The derailing of the bill that funds state, local construction

Louisiana’s state and local construction funding budget, one of the most complex and cumbersome bills before the 2016 Legislature, suffered a convoluted death the House Monday over controversial concerns about technical flaws and now must be taken up anew in the special session that begins immediately.
House Ways and Means Committee chairman Neil Abramson, D-New Orleans, balked at presenting the $1.4 billion House Bill 2 on the floor to affirm Senate amendments, but did so anyway after the House displayed its will to move the bill on a 52-49 symbolic vote.
The general session of the Legislature ended at 6 p.m., less two hours after the capital outlay measure collapsed. The 18-day special session officially convened 30 minutes later.
HB 2 is a laundry list of construction projects in nearly every Louisiana parish, including many already under way. The projects are funded through the state Bonding Commission which has warned the Legislature of over-approving building programs it does not have the money to cover.
The Senate’s amendments added around $450 million in cash lines of credit to Abramson’s construction budget, and Abramson had previously objected to some of those amendments. On the floor, however, he emphasized that no one’s project would be taken away in the bill’s resurrected form that now will be debated from scratch during the special session.
“My issues are the legal and technical issues, not the projects,” Abramson said. “The legal and technical issues could mess up projects and our bonds. I’ve been working with the staff in looking at these problems. If this capital outlay bill comes out incorrectly, it can be disastrous.”
House Speaker Taylor Barras took the podium and addressed an unusually silent membership, requesting colleagues to postpone the budget in order to fix the perceived problems, as well as further the effort to reform the capital outlay system.
“We are not doing this to punish anybody and we are not doing this to take the Senate amendments out,“ said Barras, R-New Iberia. “We are doing this to make sure we’ve done the technical and legal corrections. It is sincere; there is no game to it, but if the body wills it, I will respect its motion to take up the bill.”
Rep. Walt Leger, D-New Orleans, took issue with the speaker’s philosophy, urging House members to pressure Abramson to bring HB2 to the floor through a symbolic vote, called “the will of the House.”
More than half of the legislators present agreed with Leger, and their 52-49 vote flew in the face of the House leadership, underscoring the body’s displeasure with the process with which HB2 was handled.
Rep. Sam Jones, D-Franklin, was critical of Barras for allowing HB2 to descend into legislative chaos, saying, “We do expect leadership to lead.”
Adhering to Barras’ promise, Abramson agreed to bring the bill up for debate, but his attempt to do so hit a convenient procedural brick wall: a two-thirds majority requirement. It failed 54-44.
This procedural drama came after annoyed ruminations and one senator’s comical Twitter search for Abramson, who was missing from the House floor for a good portion of the day.
Abramson expressed dismay last week over capital outlay budgetary practices in what he said was a fiscal problem, approving more projects than they had the capacity to fund.
House opposition to the Barras and Abramson plan, however, did not go quietly into the night. It was aided by an angry Senate leadership.
Sen. J.P. Morrell, D-New Orleans, who carried the bill through his Revenue and Fiscal Affairs Committee, said he received “zero” communication from Abramson after the Senate amended HB2. He railed against Abramson and the House leadership’s decision to not act on the bill, calling the maneuver “unprecedented” for members not to be allowed to vote on a bill.
Leger told House members such a move has not happened in 40 years.
In similar tone, Senate Finance Committee chairman Eric LaFleur, D-Ville Platte, said his “colleagues would kill” him if he stalled on HB2 in the way Abramson did. “I don’t think you run away from consensus. You build it.”
Gov. John Bel Edwards piled on a short time after the session ended, saying, “We don’t deal with disagreements by hiding.” He also said he didn’t believe the addition of HB2 to the special session would cause any problems.
More playfully, Sen. Dan Claitor, R-Baton Rouge, took advantage of the legislature’s version of “Where’s Waldo” and ran around the Capitol documenting his search for the MIA Abramson on Twitter with selfies and light descriptors, such as, “Things to do with a 30-minute ‘staycation.’ Go to the top of the Capitol and look for Abramson.’”