BATON ROUGE, La. (BRPROUD) – Extra money has been recognized for lawmakers to spend this year. Those extra dollars are shrinking as the state nears a fiscal cliff.
The Revenue Estimating conference looks at revenue changes. They happened over the last several months. This fiscal year they have an extra $197 million to spend. But they must bust the spending cap if they want to spend it all.
They can only spend around $80 million before they would have to vote to bust the constitutional spending cap. The move was controversial among conservatives last year.
The commissioner said they have not made the recommendation to bust the spending cap as of right now. The leftover funds can be put into savings accounts for future use outside of the state general fund.
The state has $89 million extra to spend in the next fiscal year before the fiscal cliff hits in FY26.
Economists explained the state has hit a revenue plateau after the pandemic.
“I think we’re returning to an upslope no more down in my overall narrative after FY25,” said Economist Ben Vincent with the Legislative Fiscal Office.
There are many special funds holding money that total up to $18 billion. Rep. Phillip Devillier, (R-Eunice), the Speaker of the House, made a subtle pitch for the constitutional convention by pointing out that around 30 of them are barred from being dipped into.
“I was looking at all of the funds that we have, and it looks like a lot of them were locked up in the Constitution,” Devillier said.
Commissioner of Administration Taylor Barras said there have been no discussions so far about using the extra money for replacing the $24 million taken from early childhood education or restoring the teacher pay stipends to their original amount.
The budget is now in the hands of the Senate, so it will be up to them to determine how to spend that money.