A bill that will soon be debated in the Louisiana legislature contains language that appears to clear the way for the state to use money from the potential privatization of the Office of Group Benefits (OGB), the agency that manages state employees’ health insurance, to help plug a budget hole.As the Associated Press reports, the “fund sweep” bill authored by House Appropriations Committee Chairman Jim Fannin (D) proposes to scrape $231 million from state agencies and put it into an “Overcollections Fund,” which would help cover the state’s $1.6 billion budget shortfall. This kind of “sweep” is not unusual in Louisiana — though the size of this year’s proposal is.
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://talkingpointsmemo.com/?p=112219