Our Views: Take it easy on spending

• Advocate Opinion page staff
• Published: May 9, 2008 - Page: 8B - UPDATED: 12:05 a.m.

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Getting out ahead of the Legislature when it has money to spend is a good way to get run over.

Gov. Bobby Jindal tried to do the former Wednesday, ahead of today’s decision by budget forecasters that likely will add hundreds of millions in anticipated state revenue in this year’s budget.

Is the governor going to get run over by the spending locomotive? Or is he more powerful than an oncoming train?

Hard to say.

The governor, we think wisely, wanted to warn lawmakers that the state’s budget is based too much on one-time money used to pay recurring expenses.

“That’s like paying your mortgage with your credit card,” Jindal said.

The governor wants to avoid spending, for now, any additional money recognized for the spending year that ends June 30.

Instead, he wants the money to become surplus. Under the Constitution, surpluses can be spent only on uses such as road construction, coastal restoration and reducing state debt.

Jindal noted that the state will be expected to help the federal government pay for levee and coastal work.

Any extra money recognized for the upcoming spending year should be used to reduce the amount of one-time dollars that pay for recurring expenses, Jindal said.

The use of one-time money to prop up the operating budget — nonrecurring revenue for recurring expenses — has ballooned in recent years.

Last year, about $800 million in recurring expenses were funded that way. Jindal’s initial budget proposal cut that in half, and he said new money recognized today by the Revenue Estimating Conference ought to first go to cutting that number as low as possible.

We believe the governor is right.