BATON ROUGE, La. — Bills are moving through the legislature during Governor Landry's special session on crime.
Before they're passed, the bills are debated on the chamber floors, but some of the house floor debate hasn't been much of a discussion. During the question and answer, some lawmakers were trying to get more information, but the authors of the bills didn't seem to have it.
Some of Representative Mandie Landry's questions were answered with "I don't know."
"It’s pretty clear these came directly from the governor and his staff that they asked people to carry them, and that’s fine, but tell us that’s what happened," Rep. Landry says.
Steven Procopio, President of the Public Affairs Research Council of Louisiana, a nonprofit research organization that helps government reform, says that is likely what's happening.
"Let’s be clear, the Governor, his number one issue was running on crime, that was the number one issue for a lot of voters, and so he has a specific set of things he wants to pass," Procopio says.
Representative Landry says her colleagues' lack of knowledge of the bills they authored is concerning. She says while some bills during regular sessions don't need much research, bills like the ones being brought during the special session do since they impact so many people.
"What has been really disappointing is for the majority of them they have not spoken to people this will affect," Rep. Landry says. "We don’t do that for everything we have, but for things that are so substantive in a session that’s so public, they should’ve done that. To me, it’s also an insult to those agencies."
Procopio kind of agrees but says it's just part of the process of a special session, and there's not really a way to change it.
"Constitutionally, this is the power for calling special sessions, that’s the reason why you’ll see governors call special sessions early on first year because that’s when they’re at the height of their popularity, and they really want to get bills through to say look the stuff I said I’ll do I did," Procopio says.
He says the legislature is also trying to get this all done before the regular session that starts Monday, March 11.
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