A boost to Louisiana’s state income projections will give lawmakers more money to spend over the next 14 months, even as the post-pandemic financial surge continues to taper off and a fiscal downturn edges ever closer.

The state’s forecasting panel, called the Revenue Estimating Conference, increased its predictions for Louisiana’s tax and fee collections for the 2023-24 budget year that ends June 30 and the upcoming budget year that starts July 1.

The adjustments will give the Louisiana Legislature $197 million more in state general fund money for this year and another $89 million in the upcoming 2024-25 year. The general fund contains the flexible, unearmarked dollars that lawmakers can spend on any area they’d like to prioritize.

While those aren’t the kind of huge increases seen last term in the immediate recovery from the COVID-19 outbreak, the brightened financial picture should give lawmakers enough money to avoid backpedaling on education investments and other state priorities.

With Thursday’s forecasting action, legislators have $920 million in short-term cash they can spend on infrastructure projects, debt payments or other items – or deposit into savings accounts for use in later years. That includes surplus money from last year, previous forecasting adjustments and state general fund dollars that agencies won’t need because they found other funding sources or had fewer expenses than expected.

In addition, dollars available for drawing up next year’s budget have grown larger.

The Public Affairs Research Council of Louisiana hopes senators, who currently have control of the budget bills, prioritize early childhood education and coastal restoration work with some of the money newly available. They also should continue a focus on paying down debts, such as retirement debt, to lessen the fiscal cliff on the horizon when a temporary 0.45% state sales tax expires on July 1, 2025. Anything lawmakers can do now to shrink the shortfall will lessen the pain of next year’s budget negotiations.

The House-crafted version of the budget cut $24 million from a program that provides quality child care and education for children from birth to age 3. House lawmakers used that money to instead pay for an increase in the K-12 public school financing formula sought by the state Board of Elementary and Secondary Education for tutoring, student apprenticeship programs and targeted stipends for teachers in high-need areas.

PAR would like senators to use the extra dollars available for next year’s budget to reverse that House-proposed cut to an early learning program that helps parents stay in the workforce and children become better prepared to enter school.

Senators also will consider undoing a House reduction to public school teacher and support worker stipends. The Legislature provided $198 million for those stipends in the current school year, but the House proposed shrinking that amount to $166 million next year. That’s an unnecessary cut that could weaken teacher recruitment and retention.

Meanwhile, Gov. Jeff Landry’s administration is suggesting steering some of the new money available for next year’s budget to the Department of Children and Family Services to combat staffing shortages.

For the short-term money available, PAR would like to see legislators allocate some of the new money to the state’s vital coastal restoration and protection work. A trust fund for those efforts currently has significant sums, with some additional dollars annually flowing into the account. But that money is nowhere near the amount needed to fulfill the state’s coastal master plan.

Lawmakers face a complication if they want to spend all the new money recognized by the Revenue Estimating Conference.

The nonpartisan Legislative Fiscal Office said lawmakers would need a two-thirds vote in the House and Senate to breach a constitutionally set cap limiting annual growth in government spending if they want to spend more than $86 million of the $197 million added to this year’s general fund forecast. Such a vote caused angry debate and legislative infighting last year and nearly kept the budget from being passed in the regular session.

So far, the Landry administration and legislative leaders are showing little interest in breaching the cap, preferring to stockpile some of the largesse for lawmakers to spend in future years when they face tighter budgets. Following PAR’s recommendation, they could steer dollars to the coastal fund for use in later years without exceeding the spending limit.

If lawmakers decide to set aside money in various accounts for the future, they should only withdraw the cash later to pay for one-time expenses – not to fill gaps in ongoing programs and services. It’s never advisable to pay for recurring expenses with short-term dollars because that simply continues the budget problems rather than fixing them.

The expenditure limit, however, won’t cause problems for using the $89 million in general fund money newly recognized for the budget that begins July 1 because lawmakers have more wiggle room under the cap next year.

The four-member estimating conference increased this year’s forecast because the state is collecting more than expected from corporate, personal income, sales and severance taxes and from interest earnings on sizable sums Louisiana has locked up in savings accounts. Next year’s forecast increase was driven largely by those better-than-expected interest earnings.

The conference bumped up its projections by even larger amounts than the state general fund numbers suggest, but much of the money is earmarked to trust funds and dedications. For example, the $2.3 billion Revenue Stabilization Trust Fund, created to lessen Louisiana’s reliance on volatile tax collections tied to corporate activity and oil and gas drilling, is projected to get another $1.1 billion in deposits over the next 14 months.

As lawmakers decide how to use all the newly recognized money, PAR urges the House and Senate to keep their focus on priorities that will improve the long-term trajectory of the state while acknowledging the fiscal headwinds they will soon face.

An unusually strong solar storm hitting Earth could produce northern lights in the U.S. this weekend and potentially disrupt power and communications.

UPDATE:

Social media is sharing photos of the northern lights from parts of Louisiana, and the views are amazing.

ORIGINAL STORY:

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration issued a rare severe geomagnetic storm warning when a solar outburst reached Earth on Friday afternoon, hours sooner than anticipated. The effects were due to last through the weekend and possibly into next week.

