Except for the proclamation by in the world of sports road cycling commentators that a stage or race is “epic,” the most overused aphorism in the English language in the worlds of politics and business is asserting that the Chinese symbol for “crisis” and “opportunity” is one and the same (which is just as false as the multitude of epic showdowns).

Has Louisiana reached that juncture over its historical emphasis of state control of local governments?

In the wake of the defeat of a constitutional amendment that would have constructed education pay raises to replace the piecemeal stipend system of the past three years, policy-makers have gone into full panic mode. This has mutated into talks of a permanent solution through a task force for fiscal year 2028, with pledges somehow to usher that in with another year of stipends.

Republican Gov. Jeff Landry has proposed as much, indicating he favored a temporary rejiggering of the Minimum Foundation Program to shift $150 million from operating expenses (three-quarters of the money to compensate for the current stipends) to salaries to cover FY 2027. He also correctly noted that one alternative that had been floated — taking the amount needed out of the Revenue Stabilization Trust Fund —  was, (quite clearly), unconstitutional.

Yet another idea has surfaced: the cancellation of one-time payments to entities as gifts or subsidies and shuttling the money to prop up stipends. To a degree, this could work. It would not work with some programs that, frankly, need paring regardless of where the saved money would go, such as the wasteful Motion Picture Production tax credit, because of the statutory changes necessary. But it could work regarding the penchant to slough off state taxpayer dollars to fund local projects.

Louisiana has a long history of state government centralizing power to empower state elected officials. A panoply of laws and regulations covering local government powers and actions are designed to give state government the final say over what could simply remain matters of local jurisdiction, not so much out of a sense of subsidiarity (granting powers to local governments when the policy outcome in question is best delivered by lower levels of government), but as a means of expanding legislators’ and statewide elected officials’ powers, with an eye towards using those powers for reelection purposes. If you create a dependency relationship, in receiving stuff local officials gratefully should grease the skids for multiple terms in office for state officials (or promotion to others).

As such, for decades the practice has developed to have local governments, as well as nongovernmental organizations, become supplicants to legislators for discrete projects — earmarks, as it is. Insofar as local governments, not only does this distort their spending priorities upwards (because the state can supply things from time to time with a line-item appropriation, leading to less budgeting caution), but it also takes the pressure off reforms that could give greater revenue raising powers to local governments (for example, decreasing the state sales tax rate but increasing the ceiling allowed on combined local sales taxation) that would obviate the need of going hat in hand to a legislator and giving him a chance to grab a future favor from those officials.

That this devolves into a wasteful exercise of state taxpayers funding local projects is all the more reason to end the practice. This year the supplemental appropriations bill, which uses general fund money for a majority of its funding, will spend over $450 million from this source, although well over half will go to statewide needs, and a third of it is spoken for as surplus from FY 2025 going to defeasance of unfunded accrued liabilities.

This and the general appropriations and capital outlay bills remain in flux, but it’s likely that excising local expenditures – keeping in mind that these are capital outlay requests that often have waited years for funding – dependent upon general fund dollars, could spring a good chunk of change towards another stipend. Better, an act of this nature should kick off reevaluation of the entire worldview of state dollars going to local purposes; for example, why should DeSoto Parish have its five-year capital road plan receive $25 million in borrowed funds to completely fund it (and the majority of it at that), as well as $5 million more in cash for work on its landfill? Are these really the best uses of state taxpayer dollars?

Of course, this won’t happen, beginning with the fact that constitutional amendments would have to be made for there to trigger any permanent shift in the balance of state/local funding, and leftists throwing temper tantrums in the past couple of years lately have interfered with that. Still, it’s nice to fantasize about right-sized Louisiana governments spending only on true needs appropriate to their levels, at both the state and local levels.