Senate pours on the pressure

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The Senate staged an unprecedented public conference committee on House Bill 1, the key funding bill, Wednesday night calling for the House Republicans and public stakeholders at risk of cuts to come together to better understand the effects of the House’s plan to leave money unappropriated as a hedge against potential revenue shortfalls in the coming fiscal year.
They invited House leadership to attend, an invitation that predictably went immediately into the wastebasket.
The proposal would impose further cuts on higher education, corrections, the Department of Children and Family Services, and the Department of Health and Hospitals, as well as nix potential pay raises for 38,000 civil service employees.
Rep. Pat Smith, D-Baton Rouge, was the only House conferee, to attend, but noted she was able to give little input because she had been left out of budget negotiations. Smith was officially named to the conference committee Wednesday earlier that day which will meet Thursday to forge a compromise.
Smith’s appointment likely was a move to appease House Democrats who have threatened to veto the state’s capital outlay plan if they’re unsatisfied with the final budget. Rep. Cameron Henry, R-Metairie, and House Speaker Taylor Barras, R-New Iberia, who are leading negotiations for the House Republicans, didn’t attend the meeting.
Commissioner of Administration Jay Dardenne said the Senate’s proposal was a responsible spending plan that made use of available state dollars while still remaining austere. Dardenne added the state doesn’t have the option to withhold spending when departments are already strained from years of continued cuts.
“We have many needs in the state that are not being met because we’ve realized an awful lot of cuts over the course of the past two years,” Dardenne said. “There are obviously very real cuts realized in this budget. The way you sent it back over to the House was not free from pain, but to multiple those cuts based upon the proposal that’s before you is just unsatisfactory.”
Corrections Secretary Jimmy LeBlanc said the $17.8 million cut would force the department to furlough 4,600 inmates over the next six months, placing additional strain on probation and parole officers, already overworked and struggling to maintain employee numbers.
Reducing the number of non-violent, non-sex offender inmates in the state prison system was a main component of the justice reinvestment task force package that cleared the Legislature this session. LeBlanc said though that’s true the furlough is meant to occur over a decade, not in under a year, and the sudden change could have negative repercussions for his employees, the offenders and probation and parole officers.
The potential furlough of thousands of inmates isn’t the only problem probation and parole officers would face under the House’s proposed cuts.
The officers are also among the 38,000 classified civil service employees who would lose the potential two percent pay raise the Senate fully funded. Officers have testified the raise is a key step in reducing the department’s double-digit turnover rates.
The final group to testified was higher education leaders, with the presidents from the LSU system, the University of Louisiana system, Southern University system and the Louisiana Community and Technical Colleges system crowded together at the testifying table to ward off reductions to higher education funding.
The House plan would result in an $8.5 million cut to the LSU system, a $5 million cut to the UL system, a $2.8 million cut to LCTCS schools, and a $1 million cut to the Southern system.
LSU system President F. King Alexander said lawmakers shouldn’t fully fund the TOPS scholarship program if they’re forced to cut institutional budgets.
LSU and other systems, he said, have decreased course offerings, waning faculty numbers and significant maintenance backlogs that prevent them from offering current students the best possible education.
“We need to have our institutions funded first and foremost...TOPS to nowhere doesn’t get you much,” he said.
Senate Finance chairman Eric LaFleur, D-Ville Platte, told the Manship School News Service the hearings helped inform senators’ for a counter offer and there’s “still open ground about where we may end up.”.