BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) — Housing assistance programs spread across five Louisiana agencies would be consolidated and managed by a new state-created corporation, under a proposal that received approval Wednesday from the House and Governmental Affairs Committee.
The measure, pushed by the Jindal administration and sponsored by Sen. Neil Riser, R-Columbia, would create the nonprofit Louisiana Housing Corporation to centralize housing aid programs and develop a unified housing policy for the state. It would take over and largely dismantle the Louisiana Housing Finance Agency, which has generated complaints since the 2005 hurricanes of bloated bureaucracy and inefficient spending.
“You’ll have all the policy pieces and all the operational pieces in one place,” said Commissioner of Administration Paul Rainwater, the governor’s top financial adviser.
An 11-member board with eight gubernatorial appointees would run the corporation. The LHFA would continue to exist through June 2012, to work through the transfer issues.
The committee advanced the proposal to the full Senate without objection, though several members said the bill needed more work and more changes.
Sen. Lydia Jackson, D-Shreveport, said the process needs to include more housing advocates, saying when New York recently worked on a similar housing consolidation effort, officials spent four months traveling the state and holding hearings to get public input.
“They can make this a better bill, and they ought to be given that opportunity,” she said.
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An attempt to make it easier for lawmakers to raise college tuition and fees was derailed Wednesday by the Louisiana House.
Currently, Louisiana is the only state in the nation that requires a two-thirds vote from the House and Senate to boost tuition and fees. Lawmakers trying to change that to a simple majority vote added the language into a separate measure (House Bill 391) that would consolidate university management boards.
But House Speaker Jim Tucker, R-Terrytown, said that would create two different purposes for the bill and violate a constitutional provision that requires legislation to have a singular purpose. So, the House voted 82-10 to strip the tuition increase language from the consolidation bill, which will be debated in the House at a later date.
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Online:
Louisiana Legislature: www.legis.state.la.us