to-expire 5th penny of the state sales tax should be extended.

"Well, I think if we're going to look at the, I know the caucus is looking at that closely about that penny. You know, we have to remain focused on how we can seal the gap of that piece and burdens on people, so I think right now it is still an open issue that we'll work through, and of course that's one of the things on my plate to discuss in detail in governor,” said Cantrell before the additional questions on the issue.

After the call ended, reporters were told the Mayor-Elect had to be taken down for rebooting.  If you want to know more about about how closely they are going to look at that penny once they remain focused, you are just going to have to wait until the gap of that piece is sealed.

Anyway, I thought Neil's big thing was to push all the budgetary stuff off onto a constitutional convention. Maybe that's where the glitch happened.

Update:  Yeah so they re-booted LaToya.  This answer about the, well, the booting issue makes a little more sense.

New Orleans Mayor-elect LaToya Cantrell said Friday (April 6) she won't oppose City Councilman Jared Brossett's efforts to protect drivers from having their vehicles booted if they have fewer than three unpaid parking tickets.

Her comments came during a briefing with reporters about legislative priorities. During the conference call, Cantrell initially said she opposes a bill state Sen. J.P. Morrell introduced in Baton Rouge that would ban local government from booting vehicles that have fewer than three unpaid parking tickets. His bill is a reaction to Mayor Mitch Landrieu's policy of booting cars after a single parking ticket goes unpaid.

Cantrell said she opposes Morrell's bill because local governments should be able to set their own policy for unpaid fines. She didn't address the fact that Morrell's bill is, in effect, a local bill because he amended it at the urging of other legislators to only apply to New Orleans.

The issue of state preemption was a topic of discussion at this "5 4 Mayors" forum at Loyola this week.  I was there and it was pretty interesting. Might have more to say about it later.

Kicking the Can-stitution

Last week in Baton Rouge, Jay Dardenne made a joke. 

This week, addressing state legislators’ recent failure to renew or replace an expiring “temporary” sales tax, Commissioner of Administration Jay Dardenne said, “I hope the Legislature doesn’t morph into the Professional Can-Kickers Association.”

Remind me about this when we come to the government shut-down crawfish boil on the capitol grounds.  We need to organize a game of kick-the-can on the lawn.  We're definitely still headed that way. Radicals in the House have already determined to tank the next special session much the same way they did the previous one.  Their strategy for the regular session is to pass a comically unrealistic budget, if they pass any budget at all. Here they are arguing with Dardenne over current revenue projections.

“How comfortable are you with the $302-million we’re expected to gain as a result of the federal tax cuts?” asked Rep. Blake Miguez (R-Erath). “When are you going to start using the lower number instead of insisting it’s a $994-million shortfall?”

“The official number from the Revenue Estimating Conference is $994-million,” Dardenne replied. “The amount from the federal tax changes are speculation, until the REC says differently.”

“But that’s going to help this budget tremendously,” Miguez insisted. “Where would you allocate those moneys?”

“That’s your decision,” Dardenne fired back. “I’m not here today to talk about ‘hypothetically.’ That will be your decision.”

Oddly enough, the Republicans on the House of Representatives Appropriations Committee don't think budget allocation falls under the mandate of their office.  As they have explained in their Facebook videos, they've already done their job making sure there isn't enough revenue.  Now they want to force the Governor to make the politically unpopular cuts ahead of next year's elections.

Prior to the start of the special session, the Governor issued a warning in the form of a budget proposal meant to demonstrate the consequences of inaction. The so-called Doomsday budget outlined, according to the Governor, "what falling off the cliff looks like."  This would mean $26 million cut from higher education, an 80 percent cut  to the TOPS scholarship program, as well as further cuts to local Sheriffs' departments and DA's offices.  Most severely it included a $656 million cut in state funding for health care services, which, when we factor in the federal matching funds that spending draws down, amounts to an effective $2.4 billion reduction.  

We are already seeing how such a disaster might play out.  Here we have the operator of the University Medical Center threatening thousands of layoffs if the Doomsday budget is enacted. In May, 60,000 Medicaid patients will be notified that their benefits are at risk.  The draft budget was meant to spur Republican legislators into action. Instead they are bucking at the canter.

House Appropriations Committee Chairman Cameron Henry, R-Metairie, said the notices will pose a problem, but he also implied that the Edwards administration didn't have to propose the cuts and could have prevented the notices from being sent in the first place.

"This administration, like other administrations, always go after the poor and vulnerable when they are trying to scare legislators into voting for taxes," Henry said.

One reason the radicals are comfortable playing chicken with the healthcare of tens of thousands of Louisianians is they don't actually care if such things are funded.  But, more importantly, they know the political repercussions of the failure are much more likely to redound upon the Governor than on them. Which is why they're just fine pretending the shortfall is hundreds of millions of dollars smaller than it is.  It forces the Governor to make all of the unpopular cuts himself.

