On Friday morning, Commissioner of Administration Paul Rainwater told the legislature's Joint Budget Committee that there was no decision yet on what must be cut to offset a $108 million budget shortfall that must be balanced by June 30.
Not long after, while the committee meeting was still in progress, Gov. Bobby Jindal called a press conference to lay out the cuts his administration expects from state agencies. Higher education and health care will bear the brunt of the new cuts.
Lawmakers were predictably upset over what they saw as the administration's calculated deception over the cuts, as Advocate reporter Michelle Millhollon wrote here.
Even worse was the governor's cavalier attitude about the state's budget crisis. "We don't need whining," he said, "we do need leadership." Then our leader flew off to yet another state to raise funds for yet another Republican candidate.
What effect will the cuts have? Reporter Jordan Blum documents the approximately $35 million to higher education in this story. More details about LSU's loss are reported by Blum here.
And in this press release from the Department of Education, some $6.3 million in cuts to K-12 are laid out.
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