Louisiana lawmakers want higher pay for police. Teacher raises may face a tougher path.

As they hammer out new laws in Baton Rouge, Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards is pushing legislators to approve pay raises for teachers, school support staff, police officers, sheriffs’ deputies and other public employees.

But the different pay raise plans may face uneven paths in the legislature, which kicked off a session on Monday focused largely on budget issues. That reality was on display Wednesday as a Senate committee unanimously supported small raises for law enforcement while a more expensive pay hike for teachers drew lengthy debate before a House panel.

The Senate Finance Committee moved unanimously to pay law enforcement officers, firefighters and other first responders an extra $1,200 annually. The decision followed testimony from a trio of sheriffs who lamented their departments’ struggles to hire deputies. 

“We’re all fishing out of the same pool, and the pool is shallow, and the fish are few,” St. John the Baptist Parish Sheriff Mike Tregre told the committee. “I’ve been to job fairs, I’ve been to high schools, I’ve been to career days, and the young people I’m trying to recruit, they just don’t want to be police officers.”

The proposal would increase a state-funded enticement for law enforcement officers and firefighters by $100 each month — something the sheriffs told lawmakers wouldn’t be a silver bullet for their hiring woes, but would be a good first step.

The raises would cost taxpayers around $24 million a year, according to estimates from the Legislative Fiscal Office. It would make permanent a one-time pay hike given to first responders last year.

Some lawmakers in the House have questioned whether the state can afford that annual increase, since a 0.45% temporary state sales tax enacted in 2018 is set to expire in 2025.

“The money’s in (the governor’s budget),” said Sen. Gerald Boudreaux, D-Lafayette. “There’s no excuse for us not to get it done this year and make it permanent.”

The panel moved without objection to send the legislation to the Senate floor.

Meanwhile, Edwards’ proposed $2,000 annual raise for K-12 public school teachers and $1,000 hike for educational support staff drew lengthy debate Wednesday as lawmakers on the House Appropriations Committee grilled state education officials about associated costs. 

Lawmakers say they support the idea of paying teachers more but are concerned about the sustainability of that proposal, citing the pending rolloff of the same 0.45% sales tax that has sparked concerns about the law enforcement raises.

“We have a responsibility on this committee to make sure that what we spend this year, we can afford in future years,” Rep. Tony Baccala, R-Prairieville, told State Education Superintendent Cade Brumley. “Once we give you a raise, we can’t take it back.”

Approving the $2,000 annual raise for reachers would cost taxpayers about $197 million each year, forecasters say. If May projections from the state’s Revenue Estimating Conference show strong enough tax collections, Edwards wants lawmakers to approve an additional $1,000 in raises for teachers, for a total raise of $3,000.

Much like the law enforcement officials, state education leaders say the raises are badly needed to draw teachers to a depleted workforce. A Louisiana Federation of Teachers survey released this week found that nearly a third of the state’s teachers work side jobs to stay afloat financially.  

“It’s hard to understand how we get better without teachers in our classrooms, because they’re so critically important,” Brumley said.

The state’s Board of Elementary and Secondary Education has urged a different approach than has Edwards: That board wants the legislature to fund $2,000 across-the-board teacher raises, plus a pool of money from which to draw additional $1,000 raises for teachers in areas of high need.

Offering $1,000 pay hikes to select teachers is sure to spark controversy, since both the governor and the state’s two teacher unions traditionally oppose such measures amid concerns about fairness.

The BESE proposal, which Brumley called “more market responsive” than the governor’s proposal, drew support from Appropriations Committee Chairman Rep. Jerome “Zee” Zeringue, R-Houma, who has said he is concerned about the return on investment of teacher raises approved in past years. Lawmakers approved raises of $1,000 in 2019 and $800 in 2022, according to the House Fiscal Division.

“The important thing I think this reflects is an opportunity to reward excellence or incentivize critical needs within the system,” Zeringue said. “Simply throwing money at the system as we have in the past obviously hasn’t made a difference.”