Not three months old, the current state government in Baton Rouge — led by Gov. Jeff Landry and a supermajority Republican legislature where prominent leaders talk of feeling unleashed after eight years working alongside a Democratic administration — is already proving itself the most conservative in modern times.
Except that in one noteworthy way, it’s not.
For all the right-wing priorities that flew through the two special sessions and are projected to easily pass during the regular session — expanding incarceration, encouraging executions, removing restrictions on guns, weakening public employee unions, forbidding talk of gender identity and sexuality in schools, rolling back regulations and much more — there’s one bedrock conservative principle that is clearly not a priority.
These people cannot claim to call themselves fiscal conservatives.
In fact, you could make a good argument that they’re the opposite.
That much is obvious from the debate over one of the current session’s most talked-about initiatives, education savings accounts, which would greatly expand the use of public money for private and parochial school tuition. The legislation is moving quickly, with muscular support from Landry, even though there’s no official cost estimate.
There is an unofficial one, though. Steven Procopio, president of the Public Affairs Research Council, predicted last week that ESAs could eventually cost Louisiana taxpayers $520 million a year — which, he didn’t really need to point out but did anyway, is “a lot of money.”
That’s one hint at what could be to come. Another warning sign comes from Arizona, where a similar program is projected to cost $822 million next year and is contributing to a growing budgetary crisis there.
And there’s no sign as of yet that the price tag might give some of those conservative politicians in Baton Rouge pause — which might be surprising if it were not already shaping up as business as usual.
Consider what happened just last month during the special session on crime.
In 2017, Louisiana adopted a bipartisan criminal justice reform package that was designed to, among other things, reduce costs associated with Louisiana’s world-leading incarceration rate. In fact, cutting government spending was a chief selling point among conservatives who forcefully backed the move to allow some nonviolent offenders to leave prison.
But, citing fear of crime that could not be traced to the reform policies, Landry and his legislative allies brushed right past evidence that the reform initiative was meeting its goals — including cost savings — and ignored analysis showing a reversal would cost millions more.
Then there was the change to how Louisianans vote, another conservative agenda item that adds to the taxpayer tab.
Urged by the governor and the state Republican Party, lawmakers detoured from the main mission of the first special session — dealing with court-ordered congressional redistricting on a tight deadline — to try to replace Louisiana’s open primaries with close party votes.
There were many reasons to question the move, which was aimed at giving party purists more electoral sway than they have now and which was watered down before being adopted. But a big one was the cost of adding an extra round of voting, a party runoff in addition to a party primary and a general election. The Secretary of State’s office says the new law will cost taxpayers $61 million over the next three years and as much as $135 million over 10 years.
And add to all this the cost of the new administration’s other ideological adventures, from sending the Louisiana National Guard to the Texas/Mexico border to pursuing federal litigation on issues far afield from state government.
Conservatism? Sure.
Fiscal conservatism? Hardly, not when big government spending finances some social priority.
Which is not to say the new leaders won’t still trot out small government rhetoric on issues that don't fit their ideological agenda. Generous funding of what were once known as school vouchers aren’t likely to signal support for safety net spending, or recurring raises for badly underpaid public school teachers.
In fact, during the opening of the regular session, Landry preached the gospel of “conservative money management.”
“Remember,” he said, “government taxes the hard work and sweat of the people. Let’s be mindful of the sacrifices they make to fund government.”
The real question, though, is whether the governor or the Legislature will remember that — and not just when it’s convenient.