Tuesday, October 10, 2006
Blanco Plan "Another Bureaucratic Nightmare"
BY C.B. FORGOTSTON
On Friday, I presented my plan for Homeowners’ Insurance Tax relief. It was very simple. Give us back the money we were taxed to pay for the bonded indebtedness of the State-created Citizen Insurance Plan. (Plan posted below.)
Monday, the governor takes half my plan, but then goes on to complicate it.
Differences:
My plan would NOT require a Special Session of the lege and could go into effect next Spring. Her plan requires expending extra money for a Special Session and puts the state further into debt.
My plan would take EXTRA state revenues and give them back to the people. Her plan would take revenues that we citizens have already dedicated (in the constitution) to keep government from wasting them.
My plan would slow the expansion of a bloated government. Her plan would allow government to continue to bloat
My plan takes only a majority vote of the lege to enact. Her plan takes a 2/3’s vote of the lege and a subsequent vote of the people to enact.
My plan requires minimal bureaucratic red tape to return the money to the people. Her plan requires another bureaucratic nightmare to write refund checks to millions of individuals a la the Governor’s Road Home Program.
Before and after
Prior to the release of my plan which was merely a simplification of her plan, the governor proposed to use state surpluses and excess revenues and not calling a special session. (See excerpts below.) Details of Gov. Kathleen Blanco’s plans for bailing out the battered state-run insurance company remained sketchy Friday, but her chief fiscal adviser said a special session of the Legislature is not being considered.
Commissioner of Administration Jerry Luke LeBlanc refused to speculate on how much money would be available in the expected surplus from the fiscal year that ended June 30 or how much the administration will recommend should go toward helping pay down the debt of the state-run Louisiana Citizens Property Insurance Corp. -Times Picayune, October 7, 2006
What changed?
The only thing that seems to have changed from Friday when LeBlanc made the above pronouncements and Monday with Governor Blanco announced her complicated plan was the release of my simple plan.
