Dive Brief:
- Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal won approval from the State Bond Commission for $80 million worth of state construction projects. This utilizes all available spending capacity for the budget year before the governor leaves office in January.
- Approval from the State Bond Commission provides cash lines of credit to dozens of projects that will be financed in the budget year ending June 30. It also commits Louisiana to non-cash lines of credit for future funding of certain projects, even after the transition to the next administration.
- Planned construction projects originally exceeded the state budget by $385 million, leaving Jindal to decide which projects would be sent to the Bond Commission for approval. Some legislators have claimed the current system allows the governor to trade projects for votes on other pieces of legislation.
Dive Insight:
Lawmakers could do little more than sit by while Jindal divided up the remaining funds left in the state construction budget just three months after they failed to take that authority away during the last legislative session.
In the tight battle for funding, some of Jindal’s largest outlays included $2 million for the Louisiana Lakes Conservancy in East Baton Rouge Parish — with another $10 million in new Priority 5 funding for a total of $12 million in funding — as well as $3 million to make improvements to the TPC Louisiana golf course near New Orleans, a stop on the PGA Tour, and $2 million on rehabilitation and improvement of the lakes near LSU in Baton Rouge.
In order to afford the projects Jindal selected, the state took $74 million from projects it had already promised to fund. As part of that shuffle, Jindal elected to take away $2.3 million in financing for a hurricane protection levee, resulting in a call from Bond Commission members for Jindal to figure out a way to still fund the levee project.