Rep. Abraham holds out against proposed state budget
Published 10:29 am Wednesday, May 11, 2016
BATON ROUGE — Rep. Mark Abraham of Lake Charles was the only Republican to vote against the state budget when the House Appropriations Committee sent it to the full House with an 18-4 vote.
Abraham said committee members were given a long list of proposed amendments to House Bill 1 with little information about how they compared with earlier versions of the proposed budget.
Gov. John Bel Edwards called a special session that began in Feb. 14 to deal with a $943 million budget deficit for the fiscal year ending June 30. A $2 billion deficit was forecast for the fiscal year beginning July 1.
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Legislators at a special session wiped out most of the current year’s deficit, but came up about $800 million short of fully funding programs for fiscal year 2016-17. Edwards on April 12 told members of the House Appropriations Committee his administration made recommended cuts to deal with what was then a $792 million deficit.
Abraham said members of the committee were given a spreadsheet showing how the governor’s proposed cuts affected departments of state government.
But he said the budget amendments the committee were given Monday offered no way to see how they affected state agencies, and he wasn’t going to vote for the changes without more information.
One amendment restored a $183 million reduction in the TOPS scholarship program. Abraham said he wanted to know where the TOPS money came from and was told he would get the information but didn’t have it Tuesday afternoon.
Amendments restored funding to all of the nine public-private hospital partnerships, but Abraham said he still doesn’t know how the Moss Memorial clinic in Lake Charles is funded.
Abraham said the way the state inspector general’s budget was handled is an example of the confusion. He said the original budget for the IG was just over $2 million. That was cut by $419,033, leaving a $1.67 million budget after revenues were raised at the special session. But Abraham said the IG budget ended up being only $775,863 and one amendment approved by the committee Monday effectively eliminated the office.
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The committee took unprecedented action when it voted to give state Attorney General Jeff Landry more flexibility over his own budget, giving him an independent budget. Abraham said he voted for the change although he missed some of the debate about the move. He said Tuesday he doesn’t think it’s a good idea to pull one agency out of the state budget.
Jay Dardenne, state commissioner of administration, said, “It purports to raise the attorney general to a separate branch of government.”
Dardenne told The Times-Picayune that Secretary of State Tom Schedler was also approached about receiving his own budget authority but declined the offer.
Edwards told The Advocate, “I think it would be problematic to start breaking out agencies from the general appropriations bill. I don’t see that it’s going to become law.”
State Reps. Tony Bacala
