KEY TAKEAWAYS: Louisiana lawmakers approved Gov. Jeff Landry‘s plan to fund teacher and support worker stipends. The proposal would redirect $168 million from the Minimum Foundation Program. A temporary restraining order has paused implementation pending a court hearing Monday. The plan woul d provide $2,000 stipends for teachers and $1,000 for support workers next school year.   Gov. Jeff Landry has received the number of votes he needs from state lawmakers for his plan to provide pay stipends to public school teachers and support workers next school year. But he still has another obstacle to overcome: A lawsuit has challenged whether he can take $168 million from K-12 school operations to cover the cost of the stipends. A judge’s temporary restraining order prevents the Landry administration from moving forward at least until a hearing in the case Monday. The Louisiana Senate voted 37-1 in favor of the governor’s proposal, easily clearing the two-thirds majority needed. Sen. Royce Duplessis, D-New Orleans, cast the lone opposing ballot, and Sen. Katrina Jackson-Andrews, D-Monroe, abstained from the vote. Landry needed 70 votes from the House and received 76. Twenty representatives opted not to cast ballots, and Rep. Adrian Fisher, D-Monroe, formally abstained. An executive order Landry issued June 2 set the wheels in motion for the legislative vote on his reduction to the Minimum Foundation Program, the formula that the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education uses to determine how much state money is allocated to K-12 public schools. The legislature can approve or reject the BESE calculations, but it cannot change them. “While working towards a permanent solution to raise our teacher pay in Louisiana, the Legislature clearly did not want to see a reduction in teacher pay this year. We look forward to the recommendations from the MFP task force we created this session,” Senate President Cameron Henry, R-Metairie, and House Speaker Phillip DeVillier, R-Eunice, said in a joint statement. One Republican lawmaker, Rep. Neil Riser of Columbia, broke ranks to oppose the governor’s plan. He did not immediately respond to a voice mail message left Wednesday afternoon. Before the vote, there were bipartisan concerns over whether Landry’s plan would cut into the funds local school districts use to cover expenses such as insurance and building maintenance. Some school system leaders said the reductions could potentially impact classrooms. Some Democrats in the House cited the restraining order as the reason they didn’t vote. Landry and Attorney General Liz Murrill have said the judge’s order doesn’t impact the legislature’s ability to vote on the matter because lawmakers are not part of the lawsuit. The plaintiffs in the case are former Central school Superintendent Michael Faulk, Orleans Parish School Board member Katherine Baudouin and former state school board member Belinda Davis. Faulk wrote a letter to lawmakers Tuesday urging them not to vote on the governor’s proposal. He and the other plaintiffs argue Landry “is attempting to usurp the constitutional authority of the Louisiana State Legislature by reallocating state approved funds.” Greg Beuerman, a spokesman for the plaintiffs, said in an email after the voting results were made public that the outcome “carries no force of law” because it violates the temporary restraining order. “As the plaintiffs have maintained all along, the appropriate and constitutionally correct course of action is for the governor to call the legislature back into special session and to address this issue openly, transparently and with the kind of public input and engagement an issue of this importance deserves,” Beuerman wrote. The timing of the governor’s plan has fiscal and political ramifications for lawmakers. The state budget for next fiscal year takes effect July 1, providing Landry with a brief window during which he holds sway over lawmakers with his power to make line-item vetoes to projects in their districts in the state spending plan. Landry wants to use $168 million from the Minimum Foundation Program to provide a $2,000 stipend for teachers and $1,000 for support workers next school year. The legislature has included this money in the state budget the past three years, but proposals to make the increases permanent have failed. With the Republican-controlled legislature’s backing, the governor has twice proposed constitutional amendments that would have allowed his administration to make financial moves that he pitched as ways to provide a permanent raise for school employees. Voters rejected both resoundingly. This is a developing story. ...read more read less