EDITORIAL: Inescapable conclusions about this session
Shreveport Times (excerpt)

The Louisiana Legislature's seemingly session-long attempt to avoid directly addressing the elephant in the room — the state budget — brought on a needlessly chaotic effort that spewed out a solution at the relatively last minute. And the resulting grumblings will be heard throughout the state long after lawmakers adjourned Monday evening.

(H)ow they seemingly balanced the books in one weekend. If it were that easy, shouldn't we have done so at the onset of this session and, in the process, spared ourselves all this drama? (H)ow there always seems to be some newfound or heretofore unrecognized and often one-time money to tide us over. The state's revenue forecasting panel adopted revised income estimates Monday and formally recognized the "rainy day" fund money and tax amnesty dollars used to balance the state's budgets. Another example, state police Superintendent Mike Edmonson at least once during the past three months projected the repeal of the $15 increase in the driver's license fee would force him to cut the equivalent of 170 positions and/or services. Somehow, lawmakers found the approximate $14 million he says is needed for state police to fund their part of nationally mandated driver's license checks. (The Office of Motor Vehicles' expense in this matter is only about $300,000, he said).

(H)ow when there are layoffs in health care and higher education, they can justify reviving an estimated $30 million in pet projects — including earmarks for museums, senior centers, water and sewage systems and an array of other local projects — in the final minutes of the session