Legislators mixed on Edwards' remedies

Local legislators had mixed reactions to Gov. John Bel Edwards’ speech Thursday night on the state’s budget shortfall. Some accused him of using the same tactics he spoke against, while another legislator called the speech an honest presentation of the state’s budget issues.
Edwards addressed the state Thursday night in a televised speech ahead of the special legislative session that starts Sunday and ends March 9.
The state has a $940 mil-lion budget deficit for the current fiscal year ending June 30, Edwards said in his speech. For the fiscal year beginning July 1, the state is facing a $2 billion budget deficit.
The Legislature has just three weeks, starting Sun-day, “to make the changes we need,” Edwards said.
State Sen. Bret Allain, R-Franklin, said he was “generally disappointed” in Ed-wards’ speech Thursday night.
“I know he says in the middle of it he wasn’t trying to scare people, but you’re telling them that if the Legislature doesn’t do what you want to do, you’re going to close universities. You’re going to close hospitals. You’re going to take away money from the disabled, and you’re not going to field a football team next year,” Allain said.
State Rep. Sam Jones, D-Franklin, said Edwards presented an “honest accounting of where our state budget is.”
Former Gov. Bobby Jindal left the state “in a mess” after inheriting a $1.4 billion surplus when he came into office, Jones said.
Legislators will have to cut some of the budget, while considering tax increases to fill the deficit for this fiscal year and next year, Jones said.
“Some colleges are telling us that they’re seriously looking at shutting down on April 30 because they won’t have the money to finish the year,” Jones said. “It’s a very sobering thing.”
State Rep. Beryl Amedee, R-Gray, said she was irritated that Edwards “chose to employ Washington-style scare tactics in his address last night.”
Edwards stated there will be “unimaginable cuts” if the Legislature doesn’t raise taxes quickly, Amedee said. Edwards’ examples of the cuts’ effects all involved health care and higher education, Amedee said.
Allain is willing to work with Edwards, but Edwards, in return, has to work with legislators to find solutions, he said.
Edwards has the constitutional authority to cut most of the budgets within state government by 5 percent, Allain said. The governor can also cut 3 percent to 5 percent of statutorily dedicated funds, Allain said.
Furthermore, Edwards could cut Minimum Foundation Program funds by 1 percent for K-12 education, which hasn’t seen any cuts in the past eight years. That proposal alone would save $300 million, Allain said.
“If we’ve got a $2 billion problem, at least half of it is going to have to be from efficiency, streamlining and cuts before we even consider additional taxes,” Allain said.
Most of the calls Jones has received since Edwards’ speech have been on Ed-wards’ announcement of possible cuts to TOPS. Stu-dents who are eligible for TOPS this year will still receive all of that scholarship money, but state leaders may cut the TOPS reimbursement to the universities by 20 percent, Jones said.
Edwards announcement of cuts to TOPS “appears to have no effect on the shortfall we face right now,” Amedee said. “I see it just as a scare tactic,” she said.
Amedee talked to Nicholls State administrators who said all students will receive their TOPS money for the spring semester. Universities’ requests for TOPS funding were due this week, which coincided with Edwards announcing the TOPS suspension, Amedee said.
Nicholls State leaders “fully expect” for the state to reimburse universities for TOPS payments once the Legislature works on the budget, Amedee said.
Louisiana’s charity hospitals are seeing the negative effects of Jindal’s public-private partnerships in that system, Jones said.
“I was for leaving the charity hospital system alone, like it was. It was functioning fine,” Jones said.
Jones said Jindal destroyed the hospital system and didn’t save the state any money, either. Wait times at those hospitals have gone from one week to two weeks to as long as six months, Jones said.
The projected deficit in the 2016-17 budget makes up almost 25 percent of that budget, Jones said.
“We’re just going to have to get after it,” Jones said of trying to solve the budget problems.
For the current fiscal year, the expected deficit makes up 40 percent to 45 percent of the remaining budget expenses, Jones said.
Two years ago, Jindal signed $3 billion worth of state contracts, and then, in 2015, he signed more than $14 billion in contracts “and stuck us with those on his way out the door,” Jones said.
Allain said Edwards has to meet the Legislature “in the middle” when tackling the budget deficit “and make some cuts to areas that haven’t been cut in the last eight years.”
Then, legislators may be willing to fill the budget map with some tax increases, but they can’t do it with that alone, Allain said. There needs to be a balance between cuts and tax increases, Allain said.
“This is not just the problem of the Legislature, of which he (Edwards) used to be a part of,” Allain said. “This is the state’s problem. This is all of our problem.”
The state should remove statutory dedications, which will allow legislators to not make health care and higher education take “the brunt of the shortfall,” Amedee said.
To truly fix the state’s budget, state leaders need to change the overall makeup of the budget and structure of state government, Amedee said.
“I’m disappointed that I don’t see these ideas included in the call for the special session,” Amedee said. “Trying to set a budget without these necessary changes is like throwing money into a bottomless pit.”