Lawmakers are going home having passed a bipartisan $24 billion state spending plan.
But they're bringing home more than just the budget to their constituents. WRKF asked lawmakers about the most important thing they passed for their constituents.
Rep. Karen St. Germain - D, District 60, Iberville and Assumption
“Most of my last session, my last year, has been about Bayou Corne residents and the sinkhole, trying to get residents to their new life and where they want to be. We’re also opening up a new hospital in Iberville Parish."
Sen. Bodi White - R, District 6, Parts of East Baton Rouge, Livingston, St. Helena, and Tangipahoa
Creating a new community school district. We got real close again, all the way to the final step of the House floor. I think more and more every day that these folks want that.
Sen. Norby Chabert - R, District 20, Terrebonne and LaFourche
My port infrastructure tax credit bill. The fact that we were able to get that passed it in such a contentious climate for tax credits. It’s something that is of stimulus that can benefit private business to invest in state assets that we’ve been neglecting.
Sen. Bret Allain - R, District 21, St. Mary and Iberia
You know how important it is that we have the habitat of the reefs, the artificial reefs, offshore for the fisheries. The the rigs that are in the gulf, over the next five years, as many as 50 percent of them may be decommissioned. I got a constitutional amendment to put the artificial reef program in the constitution.
Rep. Barbara Norton - D, District 3, Parts of Caddo Parish, Shreveport
I’m happy in a sense, but there’s still a loss for words when I think about the 400,000 people that are without affordable health care.
Norton acknowledged that her largest effort, a bill to urge the state to accept the federal Medicaid Expansion, failed. But the issue isn’t going to go away.
Next session, Sen. Jack Donahue hopes the negotiations lawmakers started with the budget won’t go away either.
Sen. Jack Donahue - R, District 11, St. Tammany and Tangipahoa
Politics is an art. I’m certainly not a master of that art. That’s not what politics is about. It’s not about having a rigid view on something that can’t be changed because those people don’t get anything done.
The legislature won’t convenes again until March 10, 2014.