DALLAS - The Louisiana House on Thursday approved and sent to Gov. Bobby Jindal a $28.7 billion operating budget for fiscal 2010 that depends on a variety of controversial measures to balance the budget while restoring spending cut by the governor.
The Senate added 350 pages of amendments to HB 1 before passing it unanimously on June 5. The House had been expected to reject the changes and send the measure to a conference committee to work out the differences.
However, budget bill sponsor Rep. Jim Fannin, D-Jonesboro, instead asked House members to concur in the Senate amendments and send the budget to the governor with two weeks left in the 2009 legislative session.
Fannin said 98% of the spending in the Senate version was identical to the budget measure passed by the House in mid-May. He conceded it was not a perfect bill, but said concurrence was the best option.
"Ladies and gentlemen, we have to make decisions and the time to make them is to start now," Fannin said during the short floor debate on the budget bill.
The governor has 10 days to sign the budget bill or it would become law. Jindal can use his line-item veto to cut specific items from the budget.
The budget includes $284 million of spending that cannot occur unless the Legislature passes several measures before it adjourns June 25. The Senate proposals include restoring $118 million in cuts to higher education by delaying a scheduled state income tax break, using $86 million from the budget stabilization fund, and taking $19.4 million from a dormant insurance incentive fund to finance dozens of small projects in each legislator's district.
House Speaker Jim Tucker, R-Algiers, said the proposal to delay the income-tax rate decrease is unconstitutional and has refused to allow it to be considered by the House.
Louisiana is expecting $1.3 billion less in revenues during fiscal 2010, which begins July 1, than in fiscal 2009.
Jindal said last week in his legislative briefing for reporters that he would veto the Senate budget plan due to his "serious concerns" about it. He made his remarks before the House agreed to the proposal but said afterwards he was still opposed to delaying the income tax reduction.
Louisiana Treasurer John Kennedy said the House's approval of the Senate version of the budget will allow lawmakers and Jindal to agree on a final version before the end of the session. In recent years, he said, budget reconciliation has occurred in conference committee with legislative leaders working out a compromise. But not this year.
"That is an unusual event, but this is an unusual year," Kennedy said. "The bottom line is that the Senate would prefer to move money back to the budget through higher taxes, and the House is not at all enamored with that idea."
The treasurer said he expects the final budget to be balanced through funding amendments added to bills currently before the Legislature.
"This thing will get done," he said. "By passing that budget along to the governor with this much time remaining in the session, the legislators can act on any vetoes by the governor without having to call themselves back into a special session."
