The Legislature’s Joint Budget Committee met earlier this week to hear, among other items, a fiscal overview from the Division of Administration. Lawmakers weren’t thrilled to learn about the possibility of an $800 million budget gap for the 2023-2024 fiscal year. Commissioner of Administration Jay Dardenne and his team stressed this scenario was based on speculation and would not be baked into the executive budget. Like the budget ultimately passed by lawmakers, that proposal will be balanced. “What we’re attempting to project here,” added Ryan Guidry, deputy director of the Office of Planning and Budget, “is the existing level of service and the cost of that in the out years—doing today’s business in tomorrow’s dollars.” The possibility of a budget gap next fiscal year does not take into account the potential for increased collections. The possibility also assumes the state will be on the hook for a lower Medicaid financing rate and hundreds of thousands of dollars due for federal levee work related to Hurricane Katrina. Of course, all of that could change in the coming months before lawmakers gather in the 2023 regular session to draft the next budget.
Hiring: The newly formed Capitol Security Council meets Monday morning at the Capitol to discuss the hiring—for the first time—of a Capitol security director. Senate President Page Cortez is the chair of the new Council and House Speaker Clay Schexnayder is the vice chair.
They said it: “I don’t hate anybody. I start out the morning wanting to follow Jesus, but by 10 a.m., I just wanna slap somebody. It’s just another day in the life of working with our nation’s dopiest and most dim-witted.” –U.S. Sen. John Kennedy, via a campaign email.
Jeremy Alford publishes LaPolitics Weekly, a newsletter on Louisiana politics, at LaPolitics.com. Follow him on Twitter, or on Facebook. He can be reached at JJA@LaPolitics.com.
