Recreation tax renewal up April 5
March 26, 2014Proposed Lockport pool complex moves forward
March 26, 2014
Three years into his first term, state Sen. Norbert J. Chabert has maintained a high profile at home and in Baton Rouge, where he’s already been quite busy even though the 2014 legislative session is barely a week old.
Name recognition came easily for Chabert, R-Houma, member of a Cajun political dynasty. The name of his late father, Leonard J. Chabert, was given to the public hospital that he helped establish while serving as a senator. Norbert’s older brother, Marty, held the Senate seat after appointment following their father’s death. The family’s ties to former Gov. Edwin Edwards are more than close – Edwards is Norbert Chabert’s godfather.
But the youngest political Chabert, now 38, has done quite well at blazing his own trails. In 2011, he broke with family tradition and switched his party affiliation from Democratic to Republican. During the last legislative session, he left a permanent imprint on the state’s billion-dollar seafood industry. The Seafood Promotion and Marketing Board was moved – as the result of a Chabert bill – from the auspices of the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries to the office of Lt. Governor Jay Dardenne.
The bill and its passage won both praise and criticism for Chabert, depending on whose shrimp or crabs were being gored.
Dardenne’s job is one that government-watchers say is in the sights of Chabert’s radar, though the normally brash and talkative senator is shy of discussing future plans himself.
“I am keeping those options open,” Chabert said. “I am always going to serve my state one way or another and I think that my performance over the last four sessions – five if you recall the special redistricting session – show that.”
He acknowledges he is open “to looking at opportunities to serve in a full-time capacity.”
Chabert says, for this session, his plans are focused on big-picture issues rather than those more specifically local in nature.
“I am taking a big picture kind of viewpoint,” he said. “As vice chairman of the budget and finance committee that overall is going to be at the forefront, dominating the majority of my time.”
This year, Louisiana’s budget shortfall is at about $80 million. Chabert notes that to be a considerably better position than in prior years, when shortfalls were in the hundreds of millions.
“We find ourselves in a position where we can make some key investments again, using calculated spending maneuvers that are going to benefit the taxpayers through reinvestment,” he said. “Many things have not gotten the funding they deserve.”
What Chabert calls one of the greatest economic downturns in history has not spared Louisiana, he notes. But he sees a rosy future, and wants to see the state’s budget choices allow growth to happen in the right places.
“We are at the epicenter of an energy boom unlike any this country has ever seen,” Chabert said, expressing excitement at the potentials for growth and economic well-being that could provide.
But he is also cautious, and says decisions made this term must be tempered with heavy doses of reality and scrutiny.
“We are in a position to do unprecedented good,” Chabert said. “But at the same time with those opportunities come great challenges and always the ability to fall on your face when you are presented with a great opportunity.”
There are differences, Chabert said, between, “silly investments or smart strategic investments.”
It is important to take risks, he said, but also important to make sure “when we roll the dice we hedge our bets in the best fashion possible.”
Bolstering businesses that are consistent with what Louisiana already does well, with energy high on the agenda in Chabert’s estimation.
Spending money to lure businesses that do not already exist can shave the odds against the favor of the state, he contends. Some calculated risks however, including gaming and the filming of motion pictures, have borne fruit.
But energy is to him the wave of Louisiana’s future.
“The next frontier is this energy boom we are going through,” Chabert said. “We can finally take advantage of the fact that we have such abundant natural resources, a skilled labor force and a skilled business force. We have to do all we can to make sure they have the tools they need, and a positive climate so that they can grow with our economy.”
The maritime sector – and how it meshes with energy – is another example Chabert cites as a key to future success.
The state senator is well aware that skilled labor is something for which Louisiana businesses have a strong hunger, and reasonable measures to sate it are among the initiatives he favors.
A lack of bills in his own senatorial quiver that address more local, parochial concerns should not be cause for alarm, Chabert maintains.
His 20th Senatorial District, Chabert notes, is a hub of industries that can and will benefit from actions that are taken to benefit the state as a whole on its strong points.
“From the Atchafalaya all the way to the Mississippi border and up the river damn near to Baton Rouge is a microcosm of this state. Manufacturing, waterborne commerce and trade, aquaculture and seafood, everything that makes Louisiana unique and wonderful is all here. The ability to see the whole board from a distant standpoint, a state standpoint and a strategic standpoint is important. Not to approach your job like a police juror, only worried about our district.”
The big picture approach Chabert speaks of is evident in his filings, as much as what he says his approach will be in the committee capacity to legislation filed by others and budget priorities.
Nearly all of the 11 bills he has filed deal with statewide issues, including reorganization of Louisiana Department of Transportation, the inter-relation of levee districts and flood-control projects throughout the state, and multi-modal transportation, the broader view of transporting goods or commodities through various means, whether by rail, pipeline, water or roads, are all subjects of the Chabert offerings.
Most include highly technical tweaks to how the state approaches those issues.
While not on the agenda for this session, Chabert is still keen on his contention that Louisiana needs to revise its constitution, particularly in terms of how money can be cut and apportioned.
The restrictions on cutting money from almost anything except higher education and health care are among the practices Chabert says must be closely examined and which need to change.
That Gov. Bobby Jindal is cutting a lower profile this session than in the past is something Chabert – an avowed Jindal supporter – does not see as unusual.
“This is gong to be a legislator-agenda-driven session,” Chabert said. “The governor has done a lot of overhauling over the previous six years. You don’t have to reform, reform, reform and continually overhaul every session. Sometimes you can literally sit back and work with other peoples’ agendas and tweak your own to make the changes.”
Chabert knows that during his tenure tough choices have been made, but he speaks confidently of how sometimes-controversial changes have shaken out.
“We have cut so much and dismantled so much of government, we have redefined the charity hospital system, and yes we still have some recovery to go and do but we are at a different point now,” Chabert said. “With every new dollar that puts us in the black we can pay down debt and make investments, we are leaner, meaner and more streamlined and that works best for the taxpayer.”
