Gov. John Bel Edwards’ administration had proposed using cash in Louisiana’s construction plan for “land acquisition, planning and construction” of a St. Gabriel-area water transmission extension to the prison.
But legislative leaders removed the funding during their secretive reworking of the state spending plan, which took place in the last few days of this year’s lawmaking session. It’s not clear why the money was dropped.
Senate President Page Cortez, R-Lafayette, and House Speaker Clay Schexnayder, R–Gonzales, asked rank-and-file lawmakers to vote almost blindly on a $44 billion annual state spending plan last month. Most legislators were only given a few minutes to review hundreds of pages of budget documents before being asked to approve the budget bills.
In the aftermath of that process, legislators have complained about projects they didn’t realize were cut out of the spending plan. Money for the Jimmie Davis bridge in Shreveport, a port project in St. Bernard Parish and state judges’ pay were missing, though Edwards said he has found workarounds to backfill all of that funding.
When it comes to the water transmission line, Louisiana’s prison system may end up repeating its request for the $1.6 million next year, said Thomas Bickham, undersecretary for the Department of Public Safety and Corrections.
The state could also take some of the money meant for other parts of the prison project — a total of $36.6 million in the current budget — and use it for the water hookup. The funding would have to be replaced though, because it is needed for other areas of construction, Bickham said.
“It needs to be done one way or another. Period,” he said.
Edwards said miscommunications over the state’s construction plan might have been avoided if lawmakers hadn’t been rushing the budget process at the very end of the legislative session last month.
“If you wait until the very end of the session and you start making major decisions, you can’t really think through those major decisions to know what all of the consequences will be,” the governor said during his monthly radio show last week.
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