It's nice to have a budget surplus

Blanco thinks she's found a way to kill two birds with one big sack of money.

BATON ROUGE -- Gov. Kathleen Blanco came up with a plan Sunday to help patch the Road Home shortfall and simultaneously bypass her dispute with Washington conservatives over a proposed Charity Hospital in New Orleans.

The governor will rely solely on state money to build the medical facility, then shift federal recovery dollars allocated to the hospital to fill in the Road Home gap.

Her move takes the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development out of the equation in deciding how to proceed on the medical center at a time when HUD, the Bush administration and U.S. Sen. David Vitter, R-La., have become increasingly skeptical of the scope of her hospital plan.

I don't know if this puts the Charity Hospital project on shakier footing in the future or not, but getting HUD and David Vitter's unhelpful asses off of the State's case looks like a good move from here.

Also, by finding money for Road Home, the Governor may have freed LRA to release the block grant money that Ed Blakely's office has been counting on to partially fund the city's rebuilding plan. This may happen as early as today.

So.. not all the news is bad this morning.

Update: LRA has released $117 million to the city.