BATON ROUGE — An amendment added to the proposed $28 billion state budget Thursday would protect the Lake Charles Memorial-W.O. Moss public-private hospital partnership from receiving more than its fair share of potential budget reductions.
Rep. Mark Abraham, R-Lake Charles, was one of the few House members able to get a proposed amendment accepted. Abraham’s amendment says any cuts to the nine public-private hospital partnership budgets would have to be made on a percentage of their state and federal funding.
Budget reductions to the state Health Department could result in an $84 million cut to the private-public partnerships. If the reduction were divided equally among the nine hospitals, Abraham said, that would have penalized the Lake Charles partnership, which operates on $56 million in state, federal and self-generated funds. The New Orleans hospital partnership receives $409 million in funding from state, federal and self-generated sources.
The Abraham amendment would also lock in the $84 million as the highest cut that can be made to the partnerships. He said additional budget changes could be made by the Senate, and that there is the possibility no hospital cuts will have to made. The nine hospitals took over the former charity hospital system.
Another budget amendment that was approved removes $190 million in federal flood funding the Appropriations Committee had approved for the Comite River diversion project. The deletion was accepted by the House on Thursday in favor of using the money for homeowners who have been affected by serious flooding.
Rep. Valarie Hodges, R-Denham Springs, had successfully added the project to the budget in committee. A number of House members objected to diverting the money to one specific project when over 4,000 homeowners have been waiting a long time for federal funds to rebuild and renovate their flooded homes.
Rep. Dorothy Sue Hill, D-Dry Creek, said the Bundick Lake project in her area is also essential. She said she has managed to get $400,000 in the past for work at the lake, but that $5 million more is needed to help prevent repeated flooding.
Hodges, whose home was flooded in August, said the Comite River project has been in the works for 17 years. But she withdrew her objection to the amendment after seeing widespread opposition to taking flood money for a specific project.
Another problem was the possibility the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development might object because it had already approved the state’s plan for spending the $1.6 billion.
Amendments that were rejected would have increased funding for the health, family and corrections departments. All are being cut in House Bill 1, which contains the proposed budget.
Rep. Malinda White, D-Bogalusa, said the budget calls for eliminating vacant positions in departments before making other reductions, but that more workers are needed because of the high turnover rates in those agencies.
White’s amendment would have cost $9.8 million. Rep. Cameron Henry, R-Metairie and chairman of the Appropriations Committee, said taking general fund money for additional uses would make it impossible to spend only 97.5 percent of the revenue forecast for the coming fiscal year. Henry said the budget is not spending the total forecast in hopes of avoiding another midyear budget reduction.
Rep. Sam Jones, D-Franklin, tried unsuccessfully to add nearly $148,000 to the budget of the Department of Veterans Affairs. Henry said the agency got additional funding in its budget. A spokesman for the department said even more money is needed to replace vehicles and computers and to keep veterans cemeteries open.
Rep. Walt Leger, D-New Orleans, said, “The department has to choose between honoring the dead or serving the living.”
An unsuccessful amendment by Rep. Ted James, D-Baton Rouge, would have taken $1 million from the state Attorney General’s Office to increase the pay of probation and parole officers. He wanted that money to avoid raising fees on parolees or probationers from $63 to $100 a month. James said the higher fee poses a hardship on people struggling to return to civilian life.
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