Legislators knew the budget shortfall was coming, and it’s happened before. 
Higher education faced a 30 percent budget cut in 2008, said LSU President F. King Alexander. The upcoming cut will likely be between 42 to 45 percent of the higher education budget.
No one factor caused the budget shortfall. Constitutional protections, using one-time money, oil and Gov. Bobby Jindal’s pledge to not raise taxes all played a part in creating the deficit.
“We knew last year when we passed the state budget that we were passing a budget that was going to lead us into a billion dollar shortfall,” said Rep. Brett Geymann, R-Lake Charles, a member of the Joint Legislative Committee on the Budget. “That was not a responsible thing for us to do. That’s my biggest frustration with this.”
The Joint Legislative Committee on the Budget is the committee tasked with approving budgetary matters.
“We knew we were going to be short,” Geymann said. “We saw this coming and did nothing about it.”
Protections
Most state agencies are protected from budget cuts by Louisiana’s constitution, leaving health care and higher education for the taking, Geymann said. After new amendments passed in November, certain portions of health care are shielded from cuts.
There has never been an amendment protecting higher education on the ballot, Geymann said.
“They are basically exposed to a large portion of cuts whenever we’re faced with cutting,” Geymann said. “So what you’ll see when we have to make these cuts, mainly health care and higher education will absorb most of those cuts.”
Health care and higher education are also two of the most expensive agencies to operate, Geymann said.
Of the state’s $25 billion budget, only about $8-9 billion is part of the general fund, where higher education gets its money. About $2-3 billion is left unprotected by the constitution, Geymann said.
“Now, if you take the $2-3 billion that’s available to be cut and you look at a $1.6 billion shortfall, you can see what kind of situation we’ve gotten ourselves into,” Geymann said. “It’s not promising at all.”
Higher education is typically not one of the state’s priorities, said economics professor James Richardson, but universities are able to generate some of their own funds.
“We also have the ability to help ourselves more than most other state agencies,” Richardson said. “There are only so many things the state does, and you look at certain things. And higher education is not always one that comes to the top.”
A few ideas have been floated that could save more funding for higher education, said University director of external affairs Jason Droddy. One is an amendment providing for a dedication to hospitals.
“Basically, in exchange for hospitals paying a fee, they get to protect their base budget, which would be a great thing for higher education,” Droddy said.
The amendment would allow hospitals to pay a fee to the state in exchange for a portion of their budgets being safe from cuts, he said.
That idea is still a few steps away from fruition, but it remains a possibility, Droddy said. 
He said another issue involved the state transportation fund. A bill passed right before the recession sends revenues from the tax on vehicle sales to the general fund. However, once revenues hit a certain mark, the money starts going to the transportation trust fund.
“Our money comes out of the general fund, so that’s less for us,” Droddy said. “So we’re watching that transportation issue as well.”
Other States
Alabama is one of the few states with higher education protection, Droddy said. As a result, the University of Alabama experienced unprecedented growth. From 2006 to 2014, total enrollment grew by about 12,000 students, according to its website. LSU grew by less 1,000 during the same period, excluding online students, according to the University 14th Day
Enrollment Reports.
Other states, such as Florida, keep higher education systems small, Richardson said. The State University System of Florida represents 12 public universities compared with Louisiana’s 18.
“I think they made a decision to focus a little more on only a few,” Richardson said. “We have not been able to make that decision. In fact, we’ve made the other decision to be very expansive of our institutions. It takes money, obviously.”
Not all states have been so fortunate. If current trends continue, Colorado will no longer fund higher education by 2025, Alexander said. Iowa, Michigan and Minnesota will follow in 2029, 2030 and 2032, respectively.
Alexander said higher education funds started decreasing around 1980, and higher education nationwide has been sliding ever since.
In a nation where higher education is suffering, Louisiana is still near the bottom. Funding for the state’s flagship university already ranks 46th in the nation, receiving $110 million from the state, Alexander said.
“Next year, that reduction would put us at about $58 million, so almost half of the funding,” Alexander said. “We get about 13.5 percent of all of our revenues from the state right now on our main campus. This would knock us to about 6 percent.”
Louisiana also ranks eighth in the nation in tuition increases since 2008, according to Inside Higher Ed. Richardson said the tuition increases compensate for the lack of state funding. 
“That was replacing money the state had given us in the past,” Richardson said. “We really couldn’t improve the institution.”
