By james art 
Governor Jeff Landry has reduced state funding for domestic violence prevention programs by $ 7 million in his proposal for a budget for the second consecutive year. Survivor’s defenders said the loss of money could close the shelter beds and discontinue information services.
“This would have an almost immediate and catastrophic effect,” the Coalition CEO in Louisiana said in an interview on Thursday against domestic violence.
Wineski said its organization received $ 7 million more than the state in 2023 and 2024 and distributed the money to shelters and local violence groups to expand their programming.
It was used to add 229 new shelter beds across the country for survivors of domestic violence for a total of just over 600 spaces. The money has also opened 11 new information services offices where people can seek consultations, support groups and legal aid groups.
Landry also offered to reduce $ 7 million from domestic violence programs last year, but legislators added the money back to the state plan for spending several months later. Wineski hopes that legislators will do the same this year during their legislative session, which begins in April.
Domestic violence is one of the biggest problems with public safety for Louisiana. In 2020, the state had the fifth highest killings in the country and more than half of the women who were victims this year were killed by an intimate partner, according to the Center for Violence Policy.
An investigation from 2021 from the legislative auditor in Louisiana concluded that the state desperately needs more shelter beds for survivors of domestic violence. At that time, the 16 Louisiana shelters had a total of 389 spaces and an average of 2,700 dissatisfied requests for shelter beds each year.
Government’s chief budget and tax officials have presented a plan for the next fiscal year of the Joint Legislative Committee on Thursday, despite increasing uncertainty about how potential abbreviations of federal funding can influence the state’s finances.
Thanks to the extra money, Wineski said the shelters receive the number of dissatisfied demands up to 1400 years – a historical minimum for Louisiana.
“The state has been financing something that works,” she said.
Wineski said the loss of state funding will come at a particularly vulnerable time for domestic violence services, which are also at risk of losing federal support.
Federal grants that help financing the Louisiana Domestic Violence Services have shown lists of costs that President Donald Trump may shorten, Wineski said. State -owned domestic violence organizations were also blocked by access to each federal funding for two days in January, when the administration released a wide freezing of federal costs.
“This is a level of uncertainty about funding which [domestic violence shelters] They have not seen in the latest history, “Vineski said. “Now is not the time to lose state dollars.”
In total, Wineski said that between 40 and 45% of the money its organizations receives each year comes from federal or state funds.
Ever since he took office last year, Landry said public safety would be his top priority. Although offered cuts for domestic violence services, the governor has dramatically increased funding for other public safety services in the last year.
This year, Landry and the state legislators have agreed to spend nearly $ 100 million on new youth prisons and prisons. His proposal for a fiscal year budget 2025-26, published on Thursday, includes $ 39.5 million more funding for the Ministry of Public Safety of the Correction from the current year.
At the Thursday hearing, state-owned Denise Marcel, D-Baton Rouge, said he would strive to recover $ 7 million to finance domestic violence.
“We should not reduce the financing of domestic violence shelters,” she said.