Colleges take brunt of cuts

Gov. Bobby Jindal and legislators closed a $251 million state operating budget hole Friday, making $144 million in cuts and using newly available federal and state funds to make up the rest.

Louisiana’s colleges will take the biggest hit — $50 million that must be cut from their current budgets by the end of the current fiscal year in June.

LSU Chancellor Michael Martin said the new round of cuts should force LSU to hit the “tipping point” where the university cannot avoid cuts to the classroom.

“It’s not a shock that we got it, but it’s disappointing,” Martin said.

LSU’s main campus’ cut is $8.1 million.

The state’s health and transportation departments will each have to cut spending by about $24 million.

The state Department of Health and Hospitals will shut health-care facilities in Greenwell Springs and Leesville.

No road projects will be affected by the transportation agency cut.

The deficit eradication plan also calls for the elimination of another 290 state employee positions — 98 of which are filled.

Jindal issued an executive order implementing some of the mid-year cuts to the $25 billion state budget. The Joint Legislative Committee on the Budget approved the remainder of the plan after Commissioner of Administration Paul Rainwater urged quick action.

Budget committee chairman and state Rep. Jim Fannin concurred. “We need to give agencies as much time as we can to spread these cuts out,” said Fannin, D-Jonesboro. The shorter the time, the more drastic the steps would have to occur, he said.

The budget action was prompted by a downward revision of state tax revenue estimates and the need for additional dollars in the program that provides funding for public schools because of student growth.

Rainwater said the administration focused on “targeted reductions that protect critical services” instead of embarking on across-the-board cuts. The plan relies on a hiring freeze as well as reduced spending for travel, acquisitions, supplies, operational and professional services.

Besides the cuts, the administration took $50 million in federal health care funds from the LSU hospital system and $66.2 million generated as a result of recent passage of a constitutional amendment dealing with TOPS scholarship funding to help close the revenue hole.

DHH Secretary Bruce Greenstein said the LSU hospitals are generating extra federal dollars from providing patient care that exceeds their budgeted amounts – so DHH is using the cash to offset cuts.

LSU System Vice President Fred Cerise indicated there could be a problem with the plan.

“It appears that the federal money may not be available to LSU as it has been in the past. If that is the case, we will have to significantly adjust our activities to live within that expectation,” Cerise said.

“We will work on a plan over the next several weeks to implement any changes required.”

Commissioner of Higher Education Jim Purcell late Friday asked the chiefs of LSU, Southern, the University of Louisiana and other college systems to submit reduction plans for their campuses by Dec. 29.

The LSU System must cut $21.2 million; the Southern University System, $2.9 million; the University of Louisiana System, $17.17 million; the Louisiana Community and Technical College System, $7.3 million; and the Board of Regents, $1 million, Purcell wrote in a letter to system presidents.

The Louisiana Office of Student Financial Assistance must reduce its spending by $181,032; and the Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium by $133,451.

“Higher education’s share of this reduction, as a percentage, is much less than that of previous statewide budget reductions, and for that reason, higher education as a collective group should be appreciative of the administration’s efforts to mitigate the financial impact on higher education,” Purcell wrote.

Higher education has been cut by $360 million and nearly 25 percent of its state general funds since cuts began about three years ago as state revenues declined.

Southern University in Baton Rouge recently declared a financial emergency, called exigency, because of budget cuts and enrollment losses.

LSU likely will have to cut part-time faculty, class offerings for students and some student advising in order to balance the budget, LSU’s Martin said.

“You get bigger class sizes and the scheduling gets harder,” Martin said.

Most of the potential layoffs are in the DHH budget associated with closure of two facilities.

Acute psychiatric services will end at Greenwell Springs and move to East Louisiana State Hospital at Jackson with 103 staff positions moving and 42 scrapped.

Residents of a Leesville group home for citizens with developmental disabilities will move to the Pinecrest Developmental Center. There are 44 positions at the Leesville facility — 40 of them filled.

Jordan Blum of the Capitol News Bureau contributed to this report.