Join the budget game at solvethebudget.com

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The solution for Louisiana’s budget woes rests with Louisiana residents. Call it Fantasy Budgetry.
SolvetheBudget.com is a simulation scenario meant to challenge Louisianans into making the the tough decisions necessary to balance the state’s spending and revenue budget for the next fiscal year, including a predicted $440 million budget shortfall, just like the real-life lawmakers in Baton Rouge.
All the material you need to play is accessed atsolvethebudget.org. If you balance the budget, you earn the right to wear Pulitizer-Prize-winning political cartoonist Walt Handelsman’s “button” proclaiming that you succeeded. If you don’t, you start over.
The website’s interactive puzzle presents users with a variety of cutting and spending options, from removing a penny from the state sales tax to fully funding the TOPS scholarship program and everything in between.
Proudly proclaim your priorities.
The scale of the state budget shifts in response to each selection in a simulation of the real-life balancing act legislators currently face in the 2017 Regular Session.
One new fan of SolveTheBudget.com is Rep. Cameron Henry, R-Metairie, who, as chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, oversees the real-life political drama that goes into the making the fiscal sausage.
“Anything that gets the public involved in state government in general...is beneficial for everybody,” he said this week. “The more knowledge you have about it [the budget] the more insight you might be able to provide your own state legislator or your own state senator.”  
Further education and exposure to budget issues could lead to more constructive input from the public, he predicted.
The digital interactive challenge is the result of a partnership between Reilly Center for Media and Public Affairs in the Manship School of Mass Communication and The Advocate. It is supported by a grant from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.
LSU Professor Leonard Apcar, a former New York Times bureau chief and Switzer endowed chair in media literacy in the Manship School, masterminded the puzzle.
Apcar said the idea struck him while he was developing the university’s Solve the Budget forum in spring 2016, and he realized distilling the information into an interactive format could provide Louisianans an outlet to educate themselves.
“It’s a terrific means to educate and communicate to folks what spending amounts to, what taxes amount to, what the choices are and how you try to balance the budget,” Apcar said, adding the more Louisianans get involved, the better off the state will find itself.
With Louisiana constantly lurching from crisis to crisis, he noted, it’s important for the public to grasp the basics of complex fiscal issues.
Advocate Capitol Bureau Chief Mark Ballard said his time in the Statehouse has shown him the power that stems from understanding fiscal issues. When legislators understand how a cutting or funding decision at point A ripples to affect point Z they level up politically, much like in a video game, he said
Ballard said a similar knowledge, or even a basic understanding, is missing among the public. In conversations in church, at Boy Scout meetings, at the supermarket, people just aren’t getting it, he said.
Ballard was the workhorse behind the project, selecting language, refining ideas and framing the puzzle in a way that would hint at the complexity of fiscal issues without overwhelming everyday Louisianans with excessive fiscal jargon and budget simulations.
Some budget snobs have snubbed the project for its lack of complexity, but they tried to present the public with options that reflected real policies under discussion in the legislature, he said, adding that real life consequences tied to complex fiscal formulas affect residents directly.
“If Louisiana taxpayers had a better grasp of how these things work, then they would have a better grasp of ... what is it that I really want, and if I really want it, am I willing to do what is necessary to get it.”
Appropriations impresario Henry said educating the public is not something that happens overnight, and continued efforts, like Solvethebudget.org and increased legislative transparency, are important to encourage understanding of state government.
Henry said people think balancing the budget is straightforward when specific cuts don’t affect their parish but forget that balancing competing needs across the state makes decisions more complicated.
See for yourself: solvethebudget.com