By David Vitrano

L’Observateur

LULING – Louisiana Sen. President and Destrehan native Joel Chaisson II addressed members of the River Region Chamber of Commerce at their recent general membership meeting.

The topic for the afternoon’s discussion, given to a room filled with Chamber members as well as St. Charles and St. John the Baptist parish government officials, was the recent Legislative session.

After a brief introduction in which he exclaimed, “After a fairly intense legislative session, it is truly a pleasure to see so many friendly faces!” Chaisson got down to business with a topic at the forefront of many governmental discussions recently, the budget.

According to Chaisson, the Legislature began the 2010 regular session facing a budget shortfall of $1.7 billion. The shortfall for the fiscal year that began July 1, Chaisson said, was due to a “combination of declining state revenue collections, increasing costs associated with state programs and services and the long-term impact of over a billion dollars worth of tax breaks provided both to businesses and individual citizens.”

Additonally, Chaisson said the budget woes for the last fiscal year continued to worsen as the session continued and revenue collections continued to come in lower than was expected.

When all was said and done, the Legislature faced the daunting task of not only coming up with a balanced budget for the next fiscal year but also balancing the budget for the current fiscal year. That meant the budget would have to be reduced by about $750 million.

While some might get out the red pen and just start slashing, Chaisson said the choice for him was not so easy.

“We had an obligation to not only address the immediate budget crunch in the fiscal year we were just concluding but also to consider how our choices might impact the basic state services and programs in the future,” he said.

The House originally drafted a budget that included “huge, untargeted, across-the-board cuts to higher education and healthcare.”

“Some of the proposed across-the-board cuts proposed by the House could not have been practically implemented,” he continued.

He said there was also some question about whether the budget was using federal stimulus dollars correctly, a situation that ultimately could force the state to have to repay hundreds of millions of dollars back to the federal government.

Said Chaisson, “The Senate looked for other options — options that the Jindal administration ended up endorsing.”

The Senate’s plan included reducing state spending and state employees and using one-time dollars in a strategic manner.

Ultimately, the budget passed through both the House and Senate and was approved by the governor without any changes.

It reduced overall spending by nearly $5 billion, including the eliminatin of 2,900 staff positions.

Chaisson said any feeling of elation accompanying the aversion of a fiscal crisis may be short-lived, however, as some are predicting a shortfall of up to $2 billion for the fiscal year starting July 1, 2011.

Because of this, the governor’s office has asked all state agencies to submit budgets reflecting a 35-percent cut in spending for the next fiscal year.

“The implications of those kinds of reductions are staggering,” said Chaisson. “Those kinds of cuts to higher education will destroy the tremendous gains we have made in improving the quality of higher education under the Foster and Blanco administrations. Those kinds of cuts to healthcare will result in hospital closures and lack of access to care for a large segment of our population.”

Chaisson said many states have either raised taxes or reduced tax breaks to deal with similar conundrums.

“Whether Louisiana follows suit next year will be the most hotly debated issue next session,” he said.

Chaisson said not all financial news in the state has been so dire, however. The state is slated to get about $514 million in federal dollars to offset cuts to education and healthcare.

The budget talk was somewhat overshadowed for a while this year as the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill threatened to devastate local wildlife and fishermen.

In response to this, Chaisson said he and Attorney General Buddy Caldwell authored a contingency plan to partner with legal experts and help protect Louisiana’s interests as it goes up against the legal team of the multi-billion dollar corporation.

He said the other Gulf Coast states already have such a plan at their disposal.

Time ran out before the proposal could be considered and voted on in the House, however, so Chaisson said a special session may be called to either put that plan in place or to come up with the funds for legal representation for the state’s interests.

“The contingency fee proposal was not about lawyers making money. It was about making sure that our citizens and our state get the compensation we deserve for the damage done to our communities, our coastline, our wildlife, our fisheries, our culture — and, yes, even our vital oil and gas industry,” he said.

The Chambers is looking to have a busy fall this year.

The organization will hold its annual Parish Presidents Forum at the Quality Inn on Louisiana Highway 51 on Sept. 9 at 8 a.m. A week later, Bot’s Place on Airline Highway in LaPlace will host a networking event from 5:30 to 7:30.

Finally, the Chamber’s golf tournament will take place Oct. 18.

The event will serve as a fundraiser for not only the Chamber itself but for local institutions of continuing education as well.