Tagged: budget cuts

The LSU Athletic Department is making a $4 million contribution to the university to help with budget challenges in the 2012-13 fiscal year.

The transfer is the single largest contribution from Athletics to Academics in school history. Director of Athletics Joe Alleva says being able to make such a contribution is a "real credit to LSU's fans and alumni who support the Tigers."

Louisiana lawmakers are bristling about getting few details and no ability to decide the $523 million in budget cuts Gov. Bobby Jindal's administration has made to health care programs.

Several complained the governor's staff wasn't explaining the gravity of the slashing and the implications on the LSU network of public hospitals and clinics that care for the poor and uninsured.

The cuts are tied to a drop in Louisiana's federal Medicaid funding that was passed in congressional legislation after the state's 2012-13 budget was already crafted.

Almost 60 years since it opened, the Southeast Louisiana Hospital — a psychiatric facility that gained national notoriety in 1959 when then-Gov. Earl Long was briefly committed there — is preparing to close down its daily operations.

The Times-Picayune reports that the hospital's closing is part of an $859 million cut to the state's federal Medicaid program.

The Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals hopes to send all 176 beds occupied at the hospital to other public and private hospitals in the state.

Louisiana gives out about $4.4 billion in tax breaks to businesses and individuals each year. A look at the major categories of taxes collected and tax exemptions in the just-ended 2011-12 budget year, according to estimates from the state revenue department:

Corporate Income Taxes:

• Potential collections: $1.7 billion.
• Actual collections: $198 million.
• Estimated exemptions: $1.5 billion.

Percentage of tax loss: 88 percent.

Sales Taxes: