EDITORIAL: Cuts Reveal La.'s Unstable Budgeting
Shreveport Times (excerpt)

Because of the unique nature of the LSU Health Sciences Center in Shreveport, the institution faces a double whammy in the upcoming round of state-mandated budget cuts. That's because it is vulnerable in both major areas that are funded largely by constitutionally unprotected state monies — higher education and health care.

The cutbacks that must be made this fiscal year by LSUHSC — along with universities, health services and hospitals statewide — are telling testimony to the devastating effects of Louisiana's dysfunctional budgetary system. The so-called system that has evolved over the years "protects" most of the state general fund from potential cash raids, leaving students, faculties, patients and hospitals to bear the brunt during economic downturns.

Once again, before next year's predicted shortfalls cause even more devastation, we assert that it is time to zero base Louisiana's budget, examine the tax structure and start all over — via a Constitutional Convention or whatever means necessary. If that had happened already, the state's postsecondary institutions wouldn't likely be facing today's $52 million reduction (down from an earlier predicted $109 million) and the Department of Health and Hospitals wouldn't be expected to shear as much as $118 million (down from an earlier estimate of $160-$170 million). To add to the funding tale of doom and gloom, officials are predicting that Louisiana faces a $2 billion funding shortfall in the fiscal year that starts July 1.

As noted, this year's reductions are potentially just the leading edge of future cuts in statewide services where there are few good places to cut and where most department/division budgets are already thin.

Gov. Bobby Jindal has just laid out a new plan that takes into account a point we were making based on preliminary plans: These difficult times should at the very least be shared by entities statewide, thereby reducing the level of trauma to each one. By imposing a 3 percent across-the-board cut, he is acknowledging that the entire state must participate. More preferably, Jindal and state leadership should go back to the drawing board immediately, scrap much of the state constitution, and present voters with a budgetary and tax system that does not punish health, hospitals and higher education.