Honey-of-a-deal latest in state lawmakers’ games

A recent ruckus in the state Legislature has created a lot of anger and garnered national media attention.

The incident involves a sneak attack amendment that Rep. Avon Honey managed to get tacked on to one of his bills.

The result was a 99-0 vote in the House of Representatives for a bill that, as amended, would enact changes in Louisiana’s unemployment compensation law to be eligible for unemployment compensation stimulus money approved by Congress.

There is more than meets the eye in this maneuver.

The bill that was amended was on the “consent calendar” of the House agenda. That part of the agenda is reserved for bills that are totally non-controversial and can be considered quickly in order to speed up the legislative process.

The original bill pertained to changes in the workers’ compensation law – not unemployment compensation.

Placing an unemployment compensation amendment on the bill violates the “dual object” provision in the Louisiana Constitution. That provision is designed to maintain order in the legislative process by preventing bills from being hijacked willy-nilly by amending them to have more than one objective.

Essentially, Rep. Honey’s last second, unconstitutional amendment to his bill on a calendar reserved for totally non-controversial bills violated the legislative process on several levels, but that was just the opening act.

When the bill arrived in the Senate, another game was played when it was referred to committee.

Under the Senate’s rules, the bill should have either not been referred due to its dual object flaw or, if referred, it should have gone to the Senate Labor and Industrial Relations Committee.

Instead, the bill was referred to the Senate Finance Committee, presumably under the pretext that it has an impact on state finances.

Senate rules do provide for the dual referral of bills that have a significant fiscal impact. However, the rules clearly state that those bills must first go to the substantive committee (in this case, Labor and Industrial Relations), and only if they advance from that committee should they go to the Finance Committee for the fiscal impact review.

The rules of procedure were abused and violated in both the House and the Senate on Rep. Honey’s bill.

Why?

Unfortunately, it has a lot to do with game-playing and message-sending. The unemployment compensation stimulus issue has devolved, to a significant degree, into a Republican versus Democrat and Jindal versus Obama spat.

Other bills were filed to do exactly what Rep. Honey’s unconstitutional amendment attempts to do. However, each time those bills were scheduled for hearing in the House committee, the authors declined to have them considered in a free and open debate on their merits. Instead, the route of subterfuge and abuse of legislative rules was taken.

Gov. Jindal’s opposition to taking this portion of the stimulus money has to do with future tax increases on struggling employers to pay for the added benefits once the federal money is gone.

His objection is a valid one. Some claim that the stimulus money in question is needed to delay tax increases and benefit cuts that will occur as unemployment claims climb in the future.

But that is a bogus argument. Those tax increases and benefit cuts will occur next January regardless of the stimulus money.

What the changes in our unemployment compensation law will do is bring us closer to additional employer tax increases and unemployment benefit cuts in the future as the unemployment trust fund has to continue to pay for the new benefits once the stimulus money is used up.

There is room for honest debate about the unemployment compensation stimulus money. There shouldn’t be any tolerance for abuse of the process so that some folks can play games and send messages.