House Republican leaders today started advancing a budget plan that largely mirrors Democratic Gov. John Bel Edwards’ proposal to use federal coronavirus aid to close a $1 billion gap caused by the pandemic without deeply slashing state services.
The House Appropriations Committee rewrote the package of budget measures to account for state tax and fee dollars lost because of the virus outbreak. The bills would rebalance this year’s budget without cuts and would craft spending plans for the upcoming 2020-21 year with only modest reductions.
The committee sent those to the full House for debate without objection, a rare moment of bipartisan financial agreement.
In the upcoming budget year that starts July 1, the TOPS college tuition program, the K-12 school financing formula and the social services department would be spared reductions. College campuses, health programs and some other state agencies would take some cuts.
Spending increases that Edwards and many lawmakers wanted for teacher pay, public colleges and early learning programs have been stripped from next year’s budget because Louisiana can no longer afford them.
Fears that the virus’s hit to the state treasury would force steep slashing across programs don’t play out under the proposal. The bills would use nearly $1.2 billion in federal assistance approved by Congress to respond to the pandemic and about $90 million from the rainy day fund to fill most shortfalls across the current and next budget years.
Commissioner of Administration Jay Dardenne, the governor’s chief financial adviser, said the more than $30 billion House budget plan differs from Edwards’ proposal by only about $12 million in state financing.
“We agree on a lot more than we disagree,” Dardenne says.
One significant point of budget disagreement has emerged, however, about how to spend $800 million in federal coronavirus aid that Edwards has earmarked for local government agencies. The committee proposed in separate legislation to carve out $200 million for small business aid and create a different process for sending the remaining $600 million to local agencies than the governor has set up. Read the full story.
