Jindal staff presents $30.1 billion proposed budget

Gov. Bobby Jindal recommended a $30.1 billion budget Friday for next year that continues most state services and programs, cuts government jobs, anticipates new tax breaks for businesses and increases dollars on education and health care.

The governor complained of “out of control” government spending during his campaign, but his spending proposal for the 2008-09 year is larger than the budget approved by lawmakers a year ago and would boost state cash spending by a half-billion dollars.

Despite the increase, Jindal’s budget chief, Commissioner of Administration Angele Davis, called the proposal “the beginning of a new direction for state government” with 1,057 fewer government jobs and a lesser reliance on one-time dollars to pay for ongoing programs.

“Not everybody got everything they wanted, but we think, from our perspective, that everybody got what they needed,” Davis said of the proposal she presented to the joint House and Senate budget committee.

The new budget year begins July 1. Lawmakers will craft a final budget plan in the legislative session that starts March 31, but a governor’s recommendations usually factor heavily into the budget that is approved. The budget must be balanced.

Under the governor’s plan, new dollars would be spent to give public school teachers an average $1,019 annual pay raise, to hire 50 new state troopers, to continue work on a statewide emergency communications system and to increase spending on nursing homes and doctors. Funding for the state ethics board would increase, new jobs would be created at the economic development department and new money would be poured into job training, literacy and preschool programs.

Nearly every state department would lose jobs, though the positions recommended for cutting currently are vacant. Cutting the dollars for those jobs would save more than $42 million in state cash that can be spent on other items, said Ray Stockstill, director of budget policy and management in Jindal’s financial office.

Last year, lawmakers approved a $29.7 billion operating budget for the current year that grew to $34.3 billion as new federal dollars – almost entirely recovery aid after hurricanes Katrina and Rita – were added throughout the year.

Davis said Jindal’s budget proposal would be a 12 percent decrease from this year’s budget, but that reduction is entirely related to the loss of one-time federal hurricane recovery aid that only passes through the state budget, not reductions in state government program spending.

Of the budget Jindal recommended, more than $7 billion, or 24 percent of the total, is direct flow-through federal aid related to Katrina and Rita.

For comparison, the current year’s budget without hurricane disaster recovery spending is $21.7 billion. Jindal is proposing $22.5 billion in non-disaster recovery spending for next year, according to the documents submitted to the legislative committee.

“We feel that we have proposed a very fiscally responsible budget to you,” Davis said.

One-quarter of the spending would flow to education, and nearly one-third would pay for health care services and social services. Jindal wants $110 million set aside to cover the costs of business tax breaks he’s proposing and a reshuffling of tax dollars to more road and bridge repairs.

Lawmakers – who will begin combing through the governor’s recommendations next week – mainly praised their first view of the proposal. Among the concerns raised, Rep. Elbert Guillory, D-Opelousas, worried about the jobs cut at state prison facilities. Sen. John Smith, D-Leesville, said lawmakers needed to move more money into transportation.

Rep. Karen Carter Peterson, D-New Orleans, questioned a proposed $10 million increase in education funding for the “School Choice Initiative,” a program for students in New Orleans to go to private and parochial schools.

“That wouldn’t be vouchers, would it?” Peterson said.

Several lawmakers questioned a recommendation to plump up a $140 million economic development fund that is designed to attract so-called “mega-projects,” the big ticket manufacturing facilities, by another $307 million.

Sen. Eric LaFleur, D-Ville Platte, said some of the money may be better spent on retention and expansion efforts for existing businesses in Louisiana and on attracting smaller facilities that could be brought to Louisiana at less expense to taxpayers.

Meanwhile, the state’s teacher unions are seeking more money for teacher pay raises.

Steve Monaghan, the head of the Louisiana Federation of Teachers, issued a statement Friday saying it was disappointing that Jindal’s budget proposal didn’t include pay raises for school support workers, like bus drivers and cafeteria workers.

He also worried about Jindal’s proposal to set aside a pool of money to reward teachers for performance, saying teachers had misgivings about how their performance would be graded.