Louisiana House debates $25B budget for next year

BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) — Louisiana House members disagreed Thursday over whether they should use nearly $270 million in one-time money to piece together next year's budget or if they should more deeply cut public colleges and health care programs.

The $25 billion spending plans under discussion would pay for agency operating expenses and programs in the new fiscal year that begins July 1.

At issue is how much one-time cash legislators want to patch into the budget to pay for continuing services.

Conservative Republicans say the dollars create false expectations in state agencies, paying for services that the state won't be able to afford year after year. Other lawmakers and Gov. Bobby Jindal's administration say stripping the money would force harmful cuts to critical services.

On the chopping block and most vulnerable to further reductions are health care services and public college programs.

Appropriations Committee Chairman Jim Fannin, who handles the budget bills, urged the House to keep the one-time cash in the spending plans, saying it's the right thing to do for the citizens of the state. He disagreed with suggestions it was fiscally irresponsible to use the money.

"I would say to you, members, you need to know what that money does to your district if it's not there. You need to know how it affects your folks back home," said Fannin, D-Jonesboro, a Jindal ally.

He said when the economy begins to improve, state income tax revenue will pick up. He equated the use of one-time money to tapping into a savings account to continue paying for household bills when a family's income drops.

"What I see helps me believe that we will have the revenue to come back," Fannin said.

Critics of the piecemeal budgeting strategy said the state's budget isn't sustainable at current spending levels, and they said agency spending could be reduced without devastating effects.

"Many of us believe we can do this without hurting those critical areas. We want to try that," said Rep. Brett Geymann, R-Lake Charles, a leader of the effort to strip the one-time money.

No one has offered a list of places to cut so far, however.

Rep. Joe Harrison, R-Napoleonville, said the costs of the state's free college tuition program called TOPS have grown too large.

"There are things here that we can address rather than going after the truly needy people of this state," Harrison said.

But his previous attempts to rein in those costs have been repeatedly rejected by lawmakers.

The budget proposal contains an estimated $268 million in one-time money to pay for continuing programs and services, according to an analysis by the Legislative Fiscal Office.

Louisiana's top two Republican leaders, Jindal and U.S. Sen. David Vitter, are at odds over the use of one-time money. Vitter is urging state lawmakers to remove the dollars, calling it poor financial management to use the financing.

As it stands with the one-time money, public colleges face cuts of $71 million next year, which higher education leaders say would threaten their ability to offer educational programs to students, coming on top of several years of reductions.

LSU's public hospitals would be hit with a nearly $22 million drop in funding, which hospital officials said could shutter services and damage medical health training programs.

State agencies could be forced to make up to 2,700 layoffs.

Private companies would be hired to run a state employee health care plan in the Office of Group Benefits and two facilities that care for developmentally disabled people in Hammond and Bossier City.

The operations of ferries in Gretna, Algiers and Chalmette also would be turned over to private firms, while ferries at Edgard and White Castle would be shuttered. State prisons in Pineville and Keithville would be closed, and the inmates at J. Levy Dabadie Correctional Center and Forcht-Wade Correctional Center would be shifted to other facilities.

Fannin said the only agency slated for an increase is the Department of Health and Hospitals, which would get a $521 million boost. DHH said that's not enough money to keep up with increasing health costs, and doctors and private hospitals that care for Medicaid patients would get fewer dollars for those services because of cuts in their provider rates. Nearly 170 developmentally disabled people who would have been eligible to get increased at-home care through the Medicaid program instead won't move off a waiting list.

Meanwhile, lawmakers also haven't decided how to deal with a $220 million deficit in the current year's budget. Lawmakers are weighing whether to use the state's "rainy day" fund to plug the gap because it would be difficult to cut such a large amount of spending in the final two months of the budget year that ends June 30.