Analysis: Jindal’s sale ideas seem desperate

Gov. Bobby Jindal’s considering the equivalent of a state fire sale to drum up cash for Louisiana’s budget next year, offering ideas that range from selling state prisons and office buildings to selling future profits from the lottery program.

Jindal calls the proposals that he’s weighing “creative’’ ways to fill budget gaps, but they smack of desperation in a crisis, a sort of “Step right up, everything must go! Will take best offer’’ because the financial numbers look so dire.

The ideas also fly in the face of the governor’s own long-held rhetoric against using one-time money to pay for ongoing expenses n not that he hasn’t repeatedly violated that stance as the state’s money problems have worsened.

Jindal first offered the ideas to raise hundreds of millions of dollars in quick cash in a closed-door meeting with top lawmakers, and he stressed he wasn’t endorsing the proposals. Instead, he said they “merit further evaluation’’ as state officials weigh how to close a $1.6 billion budget gap in the 2011-12 fiscal year that begins July 1.

Jindal will present his budget proposal to lawmakers in March. The only things clear about that proposal is it won’t include tax hikes to patch holes and it will have to include some range of cuts.

Complaints about the cuts being considered have grown, with college students protesting on the state Capitol steps, health providers running ads decrying the reductions and newspaper editorial pages filled with critics.

That’s a sticky political situation for a governor facing re-election in the fall of 2011.

But if the governor was trying to float trial balloons with his sale ideas, they went over as though they were filled with lead.

State lawmakers’ reactions ranged from diplomatically suggesting they’ll at least consider any possibilities to questioning the proposals’ logistics to outright saying they were nonsensical. Critics stretched across both the Democratic and Republican parties. No lawmaker has stepped up to publicly embrace the proposals.

“It just doesn’t make sense to me, where we’re going,’’ said Sen. Dan Claitor, R-Baton Rouge, at a Senate Finance Committee hearing where discussion of the prisons sale became a broader conversation about selling off state property.

Sen. Mike Michot, R-Lafayette, chairman of the Finance Committee, said he was concerned the sales of state assets would provide only short-term cash relief, but no method for tackling the state’s ongoing budget woes. The shortfalls are projected to stretch over several years unless permanent adjustments are made to shrink spending levels.

Republican state Treasurer John Kennedy equated the governor’s ideas to a junkie selling his television and radio to “pay for a fix’’ and to postpone dealing with his long-term addiction.

Among the possibilities listed by Jindal are selling prisons in Allen and Winn parishes, privatizing a state-run health insurance program, selling future lottery proceeds to investors to get immediate cash and selling state office buildings and then leasing back the space.

Selling state office buildings would generate an estimated $400 million alone, while the sale of the future growth in lottery earnings could bring in more than $250 million.

Even if all the ideas Jindal is considering were passed, cuts would be needed. The governor said the one-time dollars could help lessen reductions while his administration also shrinks the size of government permanently and until the state’s revenues stabilize.

“I think it would be irresponsible to try to force those reductions, especially given the impact on higher education and health care, without at least considering other options,’’ Jindal said.

Though he’s complained previously about one-time fixes, Jindal said, “I think it can make sense to use one-time money to continue to restructure government.’’

Lawmakers and the Jindal administration should ask themselves, however, whether they’d be holding the fire sale simply to delay the day of budget reckoning and get through an election cycle or whether it would be in the best interest of state services and residents.