Pelican State News

BATON ROUGE, La. – On June 29, Gov. John Bel Edwards announced that he has signed House Bill 1 of the 2023 Regular Session while also using his line item veto authority on 5 items. See below for line item veto information from the governor’s veto letter:

“Dear Speaker Schexnayder and President Cortez:

Please allow this letter to inform you that I have signed House Bill 1 of the 2023 Regular Session. However, I have exercised my line item veto authority granted to me to veto 5 items.

Veto No. 1:     Delete Lines 41-43 on Page 42 of 175

Veto No. 2:     Delete Lines 6-9 on Page 72 of 175

Veto No. 2 restores the $100 million reduction in funding to Louisiana Department of Health (LDH) to protect against devastating programmatic cuts that would result from loss of the funding and the federal matching funds, totaling between $400 million and $700 million that were discussed in the Senate Committee on Health and Welfare on June 20 and that were outlined in the letter sent to me by the committee after the hearing asking that I restore the funds.

Veto No. 3:     Delete Lines 19-21 on Page 85 of 175

Veto No. 4:     Delete Lines 13-21 on Page 109 of 175

Veto No. 4 cuts the additional $125 million payment to the LASERS IUAL, which was made on top of nearly $225 million in additional payments by the state on unfunded accrued liabilities in HB 560 on top of the required annual payment, to restore the $100 million reduction to LDH, the $50,000 restoration in Veto No. 1 to the LED business development program, the $2 million restoration in Veto No. 3 for outreach for the Cancer Research Center, and the $7.5 million restoration in Veto No. 5 for early childhood education seats.

Veto No. 5:     Delete Lines 1-3 on Page 137 of 175

Veto No. 5 restores a $7.5 million dollar reduction to Department of Education for the non-federal support program that will be used for early childhood education seats."

Click here for a scanned copy of the governor's veto letter

Original source can be found here.