Louisiana reshuffles federal virus aid

BATON ROUGE, La. — Louisiana lawmakers Friday reshuffled $16 million in federal coronavirus aid to unemployment payments and mobile devices for schoolchildren, in a rush to spend all the dollars before an end-of-year congressional deadline.

The money comes from $1.8 billion in direct coronavirus assistance that Louisiana received from Congress, which must be used by this month or the state loses it. Without objection, the joint House and Senate budget committee quickly agreed to move the final dollars around to avoid giving up the available cash.

“We just want to make sure we don’t have to return it,” said Senate Finance Chairman Mack “Bodi” White, the Baton Rougearea Republican who leads the joint budget committee.

The $16 million will be split, with one half going into the state’s nearly bankrupt unemployment trust fund to pay for jobless claims and the other half steered to Louisiana’s education department for technology including computers and tablets for distance learning.

State Superintendent Cade Brumley told lawmakers the department will use its dollars to offer more mobile devices to students and teachers and replace outdated ones. The technology initiative has been stepped up because so many classes have been forced into online learning environments during the coronavirus outbreak.

If the education department can’t use its entire $8 million allocation by Dec. 28, any remaining dollars will flow to the unemployment trust fund, under the terms of the legislative agreement which also was supported by Gov. John Bel Edwards’ administration.

Louisiana’s unemployment fund has been drained to provide aid to hundreds of thousands of workers forced out of jobs during the pandemic. The state has borrowed $133 million from the federal government so far to help pay for claims because fewer business taxes are flowing into the fund than the payments flowing out of it, according to the state labor department. Many other states also are borrowing from Washington.

House Appropriations Chairman Jerome “Zee” Zeringue, a Houma Republican, said lawmakers sought to steer the remaining federal aid dollars to areas that represented a “pressing need” and that could use the assistance quickly.

The Democratic governor and majority-Republican Legislature spent more than half the $1.8 billion to fill gaps in Louisiana’s state budget.