Louisiana’s Fiscal Hawks Score A Victory Monday

By KPEL 96.5 April 23, 2013 10:20 AM

In the battle to reform the state budgeting process, the legislative “fiscal hawks” scored a victory Monday, as four of their reform bills cleared the first hurdle and passed House Appropriations committee.

Two of the bills would change the way the Revenue Estimating Committee (of which Louisiana’s Governor is usually able to exert his influence on three of the four members) recognizes expected revenues.  Another bill would actually cause the state operating budget to be split into two separate bills, one for discretionary spending and the other for non-discretionary, during times when cuts to Higher Education or state-funded healthcare are proposed.

The “fiscal hawks”, led by Republican House members Brett Geymann, John Schroder, Cameron Henry and also Acadiana legislator Simone Champagne, have recently found some Democrat allies to help support some of theirbudget reform proposals.  This is significant, as during the budget battle last year, the Jindal Administration relied HEAVILY on support from House Democrats to pass their budget.  In fact, more Democrats voted for last year’s final budget in the House than Republicans.

However, the Legislative Session is still in the early weeks. The real test of who will stand and continue to support some of these budget reforms will be in the later days of the session, as the Administration uses Capital Outlay (HB 2) monies for local projects to buy the votes of not-so-strong legislators.

Nevertheless, the “fiscal hawks” appear to have the upper hand, despite the Jindal Administration doing its best last session and in recent months leading up to this year’s session to try and discredit their efforts.  Many amongst thebudget reform group were against the Administration’s rush to eliminate the state income tax this session, preferring to first establish some changes in an attempt to better stabilize the revenue estimating and budget process.

The argument from many of the “hawks” hasn’t been that we can’t cut the budget, but rather, we should better prioritize state spending AND be more up-front with the needed cuts from the beginning, rather than cutting mid-year, which then forces departments to spread the reductions over a 6 month period rather than 12 months.

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