The state is so broke, we might as well call it Kanye West. State government is so broke it took out a second mortgage on the Capitol. Louisiana is SO BROKE … I think you get the point.
If you’ve paid any attention to the news in the past eight years, something regarding the state budget has probably popped up in your Facebook feed or come up in conversation among friends or family.
More than a few worried parents called their kids to tell them they can’t afford college without TOPS, and more than a few legislators got the same kind of calls from their constituents.
It was so bad, state Sen. Mike Walsworth, R-West Monroe, chewed out the representative from the Louisiana Office of Student Financial Aid who testified before the legislature for the media fiasco following the TOPS changes. He practically begged her not to let something like that get out again.
Rather than trying to make a broken system work, I’d rather offer a true best-case scenario for us all to strive for: a constitutional convention.
At the Capitol, lawmakers talk about Gov. John Bel Edwards’ plan as the “best case scenario.”
His plan, which Commissioner of Administration Jay Dardenne admits will cut funding to higher education, is supposed to be a bipartisan solution to our problems. It raises revenue from Republican-friendly sources like a regressive sales tax and sin taxes, and the plan incorporates serious budget cuts.
This scenario might be acceptable if you keep your mind within the confines of the status quo, but nothing is “best case” about this scenario. As LSU President F. King Alexander and other higher education leaders told the Joint Legislative Committee on the Budget, we simply can’t take any more.
Maybe Loyola University in New Orleans can afford to cover the shortfall between the portion of TOPS that LOSFA is funding and the portion they have to kick in, but public universities cannot. Each of them operated on a shoestring budget for the last eight years.
Our constitution is not at all similar to the U.S. Constitution. It is not a sacred document that we’ve barely changed — only for good reasons like getting rid of slavery and legalizing booze again. Louisiana has rewritten its constitution more than 10 times throughout its history.
The Louisiana constitution as we know it today is a product of the former Gov. Edwin Edwards’ administration of 1974. He consolidated power in the executive branch so he could do as he pleased with the state.
We can’t function under this constitution anymore. Louisiana in 2016 is completely different from Louisiana in 1974, and we no longer have oil money spilling from our ears. We cannot afford to have the majority of our budget locked up, unable to be considered for cuts.
In 2014, Louisiana voted to create the Louisiana Medical Assistance Trust Fund and the Hospital Stabilization Fund. These programs are important, no doubt, but there is no objective reason why we should fund them while we cut charity hospitals and universities.
A constitutional convention is the only way to substantively address this problem. Everything else is just talk.
I will personally hand $20 to the first person who can get a current state legislator on the record saying we should rewrite the constitution. I anticipate I’ll never have to fork it over, but I really hope I do.
Jack Richards is a 21-year-old mass communication junior from New Orleans, Louisiana.