Mayor-President Sharon Weston Broome speaks in a press conference Friday afternoon in response to the Louisiana Supreme Court’s ruling in favor of the controversial proposed City of St. George at City Hall on April 26, 2024. Baton Rouge government agencies have been told to submit plans for budget cuts of 10% and 20%, highlighting the uncertainty surrounding the city-parish's finances caused by the incorporation of the new city of St.
George. It is still uncertain if the cuts will happen. But if they do, the reductions could reverberate throughout some of the parish's most consequential agencies, officials say.
St. George is set to take over a big portion of the sales taxes that go into the city-parish's general fund. Departments that get money from that fund were asked to submit a plan with 10% cuts and another with 20% cuts.
Those agencies include: On Friday, East Baton Rouge Mayor-President Sharon Weston Broome said the reduction requests given to departments in June were both a response to the stabilization of sales and use taxes as well as the pending rehearing at the time regarding the Louisiana Supreme Court's decision regarding St. George. The East Baton Rouge Metro Council will vote on a 2025 budget in December, which could include some of the cuts the city-parish has asked departments to submit.
District 3 Metro Council member Rowdy Gaudet said he has had meetings with the city's finance director and the Mayor's Office on the impact of St. George's incorporation on the city's budget. But it is tough for East Baton Rouge officials to understand the degree of that impact, he said, as the details of St.
George's financial makeup remain unclear. "Because St George is still not an exact target in terms of, there's still some unanswered questions, we don't have those exact numbers," Gaudet said. Gaudet said he and others will need to be precise when they amend and adopt a budget for 2025 in coming months, but said as he understands it, the financial bottom line for St.
George is still being discussed between the city-parish and the new city's leadership. "I would say, based on what's been told to me, a number for this coming year is still something that's being negotiated among the parties," he said. A letter sent by Broome on Aug.
13 highlighted divisions between the city-parish and St. George over the new city's budget. The same day, the St.
George City Council passed a budget estimating $28 million in tax revenue through the remainder of 2024, though it has not yet received these funds. St. George is set to make up some of this lost revenue for the city-parish via an intergovernmental agreement for services provided for the city, but its leaders have yet to inform the Mayor's Office what those services will be and have only estimated $8 million for such for an eight-month period in their 2024 budget, Broome said.
The $28 million in tax revenue St. George budgeted from the end April 2024 through the start of 2025 equates to about $43 million annually. This would represent lost funds from the city-parish's general fund — which had a total of $413 million budgeted for 2024 — if St.
George is able to implement its 2% sales tax next year. As of Friday, Broome said her office is still waiting for a response from St. George regarding the Aug.
13 letter. The city-parish still does not know what services St. George wants the city-parish to continue to provide throughout 2025.
"We do not have the information we have repeatedly requested from the City of St. George, including answers to the basic question of what essential governmental services the City of St. George wants to provide its residents," the mayor said.
During the current transition period of unknowns regarding St. George, Broome said a portion of sales and use tax collected by the parish and in use could potentially be remitted to St. George and may require adjustments to the general fund.
Like others, District Attorney Hillar Moore was asked to submit 10% and 20% reduced budgets for next year. If cuts resemble those figures, it could decimate the DA's operations, Moore said, as its general fund expenses are entirely made up of staff salaries. "I can tell you that right now we are, we are drowning in cases," Moore said.
"Folks here, they're struggling to keep up with what they have. And you know, the salary is really kind of disappointed in the inability to give them raises for their valued work." The DA said his office — which represents the most populated parish in Louisiana — already combats retention issues, as many assistant district attorneys in the parish start at a salary of around $60,000 fresh out of law school with $200,000 to $300,000 worth of student debt.
"A 10 to 20% reduction would translate at least 10 to 20% reduction in our workforce," said Jon Daily, CPA for the District Attorney's Office. "That's anywhere from 15 to 30 people that we could lose, which obviously would be threatening to public safety, and we're already understaffed compared to our peers." District Attorney Hillar Moore speaks during a press conference regarding a drug bust at Baton Rouge Police Department Headquarters on Thursday, August 15, 2024.
Moore said the DA's Office has no political qualms with St. George and fully trusts the new city will make up some of the cuts that could come to his department. But like others, the fear lies in submitting a reduced budget while not knowing how much will be made up, as little appears to be worked out between St.
George and the city-parish regarding finances, meaning they don't know what the makeup of the office's staff will look like in January. "It's hard to say right now, because there's an active dispute about the finances," Daily said. "We're constantly in crisis management with our budget right now.
And our budget dictates what we can and cannot do, yet we have constitutional obligations to carry out." Moore's office — which employs around 65 attorneys — is given cases by the local police department and East Baton Rouge Sheriff's Department, which also are operating understaffed. "Think if the police department and the sheriff were fully staffed.
We would not be just taken on water. We would be sinking and imploding," Moore said. Among the departments asked to submit reduced budgets was the Sheriff's Office, whose largest chunk of general fund expenses is the East Baton Rouge Parish Prison.
In response to the request, the Sheriff's Office told the city-parish's finance department that any sort of reduction would be "impractical and unobtainable" for the facility. In an email sent to a finance department on Aug. 9, Amanda Oliveaux, Finance and Budget Coordinator for the East Baton Rouge Sheriff's Office, said items in the prison's budget are of statute, leaving virtually no legal wiggle room for reduction.
"The only budget variable left would be for building materials, repairs and maintenance, which is still a statutory obligation and unrealistic to adjust considering the physical conditions of the building and its property," Oliveaux wrote. The Sheriff's Office has often noted the poor conditions of the parish prison, including in April, when Sheriff Sid Gautreaux told Broome the facility was not suitable to house 17-year-old inmates as ordered under a new law, and the teens would have to be sent elsewhere. Oliveaux said submitting a reduced budget with no regard for repairs and maintenance would be a false representation of the prison's ongoing financial needs.
There are less than 75 days between now and when Broome will propose her final budget to Metro Council for 2025 with many unsettled variables that will hopefully be determined before then, she said. Still, through proactive planning for what may come, Broome has directed all departments to hire only critical personnel right now. "I will do everything possible to avoid layoffs during this transition period and have directed City-Parish Finance and department heads in preparing the 2025 budget to proceed under that approach," she said.
The mayor said it is her "sincere hope" that by the time a budget is proposed and approved by Metro Council in December, all the legal determinations necessary will be completed and an intergovernmental agreement between St. George and the city-parish will have been made. And while she still has not received a response from leadership of the new city, she hopes one comes soon.
"I stand ready to work with leaders of St. George to negotiate a timely agreement, but again, we await requested responses from the City of St. George that are critical to finalizing specific budgets both for the City-Parish of East Baton Rouge and the City of St.
George," Broome said..
