House budget panel restores some cuts
by Jan Moller - Times-Picayune (excerpt)

BATON ROUGE -- After more than 70 hours of public testimony, a House budget panel Tuesday began shifting money in Gov. Bobby Jindal's $26.7 billion spending plan, including partially restoring proposed cuts for the arts, state historic sites, the Louisiana State University Agricultural Center, and health-care services for the poor and disabled.

To finance the new spending, members of the House Appropriations Committee voted to freeze automatic "merit" raises for state employees and took $43 million from an idle fund that was originally intended to pay insurance companies willing to set up shop in Louisiana. The changes come after a month of hearings on the ramifications of budget cuts Jindal has recommended, and gave the first true indication of how lawmakers' priorities differ from the governor's.

The biggest change was an amendment by House Speaker Pro Tem Karen Carter Peterson, D-New Orleans, that shifted $35 million from the Insure Louisiana Incentive Program Fund to the state general fund for use in health-care programs. The money, which would generate $156 million when combined with federal dollars, would pay for new home-care slots for the developmentally disabled and give state-owned and nonprofit hospitals more money for treating the uninsured. Lawmakers also voted to take $6 million from the insurance fund to restore cuts Jindal has proposed for state historic sites.

Another major shift was an amendment by Rep. John Schroder, R-Covington, directing the Division of Administration not to give automatic 4 percent pay raises to rank-and-file state employees. The change would free up $13.5 million in the general fund. Companion amendments adopted by the committee would direct $9 million of that money to the LSU AgCenter, $1 million to the Southern University Agricultural Center and $3.3 million to arts programs that otherwise would face deep reductions.

But the committee rejected an amendment by Peterson to restore $100 million for public colleges and universities using money from the Louisiana Mega-Projects Development Fund, which is designed to attract large industrial projects to the state.