The state House advanced a budget bill on Thursday that includes the same temporary stipends that teachers and staff have received the last two years and increased funding for the state’s new private school voucher program. The Times-Picayune | Baton Rouge Advocate’s Meghan Friedmann reports:
The package includes nearly $200 million to ensure that, for the third year in a row, teachers and school support staff will get stipends of $2,000 and $1,000 each, respectively. To fund the stipends, lawmakers cut $30 million for high dosage tutoring and delayed $91 million in acquisitions of new vehicles and heavy equipment by state agencies, among other measures. The budget also includes $93.5 million that Gov. Jeff Landry requested for the LA GATOR program, which gives families money to pay for private school tuition and homeschooling expenses.
The $93.5 million allocation for the LA GATOR program is a $50 million increase over current spending levels. Senate President Cameron Henry has stated that he and other legislators have no intention of funding the extra money:
It remains to be seen whether the Senate will make major changes to the budget. They will work off an updated revenue forecast, which the Revenue Estimating Conference is scheduled to provide the Legislature next week. That could give the Senate more money to spend.
The budget bills’ move from the House to the Senate means the process is nearing the finish line. But budgeting is a year-round process, which involves a complex interplay between the legislative and executive branches. A new report from Invest in Louisiana walks readers through that process and identifies key actors who are crucial for decision making.
Medicaid in rural America
Medicaid plays a larger role in providing health coverage to people living in small towns and rural communities than in metropolitan areas, a trend that is particularly striking among women of childbearing age. In rural areas of Louisiana, 40.2% of women ages 19 to 44 rely on Medicaid for health insurance. A new report from the Georgetown Center for Children and Families explains why Medicaid is key to maternal and infant health in rural communities:
Medicaid is a vital source of coverage for women of childbearing age across the U.S., but especially in rural communities and small towns. Financial pressures have resulted in a severe decline in the availability of obstetric services in these communities, putting the health of mothers and babies at risk. Medicaid coverage, including the Affordable Care Act’s Medicaid expansion, helps to ensure that women are healthy before, during and after pregnancy. Severe cuts to Medicaid would result in declining Medicaid revenues and increase uncompensated care costs for rural hospitals. This would result in further deterioration of an already precarious situation for pregnant women and infants living in rural areas and threaten the ability of rural communities to grow and thrive.
Scrambling to fill weather forecasting jobs
With less than three weeks until the start of the Atlantic hurricane season, the National Weather Service is struggling to keep regional offices open 24 hours per day because of a shortage of workers. The agency is seeking to fill 155 vacancies, including key weather forecasting positions in Louisiana. The Washington Post’s Scott Dance reports:
That development is elevating fears that without the transfers or new hires, more offices will struggle to monitor coming weather threats, issue aviation forecasts and launch weather balloons around-the-clock, according to current and former weather service officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak for the agency.
Research cuts ripple through state and local economies
The National Institutes of Health’s effort to reduce a cap on indirect costs for research grants – from 50% to 15% – would cause Louisiana to lose out on $79 million and 392 jobs annually. That’s the conclusion of new analysis from a group of higher education researchers. Verite News’ Halle Parker reports:
Much of that loss would be concentrated around New Orleans, Baton Rouge and Shreveport. For example, St. Tammany, Jefferson and Orleans parishes could miss out on $45 million altogether. Allie Sinclair is a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Pennsylvania who helped create the map using grant data from the NIH itself. She said the team wanted to show that if the federal mandate moves forward, the impacts wouldn’t just stay in the lab. “It’s not about ideological warfare. This is a blanket change that would lead to economic losses across the entire U.S. in every community, big and small, urban and rural, red and blue,” she said.
A federal judge recently blocked the NIH’s new cap on indirect costs, but around 700 grants have already been terminated, including in Louisiana:
Tulane’s COVID research project was one of three NIH grants in Louisiana to be terminated, according to an analysis by the Grant Watch project of the agency’s RePORT database. One was another Tulane study looking at how lupus progresses in Black women. A third project, at LSU, was studying how to reduce suicide among youth who identify as part of LGBTQ+ communities.
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Number of the Day
$98.5 million – Amount of opioid settlement funds that Louisiana has distributed to parishes and sheriffs as of October 2024. The state will receive approximately $600 million in funds from 2022 through 2038 to combat opioid addiction. (Source: Louisiana Legislative Auditor)