Amendment 3 does not reach into the General Fund to find $2 billion. It reaches into three specific trust funds that Louisiana voters, in three separate constitutional amendments over a span of about fifteen years, deliberately placed out of the Legislature's ordinary-appropriations reach. Each of those funds has a specific origin story. Each serves a specific purpose. Each was the product of a specific political moment when Louisiana chose to save rather than spend. This paper tells each story briefly, so that voters deciding Amendment 3 know what they are being asked to liquidate.
In 1986, the federal government settled a long-running dispute with the State of Louisiana over revenues from mineral production on the Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) — the federally controlled waters off the Louisiana coast where much of the Gulf of Mexico's oil and gas is extracted. Louisiana had argued for decades that it was entitled to a share of those revenues under Section 8(g) of the federal OCS Lands Act. The 1986 settlement awarded Louisiana a lump-sum payment and an ongoing revenue share.
Rather than absorb the windfall into the General Fund — where it would have been spent within a single budget cycle — the Legislature placed it on the 1986 statewide ballot as a constitutional amendment establishing the Louisiana Education Quality Trust Fund (LEQTF). The LEQTF is a permanent endowment. The principal is constitutionally protected from expenditure. Investment returns are distributed annually to Louisiana's higher-education system for specific uses: endowed professorships (the so-called "8(g) professorships" are a fixture at LSU, Southern, Tulane, ULL, ULM, Grambling, and the other Louisiana universities), graduate-student recruitment and support, and research infrastructure.
The 1986 amendment passed by a wide margin. It was celebrated at the time as a rare instance of Louisiana's political class declining to spend a non-recurring revenue and instead setting it aside for future generations. For nearly four decades the LEQTF has done what it was designed to do: convert a one-time federal settlement into a permanent annual contribution to Louisiana's universities. The LEQTF's current market value is a substantial fraction of the $2 billion in trust-fund assets Amendment 3 proposes to liquidate.
Article VII, Section 10.1 of the Louisiana Constitution is the provision that establishes and protects the LEQTF. Amendment 3 repeals Section 10.1.
In 1998, Louisiana joined the multistate Master Settlement Agreement with the major tobacco manufacturers. The settlement provided for large annual payments to the states in perpetuity, intended to compensate for the public-health costs of tobacco use. Louisiana's share was significant — amounting to several hundred million dollars per year in the early years of the settlement, diminishing over time as smoking rates declined.
In 1999, Louisiana voters approved a constitutional amendment directing that 75% of the state's tobacco-settlement revenues be deposited into a dedicated trust fund — the Education Excellence Fund — with the remaining 25% going to a separate fund for health initiatives. The EEF's constitutional language specified that its proceeds be used for elementary and secondary education programs: early childhood education, academic improvement grants, summer enrichment, specialized instructional programs, and other initiatives at the K–12 level.
As with the LEQTF, the structural choice was deliberate. Louisiana had seen other states absorb their tobacco-settlement payments into general revenue and then find themselves dependent on a declining revenue stream for essential operating expenses. The EEF's design avoided that trap: the principal was protected, the distributions were capped to prevent overcommitment, and the uses were specified in the Constitution itself to prevent legislative reallocation.
The EEF currently funds a substantial share of Louisiana's early-childhood-education slots, Teaching & Learning Academy programs, and academic-improvement grants for struggling schools. Article VII, Section 10.8 establishes the EEF. Amendment 3 repeals or substantially amends Section 10.8 and redirects all future tobacco-settlement receipts to the General Fund.
The third of the three funds is smaller and less well known. Established in the 2000s under Article VII, Section 10.16(A)(9), the Louisiana Quality Education Support Fund receives non-recurring mineral revenues and investment income above specified thresholds and dedicates them to K–12 academic programs, testing support, and capital initiatives. Its balance fluctuates more than the other two funds because its inflows are less predictable. When Louisiana runs a revenue surplus driven by oil prices, the Quality Education Support Fund grows; in lean years, it shrinks.
The Quality Education Support Fund is the smallest of the three by principal, but its annual distributions have been critical for specific programs — assessment support, curriculum development, and capital-improvement grants that flow through the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education (BESE). Amendment 3 repeals the constitutional provision establishing the fund and adds any future deposits to the General Fund.
Each of the three funds was established for the same structural reason: Louisiana received a significant one-time or non-recurring revenue (federal OCS settlement, tobacco settlement, mineral surplus), and Louisiana voters chose, by supermajority constitutional amendment, to set aside the principal rather than spend it. The purpose of placing these funds in the Constitution — rather than in ordinary statute — was specifically to protect them from the kind of legislative liquidation that Amendment 3 now proposes.
Constitutional protection is not a bureaucratic technicality. It is a promise made by one generation to the next: that a windfall will not be consumed by the generation that received it, but will compound for the generation that follows. The three funds currently support approximately $68 million per year in recurring education spending — money that reaches classrooms, universities, and pre-K programs. That $68 million is not a hypothetical future benefit. It is a current line item in the budgets of school districts, university departments, and BESE programs.
Amendment 3 does not replace the $68 million in recurring distributions with another recurring source. It replaces them with a one-time transfer of the funds' principal to the Teachers' Retirement System (TRSL), the actuarial savings from which are projected — not guaranteed — to produce enough reduction in district pension contributions to fund the raises. The difference between a recurring endowment yield and a one-time actuarial gain is the difference between interest and principal. Anyone who has managed a retirement portfolio or a family trust understands the distinction.
"The education trust funds that would be dissolved to pay off the teacher retirement debt are now used to pay for other education services. The Board of Elementary and Secondary Education and higher-education institutions put the money toward early childhood education, academic improvement programs, endowed professorships and graduate student recruitment, among other things. By law, Gov. Jeff Landry and the Louisiana Legislature would be forced to continue to support the early-childhood education slots. The governor and lawmakers have said they would support the other programs as well. But there is no mandate that funding for those other services have to continue." — Louisiana Illuminator, April 20, 2026
Read that last line again. The Governor and lawmakers have said they will continue to fund the programs that the trust funds currently support. But there is no mandate. The mandate — the constitutional mandate that the current architecture provides — is precisely what Amendment 3 removes.
The programs funded by the three trust funds are not abstractions. They are:
After Amendment 3, these programs do not necessarily disappear. They revert to being line items in the General Fund, subject to every year's appropriations negotiations, every year's budget pressures, and every year's political priorities. The protection that currently insulates them is removed.
The three trust funds Amendment 3 proposes to liquidate are not bureaucratic surpluses. They are the constitutionally protected inheritance that Louisiana's voters in 1986, 1999, and the early 2000s chose to set aside for future generations. Liquidating them to fund a pension paydown, even a well-intentioned one, is a generational transfer from the future to the present. Teachers deserve a raise. The generation of Louisiana kindergartners who would have benefited from the LA 4 pre-K slots, the generation of Southern and LSU graduate students who would have benefited from the 8(g) stipends, and the generation of university faculty who would have filled the endowed professorships also deserve what they were promised. Vote NO on Amendment 3.