Saving money to lose money

The legislature took a jackhammer to the capital outlay budget this week.

A Louisiana House panel cut hundreds of millions of infrastructure projects from the budget Monday, in a move its chairman said was needed to end a bloated process because of the state’s financial shortfall.

State Rep. Neil Abramson, the committee chairman, told members of the Ways and Means Committee that politics played no role in his decisions, but he said a summary list of which projects would continue and which would be jettisoned would not be available until Tuesday.

They say they're reigning in a "bloated" spending process. But it's good to remember that every dollar held back now that would have gone to maintaining roads and bridges today becomes a significantly greater amount in emergency "off the cuff engineering" repair jobs later.   On the other hand, we do like our sinkholes.