Respectful and refreshing. 

Those are the words that came to my mind after discussing the Louisiana budget issues with former conservative Republican House of Representative Brett Geymann of Lake Charles, this morning via Bayoubuzz’s Facebook, Twitter and Youtube Live. 

If you had the dictatorial powers to fix the Louisiana budget, how would you do it?  Raise taxes such as sales taxes? Increase the income taxes? Property taxes? 

On Monday, hours prior to the Louisiana legislative special session, number three, started, i asked John Kay Jr., how would he fix the state's problem with the budget?  Kay is the State Director for the Louisiana Chapter of the Americans for Prosperity organization, a group funded by the conservative Koch Brothers.  It favors smaller government.

Today, Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards delivered this statement to the legislature as the 3rd fiscal session of the year commenced to fix the budget:

As prepared for delivery:

Today, the chairs of Louisiana's four public postsecondary systems - the Louisiana Community and Technical College System, the LSU System, the Southern University System Board of Supervisors, and the UL System, in conjunction with the Louisiana Board of Regents, sent a joint letter to seek funding for higher education and for TOPS.. 

With the Louisiana legislature revving up to start later this afternoon for its 3rd special session to deal with next year's budget which starts July 1 this year, here's the big question--will three be the charm?  Actually, if you want to get technical, you can add the regular session to the mix, which would make four. However, that regular session prohibited raising any revenues since it was not a fiscal session, so, we won't count it to the tally.

Today, CABL (the Council for a Better Louisiana) issued a statement via email that supports the five cent sales tax that was proposed during the second special session this year in dealing with the budget. The letter is below:

The second special session of 2018 has come and gone, although it didn’t go quietly. The theatrics in the last hour of debate rivaled some of Hollywood’s greatest performances. But still, the dramatics were not worth the waste of time and, more importantly, not worth Louisiana taxpayers’ hard-earned money. 

Can you put lipstick on a pig? Well, business leaders are certainly giving it their best shot in an effort to counteract the fact that Louisiana’s outrageously expensive insurance rates make the Bayou State an environment hostile to the attraction of new businesses.  But, last week, compounding the problem, new figures showed automobile rates continue to rise, along with insurance rates for every homeowner.  And unfortunately, both legislators and insurance regulators are assuming a blasé attitude — “that’s just the price you have to pay for living in Louisiana.”

Governor John Bel Edwards and his administration claims that the state needs to raise the sales tax to 4.5 cents this legislative session beginning Monday. If the legislature, particularly the House do not produce enough votes to hit that supermajority needed to raise taxes, Edwards and others are claiming that fiscal hell will break loose. They claim that University kids and parents will have to fork over 30 percent of the TOPS scholarship plus the colleges would be in the hole close to over 100 million dollars. They claim that homes for the aged will close, food stamps disappear, 10,000 non-violent criminals will hit the streets.

It's the Louisiana seventeen cents penny opera.

When one really considers the current debate in the Louisiana legislature starting next week in another special session to complete the budget for next year which fiscal year starts July 1, the differences between the revenues that have been approved so far compared to those that the Governor and others want to pay for government services already appropriated, is miniscule.

As has been reported, the difference between the 33% and the 4.5% of a single penny comes down to a mere seventeen cents sales tax on a one hundred dollars of a purchase.