Louisiana Voice

By Stephen Winham (Guest Column)

A question no mainstream media reporter has apparently considered serious enough to ask is a very simple, albeit long, one:

How did we enter the regular session with a proposal by the Governor that made the clear statement that we needed another $440 million in revenue to balance the budget for the coming year, provide full funding for TOPS, give state employees a pay raise and provide minimum funding for departments (among other things), yet wind up with NO new revenue, TOPS fully funded, pay raises for employees, and with everybody, including the governor, claiming the budget is okay and they are happy with it?

Think about it. That makes no sense. How can you go from needing $440 million for an adequate budget to needing ZERO? When we see this kind of thing we have no choice but to question the entire budget, including the size of the “fiscal cliff” projected for FY2018-19 and beyond. Credibility needs to be restored to the budget process before people are going to believe anything they are told about it.

For at least 7 of his 8 years in office, Gov. Jindal covered up our structural budget problem using every gimmick to which the legislature would agree.  Every year he declared a great victory on the budget and every year the gap remained or, worse, got larger.  He inherited an almost $1 billion surplus from the Blanco administration and left Edwards with a $1 billion hole – a turnaround of minus $2 billion if my second-grade math still works.

Rather than relying on such gimmicks, Gov. Edwards has returned to the tried-and-untrue plan of using scare tactics to frighten the people and the legislature into balancing the budget via increased revenue alone.  This is an old game and one Louisiana’s citizens grew sick of long ago.  How many times were we told, “We are approaching a big fiscal wall and we must do something or we will surely perish when we hit it!”  How many times did the wall move?  This tactic only worked once in the JBE administration and the temporary “solution” enacted is set to disappear in about 12 months. Now the wall has become a cliff from which we will fall to our fiscal death in the absence of a solution.

Re-read the simple question at the beginning of this column.  Do you believe Gov. Edwards presented a realistic and honest budget?  Do you believe the legislature enacted a realistic budget? Do you believe cuts were made and, if so, do you know the effects of those cuts?

The inability to definitively answer any of the above questions calls the credibility of the entire budget and budget process into question.  I personally believe we have a structural imbalance of at least $1 billion.  A “cliff” as large as $1.5 billion is being talked about.  Until we all have a better explanation of our current budget, none of us can really know the size of our budget problem, much less how it should be solved.

We pretty much know the revenue options.  What we don’t know is precisely what would have to be cut to balance the budget through cuts alone. The last time I can remember anybody really being put on the spot to answer this question was in 2013 when AP reporter Melinda Deslatte asked then commissioner of administration Kristy Nichols why she didn’t recommend cuts instead of patchwork funding in the governor’s budget recommendations.  Her response was that cuts would result in “needless reductions to critical services.”  While that is not much of an answer, it does offer clues to why we have not seen cuts anybody is willing to permanently stand behind offered up for serious consideration..

Without knowing what really must be cut to balance the budget, the contention that we need no more money by Representatives Henry, Harris, Seabaugh, and others will continue to resonate with a public that wants to believe it.

What I find most incredible is that the Governor apparently does not believe credibility is important.  More than once during recent legislative hearings on the budget the Governor’s staff essentially said, “If you don’t like what we have proposed, tell us what you want to cut.”  Legislators responded, “It is your job to tell us where to cut.”  I agree – But once the governor presents a credible list of cuts, I also agree with his folks.

I apologize for any redundancies between this and my last column, but now that the governor has signed the budget act, I believe the one simple question I ask here is worthy of an extra focus. How can we expect anybody to support taxes if they have no idea what cuts really mean?

—Stephen Winham spent 21 years in the Louisiana State Budget Office, the last 12 as Director. He lives in St. Francisville.