BATON ROUGE, La. (BRA PROUD) – More than halfway through the legislative session, social issues targeting vulnerable populations are in the spotlight as lawmakers disagree over how to spend the state’s surplus funds. are collecting.
Gov. John Bel Edwards gave his latest thoughts on the situation Thursday.
Budget talks are swirling around the Capitol after House Republicans made significant changes to the governor’s proposal. Many are hoping the Senate will reverse course by eliminating teacher pay raises at the state level and using the money lost to early childhood education to pay off teacher retirement debt instead of replacing it.
“Our belief is that with the current economic climate strong and firing on all cylinders, we cannot create a budget that reflects our priorities given the available funds,” Edwards said. “That’s so irresponsible that it’s hard for me to understand.”
House Republicans said they didn’t want to break constitutional spending caps to allow the governor’s investments and wanted to avoid that by paying down teacher retirement debt. With the money saved from interest cuts, they want local school districts to invest that money in teacher pay raises.
Edwards disagrees that breaking these investment limits is a bad thing. He said the cap was put in place when state funding is much more difficult to predict and is based on the oil and gas industry.
“The idea was to prevent spending, given such strong economic growth and other factors,” Edwards said.
In a sense, the short fiscal session was taken over by national social issues. A number of anti-LGBTQ bills have moved forward, drawing fierce testimony and rampant misinformation about the community. He said such bills distract from the real issue.
“How can you conclude that we actually have a problem to address, that we actually have a problem to solve, or that these bills will actually address and solve a problem,” Edwards said. I don’t know,” he said.
He also shared his disappointment that a bill to add rape and incest exceptions to the state’s abortion ban was not passed.
Lawmakers have until June 8 to pass the budget and all legislation.