Tagged: WRKF News

The group of legislators that routinely opposes Governor Bobby Jindal's use of one-time money in his proposed budgets met over the weekend, and may soon have an alternate way to fund some of higher education's budget. 

Last year, the fiscal hawks proposed over $160 million of cuts to lower priority areas of the budget. Representative Kirk Talbot, a leader of the group, says those weren’t considered until the mid-year shortfall. They’ll try again this year.

Gov. Bobby Jindal’s proposed $24.7 billion state budget for the next fiscal year seemingly leaves the state Department of Health and Hospitals relatively unscathed.

 Governor Bobby Jindal wants to utilize one-time funds to keep the state afloat. Jindal's proposed budget was unveiled Friday to the Legislature's Joint Committee on the Budget.

The Governor's budget it $24.7 billion in size. One-time funds make up only $424 million of it – but last year, the budget’s use of one-time funds was smaller than that, and those funds not coming through were partially to blame for mid-year budget cuts.

Governor Bobby Jindal wants to eliminate the state income tax and make up for the lost revenue by increasing state sales taxes. He is seeking money to run a media campaign in support of his proposal.

But Louisianians are not likely to be asked to vote on the tax reforms until late 2014. So why lobby support from the general public now?  

WRKF’s Ashley Westerman put that question to LSU professor and director of the Manship School’s Public Policy Research Lab Kirby Goidel.