By The Associated Press
BATON ROUGE — Gov. John Bel Edwards’ proposal to close Louisiana’s $304 million deficit relies heavily on using the state “rainy day” fund, cutting spending in the health department and tapping into millions in available fund balances to fill gaps.
The Democratic governor released his budget-rebalancing plan Monday, the starting point for negotiations with lawmakers ahead of a 10-day special session called by Edwards to begin Feb. 13.
Edwards seeks to shield the K-12 public school financing formula, public colleges, state prisons and Louisiana’s child welfare agency from slashing.
He suggests a 2.5 percent cut to the budgets that pay for the state Supreme Court and the Louisiana Legislature. He proposes reductions across a wide array of agencies, such as the Office of Juvenile Justice and state police. Offices led by the attorney general and the insurance commissioner would take reductions.
About $100 million of the plan involves tapping into other available financing — in effect, using fund balances to fill gaps, rather than cuts. Dollars from a drug company settlement, better-than-expected fee collections and other money would be used. Money allocated to the legislative auditor’s office to pay for a new office building would instead fill budget holes. The health department would get $44 million in higher-than-anticipated tobacco tax collections.
Edwards seeks to shield the K-12 public school financing formula, public colleges, state prisons and Louisiana’s child welfare agency from slashing.
A large portion of the governor’s plan hinges on using more than $119 million from the rainy day fund, which requires support from two-thirds of the House and Senate. The proposal is running into pushback from some lawmakers, mainly Republicans, who say they don’t want to raid any more savings accounts to fill budget gaps.
Edwards said in a statement that his administration “sat down with every agency to identify where budget adjustments could be made” while protecting state priorities.