(Originally posted in Citizens for a New Louisiana) — Continuing our coverage of the Constitutional amendments appearing on the upcoming December 2024 ballot, we present two separate amendments to address Louisiana’s spending cap problem, authored by the same legislator and focused on the same issue: the state budget!

Do you support an amendment to require that the legislature wait for at least forty-eight hours prior to concurring in a conference committee report or amendments to a bill appropriating money?

Do you support an amendment to allow the legislature to extend a regular session in increments of two days up to a maximum of six days if necessary to pass a bill appropriating money?

That is the language you will read on your December ballot. But what does it all mean? Well, for a thorough explanation, we must transport ourselves back to June 2023.

Busting the Cap

If you want to know tomorrow’s news, you only need to rewind the clock about twenty years and watch some old news footage. You will see the same plot playing out over and over with only a slight change in the cast. The same applies to our legislative sessions, particularly how budget bills are adopted. Historically, they are always rushed through the last minute, not allowing for ample time and criticism by the legislative members. But one legislator wants to change that.

Tony Bacala (R 8/10) brought forth legislation in the form of HB48 and HB49 during the 2024 Regular Session. Those bills became Act 406 and Act 407, which will now go before the voters for approval. Bacala’s bills are a direct response to the 2023 spending cap fiasco. This could never happen, but it happened, was our effort to expose those legislators who caved under pressure. They voted to pass spending bills packed with more than $52 billion in spending during the last half-hour of the regular session. That spending exceeded the constitutionally set cap (Article VII § 10(C)(1)) designed to limit the growth and spending of government. We only needed 36 of our 105 house legislators to hold the line against unnecessary and wasteful spending. In the end, there were only 19 people left standing. Bacala was one of them.

We Aren’t Doing That Again.

Act 406 seeks to end or at least minimize the deliberately orchestrated frenzy that plays out each year over the adoption of budget instruments. If this amendment passes, the actors may remain the same, but the script will change.

Bacala’s amendment would add very concise and straightforward language to our constitution:

No conference committee report or amendment from the Senate on a bill appropriating money shall be considered for concurrence until at least forty-eight hours after the bill, a summary detailing the proposed changes to the bill, and any additional information required by the joint rules of the legislature and the rules of the house of the legislature considering concurrence have been distributed to each member of that house of the legislature.

Opponents of the bills think they create an unnecessary roadblock, which is best addressed by the House and Senate rules. More sensible people, like Bacala, know this is a minor hurdle to comply with. When given any discretion, the powers that be will throw all the rules out the window to get what they want. After all, a vote to “suspend the rules” is an incredibly regular occurrence in both chambers of our legislature. If a written constitution is supposed to mean anything, it should send a message—DON’T DARE CROSS THIS LINE!

More Time

In addition to requiring a waiting period in our constitution, which cannot be suspended like the House Rules, Bacala also offers a second constitutional amendment that would allow the session to be extended in small increments, not exceeding six days.

This amendment makes minor technical changes to the existing language in the constitution, but the substantive addition reads:

…only if necessary to finally pass a bill appropriating money, the legislature, by a favorable record vote of two-thirds of the elected members of each house, may extend a regular session in increments of two legislative or calendar days. During the time a regular session has been extended, the legislature shall not consider any matter having the effect of law other than those contained in a bill appropriating money. No regular session shall be extended more than six calendar days beyond the original time and day for the session to adjourn sine die.

That’s it. Lawmakers would be able to extend the session in two-day increments, not to exceed a total extension of six days, and only for the limited purposes of addressing bills that appropriate money. Some would say ‘why would we want to give the legislature more time to consider spending money?’ Fair concern. But what are the alternatives?

We can have legislators frantically and ignorantly voting on fiscal matters without adequate time to vet them. Or we can have a situation where a budget doesn’t get adopted, forcing a costly special session to rectify the matter. Currently, those are the two scenarios that play out.

Clear Cut Solutions

These amendments are clear-cut, common-sense solutions to minimizing and possibly eliminating the carefully orchestrated spending cap craze that allows our lawmakers to adopt fiscally irresponsible measures and come back home with the excuse that they were running out of time. The people paying attention know the game. Now, it is time for us to change the rules.