Politician personally visits university to discuss state budget

Louisiana Secretary of State Tom Shedler addressed students at the University of Louisiana at Monroe, mainly discussing ways to trim expenses from the state’s budget.

Shedler spoke about how mon­ey can be saved by reducing the number of elections held in Lou­isiana.

According to the secretary, Louisiana has had 70 elections in the past five years, the most by any southern state. Georgia had the second most with 38 while North Carolina had the fewest with nine.

Plans to reduce the number of elections, and therefore expense, are in motion, according to Shed­ler.

He said that he intends to in­troduce a bill in the state legisla­ture that will force streamlining of elections by combining them into fewer dates.

The result would mean few­er elections, but some represen­tative seats would remain emp­ty until an election rolled around, rather than holding special elec­tions every time one became va­cant.

Another focus of the speech was clarifying the duties of the sec. of state’s office.

In Louisiana , the secretary is mainly in charge of overseeing elections, awarding business li­censes and managing the 17 mu­seums around the state.

This includes the Chennault Aviation Museum in Monroe.

At the end of his speech, Shed­ler fielded questions from the au­dience.

Waiting to be heard were most­ly ULM political science and La. history classes, as well as an ad­vanced civics class from West Monroe High School.

Questions on most students’ minds were about higher educa­tion budget cuts, to which Shedler said he sympathized with the col­lege students’ concerns.

“The toughest questions of all come from college students,” Sh­edler said.

“Unfortunately, education and health care are the first things cut and the worst things cut.”

Amanda Norris, an undeclared sophomore from West Monroe, attended as part of her La. histo­ry class.

“It was a great speech,” said Norris.

“I learned a lot about poli­tics and I liked his views on high­er education.”

John Sutherlin, a political sci­ence professor at ULM, seemed impressed with the secretary’s speech.

“[The speech] was very infor­mative. Secretary of State is a misunderstood and complex of­fice that often flies under the ra­dar,” he said.

Sutherlin also added it was en­couraging to see officials working on other methods to trim the bud­get deficit rather than just cutting.

He says Shedler’s experience in local, city and legislative govern­ment gives him a good perspec­tive on running the state.