Meanwhile, back in the House, legislators have found an even more fashionable scapegoat than the Governor.  They have also taken to blaming the Louisiana Constitution for their own inaction.   

House Bill 500, by Rep. Neil Abramson, D-New Orleans, calls for a limited constitutional convention in 2020 if the idea is approved by a 27-member committee of non-legislators whose purpose is to decide by 2019 whether the convention is needed.

The convention would focus on local government; state funds, taxes and revenue; and K-12 and higher education. The convention in 1973 was more comprehensive and looked at the state's entire body of laws.

Supporters say a new convention could serve as a long-term fix for the state's budget crisis. Excluding federal aid, about $4 billion of Louisiana's annual spending is set aside by the Constitution or state laws for various programs, and about half of the remaining $6 billion is spent on health care and higher education, leaving those areas vulnerable when spending cuts are needed.

Neil brought this up during last year's budget fight. The objections we raised then are the same as they are now. A constitutional convention is a technical solution to a political problem.  Which is to say, it is an illusion.  It asks us to imagine that we can magically sidestep the political questions raised by the allocation of state resources rather than address them head-on.  Louisiana's tax code favors the rich and privileged. It relies on an insufficiently progressive income tax and the highest sales taxes in the country to fund billions of dollars in corporate giveaways and bogus "job creation incentives" that deprive local governments and school boards of essential services.  There is nothing stopping the legislators from addressing these issues apart from their own contempt for actually doing what they so smugly refer to as, "the people's business."

Instead they prefer to abdicate that responsibility in favor of the narrow interests who make their careers possible.  Imagine if those interests were allowed to re-write the rules.. at a constitutional convention, for example. The Bayou Brief's Sue Lincoln describes an exchange last week between Franklin Foil and Barry Ivey that gets to the circular logic in play. They both favor a convention but disagree about how the delegates might be selected.

But Rep. Barry Ivey (R-Central), who has his own bill calling for a constitutional convention, had some concerns about the delegate selection process.

“You said anyone can run to serve as a convention delegate, right? John Q. Public needs resources to run an election campaign. If we elect the delegates, we could end up with a constitutional convention that’s bought and paid for by special interests. Big money could decide who is going to ‘own’ the convention – and then nobody is looking out for John Q. Public and his small business. How can we protect from having special interests dominate the convention?”

“By doing it this way,” Foil replied. “It’s democratic. It gives everyone an opportunity to participate, and everyone will decide who they will elect.”

Ivey was shaking his head while Foil was responding, and Foil reluctantly conceded, “Okay, maybe there will be some influence exerted…”

“Not maybe. Will,” Ivey insisted. “If special interests own 60% of the convention, you’re set up for bias.”

Ivey wants the convention to be made up, mostly, of current legislators. Foil's idea is to have it comprised of.. well, let's face it... more lobbyists than anything.  Is this a distinction without a difference at this point?  Maybe. Foil would have us believe that it is more democratic to elect a slew of unaccountable one-timers whereas Ivey's formula assigns the same representatives currently seated to do a job they are currently proving themselves to be incapable of.  Or maybe this really isn't about the budget after all.  Whatever it is about, it does offer lawmakers an opportunity to put the fiscal issue off until after the next election. Or as, Lincoln put it the other day, it gives them another chance to play their favorite game.

That delegate election would take place in the fall of 2019, during the next statewide election, and the proposed constitutional convention would then occur during the first half of 2020. So while the idea is touted as the ultimate fix for Louisiana’s budget imbalance, it’s actually kicking the Con con can down the road.

Perfect example of "politics" as a meaningless pejorative

John Bel is vetoing some stuff today. (Yay! Punish the Republicans. Burn Them All just like we said he should) The rhetoric he's using to explain what he's doing, though, is nonsensical. Take this transportation bill, for example.

Under current rules, the House and Senate transportation panels can nullify projects authorized by DOTD but cannot add them.

The bill, sponsored by Rep. Neil Abramson, D-New Orleans, would have allowed panel members to do so.

Jones said the change would undo reforms enacted four decades ago by former U. S. Rep. Richard Baker, then a state lawmaker.

Abramson disputed Jones' concerns.

The addition was made Senate by Senate Transportation Committee Chairman Page Cortez, R-Lafayette.

The governor said the bill was amended to change its initial mission, and became too political.

It's fine that the Governor wants to veto this. It punishes House Republicans by denying them access to one specific lever of patronage. But that decision is still "political." Everything they do in Baton Rouge is. 

What happens when the self-destruct button doesn't work

Neil Abramson's Constitutional Convention isn't going to happen. Can't blow it all up and start over. Still have to fix a budget shortfall and "fiscal cliff" problem.  They've got about a week. 

