The 60-day legislative session is reaching a climactic moment on its most important issue, and the key lawmaker determining the outcome is Senate President Page Cortez, a furniture store owner and one-time football coach in Lafayette whose political career is ending due to term limits.
Cortez is employing all the legislative wiles he’s developed during his 16 years at the Capitol to quarterback a heavy lift: win a super-majority in both the House and the Senate to spend an unprecedented amount of money in the treasury to fix roads, repair university buildings and restore the eroding coast.
Cortez has marshaled Republicans and Democrats alike in the Senate to support his effort to raise the expenditure limit, as it’s called inside the Capitol.
The looming question now, with the Legislature scheduled to adjourn on June 8, is whether fiscal conservatives can hold the line to block Cortez and his allies by preventing the two-thirds vote needed in the House to breach the spending limit.
The fiscal conservatives want instead to spend much less on infrastructure and use the extra money to pay down long-term retirement debt.
Cortez belongs to the pragmatic wing of the Republican Party in a battle that pits Republicans against Republicans.
“His years in the Legislature have prepared him for this moment,” said Sen. Fred Mills, R-Parks, a legislative ally. “He sees this as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. He doesn’t want to squander it.”
While Cortez doesn’t like to discuss it, he is allied with Gov. John Bel Edwards, a Democrat, who echoes the Senate president in saying lawmakers need to spend the unexpected bounty of money on infrastructure investments that will pay dividends in the long run.
But with limited stroke among House Republicans, Edwards is letting Cortez take the lead in winning legislative approval to lift the spending cap.
For now, Commissioner of Administration Jay Dardenne, the chief budget adviser for Edwards, is playing a more prominent role. Dardenne dangled two tempting spending projects before the Senate Finance Committee on Thursday that he said wouldn’t receive funding without lifting the cap: $188 million apiece for the multi-billion-dollar bridges that will be built in Lake Charles and Baton Rouge.
The Louisiana Municipal Association and the Police Jury Association of Louisiana have begun telling House members that badly-needed roads, parks and sewer systems in their districts won’t receive funding if they don’t raise the expenditure limit.
The Rural Hospital Coalition has joined that effort because the extra money would provide $42 million for its 50 hospitals, said Randy Morris, the board chairman.
“The heat’s getting turned up, and it will get turned up even more. We understand that,” said Rep. Brett Geymann, R-Lake Charles, a fiscal conservative leader.
Cortez and House Speaker Clay Schexnayder, R-Gonzales, have a huge incentive to make sure the House and Senate agree on a spending plan by June 8. If the Legislature doesn’t pass its budget for the upcoming fiscal year during the regular session, lawmakers will need a three-fourths vote in each chamber to do so in a special session. That’s an extraordinarily high burden because it would give lawmakers on the left and right enormous leverage to block a budget they don’t like.
Complicating matters: Lawmakers say they are hearing from constituents who believe they are grappling with whether to raise the debt ceiling to authorize more borrowing, a completely separate issue before Congress now.
Cortez and Schexnayder met for an hour with their key lieutenants in the Senate dining room on Wednesday.
“When the speaker and I took office several years ago, we met and agreed that we would always work out our differences,” Cortez said. “We have always done that. We will put together a solution to the budget issues this year that will be in the best interests of all our citizens.”
A Legislature divided
For now, though, the two chambers they lead are at loggerheads.
Schexnayder supports the House budget plan crafted by his Appropriations chairman, Jerome Zeringue, R-Houma. It calls for scrapping Edwards and Cortez’s plan to give public school teachers a pay raise and for holding down infrastructure spending to avoid breaching the spending gap. Instead, it would use the extra money to pay down debt owed on the retirement plans for teachers and state employees.
Zeringue said advancing the retirement debt payments would reduce interest payments, and local school boards could use the savings to raise teacher pay.
“It’s going to be difficult to convince House members that the expenditure limit should be exceeded,” Zeringue said.
Supporting the House and opposing Cortez and his allies are the Associated Builders and Contractors, Americans for Prosperity, the Louisiana Association of Business and Industry, the Louisiana Committee for a Conservative Majority (LCCM), Louisiana Family Forum, the National Federation of Independent Business and the Pelican Institute for Public Policy.
The business groups have a financial incentive because their plan also calls for putting enough money in the state’s rainy day fund to trigger a sharp drop in the corporate franchise tax and a slight reduction in the personal income tax.
