By Samuel Carter Karlin
BATON ROUGE — Republican legislators tentatively are filing bills to rein in the massive yet beloved TOPS program — state-funded college scholarships — whose cost will approach $300 million next year, while preserving tuition payments for seniors and their parents who have come to expect them.
By Jack Richards
The House of Representatives was poised Tuesday to approve more revenue raising bills, but decided to hold off until the Senate addresses the $100 million in spending cuts it sent to the upper chamber last Friday.
The Senate, for its part, was waiting to see if more revenue measures were forthcoming from the House before it took up the reduction bill.
By Gannett Louisiana (with reporting by Jack Richards)
BATON ROUGE — If the state does not change its rules on oil well operators, Michael Hale’s savings will be gone within a year.
By D.B. Narveson
BATON ROUGE — Department of Health and Hospitals Secretary Rebekah Gee today told a House committee about Louisiana’s hospitals’ dire need for support.
Read the story in HoumaToday.com/The Courier
By Quint Forgey and Justin DiCharia
Three days after severe weather warnings and a nasty spate of tornados tore through southeast Louisiana, Gov. John Bel Edwards offered words outside his fourth floor Capitol office on Friday which applied as much to upcoming forecasts as they did to this year’s nearly $1 billion fiscal shortfall. “We should take advantage of the warnings we’re given and not risk the roulette wheel,” he said.
By Jourdan Moschitta
BATON ROUGE — The Louisiana State Capitol is filled with tales, tall and otherwise, that not only keep the state’s sense of history alive but also provide space for imaginations to run wild.
One of the mysteries within the walls of the Statehouse is on the ground floor, in a corridor separating the House and Senate committee rooms, in a small box-like room marked with a large cross on the wall, an altar and a kneeler.
Read the story in HoumaToday.com/The Courier
By Noah Bryant Ballard
BATON ROUGE – The Senate Revenue and Fiscal Affairs Committee Sunday approved and sent to the full chamber for consideration a House-approved one-cent increase in the Louisiana’s sales tax, but not before replacing an 18-month sunset clause with a five-year window more in line with what Gov. John Bel Edwards was seeking.
By D.B. Narveson
The House and Senate are rounding out the second week of the special legislative session…
By Tierra Smith
BATON ROUGE — A resolution asking the federal government to extend the state’s sea boundary nine nautical miles, six miles further that currently the case, has been introduced into the Louisiana Senate.
Republican Sen. Dan Claitor of Baton Rouge, sponsor of Senate Concurrent Resolution 4, argues the expansion could provide between $500 million and a $1 billion in taxes to the state.
By Nick Chrastil
BATON ROUGE — The Pediatric Day Health Care program, which initially was to be eliminated under the best and worst case budget scenarios presented by the Department of Health and Hospitals (DHH), is off the chopping block for the current fiscal year.
LSU Manship School Statehouse Bureau 