By D.B. Narveson
BATON ROUGE — A bill creating a fund to help pay down state retirement and bond debts and refill the rainy day fund was passed through the House Appropriations Committee.
Rep. Beryl Amedee, R-Houma, who has already created a GoFundMe crowd-sourcing campaign to help pay for Louisiana’s deficit, said her bill would create a fund into which Louisianans, and anyone else who feels charitable, could donate money into pay down about $20 million in those two areas.
By D.B. Narveson
BATON ROUGE — Secretary of the Department of Environmental Quality Chuck Brown wants to make the use of compressed natural gas the go-to fuel for fleets of trucks and buses across the state.
By Jack Richards
BATON ROUGE — The Department of Health and Hospitals is preparing to cut tens of millions of dollars from hospitals around the state, potentially shuttering hospitals in Houma, Monroe, Alexandria, Lake Charles and Bogalusa, according to the agency’s undersecretary, Jeff Reynolds.
The final decision, he told the House Appropriations subcommittee on Health and Human Services, will come soon from Commissioner of Administration Jay Dardenne, but Reynolds outlined worst-case scenarios where cuts to public-private partner hospitals could force them to terminate their contracts, leaving people without healthcare in their area — at least on a temporary basis.
By Justin DiCharia
BATON ROUGE — Medical clinics in Monroe, Alexandria, Shreveport and rural areas in northern Louisiana may have to shutter their doors under the current proposed $39 million cut to the center’s budget, LSU Health Sciences Center-Shreveport Interim Chancellor G.E. Ghali told Manship School News Service Tuesday.
Read the story in The News-Star
By Justin DiCharia
BATON ROUGE — God, science and legislators battled Tuesday evening as a bill by Sen. Dan Claitor’s, R-Baton Rouge, to repeal a state law that was ruled unconstitutional that required Louisiana schools to teach creationism failed 4-2 in a Senate Education Committee hearing.
By Noah Bryant Ballard
BATON ROUGE — In response to a perceived increase of violence against law enforcement, Sen. Barrow Peacock, R-Bossier City, is teaming with the Louisiana Sheriffs’ Pension and Relief Fund (LSPRF) to better provide for the survivors of officers killed in the line of duty.
By Samuel Carter Karlin
BATON ROUGE — A Senate panel Monday continued a long-term discussion of the roughly $8 billion per year the state spends in tax giveaways – credits, exemptions, exclusions and rebates — this time tackling more than 20 delicate spending items benefitting agriculture, farmers and fishermen.
By Justin DiCharia
BATON ROUGE — Louisiana School for Math, Science and the Arts Executive (LSMSA) Director Patrick Widhalm warned Monday that legislative reductions to the Natchitoches school’s funding would be a death knell for its EXCEL program that admits teens from the state’s underperforming schools into the competitive program.
By Tierra Smith
BATON ROUGE — A state senator seeks to ban infant formula and baby food stored in plastic containers, jars, or cans that contain bisphenol-A or BPA.
“It’s children, who are not fully developed, that are more at risk of diseases related to BPA,” said Sharon Hewitt, R-Slidell.
By D.B. Narveson
LSU Manship School Statehouse Bureau 