“Let’s pay that (debt) down, and that will give the local school districts savings to give the teachers a raise,” said Lane Grigsby, a conservative mega-donor who has contributed to the trade groups and to LCCM, the group that finances the campaigns of conservative legislative candidates.
Besides Cortez, Schexnayder will play a key role in determining whether the Legislature unlocks the full $2.2 billion that is available for infrastructure spending.
Capitol insiders are watching to see whether Schexnayder works with the fiscal conservatives against Cortez and his allies or whether he quietly supports raising the spending cap.
Complicating Schexnayder’s upcoming moves: Termed out of his House seat, he is running to be secretary of state and doesn’t want to be tagged as a big spender who is allied with Edwards, analysts said. But if the Legislature authorizes the higher spending level, he could attend more ribbon cuttings around the state during this year’s campaign.
Schexnayder declined to be interviewed.
The House and Senate are often at odds over the state budget, even though Republicans have controlled both chambers for a decade. The more conservative House typically approves a budget with less spending, and the Senate typically opts to spend more. The Senate, led by more experienced lawmakers, usually gets more of what it wants in the end.
Cortez has experience
Cortez seems to have the upper hand this year over the House, which is filled with less-experienced members. Before becoming Senate president, Cortez served a term in the House on the Appropriations Committee, and in the Senate he chaired the transportation committee.
The son of a beloved educator in Lafayette who died in March, Cortez coached football and taught at local area schools before joining the furniture store business owned by his wife’s family. With Cortez, they also own a car wash and commercial real estate.
In his 16 years, Cortez has a solid conservative voting record. But last year, when the treasury was overflowing with money from Congress and the post-pandemic recovery, he pushed to spend all the available money. That included $200 million to extend I-49 south of Lafayette in his district.
Cortez, 61, remains mindful of his French ancestry and can speak passable French.
His office on the first floor of the Capitol features a George Rodrigue painting of a blackboard with the words, “No French to be Spoken in School” and a schoolboy being scolded, apparently for having spoken the language.
Sitting at the round table in his office, Cortez noted that the author of the decades-old expenditure limit law agrees with his views.
“It was never contemplated at the time to keep taxpayer dollars in the treasury as opposed to spending it on needed projects,” Cortez said. “By raising the expenditure limit, we’re allowed to put that money back into commerce — to fix roads, bridges and buildings that would otherwise cost more in out years via inflation and that will be in more deplorable shape. You can pay me now and fix the buildings, or pay me later to tear them down and build a new one.”
He also noted that, under state law, the surplus is already directing tens of millions of dollars to the rainy day fund and to pay down retirement debt. Taxes are scheduled to be cut in two years with the scheduled expiration of a temporary .45-cent sales tax.
Two days later, speaking to the full Senate, Cortez said the state is projected to fully pay off a portion of the two retirement plans in 2029. In the meantime, he added, the state is facing a $14 billion backlog in upgrading roads and bridges, a $1.8 billion backlog in fixing dilapidated university buildings and a $55 billion cost to rebuild the coast.
Cortez said the Senate will soon make public its proposed budget. It will show which projects wouldn’t be funded if the spending limit isn’t raised.
Sen. Mike Fesi, R-Houma, is one of several senators who have begun talking to House members to advise them of valued spending projects at risk.
Fesi is warning them that they might not receive the money to raise the levees in Terrebonne and Lafourche parishes to 18 feet.
“They’re currently 12-16 feet high,” Fesi said. “[Hurricane] Ida’s storm surge was right at the top of the levees.”
Sen. Mark Abraham, R-Lake Charles, plans to talk to Lake Charles area legislators about how lifting the spending limit this year would generate dollars for the proposed bridge there.
The Senate’s tactics come as no surprise to the House members.
“The Senate always tries to sweeten the pot. That may not work. House members don’t like being told what they can have by the Senate,” said Rep. Tanner Magee, R-Houma.
In the coming days, the Senate is expected to pass its version of the budget and Cortez’s resolution authorizing the lifting of the expenditure limit. Action will then switch to the House, where it will take at least 70 votes to raise the cap. Rep. Raymond Crews, R-Bossier Parish, has circulated a petition that he said contains enough names — at least 36 are needed — to block such a move.
The issue will likely be settled in the session’s final days.
Meanwhile, Cortez and Geymann, old friends from their time in the House, were spotted laughing together during a legislative hearing on Tuesday.
Geymann was studying the state Constitution and the House rule book. The reason?
“He said he’s fixing to go to war with us,” Cortez said. “I said, ‘When you throw your grenades, make sure they don’t land next to me.’”
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