The University Medical Center Board has postponed its May 5 meeting to consider the size, cost and financing of the planned teaching hospital in New Orleans, but the House Appropriations Committee is wading into controversies surrounding the project on Monday. New questions have been raised by a draft of a study commissioned by UMC that projects higher state subsidies and casts doubt on key economic assumptions made in earlier studies done for LSU, which has driven the planning process up to now. The current plan calls for a 424-bed, $1.2 billion medical center. LSU officials have been conferring with the consultants, Kaufman Hall, to seek revisions before a final report is written. That aroused the suspicion of U.S. Sen. David Vitter, a critic of the hospital’s planned size, who said “the inconvenient findings” have led to “an intense lobbying effort . . . to change the final report.” Vitter has asked U.S. Housing and Urban Development to deny the state’s application for $400 million in low-cost HUD bonds. Speaker Jim Tucker wants to know more about the $300 million the Legislature set aside for the project in 2006. Only $75 million of that is in a Treasury account, while the rest is an obligation recognized by the Bond Commission. Tucker believes the state will get federal approval to redirect some $1.2 billion in unspent hurricane recovery block grant money. If not, the state might need to finance that $225 million through general obligation bonds, which would count against the state’s debt ceiling and could thus affect other state projects. LSU and state DHH officials have said that a smaller hospital would not be able to attract enough private-pay patients and thus would be a greater burden on the state.
— Gov. Bobby Jindal on Tuesday defused a major budget issue by pulling back the proposed sale of three state prisons. He wants to wait to see if more revenue is recognized at the May meeting of the Revenue Estimating Conference to replace the $86 million in the budget to come from the prison sales. Speaker Jim Tucker, a member of REC, is not confident the money will materialize. If it does not, he says, “the House would cut Medicaid and not sell the prisons,” noting that the sale-and-lease-back plan would be “borrowing out of the problem.” Betting on anticipated revenue has caused problems for past administrations. While economists projected robust personal income and sales tax growth at the March REC meeting, the big worry remains the corporate income tax, which a legislative economist described as in “free fall” at that meeting. Most corporate returns are not filed until April and May. Opponents of the sales, including many local officials in central Louisiana, aren’t relaxing, for they expect the administration will seek to privatize two state-run facilities, in Avoyelles and Rapides parishes, which would take legislative approval.
They said it: During the House’s mandatory one-hour ethics training, Rep. Ernest Wooton rose to ask: “If I ask to go to the restroom, do I have to make up the whole hour?” House Clerk Butch Speer: “Yes, sir.”
(John Maginnis will publish a daily update on the legislative session at 3 p.m., available to LaPolitics Weekly subscribers on the Subscribers Only page at LaPolitics.com. You can register your user name and password on the Lapolitics home page.)
