The Senate Finance committee met Wednesday to amend the supplemental appropriations bill, which allocates the money raised during this special session.
The session must end no later than midnight Thursday. At this point, says Senate Finance Chairman Eric LaFleur (D-Ville Platte), $258 million of additional revenue has been found.
That revenue took a nearly $25 million hit when it was identified that "the House had spent money that was already spent in the regular session in House Bill 1. This was savings related to Medicaid expansion. So, we’ve decreased our revenue by that amount," explained LaFleur.
Commissioner of Administration Jay Dardenne addressed the committee.
“I would tell you that, in large part, the amendment you’re proposing mirrors the suggestions we made to you,” he said.
The big concern, however, is the supplemental funding to the Minimum Foundation Program, or MFP, which is the state's contribution to K-12 education. The Senate Finance amendment shifted $21 million from the MFP to higher education, money the House had allocated for public school students with disabilities.
As it left the committee, the MFP would receive $6.2 million in supplemental funding.
“We want to see full support for higher education at the end of the day as well," says Dardenne. However, he continued, "we believe it is inappropriate to not provide a bigger increase in these new dollars to the MFP.”
That opened up the debate: with limited dollars, which level of education do you fund first?
Vice Chair of the Senate Education committee, John Milkovich (D-Shreveport), suggested public schools already have enough.
“We’re spending over $10,000 per child per year, which is higher than every other southern state other than Virginia. There is a school of thought that quality of education does not always exactly correlate to money spent,” he said.
Democratic committee member Wesley Bishop allowed some of the partisan friction that has built between the Senate and the House to spill into his response.
"You can’t choose to not raise revenue," he responded, "but at the same time sit and say, ‘well, we’re not doing enough with the monies that we have.’ You can’t have it both ways.”
The committee moved the amended bill favorably to the Senate Floor.