One-Time Money
For the past decade, the governor’s office has used one-time funds to pay for recurring expenses, Geymann said. The one-time money comes from outlets like sold assets or lawsuit settlements.
When the budget was approved, legislators knew some one-time revenue funds, like tax amnesty and Medicaid trust fund money, would not be there, he said.
“We were losing several sources of funding that we knew were going away,” Geymann said. “We chose to do nothing about it.”
Governors use one-time funds so they won’t have to make unpopular political decisions to cut expenses or raise taxes, he said. 
“We rely on that one-time source of revenue, and what happens the next year is we have the same problem again,” Geymann said. “We have relied on the use of one-time revenue, accounting tricks, shuffling money around, different gimmicks where we can technically be balanced, but, in reality, we’re not.”
The one-time money has been used to cover operating expenses like salaries, travel and retirement, which have to be paid for every year, Geymann said. This led to the expected billion dollar shortfall, which has grown due to oil prices.
The falling oil prices added another $400-600 million to the deficit, Geymann said. 
Now the deficit is closer to $1.6 billion.
“Neither one of those numbers are encouraging,” Geymann said. “They’re both trouble, and they both are difficult to deal with, but it certainly is worse now because of the price in oil.”
The combination of oil prices and bad budgeting is an issue the state faced before in 2008, Richardson said.
Oil prices fell from about $120 per barrel to $60-70 per barrel from 2008-2010, and income taxes were cut by close to $800 million, Richardson said. Combined with the national recession, the state lost about $3 billion in
revenues.
Oil prices are a factor in the current situation, but the initial budget is still the reason behind the bulk of the problem, Geymann said. Oil just darkened an already bleak situation.
“A large portion of what we’re looking at was preventable,” Geymann said. “We certainly could not have predicted the drop in the price of oil. Even in a perfect environment, we would be facing some tough decisions because of that.”
Jindal’s Pledge
As of 2014, Jindal was one of 14 governors who had taken the Taxpayer Protection Pledge, according to Americans for Tax Reform. The pledge advocates against tax increases under any circumstance.
If taxes aren’t being raised, expenditures will have to be cut, Richardson said, though it’s not as simple as it sounds.
“There’s only so much waste you can cut,” Richardson said. “What you see as waste might not be what I see as waste, and what I see as waste might not be your waste. You have to accept the politics of that.”
Geymann said citizens have indicated they are against tax increases. To compensate, the state has to find other ways to raise revenue.
The Jindal administration has focused on economic growth to increase revenue, Geymann said. While higher education has been cut, Louisiana has given out more than $11 billion in subsidies to corporations, more than any other state, according to Inside Higher Ed.
This plan of attack hasn’t had the desired effect, Geymann said.
“I think this administration has relied and hoped that the
incoming growth would grow us out of this shortfall, but it just hasn’t happened,” Geymann said. “It may in the future if we have an economic boom. Then maybe we’ll grow out of this problem.”
The last major period of economic growth stemmed from the Hurricane Katrina and Rita recovery periods, Geymann said. 
During that time, higher education was funded at the Southern Regional Average, Geymann said. Teachers also received raises as a result of the economic boom.
“We were able to do some wonderful things that needed to be done but mainly because we have that phenomenal growth from the recovery,” Geymann said. “That’s really the only thing we have looking at as where we can get out of this hole is by looking at the exemptions we can take away, increasing fees, and some kind of economic recovery.”
Jindal’s pledge makes it more difficult to raise revenue, Richardson said.
“To be honest, he’s tied his own hands because of his pledge,” Richardson said. “I think that’s the choice he’s made. I think it’s a silly choice, but that’s his choice, not mine.”
The Future
The next governor and legislative body have a tough task ahead of them, Geymann said. They’ll have look at what they do well and where they need to improve.
“If we’re going to deal with this, we’re going to have to have some courage, and we’re going to have to make some tough political decisions,” Geymann said. “If we don’t, we can potentially destroy education and healthcare in the state as we know it.”
Richardson said he expects to see multiple solutions to the issue, though many of them may not be beneficial in the long run. 
“It’ll be a strange thing. It’ll put a lot of pressure on everybody,” Richardson said. “I think it’s a matter of waiting one more year and hoping the new governor will come in with a different attitude.”
Jindal’s office did not respond to two requests for comment.
Rose Velazquez contributed to this report.