Neil doing Neil things

This is a small matter but it should probably be noted. I'll try to quickly explain the very dry nuts and bolts of it so you'll understand just how small a matter it is. Yesterday the Democrats in the state House voted to hold up House Bill 3 which authorizes bond sales to pay for items in House Bill 2 which is the capital projects budget.  The reason they did this, and they freely admit this is the reason, is they needed something they could use as leverage to talk about how bad the Republicans' version of House Bill 1 (the operating budget) actually is.

With two weeks to go in the session, the legislature has done nothing to solve its ongoing fiscal crisis.  They have shelved all of the governor's proposed revenue measures, put forth a draconian Republican budget that futher slashes health and social services in favor of TOPS and a 2.5 percent "cushion" just in case currently insufficient revenues turn out to be even less sufficient, and set themselves firmly on course to come back into special session later in the year probably so they can fail all over again.

There are a few things the Senate can do to help but the source of the trouble is in the House so that's a good place for the Democrats to throw a tantrum.  And that's what the hold up over HB 3 is. It's a tantrum, probably a symbolic one at that.  Everybody knows HB 3 has to pass eventually.  The maneuver here is just meant to get some attention.  And this is why all of the Democrats in the House voted together on this. They needed to send a signal that they mean business and.... wait.. what? Oh... sure.

HB3 needed a super-majority of at least 70 votes in the 105-member House. It received 56 votes, with only one Democrat voting yes.

One guy just couldn't get on board.  I mean, like we said, it's a small thing since there were enough votes to stop the bill and all but isn't it interesting that one Democrat had to sit out the exercise.  Let's go see who that was. I'll bet you can spot it.

Voting for HB3 (56): Speaker Barras, and Reps. Abraham, Abramson, Amedee, Bacala, Bagley, Berthelot, Bishop, Broadwater, S. Carter, Chaney, Coussan, Crews, Cromer, Davis, DeVillier, Dwight, Edmonds, Emerson, Falconer, Guinn, L. Harris, Havard, Hazel, Henry, Hilferty, Hodges, Hoffmann, Hollis, Horton, Howard, Huval, N. Landry, Leopold, Mack, Magee, McFarland, Miguez, G. Miller, Jay Morris, Jim Morris, Pearson, Pope, Pugh, Pylant, Richard, Schexnayder, Seabaugh, Shadoin, Simon, Stagni, Stefanski, Stokes, Talbot, Thomas and Zeringue.

Again, not a huge thing, but it's a very Neil thing.

In any case, the fight over the House budget isn't over. This afternoon the governor stepped in and threatened a veto if the final version looks like what the House has passed. It's good to see somebody is playing hardball. Since we'll all be back here in a few months anyway, there's no reason not to.

ConstitutionCon

If a complicated multi-step process makes its way through several meanderings, we might have a constitutional convention two years from now.

Under HB 456, the Legislature would create a 27-member committee of affiliates from different state associations to meet in September and determine whether a constitutional convention is even needed. If so, the committee would provide a written plan. The proposed convention would then need two-thirds approval of the 2018 Legislature.

If those thresholds are met, the convention would meet in January 2019. It would comprise the committee members and a delegate from each of the 105 House districts. Anyone could run to be one of the delegates as long as they represent their House district. 

In the meantime there's a fair to middling chance the initial bill at least passes the House. At the very least it gives everybody a ready made excuse for not solving the budget problem this year or next. 

Update: Quickly just to add.. this session began with such high hopes. And now look.

BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) — After months of study by a blue-ribbon panel commissioned to recommend tax overhaul ideas, Louisiana’s lawmakers are on track to reject most of the big-ticket concepts, sending the suggestions to the same dustbin as past studies.

Few task force tax suggestions have advanced beyond their first hearings. Several of the main proposals have been killed outright, while others haven’t even gotten a hearing as bill sponsors realized they’re unlikely to gain traction.

The stopping point for many proposals has been the conservative, majority-Republican House Ways and Means Committee, where most tax bills must start.

That's Neil Abramson's Committee. Neil said at the outset he'd prefer just to do the constitutional convention. So here we are. 

QOTD

State Rep Sam Jones during today's legislative debate on Confederate monuments:

“I don’t know why in a session where we can’t balance a budget,” said Democratic Rep. Sam Jones, a former Franklin mayor, “we are here today to refight the Civil War."

Because two lost causes are better than one, obviously. 

Also... Where was Neil? 

Not Voting (9): Reps Abramson, Broadwater, R. Carter, Connick, Johnson, LeBas, Norton, Reynolds and Stokes.

