A $28 billion spending plan that Commissioner of Administration Jay Dardenne calls a “pretend budget” that Gov. John Bel Edwards is expected to veto should it reach his desk was approved today by the Louisiana Senate.
It’s an interesting exercise in policymaking; the House now has the choice of agreeing with the Senate version of the budget or restarting negotiations to work out the differences. Either way, the budget will be retooled during a special session convening Tuesday.
The ongoing regular session is expected to conclude Friday, leading to a special session where lawmakers will debate a variety of tax and revenue ideas to address a $648 million shortfall. That special session—the second of the year and the sixth so far this term—will be hectic and rushed, especially with a June 4 adjournment.
The Senate passed the budget, as found in HB 1, Tuesday by a 27-10 vote, with opposition from Democratic lawmakers.
“It is not fair to the people we serve,” Sen. Karen Carter Peterson, D-New Orleans, said of the legislation. “This is an exercise in futility.”
The governor’s comments prior to the Senate’s vote took on the same tone. “I have no plans to allow that budget document to guide our appropriations for next fiscal year,” said Edwards, who appears to be turning his attention to the approaching special session.
His 32-item call has many familiar items, such as sales tax increases and income tax bracket compression, but does not include items that were key to the collapse of the last special session in March.
It does not include any provisions related to Medicaid work requirements, fraud detection via tax return inspection or shifts in co-pays for non-emergency visits. Those provisions, along with a Republican effort to make passage of Democrat-backed bills conditional upon passage of GOP-backed bills, were mainly to blame for the failure to meet a compromise.
The Senate version of the budget props up health care priorities, such as services for the disabled and elderly, by making deep cuts to other areas of state government. While senators weren’t pleased with this formula, many called it a demonstration of the state’s critical needs and justification for creating new revenue sources in the special session.
