Public school teachers and their support staff will not have their pay cut under a budget proposal that advanced out of the House Appropriations Committee on Monday. The amended version of House Bill 1 includes the same temporary stipends that teachers and staff have received from the state the last two years. The Louisiana Illuminator’s Julie O’Donoghue explains how lawmakers made the budget math work:
House leaders found the money by delaying $92 million worth of government acquisitions, including the purchase of new state vehicles and equipment, for another year. Legislators also proposed paying off retirement debt for Louisiana State Police troopers early, resulting in an additional $25.5 million in savings that would be used to cover the teacher stipends. House leadership will also sideline a “high-dosage” tutoring program for public school students that was put in place after the COVID-19 pandemic to find another $30 million for the stipend. Their strategy also relies on a temporary state government hiring freeze and the elimination of state employee “work from home” benefits to produce at least $20 million in savings.
The stipends are temporary, however, and not guaranteed for next year:
House leaders are hoping the stipend won’t be needed in 2026 because the state will have the resources to offer teachers and support staff permanent salary increases. They are pushing to put several segments of the amendment that failed in March back on the ballot next spring as simpler, individual ballot items. They include the constitutional changes needed to free up money for the teacher salary bump equivalent to the current stipend.
Reality check: The fact that Louisiana must cut funding for tutoring services to ensure public school teachers don’t receive a pay cut is proof the state doesn’t raise enough revenue to fund its priorities. The Legislature is currently in a fiscal session where they can raise more revenue, but on Monday lawmakers rejected a proposal to create a new top personal income tax bracket of 4.75% on annual income above $500,000. It would have generated enough revenue to ensure a permanent pay raise for teachers.
What’s in the big, beautiful bill?
House Republicans have released their “big, beautiful bill” to enact President Donald Trump’s domestic agenda. The proposal includes cuts to safety-net programs that will be used to partially offset tax cuts for the wealthy and large, profitable corporations. The Washington Post’s Jacob Bogage outlines those cuts and other policies included in the sweeping legislation:
To meet budget goals, Republican plans to cut Medicaid spending could strip coverage from 8.7 million people and lead to 7.6 million more uninsured people over 10 years. … The legislation would pass on more of the cost for administering SNAP, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program formerly known as food stamps, to state governments, potentially forcing local officials to decide whether to cut benefits or dig into their state and municipal budgets.
Jennifer Wagner of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities notes the proposal would require Medicaid enrollees to renew their eligibility more often, which could lead to increased costs for states and errors that cause coverage loss:
Even after improvements to the renewal process made during the unwinding of the COVID-era continuous coverage provision, many enrollees still lose coverage at renewal for procedural reasons — not because they’re determined to no longer qualify for Medicaid, but because they didn’t receive a renewal form, didn’t submit all of the required forms, or the agency didn’t process their renewal in a timely manner. … Increasing the workload of Medicaid agencies by requiring more frequent renewals, plus an increase in re-applications as enrollees churn off the program, would increase administrative costs for states — each episode of churn can cost a state hundreds of dollars.
Steering billions to private school vouchers and wealthy
The federal budget plan also includes $5 billion to fund private school vouchers that would be available to nearly all families. Only those making three times or more of the local median income would be ineligible. The AP’s Moriah Balingit explains how the proposal uses use tax avoidance to fuel school privatization:
The program would be funded by donors who could contribute money or stock. In turn, they would receive 100% of the contribution back in the form of a discount on their tax bills. It would allow stock holders to avoid paying taxes that would be levied if they donated or transferred the stock. Critics decried the proposal, saying it would aid the wealthy at the expense of the public school systems that serve the overwhelming majority of students. They said it would set up a tax shelter allowing savvy investors to make money under the guise of a donation.
Rural water woes
Failing drinking water systems have become more common in Louisiana in recent years. While Louisiana has received millions of federal dollars – and allocated more state dollars – to upgrade its water infrastructure, it’s not enough to address the entire problem. The Times-Picayune | Baton Rouge Advocate’s Sam Karlin explains:
But for the state to fix all of its water systems, it will likely take painful decisions, including raising rates on low-income residents in towns that have been losing population for years. “The Water Sector Program was very successful in addressing a lot of those critical projects,” (State Rep. Jerome “Zee”) Zeringue said. “It definitely hasn’t solved the problem. There are going to continue to be problems with water systems, especially in rural communities, that the water sector will not be able to get to.”
Louisiana will need $9 billion over the next 20 years to address its water-infrastructure needs, according to a 2023 estimate from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
Number of the Day
33 – Louisiana’s national rank for state and local tax collections per capita. (Source: Tax Foundation)