The Constitutional Convention Gambit

Neil Abramson is the Chariman of the Louisiana House Ways and Means Committee. His charge there is to guide potential solutions to the state's ongoing budget impasse through the legislative process. For example, this week, Ways and Means is conducting hearings on the Commercial Activity Tax proposal.  The CAT is central to the governor's fiscal program this session.  But because its most recent form is unlikely to raise anything like the amount of revenue the governor has targeted, there will be plenty of work for the committee if it wants to tweak the thing into shape.

It's uncomfortable for Abramson, though, because this puts him squarely in the middle of a fight between the Republicans who gave him the chairmanship and a governor who is in the same party as he is. (It's a long story.)  Tax reform is a major priority for John Bel Edwards this year.  But with Republicans already eyeing the next election cycle, they're less inclined to be of any help to him with every passing session.

So it's a difficult job; the kind of job a smart politician always finds a way to avoid doing. Or at least, the smart ones find a way to avoid blame if a thing gets done wrong.   Neil, as it turns out, is a pretty smart politician. His preferred solution is to have the legislature punt the whole thing to a (theoretical) constitutional convention instead.

When asked which plan or approach he favors, Ways and Means Chairman Neil Abramson, D-New Orleans, has been telling colleagues that he prefers his own plan, which includes just one bill—his House Bill 456 to call a limited constitutional convention.

We've just spent several months conducting hearings on credits and exemptions, waiting on recommendations from a fiscal reform task force, and figuring out just what a Commercial Activity Tax is and how it might work. (Or how it might not work, as the case may be.) Thanks, but no thanks, says Neil. Better to just blow the whole thing up and start over.  For someone who cultivates a moderate-conservative reputation, that's kind of a radical step.

To be fair, Abramson isn't alone here.  Clancy DuBos is also highly enthusiastic. In a recent op-ed Clancy suggests a convention may be the only solution to legislative "gridlock."

Given the gridlock between the Republican-controlled House and Gov. John Bel Edwards, the prospects for long-range, comprehensive fiscal reform are dim. Heck, it would take a minor miracle to get a small gasoline tax hike out of the House, even though a clear majority of Louisiana voters support that idea as a means of putting more money into the state’s crumbling infrastructure.

That’s one reason why state Rep. Neil Abramson’s bill to convene a limited-purpose constitutional convention deserves serious consideration. If lawmakers can’t even agree on the simple things, maybe a constitutional convention can address the big picture. Abramson doesn’t quite frame his argument that way, but that’s the reality.

But this doesn't make a heck of a lot of sense.  Clancy doesn't explain, for instance, what sort of gridlock busting magic the convention delegates might posses that the legislators lack. Abramson's bill would elect the delegates from the existing House districts.  Unless they are specifically barred from serving there, it's possible the House Reps themselves could end up being most of the delegates. And, of course, the same lobbying interests will exert as much influence at a convention as they would at any legislative session.  So whatever the venue, we're essentially left with the same set of people (or close to it) having the same arguments over the same issues. The only difference, really, is the convention delegates, serving only one term in office as it were, wouldn't be accountable to the voters in any meaningful way.  Even if that somehow does help lessen the "gridlock," is it really what we want?

For his part, Abramson isn't actually making this claim. He was nice enough to talk to us a bit about it on Twitter the other day. There, he emphasized the process by which a convention could rewrite fiscal parameters all at once rather than through the multi-step process of passing laws and amendments.

@skooks Legislators can only fix one Constitutional  issue at a time and the voters have to approve each one separately.  (1/2)

— Neil Abramson (@NeilAbramson) April 21, 2017

@skooks Convention can create one comprehensive fix which is more likely to be
successful (2/3)

— Neil Abramson (@NeilAbramson) April 21, 2017

@skooks than putting many, many separate amendments on the ballot which would require unanimous approval of all by the voters to be successful (3/3)

— Neil Abramson (@NeilAbramson) April 21, 2017

While Neil's argument has the advantage of being more grounded in reality, it still isn't much more convincing that Clancy's.  Each asks us to assume that we can bypass the political arguments around fiscal policy.  Unfortunately there are fights that need to be fought one way or another.  Changing the rules of the game can only do so much as long as the players and their motivations are the same.   Better to just haggle it all out in the most democratically accountable way that is practical. And I'm not convinced a constitutional convention is best in that regard.

Spoiler alert

This is just a typo. And if I had to bet, the mistake is a Business Report editor's and not Alford's. (Update: It was Alford's typo and he's corrected it. We're still going with this joke, though) Unless it's, like, a Freudian typo, or maybe Alford knows something we don't know about Neil.

But the bigger concern for the administration is not members of the House Democratic Caucus. The real worries reside on the tax-writing House Ways and Means Committee, which could inflict more damage on Edwards this year than any other legislative group or faction.

