BATON ROUGE — House Speaker Chuck Kleckley expressed confidence Thursday that the Legislature has the tools it needs to provide stable funding for higher education and health care now and in the future. Both have received major budget reductions over the last seven years.

“We continue to work with members of the House and the leadership to make it happen,” Kleckley said.

What Kleckley is talking about is dealing with a $1.6 billion deficit for the fiscal year beginning July 1 and forecasts that future deficits could be even higher.

The tools Kleckley, R-Lake Charles, is talking about are the bills that have either cleared or are on the agenda of the House Ways and Means Committee. All tax measures go through that committee. Its counterpart in the state Senate is the Revenue and Fiscal Affairs Committee.

The House committee forwarded 14 bills to the full House on Monday. They deal with solar and corporate income tax credits and exemptions and the Enterprise Zone incentives, which encourage business investments in impoverished areas.

Tuesday, the committee advanced measures dealing with movie tax credits and Internet taxes.

The pace continued Wednesday when the committee sent bills to the full House dealing with the suspension of some state sales tax exemptions and a one-year moratorium on sales tax holidays.

Some 280 bills have been filed dealing with tax credits, exemptions and rebates. More of them are scheduled for a Monday hearing.

Kleckley said the plan is for the Legislature to work with business and industry and local government agencies. They have to find common ground, he said.

That will be difficult for a couple of reasons. 

Local governments are upset about a Senate bill approved in committee that eliminates the inventory taxes that are levied at the local level. The legislation contains no mechanism for replacing the funds local governments would lose.

Business and industry groups have opposed a majority of the tax measures that have been approved by the House Ways and Means Committee.

“At the end of the day, everybody has to be part of the solution,” Kleckley said. “It’s a complicated puzzle with many pieces, and all of them haven’t been put together.

“By June 11 (adjournment day), we will have a balanced budget and long-term solutions for higher education and health care.”

Part of the solution, he said, will involve tax exemptions for things like horizontal drilling, movie tax credits and corporate loopholes, exemptions and credits.

Another goal, he said, is to lay the groundwork for the next governor, who can work with a tax reform plan put together by economists from LSU and Tulane University. The plan was the result of a request by Kleckley and Senate President John Alario, R-Westwego.

Alario, who has served longer in the Legislature than any of his colleagues, said lawmakers will try to put a budget solution together under the guidelines laid down by Gov. Bobby Jindal. The governor has signed a no new tax pledge and insists that any new revenues have to be offset by reductions elsewhere.

Neither Kleckley nor Alario has been willing to say what might happen if a solution can’t be found under those guidelines.

House Speaker Chuck Kleckley