Louisiana lawmakers are sitting on $86 million in off-the-books surpluses in their agencies, and the House and Senate’s new leaders say they haven’t decided how they want to spend the money that has been quietly amassing for years.
The dollars aren’t regularly discussed in budget hearings, and they’re not included in the yearly legislative spending plans. Their existence is tucked away in annual financial reports for the House, Senate and other legislative agencies that were recently filed by the legislative auditor’s office. The surpluses’ size approaches the $96 million allocated this year for legislative operations.
House Speaker Clay Schexnayder of Gonzales and Senate President Page Cortez of Lafayette, both Republicans, say they haven’t looked at the accountant’s figures or started discussions of how they might want to spend the money.
“You’re telling me something that I don’t even know,” Cortez said Tuesday. ”No, I don’t have any idea what we’re going to do with it.”
Schexnayder says he’ll “start looking at all of that” over the next few weeks, now that he’s completed committee assignments and can dig into details of other topics.
Both legislative leaders say they would consider steering some of the cash to needed repairs on the exterior of the Louisiana Capitol, where a temporary walkway protects the public entering the front doors from crumbling mortar that has been eroded by water damage. Repair work on the 1930s-era historic landmark is estimated to cost up to $60 million.
“One thing we don’t want to happen is to have a building like that deteriorate because we didn’t take care of it,” Schexnayder says.
Cortez agrees, saying repairs to the building that houses the legislative branch, the governor’s office and the offices of many other statewide elected officials need to be prioritized.
“I think that we really need to put some money towards the care of the building,” Cortez says.
While state general fund surpluses from tax collections get heavy scrutiny, the House and Senate have socked away dollars for years with little public discussion. It’s hard to determine how much money legislative agencies have at any given time because they don’t keep their funds in accounts with the state treasury like most other state agencies. But the surplus dollars are buried in the Legislature’s annual financial reports, growing slightly over the last year.