When asked which plan or approach he favors, Ways and Means Chairman Neil Abramson, R-New Orleans, has been telling colleagues that he prefers his own plan, which includes just one bill—his House Bill 456 to call a limited constitutional convention. Coupled with the new conservative votes added to the committee recently, via the appointments of Reps. Alan Seabaugh, R-Shreveport, and Clay Schexnayder, R-Gonzales, the Ways and Means Committee looks like a one-stop shop of horrors for the Fourth Floor.

As far as we know Neil hasn't switched parties just yet, although nearly everyone expects it's something he's considering if he wants to run for State Senate in the next election. In the meantime, he's taking his current job as seriously as we might expect. As Chair of Ways and Means, Abramson is responsible for managing the session's most vital task.  His committee's actions will determine the shape and scope of reforms to the tax code the governor has asked for. But, as Alford discusses in this column, the governor's agenda is rapidly losing momentum. Neil's solution is to take no position on any of it and punt everything to a "limited constitutional convention," whatever that is.

It's possible the situation could change now that the details of Edwards's  CAT tax proposal are out of the bag (sorry). This could become an opportunity to start making a more compelling argument. John Bel says, and the Louisiana Budget Project has backed him up on this, that the overall effect of his plans should amount to a tax cut for 95 percent of Louisiana families. This is premised, however, on the assumption that multiple moving parts come together more or less according to what he has asked for. For example, the LBP report singles out a proposal to lower income tax rates while eliminating the federal deduction without which, the entire scheme falls apart. And look how hard that is to accomplish.

This part of the proposal is critical for making Louisiana’s overall tax structure more equitable. Without eliminating the deduction for federal income taxes paid - which if passed by the Legislature would also require a vote of the people - the overall tax package would not improve Louisiana’s regressive tax system.

So it's not surprising that both friends and enemies are skeptical. But it's not even the ostensible Democrats like Abramson who are at the root of the problem. They're really just following the lead of the House Republicans. And, as Stephanie Grace writes this morning, those Republicans seem pretty well set on leading everybody over a "cliff."

The thinking behind the Legislature's decision a year ago to bail out the current budget with a stopgap emergency plan was that it would be forced to come up with a more stable framework this year. That was the idea behind the temporary increase in state sales tax, which took effect immediately but will drop off the books next year, creating what's become known as a $1.3 billion "fiscal cliff."

Right about now is when they were supposed to be staring it down.

This is the last fiscal session before the tax expires, which means it's the last time lawmakers will be able to raise taxes in a regularly-scheduled session as opposed to a special session. And the next fiscal session two years from now will hit just as everyone's running for re-election, which makes raising taxes on some — even if the proposal includes reducing them on others — especially daunting.

Rather than coming together and tackling the challenge once and for all, though, the opposite could happen.

Politically, the Republicans have no incentive to do anything but keep saying no. If the legislature fails to act and the "fiscal cliff" causes more budget cuts, they and the voters will just blame the governor. Poor John Bel's only real tool he has left is to keep threatening to make everyone stay after school. But, after a while, even that loses its stroke. The cumulative effect of one failed special session after another every year is the appearance of ineffectual leadership.

Still, it does look at this point like that's next on the governor's itinerary.  What choice does he have? Who knows what the future may hold for Neil, though... regardless of whatever spoilers and hints Alford may be laying for us.

Rainy Day Fun(d)

Cameron Henry isn't having any fun.  

House Appropriations Chair Cameron Henry said that he was eager to get the budget bill out of the House and on to the Senate. A final plan will be hashed out between the two chambers once they have their own versions in place. The legislation had to start in Henry's committee though, under the legislative rules.

"There's a bigger picture here and I can appreciate no one wants to make cuts," Henry said. "It is a miserable experience. It's not fun."

It's hard to blame him.  The governor did call everybody up to Baton Rouge during Mardi Gras to work on  all this stupid budget stuff. On the other hand, he did try to make it as easy as possible.  Seems kind of spiteful of them not to take advantage of that.

Disagreements are almost exclusively between the governor and the House Republicans. Edwards wants to use $119.6 million worth of reserve funding, called rainy day money, and avoid cuts to elementary and secondary education, prisons and others areas. The rest of his plan reduces spending by about $60 million and moves money around in the budget.

House GOP leaders are less inclined to use rainy day money. They say that's a short-term fix that doesn't address Louisiana's continuing financial turmoil. They want larger and more permanent spending cuts, for long-term change. 

Problem there is "long term change" in their minds just means deeper and more permanent cuts to vital services. Hospitals, higher ed, K-12 funding are all (again) on the chopping block.

The House GOP plan that was approved Friday would make use of $75 million of rainy day money. It includes $55 million more in cuts than the governor's plan, for a total of $115 million worth of cuts overall.

"What we must do is attempt to stop spending more money than we have," Henry said. 

Funny thing about that, though. Henry's plan isn't to stop spending the money we don't have. It's more about pretending we have more money than we do... in order to cut that too.  

