Legislative election is a good omen for teachers’ raise

By Christopher Tidmore
Contributing Writer

It was a rainy day on Monday, but the weather didn’t get the governor down. On the afternoon of his second inauguration, John Bel Edwards succeeded in blocking from the House speakership and Senate presidency from his conservative adversaries – whose allies have affectively unfunded his teacher pay raise for a year.

While the minds of most of the residents of Louisiana (and frankly most of the lawmakers) were on LSU’s national championship bid that night, January 13, the Governor had spent the morning completing a series of telephone calls to most of the House Democratic caucus – and a few key Republicans. He ultimately achieved the same victory for the new House Speaker Clay Schexnayder that he had arranged weeks earlier, lining up the votes for the new Senate President Page Cortez.

At the dawn of his first term, the governor was comfortable with the continued Senatorial leadership of John Alario. Despite the “R” behind his name, the former Democratic House Speaker turned Republican Senate president was someone with whom Edwards thought he could have a cooperative relationship, as the next four years would prove. Consistently, the governor’s policies would pass the State Senate only to be blocked in the House – or by the “tribune” of the lower chamber’s leadership on the REC.

Then, governor made a mistake in the House. Ignoring pleas to support “a Republican, ANY Republican” in the GOP-majority chamber for speaker four years ago, Edwards pushed the election of Uptown New Orleans Rep. Walt Leger III, a highly respected moderate Democrat. The intervention was enough to block his nemesis, conservative favorite then-Rep. Cameron Henry, from the speakership, but Henry outflanked the governor when the conservative leader threw his support behind fellow Republican Taylor Barras – and opted to be the power behind the speaker’s throne.

Henry’s pleas for Republican Party unity succeeded; Barras was elected over Leger, and Henry consequently spent the next four years blocking nearly every major initiative of the governor as Appropriations Committee Chair. Only in the sales tax hike would Henry fail to defeat Edwards’ efforts, and even in that, it is worth noting that the recessive tax increase had not been the governor’s first choice for revenue enhancement. He wanted some sort of income-based levy originally.

Former Representative Henry’s greatest success came when he literally stood in for Speaker Barras on the State Revenue Estimating Conference. Louisiana’s general fund took in just over $500 million more in tax revenues in the last fiscal year than the legislature budgeted to spend, but for political and practical reasons, Henry blocked the REC from deciding if these monies were an on-going surplus or just a one-time windfall.

The ruling, at Henry’s behest, blocked Gov. John Bel Edwards’ number one legislative priority – raising teacher pay to the Southern average. Four votes comprise the REC, the Commissioner of Administration, the Senate president, the Speaker of the House, and a designated LSU economist. Created in the 1980s to guarantee that one-time money would not be spent for on-going responsibilities, thus engineering a deficit in future years, unanimity was required to signify new revenues. Most expected that it would be the LSU economist who would object as the politicians stood together hungry for new revenues. In the end, it was Cameron Henry.

Speaker Taylor Barras sent the House Appropriations Committee Chairman as his representative to the REC meetings, and Rep. Henry objected to allowance of the funds for any purpose other than the rainy day fund, capital projects, or other one-time expenditures. In fairness, besides frustrating the Democratic governor, Henry did make a valid economic point. The surplus came almost exclusively from the .45 percent temporary sales tax which was scheduled to expire in less than five years (mostly due to Cameron Henry’s opposition to the tax in the House, admittedly.)

At the same time, a report from Moody’s Analytics noted that Louisiana was the state with the greatest shortfall in reserves necessary to survive a moderate recession. The Pelican State had tapped into its budget reserves several years ago to cover financial problems in the wake of the post-Jindal Administration deficits and has gradually replenished the “Rainy Day Fund.” It plans to transfer nearly $134 million to the rainy day fund next year from an estimated $535 million surplus. That would bring the balance above where it was when Gov. John Bel Edwards took office four years ago. But that’s still not far enough if the economy collapses, Henry warned citing the report. A permanent boost in pay for teachers was a laudable goal, he said, yet without a permanent way to pay for it (hopefully not a regressive sales tax which will disappear just after the current governor leaves office), the Appropriations Committee Chair refused to authorize the monies.

Term limited, Henry won election to the State Senate last fall, and he managed to get his brother, Charles Henry, elected to succeed him in his former Old Metairie/Old Jefferson House seat. They are the first brothers to serve simultaneously in the legislature in 100 years (and both served as aides to Steve Scalise demonstrating an even greater influence). Nevertheless, Cameron Henry, who had announced his candidacy for the Senate presidency even before winning election to the Senate, ultimately conceded the race to one of the governor’s allies. Moderate Republican Page Cortez, a former high school football coach and furniture store owner from Lafayette, won the Senate presidency almost by acclamation to the governor’s pleasure. Little chance exists that a fiscal conservative like Cameron Henry will stand in for Cortez on the REC.

Which did not bother the elder Henry all that much, as the real conservative contest came down to control of the House speakership. Charles Henry along with some of the “big guns” of the GOP, including U.S. Sen. John Kennedy and Attorney General Jeff Landry, strongly backed Rep. Sherman Mack of Albany. Mack was the conservative favorite, sure to continue Barras and Henry’s REC and other fiscal opinions. However, the governor quietly worked the phones convincing the majority of the Democratic caucus in the State House to back another Republican, Rep. Clay Schexnayder of Gonzales. Despite holding 68 GOP seats out of 105, the Republican mandarinate saw Mack lose in a 60-45 vote to Schexnayder.

Fiscal conservatives out of the way, the odds remain in Edwards’ favor that the next meeting of the State Revenue Estimating Conference will “find” a surplus large enough to find a $300-$400 million dollar teacher pay raise, an issue popular enough that majorities in both Houses support it – despite GOP control. John Bel Edwards did not just win reelection; this time, he won the legislature too.

This article originally published in the January 20, 2019 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.