The Louisiana State Legislature, after hearing its goal for a “best-case scenario” was to cut higher education $70 million statewide during the special session, reduced that number considerably while bridging a nearly $1 billion mid-year budget shortfall. The shortfall was left at $30 million for this year, and will likely fall on higher education and healthcare, the areas of the budget not protected by law.
While the exact amount of cuts are unknown, any cut taken by higher education will be added to a roughly $26 million reduction in TOPS funding. Gov. John Bel Edwards is expected to outline the specifics at a news conference early Friday morning.
Higher education leaders can breathe a sigh of relief, avoiding a potential $200 million cut that could have shuttered many campuses, while some wish the legislature had avoided cutting schools’ funding at all for the current year.
Next year’s budget, which began with a massive $2 billion plus deficit, is a different story.
Lawmakers left $800 million in red ink for the fiscal year 2016-17, which begins July 1, falling well short of their goal to balance both budgets in the 25-day special session as in-fighting and disagreements between various factions and the two chambers left important state agencies in the dark until the budget is balanced in the coming months.
In a hailstorm of last-minute tax increases, confusion reigned and the Senate went over their 6 p.m. legal deadline by a few seconds Wednesday evening. Senate President John Alario, R-Westwego, apologized for the way the legislature handled the “people’s business.”
“This is not the way we needed to conduct ourselves,” said an emotional Alario, who has been in the legislature for more than 40 years.
The cornerstone of revenue-raising to bridge the gap was HB 62, a one-cent sales tax increase that Rep. Katrina Jackson, D-Monroe, carried for the Edwards’ administration, and is expected to raise more than $200 million in the current year. But that bill nearly fell apart in a last-minute Senate vote as a typo in the digest, which asserted the increase as 1.25 cents instead of one cent, caused confusion in the chamber.
Sen. Karen Carter Peterson, D-New Orleans, took the mic with less than 10 minutes left in the session to urge her colleagues in the House to vote “no” to the higher-than-agreed upon increase. Staffers sprinted across the Capitol rotunda and in and out of the chambers and shocked onlookers nervously voiced their frustration and confusion.
The bill passed. State colleges, universities and hospitals could have been devastated if it had fallen apart last-minute.
Edwards called the final day of the session “somewhat of a disaster.”
Sen. J.P. Morrell, D-New Orleans, said the $800 million shortfall will pose problems to universities even if legislators do eventually bridge the gap, as schools must make staffing and operations decisions sooner rather than later.
“There will be a bell that will be rung that cannot be un-rung,” he said.
Richard Lipsey, chairman of the Board of Regents, which oversees all public colleges and universities in the state, stressed that he was grateful to the legislature for lessening what could have been deep cuts to schools.
“The best news is, it could have been a lot more dire than it is, if the legislature had not come together late last night at a quarter to six,” Lipsey said. “The bad news is they didn’t go quite far enough.”
The immensely popular TOPS program is still up in the air for next year. Legislators continually assured the public that they would fund TOPS, but the program’s fate rests in the regular session, in which taxes cannot be raised. Another special session is likely, according to lawmakers, but cannot be called until June 14.
Sujuan Boutte, the director of the Louisiana Office of Student Financial Assistance, said the agency will begin looking at eligibility for new students in June, and for current students at the end of the Spring and Summer semesters.
As of Thursday afternoon, Boutte said LOSFA had no new knowledge of TOPS funding for the next year, and will not be able to assume the program will be fully funded until an official document is presented outlining the amount of funding the program will receive.
“You can’t imagine the calls we’re getting from parents that are concerned: ‘Is my child going to get TOPS or not?’” Lipsey said. “Right now that’s the number one thing on our list: how much money will we have in TOPS next year?”