Proponents of the plan to use the money from vacant positions discussed on the floor some 1,750 state government jobs that they say are funded but not filled.

Democrats questioned whether the money actually exists in those agencies budgets after an earlier round of cuts.

"That money's not real," said Rep. Sam Jones, D-Franklin. "There's not $8 million lying over here or lying over there. That's fake money."

The House being the House, though, went ahead and passed the "fake money" budget. Every Republican (plus Neil Abramson, of course) voted for it.  Today, the Senate will try to fix whatever it can of the mess. We'll see how that goes.

As for us, we're going back out to the parades.  Last night while the legislators were arguing over rainy day funds, were standing out in the actual rain watching Oshun and Cleopatra. 



St. Mary's here is the only picture I managed to get during Oshun. It was raining a lot. Kind of a shame as it looked like this could have been one of the better Oshun parades. Not that that's saying a whole lot. In Oshun's case, it just means it looked like there were more large floats.  They do lose points for these corporate branded throws.



Oshun looked like it could have been a pretty good Oshun. Cleopatra looked like it could have been huge. In years previous, you weren't likely to see the Elvi on the first night, for example.



Also Disco Amigos. Sorry about the blurry photos. It was raining a lot.



Not so long ago, these specialized variety acts didn't show up until much later in the week.  Lately they've become more of a standard element. They fit Cleopatra's Vegas-type theme, though.



As for the cold and rain, maybe that fit the occasion as well.

Sen. @ReginaBarrow says lawmakers should use full rainy day fund: "We're not in a rain. We're in a hurricane." #lalege

— Melinda Deslatte (@MelindaDeslatte) February 18, 2017

Who is getting whacked?

Tyler Bridges writes that it may be time for the governor to mete out some punishment.

Several legislators said privately that Edwards needs to make an example of at least one prominent opponent.

One veteran legislator remembered how Gov. Kathleen Blanco and Speaker Joe Salter punished state Rep. Troy Hebert in 2004 by sacking him as a committee chairman after he voted against a key tax measure sought by Blanco.

“It’s like what you have to do sometimes with a mule that won’t go into the barn,” the legislator said. “You have to whack him in the head to get his attention.”

Candidates for wracking in Bridges' article include both House Speaker Taylor Barras and, of course, our friend Neil.

The governor also could whack an $11 million request in state construction money from another high-profile nemesis, state Rep. Neil Abramson, D-New Orleans, who chairs the House tax committee that killed several of the governor’s revenue-raising measures. The $11 million would go for an Audubon Zoo exhibit to be held in 2020.

Although in both cases, this may be precisely what each of them wants. Particularly so for Abramson who has made it a point this year to demonstrate his independence from the governor and will certainly argue that his constituents are being unfairly punished.

But then none of this may happen. During his late night press conference the governor snapped at reporters (including Bridges) as they asked questions about the political fallout from the session. "How is that helpful?" Edwards snarled at one such question.

So it remains to be seen whether Edwards has the temperament for exacting punishment when legislators behave badly. session ended Stephanie Grace compared the governor's face to that of an ineffectual "disappointed dad."  If he plans to continue giving the reactionary children in the house free rein, we'll probably see more of that in the future,

So much session

We may not be well governed but we certainly are much governed this year. Clancy DuBos suggests there may be even more extra special governance to come.

Louisiana lawmakers have until midnight Thursday, June 23, to conclude the second special session of 2016. They have been meeting more or less continuously since Feb. 14, and by now they’re pretty much tired of looking at each other.

But their work is far from done, according to Gov. John Bel Edwards, who summoned them into both special sessions and is said to be considering yet another — yes, a third — if this one doesn’t meet his expectations.

Probably won't happen that way. But fun to think about!

Anyway I'm not sure about Clancy's casting of JBE as Henry V there. Yeah he's a military guy and all but it's not quite right. 

Of course the temptation is to turn every political drama into Julius Caesar. I don't know if Edwards is enough of a populist or as true to the poor to qualify as Caesar but we could probably stretch it to fit if we try. I guess that would make Jay Dardenne Mark Antony.. or maybe that's JP Morrell.  I don't know. Like I said, it's a flimsy premise. I'm just trying to get us to the party where Neil Abramson and Cameron Henry are Brutus and Cassius because that's what makes this whole thing go.

Let's try this again

Looks like Neil Abramson's House Ways and Means committee will get a second crack at that income tax exemption bill they rejected last week.

A key piece of Gov. John Bel Edwards' tax package will get a second look Wednesday (June 15) after the governor and House leadership talked through a possible compromise.

The House Ways and Means Committee will consider a bill to reduce a state income tax break based on excess itemized deductions used for federal income taxes. The committee killed a similar piece of legislation last week, but amendments are expected to make this proposal more palatable to tax-averse lawmakers.

