by Robert Travis Scott, The Times-Picayune
Thursday June 18, 2009, 11:31 PM

BATON ROUGE -- A heated fight in the Legislature to claim a newly discovered $22.6 million pot of money has pitted West Bank and other New Orleans area lawmakers against their southwest Louisiana colleagues and the Jindal administration.

The cash in question is a residual from transactions years ago to pay down bond debt for the Crescent City Connection. But in a surprise move, the administration slated the money in a state construction bill for a Lake Charles rice and grain elevator without consulting legislators outside the affected region.

"The West Bank delegation is riled up," said House Speaker Jim Tucker, R-Algiers. "When that bill goes to conference committee, that money is not going to southwest Louisiana."

The issue boiled over during a state Bond Commission hearing Thursday when Tucker and Sen. Rob Marionneaux, D-Livonia, who chairs the Senate Revenue and Fiscal Affairs Committee, criticized the administration's action, even though the grain elevator project was not on the commission agenda.

Marionneaux said he will try to amend the state's construction legislation, known as House Bill 2, to spread the money among port projects in several regions. He said Jindal's team had circumvented the state's system of setting priorities for port and capital outlay projects.

Agency recommendations
Commissioner of Administration Angele Davis said the decision was based on recommendations by the state's agriculture and economic development departments. The state proposed backing the grain elevator project with bonds during Gov. Kathleen Blanco's term but never issued the debt, partly because the state was nearing its legal debt limit.

Davis compared the decision to one taken last month to put cash into the Federal City project, a military office development in Algiers. Using cash will cost less than bond financing, Davis said.

Bond Commission staff notified Davis and other administration officials April 7, three weeks before the start of the legislative session, that the fund contained $22.6 million available for state spending. Subsequent correspondence in late May clarified that the money could be used for just about any state construction project but not for state operations costs.

Meanwhile, the state construction bill was moving through the House of Representatives, which was operating without knowledge of the fund. When the bill reached the Senate Revenue and Fiscal Affairs Committee on June 3, Sen. Dan "Blade" Morrish, R-Jennings, announced that the administration had identified the unused funds and had agreed to devote $21 million to upgrade a grain elevator facility that would be owned and operated by the Port of Lake Charles and employ about 15 people. It would give farmers a better market for rough and milled rice and expand trade to Cuba, Morrish said.

Morrish works with the Lake Charles river pilots.

Many lawmakers shocked

That the administration had found a large cache of money in an otherwise bleak budgetary landscape came as a shock to many lawmakers. Tucker this week learned that the source of the money was an escrow of unused cash resulting from bond interest payment reductions for the Mississippi River bridge.

Tucker said he thinks the fund could have been tapped years ago and might have relieved the need for bridge tolls that helped pay for a subsequent set of bonds.

The construction bill is scheduled to be debated next on the Senate floor. It will then have to go back to the House for further deliberations, and it is expected eventually to be hammered out by a compromise committee between the two sides. That committee is where Tucker expects to try to amend the bill to steer the money back toward the New Orleans area.
"Of course, like all other budgetary and capital outlay proposals, this is a recommendation the administration has made to the Legislature, and the Legislature has the ability to change that recommendation," Davis said.
Adam McBride, director of the Port of Lake Charles, said the grain elevator facility is more than 50 years old. Discussions with private investors did not pan out.

Robert Travis Scott can be reached at rscott@timespicayune.com or 225.342.4197.

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