We expected to get a real breakdown of cuts to higher education, healthcare, and other state services today– but lawmakers still aren’t ready.
Monday was supposed to be the day that cuts to fix the 66 million dollar current year deficit would be announced, but with all these numbers floating around, last minute changes, general confusion, and future business to attend to… those numbers just weren’t ready.
Today, Commissioner of Administration Jay Dardenne, the Governor’s chief financial adviser, said it’ll be a few more days until the cuts are released. If you’re expecting information on next year’s budget, keep dreaming. Those numbers are far from being ready. Dardenne called the situation unusual, “perhaps unprecedented for the committee in the regular session to be looking at a bill that has been ratcheted down dramatically from the way it was introduced, and not to have the administration’s view of what ought to happen yet.”
Dardenne says “the reality is we’re not ready to give you that view because we’ve had to do this exercise over and over again based upon the reduced numbers, and we’re meeting as quickly as we can with the departments and as deliberately as we can, and at the same time trying to impose the cuts for the 2016 year.”
Dardenne estimates by the end of the first week of April, everyone should have the real numbers, cuts and all.