By Jack Richards
BATON ROUGE — The State Budget Director Barry Dusse Tuesday testified before the joint legislative Committee on the Budget that the state has an approximate $70 million hole in its budget for the current fiscal year, slightly higher state agencies were told a day earlier.
The precise figure is central to the anxiety of leaders of state institutions of higher education and hospitals
By Noah Bryant Ballard
BATON ROUGE — More than 250 children from across Louisiana gathered Wednesday at the State Capitol to recognize “Kick Butts Day.”
Organized by the Louisiana Campaign for Tobacco-Free Living, the event brought together young people ages 11 to 17 to promote tobacco-free lifestyles and advocate for anti-tobacco public policy, especially regarding products that target young consumers, such as flavored e-cigarettes.
Read the story in The Advertiser
By Nicholas Chrastil and Michael Tarver
BATON ROUGE – The scope and flavors of legislation up for consideration in the 2016 regular session of the Louisiana Legislature would put a Golden Corral to shame — fantasy football, “blaze pink” hunting apparel, buying and selling aborted fetuses, service monkeys, drones, disposal of pet remains, cursive writing and switchblades.
By Quint Forgey
BATON ROUGE — The House Health and Welfare Committee Wednesday unanimously approved a bill authorizing human services districts to create mental health emergency room extensions, aimed at offering crisis-receiving centers for Louisianans struggling with mental illness and substance abuse.
By Justin DiCharia and Samuel Carter Karlin
BATON ROUGE — An expected $3 million to $5 million cut to LSU’s AgCenter budget has administrators scrambling to find ways to absorb the hefty reduction, possibly by consolidating the center’s satellite offices in agricultural regions around the state and by selling cattle.
By D.B. Narveson
BATON ROUGE — A driver shortage in state’s trucking industry is causing the Louisiana Motor Transport Association to consider recruiting high schoolers to move freight as a career Cathy Gautreaux, the association’s executive director, told the House Committee on Transportation, Highways and Public Works on Tuesday.
By Samuel Carter Karlin
BATON ROUGE — As black storm clouds circled the Capitol, belying the mood of a crucial extraordinary session that came to a head Wednesday evening, staffers sprinted from chamber to chamber, leaping over velvet ropes to deliver last-minute paperwork needed to finalize solutions to the state’s momentous budget crisis.
With less than 10 minutes left before the session ended at the statutorily mandated 6 p.m. deadline, Sen. Karen Carter Peterson, D-New Orleans, noticed an inconsistency in House Bill 62, the cornerstone of lawmakers’ plan to bridge the nearly $1 billion budget deficit.
By Samuel Carter Karlin
BATON ROUGE — When state lawmakers convened at the Capitol Feb. 14, before them was a fiscal scenario that prompted apocalyptic rhetoric and fiery pleas from agencies whose doors could be forced shut. The red ink was called historic.
It wasn’t. And only a few veterans in the Statehouse recall 1988.
By Tierra Smith
BATON ROUGE — Speaker Taylor Barras, R-New Iberia, made fewer leadership appointments for minorities in the state House of Representatives this session compared to last, while Senate President John Alario Jr., R-Westwego, remained consistent with last session with his appointments of color — seven.
Many black legislators say diversity in leadership continues to be an issue.
By Justin DiCharia
As the House debated last-ditch attempts to raise revenue to fill the current and next year’s substantial budget gaps, a panel of educators, policy wonks, students and a lobbyist and a journalist came to the conclusion that both businesses and individuals would need to feel the pain of tax increases if the state was get itself out of its fiscal mess.
LSU Manship School Statehouse Bureau 