House Bill 38 would affect about a quarter of Louisiana taxpayers. The governor's staff said most of the people who would see their taxes go up make more than $100,000 per year.

According to a press release put out by Abramson, the bill failed last time because it had been "tied" to the passage of some flat tax legislation proposed by Rep. Julie Stokes which Neil (quite rightly) said he did not care for.  But Stokes's bills passed anyway so that's kind of moot point now.  Anyway something tells me they'll get it passed this time. Why else would they bring it back up if they didn't have a good read on it, right?

Speaking of Abramson, Lamar has really laid into him today in a post questioning Neil's relationships with insurers, oil and gas, chemical companies and other corporate backers. Lamar also hits Neil for his strategic absences including one just yesterday during testimony from parents of children with special needs.  To be fair, though, Neil's committee wasn't taking up any actual business yesterday so he didn't technically have to be there. In today's legislature, you can pretty much follow along from home via the tweets and videos anyway.

Antics

Governor Abramson issued another veto last week.

The Democratic chairman of the House tax committee sided with his Republican colleagues to kill one of the main money-raising tax bills sought by Gov. John Bel Edwards.

Ways and Means Chairman Neil Abramson cast the tie-breaking vote Wednesday to stall the Democratic governor's proposal to lessen an income tax break given to upper-income earners. The committee voted 10-9 against the bill.

The proposal by Republican Rep. Rob Shadoin would have raised $117 million to fill gaps in next year's budget by cutting tax breaks allowed for taxpayers who itemize on their individual income tax returns.

This was supposed to be the special session where we actually got down to doing some real work. During Special Session Part 1, the previous year's emergency budget shortfall forced lawmakers to resort to unpleasant regressive sales tax hikes (remember the whole "clean pennies" business) in order to catch up. The situation going in to Special Session Part Deux was still dire, but at least this time there was an opportunity to apply fairer remedies. 

Or so we thought there would be. But so far nearly all of the Governor's proposals to raise revenue through progressive tax reforms such as eliminating a capital gains deduction have been rejected by Abramson's committee. Meanwhile the House managed to slip in yet another corporate tax break aimed at benefiting oil and gas companies. So, really, we're going in the wrong direction altogether.

With last week's failure of HB11 following so closely on the even stranger failure of the construction budget at the close of the regular session, Abramson has been the center of attention lately. If you've picked up your Gambit on the way to work this morning, you will have already found this commentary. It goes after Neil pretty hard.

Further evidence of their irresponsibility came last week. House Speaker Taylor Barras, a Republican from New Iberia, and Ways and Means Committee Chairman Neil Abramson, a Democrat from New Orleans who is in league with the GOP’s “Gang of No,” strained credulity in preventing a vote on the so-called Capital Outlay budget before the annual session adjourned. Both said the measure as approved by the Senate had unspecified “technical” defects, yet they did nothing with the bill for the final five days of the session. Abramson literally hid from his colleagues to avoid bringing up the bill for a vote. Then, one day after the regular session ended (on the first morning of the special session), Abramson’s committee approved the measure in an hour — with millions more for projects in Abramson’s district. He blamed committee staffers for that “technical” error.

Those "projects in Abramson's district" by the way, are special favors for Audubon and other usual suspects from the NOLA non-profit cartel.

The largest of the two New Orleans projects -- financing for exhibit upgrades at the Audubon Zoo -- is in Abramson's district. That project got a $23.2 million boost, nearly double the original cost of the project. The Louisiana Children's Museum got a 10 percent increase for the planning, design and construction of an early learning village.

Also in the bill was an increase to a Junior League of New Orleans project. That project got an 83 percent funding increase for renovations to its headquarters, annex and thrift store.

Anyway, if you read that Gambit commentary online you'll see that Neil has already responded by pasting a press release of his into the comments section. Therein, Abramson claims he voted against HB11 because amendments had "tied" it to other problematic tax increases. 

An amendment tied the passage of HB 11 to a set of other tax reform measures that were not part of the Governor's tax reform package and were not adequately discussed or analyzed. The fiscal note on the tax measure that HB 11 would have been tied to would have led to a tax increase of more than $100 million. That burden could have fallen on lower-middle and middle income families. There simply was not enough information today to allow this bill to move forward." 

We think he's talking about Julie Stokes's "flat tax" bills. If so, he's at least correct in nominally opposing them.  But the Governor had already ceded the point.

To revive the bill on Wednesday, Edwards agreed with Stokes’ plan to amend HB11 by tying its fate to three measures sponsored by her that would give voters the chance to eliminate a popular tax break in exchange for a single flat rate. (This was the version Abramson referred to afterward. The committee separately approved all three measures; they do not raise more money.)

