Daily Dime

Flush with more than $3.6 billion in extra cash, the Legislature wrapped up its budget deliberations on Thursday with more than two weeks left before adjournment, sending Gov. John Bel Edwards a package of bills that fund state government services next year while setting aside billions of dollars for construction and maintenance projects.… Read more...

The Louisiana Legislature will sometimes spend hours in loud, passionate public debate over relatively trivial issues. But when it came to distributing an unprecedented amount of state and federal revenue through the annual budget process, lawmakers made all the major decisions behind closed doors.… Read more...

The state Senate will debate the state budget on Wednesday afternoon, and if precedent holds it will make few substantive changes to next year’s $39 billion operating budget and various other bills that allocate more than $3.6 billion in windfall revenue.… Read more...

Recipients of the popular TOPS scholarship increasingly come from higher-income households. Since 2010-2011, the number of students who hailed from households with incomes above $150,000 increased by 56%. While the Louisiana Board of Regents is required by state law to annually report the household income data of TOPS recipients, state lawmakers are considering legislation this session that would mask these disparities by stripping this data from the annual TOPS report, and the entire TOPS reporting system.… Read more...