NOAA alerted operators of power plants and spacecraft in orbit to take precautions, as well as the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

“For most people here on planet Earth, they won’t have to do anything,” said Rob Steenburgh, a scientist with NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center.

The storm could produce northern lights as far south in the U.S. as Alabama and Northern California, according to NOAA. But it was hard to predict and experts stressed it would not be the dramatic curtains of color normally associated with the northern lights, but more like splashes of greenish hues.

“That’s really the gift from space weather — the aurora,” said Steenburgh. He and his colleagues said the best aurora views may come from phone cameras, which are better at capturing light than the naked eye.

Snap a picture of the sky and “there might be actually a nice little treat there for you,” said Mike Bettwy, operations chief for the prediction center.

The most intense solar storm in recorded history, in 1859, prompted auroras in central America and possibly even Hawaii. “We are not anticipating that” but it could come close, said NOAA space weather forecaster Shawn Dahl.

Republican lawmakers plan to leave in a section of the Louisiana constitution that defines marriage as between one man and one woman during a potential constitutional rewrite despite a U.S. Supreme Court ruling. 

Rep. Beau Beaullieu, R-New Iberia, the lawmaker carrying the legislation calling for a constitutional convention, said his conservative colleagues want to leave in the “Defense of Marriage” section just in case the landmark 2015 civil rights case Obergefell v. Hodges, which legalized same-sex marriage nationwide, is overturned. 

“I’ve had requests to leave it in. I haven’t had any requests to remove it,” Beaullieu said in an interview with the Illuminator. Beaullieu declined to name who requested to leave the unconstitutional section in, but said he received “many” requests to do so. 

About 62% of Louisianians support same-sex marriage, according to a 2022 survey from the nonpartisan Public Religion Research Institute, which also found approximately half of Republicans nationwide support same-sex marriage. 

Lawmakers are currently discussing Beaullieu’s House Bill 800 that would assemble a constitutional convention, with 144 legislators and 27 delegates appointed by the governor meeting to make changes to the document. 

Beaullieu has said the delegates would use the convention to move some portions of the constitution into statute, which would make it substantially easier for legislators to change them. 

Neither Beaullieu or Republican Gov. Jeff Landry, who is the driving force behind the convention, has been forthcoming about what they want to remove from the constitution, although they have promised to wall off public school funding protections and the homestead exemption property tax break in the constitution. While lawmakers have billed this as a limited convention to “refresh” the constitution, delegates likely would have authority to change anything they wanted. 

Kate Kelly, a spokesperson for Landry, did not respond to a request for comment for this story.

The Louisiana State Law Institute, which is required by law to provide a report on unconstitutional and preempted state laws to the legislature every other year, has included this portion of the constitution in every report since 2016. 

The Institute has recommended the legislature pass a constitutional amendment to the voters to change the definition as not a marriage between one man and one woman, but as between two natural persons. 

While the legislature has declined to do this, it has instructed new printings of the constitution to include a note regarding the Obergefell decision below the section. 

In Obergefell v. Hodges, the U.S. Supreme Court found that same-sex couples could not be deprived the right to marry under 14th Amendment protections. As a result of this ruling, same-sex couples now have a legal right to marry in every U.S. state. 

After the Obergefell ruling, the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals reversed its ruling in Robicheaux v. Caldwell, which in 2014 upheld Louisiana’s ban on same-sex marriage. In the Robicheaux reversal order, the court explicitly stated that the portion of Louisiana’s constitution banning same-sex marriage is unconstitutional. 

Article XII Section 15 was added to the constitution in 2004 after being approved by 78% of voters. The constitutional amendment was proposed by then state Rep. Steve Scalise, who is now the U.S. House majority leader. 

Legislators have made several attempts to repeal this portion of the constitution, most recently in the current legislative session. House Bill 98 by Rep. Mandie Landry, D-New Orleans, was shelved in its first committee hearing. The bill would have complied with the Louisiana Law Institute’s recommendation by defining marriage as “the union of two persons.” 

Landry said she intends to bring up the proposal again if the constitutional convention happens. 

The bill was sidelined at the request of House Speaker Pro Tempore Rep. Mike Johnson, R-Pineville, who argued the Legislature should avoid advancing bills that would put constitutional questions on the ballot in light of the potential constitutional convention. 

Rep. Landry argued it’s important to repeal that section of the constitution not just for symbolic reasons, but because many fear further legal attacks on same-sex marriage. 

“Younger people don’t stay up at night thinking they want to leave here because the Constitution is too long, but they do think about and they do leave because of issues like same sex, marriage, abortion, reproductive issues,” she said. 

Beaullieu’s bill, which calls for a constitutional convention this summer, has received approval from the House of Representatives but has not yet been scheduled for a hearing in the Senate and Governmental Affairs Committee. 

If a convention was held — which is still uncertain due to skepticism from senators — it would take place in three stages: An organizational session to select convention leaders could take place as soon as May 30. Convention committees would then meet in June and July to discuss potential constitutional changes, and wrap up their work by Aug. 1, when the full convention would then meet until Aug. 15. The finished product would then be on a ballot for voter approval at the same time of the presidential election in November.