Budget cuts big and small hit agencies

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Budget reductions large and small hit a number of state agencies during the 10-day Extraordinary Session of the 2017 Legislature as lawmakers eventually erasing a $304 million mid-year budget deficit.
Some entities “contributed” millions to the cause, mostly accompanied by the grinding of clenched teeth. And, proving it’s hard to leave any coin unturned, there was the $293 budget reduction to the Bicycle and Pedestrian Safety Fund in the Department of Transportation and Development.
At $293, why bother?
It’s a matter of equity, maintains DOTD Customer Service Manager Brendan Rush. The Edwards’ Administration wanted a 5 percent reduction many state programs. Fair is fair. Five percent was shaved from the bicycle overall fund, says Rush.
But it prompted Sen. Sharon Hewitt, R-Slidell, to complain early on that the broad brush approach doesn’t shrink government or make it more efficient.
“What he found was a whole bunch of little pockets of money, like in a sock drawer,” Hewitt said, holding up the $293 deduction from the Bicycle and Pedestrian Fund as Exhibit 1 of money “collecting dust.”
“You’ve got to look everywhere for cuts,” said the governor’s chief spokesperson, Richard Carbo, this week. “If there’s money in the sock drawer, we absolutely want to take that. I think that’s what people expect us to do.”
DOTD Communications Director Rodney Mallett said the fund is used for one thing: to publish a bike map for state tourist centers.
“When you just say, ‘We’re going to cut five percent,’ you have some unintended consequences,” Hewitt complained. “It’s difficult unless you’re an expert in each agency to know exactly where the opportunities are.”
“No one is looking and saying that the Louisiana Bicycle and Pedestrian Fund has too much money in it,” said Division of Administration spokesperson Jacques Berry. “We’re saying that everyone has to sacrifice at that five percent level, which is where the governor’s authorization stops.”
Berry noted that current law prevents the governor from taking more than five percent of any fund.
Rush said the fund comes from less-than-lucrative sales of the state’s “Share the Road” license plates, which are used to raise awareness for bicycles and pedestrians. “I guess every little bit counts.”
There are additional examples. The Louisiana Commission on Law Enforcement gives up $521 out of its Innocence Compensation Fund.
Law Enforcement Training Manager Bob Wertz said that money was simply all that was left over in their budget this fiscal year after the state awarded compensation to victims of wrongful convictions.
Only the cuts from innocence compensation and bicycle safety were under $1,000 in the governor’s proposal. Among the largest cuts, meanwhile, were around $128 million from the Department of Health, $7.4 million from the state police and nearly $4.5 million taken from Juvenile Justice.
The governor, however, wasn’t the only one getting miserly with cuts.
An alternative to the governor’s bill, offered by Rep. Rick Edmonds, R-Baton Rouge, takes $2 from the Caldwell Parish economic development fund, $80 from the East Feliciana tourist commission, $134 from the Grant Parish economic development and $322 from the Audubon Golf Trail fund while a rival bill by Rep. Cameron Henry, R-Metairie, takes $149 from the state’s sex offender registry technology fund.
Berry warns that nitpicking over these small numbers focuses attention in the wrong place.
The state’s mid-year shortfall debate did not address the larger systemic changes, he said, attention should be put with a new fiscal year only four months away..