Louisiana's budget short $145 million this year

[Louisiana1976]

BATON ROUGE — An estimated $145 million midyear gap exists in Louisiana's state budget, and more than a third of that is tied to unexpected growth in student rolls at public schools, the governor's top budget adviser told lawmakers Friday.

Commissioner of Administration Angele Davis said available funds have been identified to cover part of the shortfall in the $29 billion budget, leaving a projected $68 million problem for lawmakers and the governor.

Midyear budget shortfalls aren't uncommon and are routinely addressed in the regular legislative session by shifting around available dollars, making trims to some areas of spending and boosting others. But in a tight budget year and with the shortfall sizable, cuts could be more than just nips and tucks.

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The projected budget shortfall described Friday is separate from a $308 million midyear deficit identified by the state Health and Hospitals Department in Louisiana's Medicaid program. Health and Hospitals plans to shift dollars from public health and mental health programs, along with tapping some federal stimulus funds and using other one-time dollars to help fill the gap.

Health and Hospitals Secretary Alan Levine has blamed the Medicaid deficit on swine flu cases, a recession that has pushed new people onto Medicaid rolls, growth in the costs of home- and community-based services for the elderly and disabled and delays in planned cost-cutting moves for the current budget year.


http://www.shreveporttimes.com/article/20091205/NEWS01/912050308/1060

[lapfog_1]

1. Unfortunately, I think this is where all that stimulus money is really going.

The states are using it to cover budget shortfalls. States, unlike the federal government, aren't supposed to run deficit budgets (the federal government SHOULD be running a deficit now, but should have been running a surplus all the years that we weren't in a recession / depression). Anyway, I keep hearing rumors that the states are using the stimulus money to stop the red ink. Probably DOES keep some people from being laid off, but I don't think this is what the public ( or the economists ) had in mind.