BATON ROUGE — Gov. John Bel Edwards on Friday vetoed the $28 billion budget passed by the Legislature, refusing to accept deep cuts to TOPS, higher education and state government.
"I know we can do better for the people of Louisiana," he said late Friday night.
Edwards is banking on lawmakers raising taxes in a Special Session that begins Tuesday to mitigate a $648 million shortfall, although they declined to do so in a February Special Session.
The budget sent to Edwards leaves nursing home patients, hospitals and healthcare whole, but cuts the popular scholarship program TOPS by 30 percent and higher education by $96 million.
It also cuts the general fund allocations to virtually every agency except the Department of Health by 24.2 percent, which Edwards said would put state government at a standstill and cost 2,000 state employees their jobs.
The majority of lawmakers, as shown by the Legislature's decision to pass the budget bill, said it was their responsibility to pass a budget during the Regular Session that ended Friday.
But Edwards and other lawmakers preferred that the Legislature park the budget until the shortfall, or fiscal cliff as it's become known, could be addressed in a Special Session.
The Legislature is constitutionally required to pass and Edwards to sign a state budget by June 30.
"It gives people false hope," Sen. Karen Carter Peterson, D-New Orleans said during the Senate debate. "We don't have to pass this budget now."
Next year's budget shortfall is created by the expiration of $1.4 billion in temporary taxes that fall off the books June 30.
Most of that revenue is generated through a temporary one-cent sales tax, which raises about $880 million annually.
Lawmakers will now have another chance to fill the $648 million budget hole or some portion of it with new taxes in a Special Session before the fiscal year begins July 1 or live with the consequences of the cuts.
