Three-term District 25 State Sen. Dan ‘Blade’ Morrish, R-Jennings, told the Crowley Lions Club on Tuesday the state’s government’s situation is critical.
Morrish is in his final term as a state senator. He ran unopposed in the last election and has served in the state’s legislature for 21 years. Eleven of those were served in the House of Representatives, 10 were in the Senate.
“I’ve enjoyed the time I’ve had serving two-thirds of Acadia Parish,” he said. “I’ve enjoyed all the time I’ve had working with (former District 42 representative) Jack Montoucet and the short time I’ve had working with your current representative John Stefanski. Having met him though, I’m sure he’ll do a great job.”
He then moved onto the biggest problem the state legislature is currently facing.
“Obviously the budget is the biggest issue,” said Morrish. “All spending measures have to begin in the House and I’m not trying to pass the buck on to them, that’s just how it works. And if there’s anything that I feel good about is that they have realized how big the problem we are facing is and Democrats and Republicans are trying to work together to fix it.”
Morrish said that another positive aspect the to the possibility of the legislature fixing the budget is that, aside from him, 46 members of the House of Representatives and 20 members of the Senate are about to be termed out as well.
“They are coming together because they don’t want to leave office with the mess we are currently facing to the people that take their seats,” he said.
Morrish also discussed how the next legislative session begins on March 12, 2018, and “how we can’t address the situation with the budget in a regular session.”
“This is something that needs to be addressed in a special session and our governor (John Bel Edwards) has already said that he won’t have a special session unless there is something on the table,” he said. “On July 1, our 1 cent sales tax is going to go into the books. Unless something is done we are going to be operating on a budget that is $1.5 billion short.
“This is not a pretty picture and it’s going to be an interesting process.”
Morrish mentioned how a task force was set up by three former governors “both Republican and Democrat to address these budget issues.” Those governors were Buddy Roemer, Edwin Edwards and Bobby Jindal.
“Why wasn’t one of these reports by any of these three task forces not being held up and waved around by any one of the candidates we had in our recent governor’s election,” Morrish said. “I think we shouldn’t raise revenue we should spread it around. We need to work on a favorable sales tax exemption. We need to lower the sales tax. When combined with our local taxes we have the highest sales tax in the country.
“These are all mentioned in the reports by these governors,” he said.
“We’ve been calling this ‘Stelly lite.’ Had we not repealed the Stelly Plan We wouldn’t be in this current situation.”
Morrish said, “In Lake Charles things are looking really good. In Lafayette, things haven’t been so good due to the oil industry being down. But it will get better. The jobs in the Lake Charles area are mainly in the construction industry, which is booming.”