Who are real power-brokers?

Republican Speaker of the House Taylor Barras, a gentleman banker from New Iberia, is as nice a fellow as you will ever meet. Unfortunately, it doesn’t appear to be in his nature to get tough with GOP hardliners in the state House that helped him become a compromise choice for speaker.

Those anti-tax Republicans, dubbed the Gang of No, are actually calling the shots in the House that failed miserably during a special session called to right the state’s financial ship. Why the other 40 GOP House members continue to let onethird of their membership rule the roost has been a mystery for over two years.

Many closed-door meetings were held during the special session in an effort to get everyone on the same page. A lawmaker who took part in some of those meetings said it became abundantly clear to everyone in the room that Rep. Lance Harris, RAlexandria, is the real power-broker in the House, not the speaker. Harris is chairman of the House Republican Caucus.

Confusion reigned during much of the session and many legislators and spectators constantly stayed in the dark. They could only watch Republican hardliners conferring often with Harris, apparently getting updates or their marching orders.

Democratic Gov. John Bel Edwards came down hard on Barras at a news conference after the session ended. He said the speaker broke a promise he made personally to Edwards and incriminated Democrats for problems in the House that Barras caused himself.

“Simply put, the failure of this special session is the result of a total lack of leadership and action in the House of Representatives — a spectacular failure of leadership…,” Edwards said.

“Even the most casual observer of the way the House has conducted itself over the last few weeks can only conclude that it was totally dysfunctional,” Edwards said. “Just go back in your mind and relive the countless recesses, the inability to make decisions to move forward, to bring people together, to do the hard work that is necessary to reach a compromise.”

Barras fired right back at the governor’s remarks, saying it was Edwards who wasn’t able to keep his promises. He said the governor couldn’t get the House Black Caucus to support tax measures.

“He (Edwards) repeatedly led me to believe he would garner the Dems support,” Barras said in a text message. “That never happened.”

The state Republican Party also got into the blame game. It said the session wasn’t necessary and quoted Harris, who said Edwards couldn’t produce or communicate. U.S. Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., joined the GOP refrain, placing all the blame on Edwards.

Lost in this blame game is the fact Republicans helped approve the $1.3 billion in temporary tax measures approved by the Legislature in 2016. New revenues were necessary at that time because of the deficit Edwards inherited from former Republican Gov. Bobby Jindal. GOP members knew a day of reckoning was coming in two years.

The GOP also passed a resolution creating a task force on budget and tax reform. It did its job and Republicans promised the reform effort would take place in 2017. House members from the GOP had reform bills ready to go, but their own leadership either killed their bills or refused to hear them.

As for who is at fault for the session’s failure, everyone involved shares some of the responsibility. Communication problems existed between every faction involved in legislating. A majority wasn’t interested in compromise, and there is no guarantee they will do any better at another special session at the end of the regular session beginning Monday.

Republicans constantly deny it, but one of their agendas is to deny a Democratic governor another term in 2019. Mark Ballard of The Advocate wrote about a GOP strategist being unable to “contain his exuberance” when the session’s state sales tax bill failed.

Ballard said the strategist “pumped hands with double-fisted handshakes and slapped backs as he congratulated some members of the 20-member House’s ‘Gang of No’ for helping defeat” the bill.

Rep. Chris Broadwater, R-Hammond and one of the few moderates left in the House, resigned from the Legislature last week. We have seen others depart because of the unwillingness of too many lawmakers to compromise. There will probably be more.

The folks back home aren’t getting much from their elected representatives who just spent at least $750,000 doing virtually nothing. Left holding the bag with little promise of things getting much better are TOPS students who need their scholarships, colleges and universities, medically fragile children and the developmentally disabled who need health care and safety-net and rural hospitals.

Sadly, the two failed tax bills that caused most of the controversy were only going to cost most taxpayers pocket change.

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Jim Beam, the retired editor of the American Press, has covered people and politics for more than five decades. Contact him at 337-515-8871 or jbeam@americanpress.com.