In an unusual Senate Finance Committee hearing on Tuesday of this week, the Louisiana legislature began to find out what was actually in the budget and spending bills they passed 11 days prior, under the guidance of House Speaker Clay Schexnayder and Senate President Page Cortez. When this leadership tries to tell you the time delay and chaos was the fault of the Louisiana Freedom Caucus and other conservatives, you have the facts herein that contradict that assertion, gleaned from the legislature’s own website, including both the timeline on the bills and hearing testimony in the Senate.

The hearing was broadcast online and you can find the full video here if you have a bit over three hours to kill and want to see and hear for yourself how the debacle of June 8 unfolded.

The main witness was State Senate Chief Budget Analyst, Sherry Phillips-Hymel. She did a great job trying to make sense out of a process that was riddled with problems imposed by the leadership attempting to shove their pork-laden spending bills through the legislature before anyone had time to read the bills and to assess what the impact on spending would be. Before we get to her extraordinary testimony, an examination of the timeline of the budget and two of the main spending bills is in order.

The state legislature convened this year on Monday, April 10, 2023. The House budget bill, HB1, the spending plan that all other spending bills are based upon, had been done and pre-filed on March 24. It was referred to the House Appropriations Committee on the first day of the session. Working with rank-and-file members, Chairman Jerome Zeringue amended the pre-written bill and sent it to the House floor on May 5, where it passed by a unanimous vote of Republicans along with our one independent, and was opposed by all Democrats. Off to the Senate it went. It was referred that very day to the Senate Finance Committee where it sat parked with no action until June 3, two days short of a month later, when it was passed with amendments from committee and sent to the Senate floor.

Two days later, on June 5, HB1 passed the Senate and was sent back to the House. But there was a problem: this was three days before the mandatory adjournment of the legislature by law on June 8. You can see this progression on the bill here from the Legislature’s website:

What happened in the interim? Let’s take a look.

The bill used to bust the spending limits imposed by our state constitution was written and pre-filed in the Senate way back on March 30. Cortez had always planned to bust the budget and send it back to the House. To do so, however, he would need two-thirds of the House and Senate to vote for it. Getting to the that number (70 of 105) in the House took time and buyoffs with pork projects, along with intimidation and threats of repercussions made by Cortez and Shexnayder and their followers. That bill to bust the spending limit wasn’t sent to the House by the Senate until the end of May, on the 29^th to be exact, nearly two months after it was pre-filed.

In the House, Schexnayder didn’t bring that bill to the floor until June 7, nine days after it was received, and one day before the mandatory adjournment date of June 8. You can see the progression of this bill, SCR3, here.

The vote to bust the spending cap was joined by all Democrats, the independent, and the majority of Republicans the day before mandatory adjournment. But 19 brave Republicans from the Louisiana Freedom Caucus and others stood firm against the reckless spending.

Now here’s where the chaos comes in.

The capital outlay spending bill, HB2, that is based on the budget limits set in HB1, spells out where and how the money is spent. HB2 had been first passed by the House on May 18, and was sent to the Senate, which added amendments and sent it back to the House on June 5, two days before the vote on busting the spending limits. This bill was also brought up for passage on the House floor June 7 with amendments out the wazoo, as you will hear from the Senate hearing testimony. The progression of this bill can be found here.

When both HB1 and HB2 versions from the House and Senate do not agree, they go to a conference committee appointed by the Speaker of the House and President of the Senate, in other words their cronies, to reconcile the differences. That’s where yet another bout of removing and adding amendments takes place. The bills that come out of conference are called conference reports and they are what the House and Senate must pass as the final bill.

Now to the testimony of Senate Budget Analyst Sherry Phillips-Hymel. We are putting this here in its raw transcript form, no edits for clarity other than the words Senate Revenue and Fiscal Committee in place of her shortening that to Rev and Fisc. You can find the full video here with this testimony being at the very end, starting around hour three.

Phillips-Hymel had just testified that due to the amount and complexity of the amendments offered, staff didn’t get the amendments even sorted through until June 19, 11 days after the vote. The sorting is taking information that looks like this and figuring out which pages and parts of the bill each of the amendments effect, not the outcome of that effect. We pick up the transcript after some back and forth between Phillips-Hymel and Senate Finance Committee Chair Bodi White, where she describes the sheer volume of what leadership had forced upon them in the final days and hours:

PHILLIPS-HYMEL:  The budget office just rolled up their totals last Thursday [June 11, three days after the vote] which was when I got the totals rolled up on all of the documents. And it is a difficult bill when you think of four bills that are within the expenditure limit, the number of amendments that were being added, the number of pages in those bills, the amendments within the amendments within those bills, 120, I think, for the supplemental bill, another 50 in floor amendments, 186 in HB 2, and another 225 in Finance in HB2, and then there’s floor amendments, 50 in HB 2 on floor amendments, mostly dealing with cash, then 187 in HB1, and then I think it was about another 60-70 on the floor.

The sheer volume of amendments, but then I wish Sen. Abraham was still here because how many times did he ask us when am I going to see the amendments engrossed into the bill? When it’s a House bill you’re never going to see the amendments engrossed in the bill, but we are always dealing with the amendments. In the case of HB2, bless their hearts, they have [Revenue and Fiscal Committee] amendments and the Finance Committee that were in all essence stapling to the back of that bill and it’s just old school of having to go through the bills and then looking at that piece of paper and then looking at another piece of paper and trying to reconcile it.

It is a hard, long process to get through and a lot of detail. It would be great if we could, moving forward, find a way even if you did something, and I know no one ever wants to hear this, but doing some kind of rough engrossment of the appropriations bills after they come out of committee.

END TRANSCRIPT.

It is clear from the volume of amendments that the aftermath of the June 7 vote to bust the spending limit opposed by 19 Republicans affected the timeline only in the number of the amendments offered punishing those members, meted out by Cortez, Schexnayder and his mini-me, House Speaker Pro-Tem Tanner Magee.

It took until 11 days after the vote to pass the spending bills just to sort out the amendments. These conference reports were introduced AND voted on in the last 15 minutes of the legislative session. That’s right. From introduction, when members could read them, to the final vote, members had a total of 15 minutes to vote on them. You can see that for yourself in the video, in the waning minutes of the legislative session here.

The delay and mismanagement of the spending bills were the fault of Speaker Schexnayder in the House and President Cortez in the Senate. In their fervor to spend more of your money and to also punish those who wouldn’t vote to spend over a billion and a half more of your money, they put through more amendments to the bills than could possibly be processed by professional staff before the votes. It took 11 more days just to sort them out.

The responsible thing to do would have been to go into special session and give staff and members time to read what they were voting on before bringing up the bills for passage. Leadership could not allow that because in a special session, it takes a three-fourths majority to pass the spending bills and their punishments and pork would not have survived a transparent process.

Cortez and Schexnayder are term-limited, though Schexnayder is running for Secretary of State. Magee is running for re-election. It’s fair to say this level of performance should probably end their political careers.