Legislators butt heads over budget in final hours
Published 1:32 pm Thursday, June 8, 2017
<p class="p1">BATON ROUGE — With one day left in the legislative session and lawmakers seemingly at an impasse on which version of the budget should be approved, the Senate Finance Committee held a meeting to let agencies share how more than $150 million in proposed cuts by House leadership would hurt them.
<p class="p1">The timing of the meeting — held after the Senate adjourned Wednesday afternoon — was unusual because public testimony on the potential impact of budget cuts happened earlier in the session, which must end by 6 p.m. today.
<p class="p1">The meeting was scheduled after House Republican leaders released a revised budget plan that took out more than $150 million the Senate wanted to spend on several agencies. Services that would be affected include health, higher education, prisons, child welfare and state police.
<p class="p1">The change also slashes $18 million that would provide a pay raise for 38,000 state civil service workers. Commissioner of Administration Jay Dardenne called the cuts “extremely unsatisfactory.”
<p class="p1">Jimmy LeBlanc, secretary of the state Department of Public Safety and Corrections, said the 2 percent civil service pay raise is needed. He said over 4,000 inmates would be furloughed under the House budget plan.
<p class="p1">The committee also heard from higher education officials, including LSU President King Alexander and Louisiana Community and Technical College System President Monty Sullivan.
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<p class="p1">Sullivan said the Senate set the budget “the way it should have been to begin with.” He said lawmakers should fund colleges and universities at last year’s levels.
<p class="p1">The budget will be debated by a six-person conference committee, which comprises three lawmakers from the House and three from the Senate. The House conferees are House Speaker Taylor Barras, R-New Iberia, Cameron Henry, R-Metairie, and Patricia Smith, D-Baton Rouge. As of Wednesday, the Senate conferees hadn’t been named.
<p class="p1">Barras and Henry were invited to the Senate Finance meeting but didn’t attend. Smith told the committee that she has been left out of budget negotiations and only saw them Wednesday morning.
Alexander called for fully funding TOPS but not “on the backs of our institutions anymore.”
