By: Julie O’Donoghue | Louisiana Illuminator
The latest version Louisiana’s proposed $51 billion budget for the next fiscal cycle would boost spending for a wide range of criminal justice and law enforcement entities, including prisons, juvenile jails, crime labs, state police and K-12 school security.
The Louisiana House of Representatives unanimously approved a spending proposal that puts over $100 million more into public safety and criminal justice collectively. It would kick in for the fiscal year that starts July 1.
Yet one of the biggest ticket items in the budget — how much public school teachers and support staff will be paid — remains on hold.
Gov. Jeff Landry and the legislature are banking on voters to approve Constitutional Amendment #3 on the May 16 ballot before they finalize teachers salaries for the 2026-27 school year.
If the amendment passes, teachers and other school staff will see $2,000 and $1,000 annual raises, respectively. It would make permanent the temporary pay stipends they’ve received for the past three years. Plus, they will get additional modest pay bumps of $250 and $125 per year.
If the amendment fails, lawmakers would have to make tough decisions about whether to move funding around to avoid a teacher and school staff pay cut. Landry and the legislature have not included money in the current budget to continue to the current pay stipends if the amendment flops.
Prioritizing prisons, police and firefighters
The focus on criminal justice aligns with Landry’s priorities.
Soon after taking office in 2024, the governor pushed through several tough-on-crime laws that will now keep many people convicted of crimes in prison for longer periods of time.
Since those changes have been made, both the adult prison and juvenile justice prison populations have grown. But the Landry administration has said the new laws aren’t responsible for the increase in incarceration expenses.
The proposed prison spending includes $36.5 million more for Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola, according to budget documents. The increase would cover, among other items, an expansion in the inmate population by 688 people, 150 more staff members and substantially more medical treatment for prisoners.
The most recent figures from the Department of Public Safety and Corrections show more than 4,300 people were held at the facility as of Jan. 31, not counting a renovated section with some 400 immigration detainees.
The prison and parole system would also receive a lump sum of $36.4 million to cover cost overruns such as overtime pay for correctional officers and prisoner medical expenses in the current year. That includes $12.7 million at Angola for “personnel services, other compensation and supplies,” according to budget documents.
The budget proposal includes $15.2 million to open a new 56-bed youth prison and hire its staff of 122 at a Vernon Parish building the local sheriff owns. The state also plans to add 36 beds, which will require 31 new staff members, at the old Jetson Center for Youth in East Baton Rouge Parish for a price of $1.9 million.
The Office of Juvenile Justice is also receiving an one-time allocation of $1.7 million to cover “security acquisitions.”
Louisiana State Police would receive an extra $22.2 million to cover its expenses, including $9.6 million to move into a new crime lab.
Firefighters employed by the Louisiana Department of Agriculture and Forestry will be getting pay raises totalling $5.5 million per year and $10.6 million to purchase new firefighting equipment.
K-12 school funding uncertainty
Constitutional Amendment #3, if it passes, will dissolve state education trust funds to use the money to pay off local K-12 school system debt. This is expected to produce enough savings to allow most school districts to make their public teachers and school support staff’s stipend permanent and give them a slight raise.
But the legislature will still have to cover the cost for some school districts, particularly charter schools, with $40 million to $50 million needed to cover the entirety of the teacher’s pay package. That additional money isn’t in the budget yet, but the chairman of the House budget committee, Rep. Jack McFarland, R-Jonesboro, said he doesn’t expect it to be a problem to cover.
The proposed budget actually includes a drop in the public school per-pupil funding formula of approximately $21.9 million, McFarland said. School districts aren’t receiving as much funding because public school enrollment across the state is down by 12,000 students this year.
The legislature has granted public schools an allocation boost for operational expenses, such as fuel purchases, from $100 to $147 per student, at the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education’s request. The state school board said the fuel rate had not been raised in almost two decades and was needed in order to keep with recent inflation costs.
The House-approved budget backs Landry’s push for a major expansion in Louisiana’s private education voucher program, in which some families would receive public dollars to support their children’s private education expenses. These include private school tuition, tutoring, computer and uniform expenses.
The budget includes $87 million for the LA GATOR scholarship program, which is double the amount the program received last year. That would boost the number of students who receive the approximately $7,400 scholarship award from 5,700 this school year to 11,800 next year, according to the Louisiana Legislative Fiscal Office.
Senate President Cameron Henry, R-Metairie, has indicated he doesn’t want to see the LA GATOR program grow, let alone double, so it seems unlikely this funding will stay in the budget plan.
Backfilling federal government cuts
The budget proposal would also put state money toward programs that lost federal support.
Louisiana could spend an additional $42 million on the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program, known as SNAP or food stamps, because the federal government is no longer the state to administer the program.
McFarland said the state has also backfilled $1.5 million for sexual assault victim services after declines in federal funding for those programs over the years.