By: Greg LaRose – Louisiana Illuminator
Road construction and repair is arguably the most visible sign of government at work, so it’s no surprise that the Louisiana Department of Transportation and Development – with an $19 billion backlog of highway projects – is in the crosshairs of Republican state leaders pushing for a public agency revamp.
A package of legislation promises to deliver that overhaul of DOTD, which employs 4,300 state workers. Its key components are scheduled for debate Tuesday in the state House of Representatives.
But there are concerns the changes will be radical rather than surgical, bringing to mind a chainsaw-wielding Elon Musk and the federal government cuts his Department of Government Efficiency has made. The Trump administration has since had to rescind many of those dismissals.
The proposals to shakeup DOTD would place more control over highway construction projects directly under the governor’s office, with an emphasis on infrastructure considered critical to economic development. Critics worry that underscoring expediency could come at the cost of safety when designing and building roads and bridges.
Rep. Ryan Bourriaque, R-Abbeville, authored the proposals and rejects suggestions that his bills bear any resemblance to the DOGE-driven purge in Washington. For starters, he said efforts to reconfigure DOTD have been shaped through bipartisan feedback from members of the House Committee on Transportation he chairs. It’s held monthly meetings since January specifically to get input on his proposals, he said.
“I don’t think a lot of the things we’re talking about surprise a lot of people, you know, because we’ve had these discussions,” Borriaque said last month in an interview.
Long-distance dedication
Borriaque’s House Bill 556 would restrict the DOTD’s use of the state Transportation Trust Fund to actual construction projects. That would end the practice of using the money to pay DOTD employee salaries and benefits that goes back more than 30 years.
The fund, established in 1990 with a specific dedication to roadwork, gets its proceeds from taxes on gasoline and motor fuels. Beyond having employee pay siphoned from the account, the fund revenue stream struggled to keep up with increases in construction costs.
Borriaque’s proposed changes mean compensation for DOTD employees, which comes to $438 million next fiscal year, would have to come out of the state general fund. There’s consensus among lawmakers for limiting the trust fund to actual construction, an objective they’ve discussed for years but never figured out how to achieve.
To accomplish it, it means the governor and lawmakers would have to cover DOTD personnel costs while facing a budget deficit that will exceed $570 million in another two years, according to the most recent legislative fiscal staff forecasts.
Lawmakers don’t have to tackle this math for another year, as Bourriaque’s measures wouldn’t take effect until July 1, 2026.
Rep. Jack McFarland, R-Jonesboro, the legislature’s lead author of the state budget, told The Advocate last week money in the general fund that has been put toward DOTD projects in the state construction budget will cover employee overhead at the agency instead.
Power shifts
Bourriaque originally wanted to give DOTD’s secretary more authority to “eliminate any position within the department,” reinforcing an executive order Gov. Jeff Landry issued last May. Bourriaque has since updated the job reduction provisions to align with state Civil Service rules, acknowledging the legislature cannot unilaterally have classified employees fired.
Rep. Joy Walters, D-Shreveport, was among the few members of the transportation committee who pushed back on unfettered DOTD employee reductions without any prior assessment of the impacted professionals or their importance to the agency.
“I do know that change is necessary. Change is good,” Walters said in an April 15 interview. “But I believe also in transparency.”
Another concern for Walters lies within Bourriaque’s House Bill 640, which creates the Office of Louisiana Highway Construction in the governor’s Division of Administration. The office would have its own executive director and staff, but there are no details yet on the size of the staff or compensation for these new government positions.
Proposed measures within House Bill 528 by Bourriaque would allow the governor to appoint a deputy secretary for the new DOTD Office of Transformation, which was launched in January. It was among the recommendations of a Boston Consulting Group review of department operations and structure, which led to a DOTD “strategic improvement plan.”
The ultimate goal of the governor might be to do away with DOTD, Walters said, and replace it with the state Office of Highway Construction. The governor has never stated this is his intent, but the creation of a new Division of Administration offshoot for transportation seems to move away from the DOGE philosophy of shrinking government, according to Walters.
“If you ask me, we are giving the governor a lot of rein outside of the scope of what is necessarily needed to run government effectively,” she said. “My strong concern is that we are politicizing that particular position, and then you can be hired and fired really quickly.”
Walters said she’s more amenable to a provision in House Bill 556 that creates an assistant secretary of project delivery within DOTD. Borriaque referred to the role as a “change agent” that would replace the current post of chief engineer. Walters’ research into transportation agencies in other states found that California has a similar position with oversight of thousands of employees directly involved in highway construction.
Expert advice
When Bourriaque’s bills advanced from the transportation committee, there were questions about whether it would reduce the number of engineers at the agency. In an interview, he said amendments on the House floor would likely restore the chief engineer’s duties and carve out a more specific job description for the new project delivery leader.
Peter Robins-Brown with Louisiana Progress, an advocacy group for the poor and working class, asked committee members to keep safety in mind when shaking up the DOTD. He linked improved conditions for pedestrians and cyclists with the ongoing legislative efforts to bring down auto insurance costs.
“The fear is that in the rush to catch up with that backlog – which is important, right, like we need to catch up with that backlog as quickly as we can – we don’t want to see what is already, apparently not a very good process for creating safer roads. We don’t want to see that get bumped down the priority list,” Robins-Brown said in a subsequent interview.
Norma Jean Mattei, an engineering faculty member at the University of New Orleans, is also part of the Louisiana Transportation Research Center, DOTD’s testing and experimentation arm.
Mattei, who was national president of the American Society of Civil Engineers in 2017, said any reform at the department should take place with preserving institutional knowledge in mind, given the relatively short career spans of politicians.
“One of the issues with elected officials is they come in and they only have this lens of four to eight years, and they’re gone,” Mattei told the Illuminator. “Then somebody else comes in with another vision. You want to have some type of continuity so that there’s not this knee-jerk reaction … you wipe everything clean every time we’ve got a new person in charge.”