INDReporter

Durel mulling veto after budget vote

by Walter Pierce

Additional expenditures were added to Durel’s budget by various council members and include pay raises for firefighters and $1 million for various infrastructure improvements on Lafayette’s north side.

Watch last night's LCG budget hearing online by clicking here.

City-Parish President Joey Durel, in his final budget meeting of his three terms in office, threatened to veto more than $2.3 million in additional expenses added to the Lafayette Consolidated Government fiscal year 2015-16 budget he submitted to the City-Parish Council earlier this summer. The additional expenditures were added to Durel’s budget by various council members and include pay raises for firefighters and $1 million for various infrastructure improvements on Lafayette’s north side.

Durel’s complaint, echoed by Chief Financial Officer Lorrie Toups, is that the additional funding put’s too much pressure on LCG’s excess fund balance — that is, millions LCG sets aside as a rainy-day fund to weather tough economic times.

“This budget is using over 15 percent, which is our policy, of fund-balance excess ... and that’s going to have consequences on us and on this government and on future potential bond ratings,” Durel warned council members. “We’re also exceeding things at a time when we know for sure that our sales taxes are declining, and we know for sure, almost definitely, that next year will not necessarily be a good year for sales tax collections and maybe for the economy pretty much overall.”

Durel asked council members to trim more than $630,000 of the $2.3 million in additional expenses to avoid pulling more than 15 percent from the reserve fund, warning that if they failed to do so he would consider vetoing all $2.3 million in additional expenses, setting up a line item-by-line item veto showdown with the council. The council would need six votes on each line item to override a veto.

“So, what I’m asking the council to do to help me avoid a veto is to, tonight, work with us, work with Laurie on how to make this budget sustainable and how to get this to 15 percent. What I think I’m going to do if we don’t get it to 15 percent, or to less than 15 percent, I will likely veto everything that’s been changed in the budget and then we can come back and do one line item at a time and see who can get their six votes and who can’t — and maybe you’ll get them all — but I think it’s important that the public see that there’s an effort to keep our budget responsible.”

The council, however, ignored Durel’s request and approved all $2.3 million in additional expenses. Durel has 10 days to issue vetos; if he does nothing, the budget amendments and additional expenditures become law. The next fiscal year begins Nov. 1.

Read more here.