Redirect spending to support early child ed

This time, presumed conservative supermajorities in the state Legislature need to act like it and not spend just because they can.

With projections of state spending coming in a bit more flush that previously predicted – about $88 million more this current fiscal year and $197 million for the next – plans are afoot on what to do with it. One suggestion has been to restore all current state spending on early childhood education, which at this point is budgeted at $24 million fewer.

A few years ago, legislators set up a fund to entice matching dollars from local governments to dole out to families with child care expenses. Although the law creating the program to draw from the fund cast a wide eligibility net, subsequent rules issued by the fund’s overseer the Department of Education essentially steer most of the money, and encourages all of it, to go to the lowest-income households with preschool-and-younger children for use at better-quality licensed child care facilities.

This Louisiana Early Childhood Education Fund received a boost when sports betting became legal in Louisiana. A quarter of the revenues from on-site and (limited to 55 parishes that permit) mobile wagering are deposited into this fund, with a maximum of $20 million disbursable to parishes that match dollar-for-dollar.

Around this same time, massively debt-fueled federal government pandemic dollars were flung to states, a part of which Louisiana used to expand child care provision. Leave-no-big-spending-government-behind Democrat former Gov. John Bel Edwards then cajoled Republican majority legislators, when the tap stopped during this fiscal year, to toss in state dollars to supplant that. These dollars were in addition to Fund bucks and didn’t require a local match.

The $24 million would keep things stasis, but if delivered again without strings or cuts elsewhere to compensate would echo the Summer EBT cash food benefit fiasco, where legislators recently decided to spend additional state taxpayer dollars to chase extra pandemic spending unwisely made permanent, like addicts needing a fix, despite little demonstrated need or utility of the larded-up benefit. The case for early childhood spending is somewhat better, but with budgetary rough waters ahead for FY 2026 because of a temporary sales tax hike from the Edwards era finally rolling off and with other revenue stream adjustments into the state’s general fund on the horizon, continuing the new commitment isn’t as wise as cutting or redirecting spending from elsewhere.

Fortunately, the statute containing the fund has the answer. It allocates a tenth of revenues to the 55 parishes no strings attached and over half gets dumped into the general fund. That tenth should be added to the quarter but in proportion to the contribution by parish to be drawn the same matching way. Throwing in the local match gets that extra amount close to the $24 million. It would require a change in a statute, but plenty of legislative instruments exist in this legislative session to provide a vehicle to do so.

Local governments, essentially footing this entire increase, may squawk, but they are the direct beneficiaries of the program as it supplements their workforces while injecting money into their local economies. It also makes much more fiscal sense to have an entirely dedicated revenue stream for this purpose, rather than plug the hole with general fund dollars and hope enough show up for FY 2026 when initial estimates peg hundreds of millions fewer dollars of revenue.

Of course, to do something like this that prioritizes spending will take much more governing fortitude than grabbing at a bonus and kicking the can down the road. Truly conservative legislators would act preemptively with a strategy like this rather than sign the check and think wishfully.