BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) – Lawmakers were preparing to put the finishing touches on Louisiana’s more than $30 billion budget for next year in the final hours of their election-year legislative session Thursday.
House and Senate action started late, delays forced by torrential rains that flooded streets across Baton Rouge and had people struggling to reach the Louisiana Capitol building.
The 60-day session must end by 6 p.m.
The House and Senate were working through disagreements over small sums. But plans to boost spending on colleges, health services, foster care, senior centers and public safety programs were expected to remain intact.
House Appropriations Chairman Cameron Henry, a Jefferson Parish Republican, said he hopes to have a final version of the budget package ready for a vote by mid-afternoon.
“We’re on the fifth version, going back and forth” with the Senate, he told House lawmakers.
Before they wrap up their work, lawmak ers also planned to complete the state’s multi-year construction budget and a measure to spend millions in unbudgeted money from the current year.
The largest disagreement, over public school financing, was resolved days ago. K-12 teachers will get a $1,000 pay raise in the 2019-20 school year, school support workers will get $500 salary increases and districts will get new $39 million in new discretionary money for their operations.
The session was expected to be the final gathering of lawmakers this term, a four-year stretch marked by sharp partisan disagreements, particularly between House Republican leaders and Democratic Gov. John Bel Edwards.
Most of the term centered on the hefty budget gap that Edwards and lawmakers inherited from former Gov. Bobby Jindal’s administration. After 10 legislative sessions – three regular and seven special session – the governor and lawmakers passed a seven-year tax deal in 2018 that stabilized finances.
That compromise m ade this year’s spending debates quieter, in the 11th legislative session of the term with lawmakers focused on their looming election battles back home. This year, legislators bickered over how to spend new money, a more pleasant task than deciding whether and how to make deep budget cuts.
“People have walked through the fire, and this session has been sedate compared to the others,” said House Republican leader Lance Harris, of Alexandria.
Lawmakers in the majority-Republican House and Senate also still were haggling over bills to legalize sports betting and set regulations for online fantasy sports competitions for cash. While senators were working to establish a minimum marriage age in Louisiana, it was unclear if House lawmakers would agree to revisit the debate after rejecting the idea days earlier.
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Copyright 2019 The Associated Press.
