Jay Dardenne Talks about Revenues

State lawmakers are beginning the tedious work of hashing out the budget. As you can see by the budget graph provided by the House, the numbers keep growing.

One of the big issues is determining how much revenue Louisiana will bring in. The Revenue Estimating Conference has not yet agreed on that number. House Speaker Taylor Barras serves on that panel and he has refused to ok the revenue estimate. Barras wants to use a more conservative number, but he has been outnumbered. The REC decision has to be unanimous, so they have not agreed on a revenue estimate yet.

We caught up with Jay Dardenne, the Commissioner of Administration to talk about the REC and the state budget situation.

House Speaker Taylor Barras tells us he wants to continue to be conservative in setting the revenue numbers. He says if the estimates from the fall would have resulted in another pretty significant REC miss on projecting revenues. He says when the number is too high, mid-year budget cuts are the result.