Gov. Jindal's plan to sell state prisons is killed by House committee
by Jan Moller - Times-Picayune (excerpt)

BATON ROUGE - A controversial plan to sell three state prisons was narrowly voted down in a House committee late Monday, dealing Gov. Bobby Jindal a tough loss on an issue that had been a top priority for his administration. With dozens of prison employees and their families looking on, the House Appropriations Committee voted 13-12 to derail the plan after more than three hours of testimony that included emotional appeals from people who feared the loss of their jobs or steep pay cuts if the facilities were sold and privatized. "Our community would not be able to handle the flood of unemployed people," said Angie Bordelon, whose husband works at Avoyelles Correctional Center, which was targeted for sale along with the prisons in Allen and Winn parishes. The defeat of the bill, by Rep. Henry Burns, R-Haughton, complicates the task of balancing the $25 billion state budget. Jindal's spending plan counted on using $86 million from the prison sales to prop up health care services for the poor, but the House took that money out of the budget before sending it to the Senate late last month. The defeat of the prison-sale bill makes it unlikely the Senate will put it back. While the administration has been lobbying the Senate to restore the House budget cuts, lawmakers now have limited their options in a political environment where raising money through tax increases or by suspending existing tax breaks is a non-starter.