LSU Student Government is continuing its stand against the state Legislature’s failures to address the looming budget crisis.
SG president Jason Badeaux has begun working with government relations director and microbiology senior Hunter Sikaffy on a report card that will list the grades of state legislators based on how they vote on LSU-related bills.
This is the third year an LSU SG president is making a report card based on state legislation. This particular report card is different as it is regarding the legislative special session that ended after two weeks on March 5, two days before it was scheduled to come to a close.
Legislators and Gov. John Bel Edwards are at odds with the actual amount of the shortfall, but Gov. John Bel Edwards will have to plan for a $994 million budget state’s budget shortfall, though the number may be closer to $692 million, according to Louisiana Commissioner of Administration Jay Dardenne. Regardless, higher education, healthcare and TOPS all face potential deep cuts.
Louisiana law prohibits legislators from approving revenue-raising measures during the regular legislative session in even-numbered years. Thus, Edwards called a special session in February in hopes state legislators would solve the fiscal cliff. However, state legislators failed to pass any bills within the special session, and elected to cut it short and possibly regroup later in the year.
SG will grade legislators based on their votes on House Bills 8, 14, 22 and 23 during the special session — all tax bills filed to raise revenue in the state. Legislators will receive a grade ranging from A to F based on which way they voted on those bills, or if they were present to cast a vote at all.
Speaker of the student senate James Mickler voiced his opinion on why this was an important move for SG to make.
“The real goal is to apply some sort of accountability to the legislators,” Mickler said. “They’re always saying ‘we’re for the students, we really care about higher education,’ but now there’s actually a metric to be able to judge it.”
Student senator for the graduate school Jordan Landry addressed the SG student senate in its meeting on March 7, expressing his displeasure for the special session’s lack of progress.
“I’m highly disappointed,” Landry said. “We’re already behind. This is not helping.”
The regular session began March 12 and is projected to end early June. A state budget will become effective July 1, leaving little time for state agencies and state schools to make their budgets, and Louisiana students may have already selected out-of-state schools by then due to the threat of TOPS funding.
LSU President F. King Alexander visited LSU-system schools throughout the state to emphasize the importance of higher education and TOPS funding. In his address to the University on Feb. 16, he said last year’s decrease in TOPS spending cost the main University campus potential freshmen and staff members.
Landry advocated for both SG and the student body to take action and make LSU’s need for funding known.
“Make them look us in the eyes,” Landry said. “Just fund us already. We’re doing the work. Pay us for it.”
Badeaux and Sikaffy are waiting to see what the state legislation elects to do in order to readdress the budget crisis before completing and releasing the report card. After the report card’s release last year, several state legislators visited SG’s office personally to discuss why they received a poor score.
Sikcaffy is hoping this year’s report card will be seen, as well, and mentioned there will be more coming from SG’s offices.
“We’ve got some plans to get them to hear us,” Sikaffy said.
Natalie Anderson contributed to this report.

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Isabella Allen

The LSU Student Government senators discuss the implementation of new bills on Wednesday, March 14, 2018, in the LSU Student Union Capital Chamber in the LSU Student Union on LSU campus.