Legislators Told Not to Panic at Budget Plan

              Legislators Told Not to Panic at Budget Plan
By RONNI PATRIQUIN
Journal Capital Bureau
BATON ROUGE - As the governor's
office distributed a printed version of
this year's state construction budget
this morning, House gubernatorial floor
leaders felt it necessary to calm
representatives by explaining that the
measure being distributed is only a
preliminary plan which will be altered
when Gov. Dave Treen submits the
actual capital outlay bill, probably next
Monday.
"The governor's office wanted you to
know that this is only a preliminary
budget, and it will be changed, so don't
press the panic button," chief Treen
floorleader Rep. Charles Grisbaum of
Metairie said from the House
microphone.
The construction budget book dis-tributed
this morning is essentially the
same as the proposed budget given
members of the Legislative Budget
Committee last month.
That proposal, which totaled $834.2
million in construction for state pro-jects,
angered lawmakers last month
because it failed to approve funding for
any of the local-interest projects vetoed
by Treen in last year's special session
capital outlay bill.
When the new budget was unveiled in
early March, many House members
who went along with the governor's
plans last year said they felt they had
been betrayed because they believed
they had Treen's promise that needed
local projects which met the governor's
cost-benefit standards would be funded
this year. None of those projects are
included in the "preliminary" budget.
Since the original proposal, Treen has
said he will support spending approx-imately
$26 million to fund on a
matching basis some of the local jails
which are under federal court orders.
In his state-of-the-state message
when the Legislature opened last Mon-day,
Treen proposed spending the $235
million slated for the Enhanced Mineral
Trust Fund on additional capital con-struction.
He recommended that
lawmakers consider using a portion of
that money to help meet the capital
construction needs of local govern-ments.
Treen, who has never liked the idea of
the state putting its extra mineral re-venues
in trust, said he believes it is
more important to meet "the urgent
needs of our state."
Capital construction, he said, "will
provide a much greater rate of return."
If the money is placed in the trust
"rainy day" savings account, he said,
"the principal of that endowment will
be severly eroded over the years by
inflation."
Grisbaum said this morning he ex-pects
the actual capital outlay bill to
reflect some of the concerns Treen
listed in his speech. Although ad-ministration
sources said Treen may
not suggest how to spend all of the trust
monies in the bill, leaving it to
Legislature to make those decisions.
In the original proposal as reflected
in the budget book distributed today, the
governor allocated 80.6 percent for
transportation improvements and 11.8
percent for education needs. The re-mainder
was allocated to purely state
projects.
Of the $834.2 million, $501.6 million
is financed with cash from the state
general fund, matching federal grants,
feberal revenue sharing and self-generated
revenues.
The governor proposed the sale of
$332.6 million in state general obliga-tion
bonds to finance the rest.