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SEN. MORRELL D-DISTRICT 5 Sen. J.P. Morrell, D-New Orleans, likened Jindal’s budget to a “house of cards” that’s tipsy — “If just one thing goes wrong, the whole thing will come falling down,” he said. PHOTO BY SHARON TURNER
of public hospitals; the funding obstacles faced by the state’s construction program; money for higher education; the future of the state’s Medicaid program; and the court challenges delaying his landmark education and retirement reforms of 2012, which may have to be voted on again this session. Rep. Herbert B. Dixon, D-Alexandria, noted that the session has many moving pieces, and some were obscured in the mists of Jindal’s tax-swap proposal. That is troubling, he said, because this year’s session may well be remembered for the budget it produces, not the tax plans it studied but did not pass. “This is the time where John Q. Public needs to get very involved. They need to come to the Capitol, use the phone, send an email, mail a letter, find a homing pigeon — whatever it takes,” said Dixon. “Things are about to get really moving here and people are going to be caught by surprise.”
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be underwritten largely by the state’s tobacco settlement fund. Never before have state general fund dollars contributed so little to TOPS’ bottom line. After Jindal delivered his opening remarks to the Legislature last week, the Public Affairs Research Council suggested that, because of the governor’s nearcomplete focus on his tax swap plan, “all other major concerns facing the state, and all other aspects of tax reform that might be usefully pursued, seem to have been totally eclipsed by this one proposed initiative. … The governor made it clear that an income tax repeal is all he wants or expects of the Legislature this session.” In effect, the governor has created two voids: one on tax reform; one on the budget. Among the topics not mentioned by Jindal during his roughly 2,000word speech — short by Jindal standards — were his budget’s $1.3 billion revenue shortfall for the next fiscal year; the privatization
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