BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) - State lawmakers in the House have backed
a $24.9 million spending plan to send money to coastal parishes and
Grand Isle for oil spill response efforts.
The dollars, added to a budget bill Friday, still would need
approval from the Senate before they could be spent.
The money would come from the state's Oil Spill Contingency
Fund. That fund had contained $4.7 million but recently was
bolstered by another $25 million from a BP grant to the state.
However, the governor's budget office says $9.5 million from the
fund already has been spent or "obligated" to state agencies for
their oil spill response and cleanup expenses. That means the
allocation approved by the House exceeds the money available in the
fund.

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