Plus, as it says, Stokes's bills passed anyway so.. again.. what was the point?  Abramson's colleagues, particularly those in the Senate, are getting more and more frustrated with what JP Morrell called "antics."

"We will try to work with him because he's the chairman of the committee," Morrell said. "But my committee right now is really struggling because we are really frustrated with these antics. There's more games being played."

And then there was this Advocate profile published over the weekend where we learn Abramson's "antics," at least as far as strategic absences are concerned, are actually a standard move of his. 

Abramson has a history of being absent but especially on controversial matters where, had he voted in line with his Uptown New Orleans district, which strongly backed President Barack Obama in 2012 and Edwards in 2015, he risked damaging his standing with Republicans. (Obama won 62 percent of his district in 2012, and Edwards carried it with 74 percent in 2015).

Consider this extraordinary fact: Abramson has voted on two of the 23 abortion bills tracked by the state’s dominant anti-abortion group, the Louisiana Right to Life Federation, over the past five years.

The profile also tells us about Abramson's football career. Neil was the quarterback of his high school team and even went on to play free safety in college. Nowadays, it seems, he just punts. Which is exactly what he does again here when asked about his future plans.

The latest developments in Baton Rouge have reignited a buzz among insiders that Abramson is positioning himself to switch parties and run for a conservative-leaning state Senate seat in 2019 as a Republican.

If so, he won’t admit to it, though he also passed up an opportunity to deny it.

One quick note about that. Neil doesn't actually have to switch parties to run for Senate. Sure, it makes more sense for most candidates to run in that district as a Republican. But suddenly switching parties just in order to do so might seem a little too transparent.  It's probably enough for Abramson just to keep positioning himself as an anti-tax, ambivalent on abortion thorn in the side of the Governor. In other words, it's probably best for Neil to just keep up the same antics that got him where he is.

Which brings us to this afternoon.

.@NeilAbramson is not present to discuss HB2, though @JPMorrell says they talked. #lalege #lagov

— Julia O'Donoghue (@JSODonoghue) June 13, 2016

Yep, and that's how they're going to beat you

John Bel Edwards is upset that Republican legislators won't help him fix Bobby Jindal's budget crisis.

Edwards called Seabaugh’s comments a “bitter, partisan attack.”

“When he had the chance to do his part, he sat on the sidelines. He would neither identify cuts to make to stabilize the budget, nor would he support raising additional revenue. He said ‘no’ to every single possible solution without offering any of his own,” Edwards wrote in the Tuesday editorial.

“Rep. Seabaugh needs to look no further than his own voting record when he decides to place blame for the continuation of these problems and the lack of funding for critical programs in this area, like TOPS and the medical school, and I will not let him distract from the work that so many other bold leaders, in both parties, from this region are willing to do,” Edwards continued.

Yeah well good luck with that. The budget crisis may be a Jindal era leftover but that hasn't discouraged Republicans (and others) from making sure it becomes Edwards's problem rather than theirs. They've had almost no political incentive to cooperate with him in good faith.  Instead we've seen a series of insincere political postures from Governor Kennedy, Governor Landry, and yesterday, Governor Abramson.

Governor Kennedy is running for Senate. Governor Landry is running for... well.. Governor, eventually. And Governor Abramson is probably running for State Senate in a conservative district. All of those guys have a greater political incentive to distinguish themselves as enemies of the Governor than they do to actually resolve the budget problem. In fact, the longer the crunch persists, the easier it is to pin everyone's woes on Governor Edwards.

All Edwards has going into the special session is the faint hope of offering TOPS as a carrot to Republicans in some sort of  bargain to raise revenues.

The budget passed by the Legislature on Sunday night funds only half of the TOPS scholarship program while five safety net hospitals are short $100 million and the state’s colleges and universities are missing $55 million if they were to receive as much next year as they got this year. The budget also cuts spending for K-12 school spending by $44 million — the first reduction from one year to the next in decades — and does not contain money to open the new $24 million Acadiana Center for Youth, a 72-bed facility in Bunkie.

Edwards is asking lawmakers to raise more money by eliminating tax breaks for individuals and corporations and by raising a tax on insurance companies. In all, he wants to fill what he says is a $600 million gap.

Already, though, it's clear that won't be enough. 

“I would like to fund TOPS at 100 percent,” said state Rep. Cameron Henry, R-Metairie, who chairs the budget-writing committee. “But TOPS is only short this year. Do you permanently raise income taxes to fund TOPS this year?”

The answer for Henry is definitely no.

And the reason for that should be obvious as well. The Republicans don't actually have to fund TOPS in order to win the issue politically. All they have to do is complain that the Governor failed to do it for them. Yesterday's HB2 fiasco as well as the ridiculous way the earlier special session ended demonstrate quite clearly that the conservatives are well dug in against this Governor. And that's how they're going to beat him.