The second special session of 2018 went down to the final seconds, as most predicted it would. When it was all over at the stroke of midnight, there were bright spots and disasters and the all-but-certain specter of a third special session later this month. Let’s start with the good news:

• After multiple tries, the Legislature narrowly approved House Bill 18 by Rep. Katrina Jackson, which includes a modest increase in the Earned Income Tax Credit from 3.5 percent to 5 percent of the federal credit. The bill was amended to delay implementation by a year, and includes a 2025 sunset date. But it also means that low-income working families with children will see a collective $21 million more in their tax refunds when they file their 2019 tax returns.  The bill won bipartisan support and had backing from a broad coalition of community and nonprofit leaders including the United Way of Southeast Louisiana, the Louisiana Conference of Catholic Bishops, the Louisiana Partnership for Children and Families and teachers’ unions.

Then the bad news:

• The Legislature also sent a budget bill to the governor’s desk, which protects health care services and avoids the potential disruptions to hospitals and nursing homes that made headlines earlier in the Spring. But by protecting the Medicaid program, the budget cuts just about everything else in state government. The bill was structured in a way that makes pro-rata cuts in the event that legislators failed to raise sufficient revenue. Included in the “below the line” section of the bill is funding for TOPS scholarships, youth services, the Department of Corrections, K-12 education and foster kids, among other things. It includes an across-the-board cut of up to 24.2 percent to most state agencies.

Which brings us to the ugly:

• The last 30 minutes of the session featured a frantic – and ultimately unsuccessful – bid to pass enough revenues to finance the “below the line” items in the budget bill. There were two bills up for discussion: House Bill 12 by Rep. Walt Leger III, which raised $507 million by renewing one-half of the expiring “clean penny” of sales tax and making other adjustments. It died on a 63-41 vote, seven short of the 70 needed for a two-thirds supermajority. And House Bill 27 by Rep. Lance Harris, which would only have renewed one-third of the penny and raised $400 million. It received 38 of the necessary 70 votes.

With both bills having died and the seconds clicking toward midnight, Rep. Julie Stokes tried frantically to reconsider the vote on Leger’s bill. That’s when Rep. Alan Seabaugh took to the podium for a filibuster that ran out the clock. You can watch the archived video here. We recommend starting with the last ten minutes.

If you’re scoring at home, this means the Legislature broke down over a difference of $.017 of sales tax renewal – or 17 cents on a $100 purchase.

So what’s next? Julia O’Donaghue of Nola.com | The Times-Picayune reports that Gov. John Bel Edwards will likely call lawmakers into a third special session before the new fiscal year begins on July 1. The Legislature chipped away at some of the shortfall in the special session that ended last night, but the majority of the fiscal cliff remains intact.

“It is a sad day for the state of Louisiana. You saw a minority in the House prove that politics take priority over people,” Edwards said a press conference. “Our state deserves better than what we saw tonight.”

The Advocate’s Elizabeth Crisp notes that lawmakers will take at least a week off, and that the next special session will likely be focused exclusively on raising enough revenue to fund the priorities outlined in the budget bill.

“It will be a short, concentrated special session,” Edwards said, without providing details other than it will end “several days” before July 1. By law, he’s required to give seven days notice, so another session cannot begin before next week. Edwards said he’s optimistic that the next one will end with approval for more revenue that that has evaded lawmakers in the past two.

While the session will be remembered most for its failures, Crisp writes that some revenue measures did squeak through.

The Legislature finalized some smaller sources of revenue, including the continued suspension of an income tax break for taxes paid to other states, which generates about $34 million next year, and redirecting about $53 million from the Louisiana’s settlement from the 2010 BP oil spill to shore up the state’s finances. Due to the flurry of legislation in the final hour of session and the late hour that it ended, it wasn’t immediately clear what impact that $87 million would have on agency cuts, but House Bill 1, which carries the state’s annual operating budget, had a provision that directed additional revenue to be distributed on a pro-rata basis.

The best roundup of the day’s events, as usual, comes from the incomparable Melinda Deslatte of the AP.

Correction: In yesterday’s Daily Dime, we credited Greg Hilburn of Gannett with a story on the revival of the EITC. In fact, this story was reported by Paul Braun and Devon Sanders of the LSU Manship School News Service. Our apologies to the journalists.

Number of the Day:
$60,000 – Estimated cost per day of special legislative sessions (Source: The Advocate)