Author: manshipxgr

Published: June 1, 2020

By: Hailey Auglair, LSU Manship School News Service

Louisiana State University officials announced Monday that their campuses will reopen with new safety protocols during Phase 2 of the governor’s order to restore activities after the shutdown for the coronavirus.

LSU is looking toward welcoming students back to campus in the fall on schedule. However, the school is exploring the option of holding the remaining classes after Thanksgiving break online to prevent the spread of the coronavirus since many students and faculty members will have traveled for the holiday.

“We are planning for all facilities and buildings to be open and accessible to our students, faculty, and staff, but, as noted, we will continue to strive to protect the health and safety of the LSU community,” Tom Galligan, LSU’s interim president, wrote in an email. “This means that things may look a little different on campus, but that’s okay. Together, we will navigate the challenges that COVID-19 presents to us, and we will adjust our policies and protocols as needed.”

LSU is requiring everyone to wear face masks. The university also plans to randomly test between 10% and 16% of the people on all LSU-system campuses statewide for the coronavirus.

Officials said they plan for everyone on the campuses to practice social distancing when able, and they will increase cleaning protocols.

While LSU is planning to require face masks, Republicans in the state Senate raised questions about a proposed resolution Monday asking the governor to issue an executive order that all citizens wear face masks in public. In the end, the resolution was changed to ask the governor to require people to wear face masks while visiting businesses.

The regular legislative session ended Monday before the Senate could take up another issue important to LSU and other schools in the state–a bill that would let them continue for three years to set the levels of their mandatory undergraduate student fees.

The House had passed the bill, and now the Senate will presumably take it up in a special session that started tonight and could last through the end of June.

Read more at KALB

Published: June 1, 2020

By: Catherine Hunt, LSU Manship School News Service

BATON ROUGE–A bill that aims to lower car insurance premiums in Louisiana by limiting injury damage suits will return for debate during a special session after Republican lawmakers could not reach a compromise Monday with Gov. John Bel Edwards.

The bill by Sen. Kirk Talbot, R-River Ridge, was approved for a second time by both the House and the Senate after changes were made to accommodate concerns about some of the terms.

The House voted 66-31 to approve the new version of the bill, and the Senate approved it 28-10, shortly before the regular legislative session ended at 6 p.m. Monday.

Democrats have said that the bill would make it too difficult for some people injured in car wrecks to receive fair compensation, and Edwards has threatened to veto it. Talbot told the Senate that he had constructive talks with Edwards but could not reach a deal on all of the issues.

If Edwards vetoed the bill, Republicans in both chambers would need to muster two-thirds of the votes to override it. Monday’s vote in the House fell short of that supermajority, suggesting that Edwards still has leverage to push for more changes as the Legislature moves into a special session to work on a state budget and other bills leftover from the regular session.

Just before the regular session ended Monday, the House voted 63-38 to join the Senate in approving a measure to use $300 million of $811 million that the state will receive from federal COVID-19 relief funds to help small businesses instead of channeling all of the money to help local governments, as Edwards would like to do.

That action also sets up another possible veto showdown with the governor.

The changes in the tort laws and efforts to help businesses hurt by the virus shutdown were among the biggest priorities of lawmakers during the regular session. Lawmakers also voted Monday to temporarily suspend the corporate franchise tax for small businesses. That will reduce state revenue by about $6 million.

Talbot and other Republicans say his tort bill targeted Louisiana’s litigious climate and laws that Republicans say make it too easy to sue. Louisiana drivers pay the second highest car insurance rates in the nation, next to Michigan.

Read more at Lafourche Gazette

Published: June 1, 2020

By: Kathleen Peppo, LSU Manship School News Service

The state Senate passed several bills to improve Louisiana’s criminal justice system, including a bill to make probation less costly for both the state and offenders.

Other bills would adjust the juvenile probation procedure and provide released prisoners letters verifying where they had served their time.

The measures had already been approved by the House and now go to the governor for his approval.

House Bill 643, sponsored by Monroe Democratic Rep. Frederick Jones, allows the parole board to reduce the level of supervision at which a parolee is monitored, potentially reducing the cost of probation for the state and reducing the number of fees that have to be paid by the parolee.

Sen. Katrina Jackson, D-Monroe, spoke in support of the legislation, which does not decrease anyone’s parole time. HB643 helps “lighten the level of supervision after so much time and also lighten the cost of supervision after so much time, which helps both the state and the offenders with the cost,” she said.

Under HB643, the parole board can reconsider a nonviolent offender’s terms of probation after three years of parole. For violent offenders, the time frame is seven years. After the offender has completed the required time, the board can reduce the number of meetings that the offender is required to have with his or her probation officer per month.

Jackson said that district attorneys have voiced support for the bill. It passed with 35 yeas and 2 nays.

The Senate also swiftly voted 33-0 in favor of House Bill 453, which ensures a minimum of three days’ notice before a court can make a change to a juvenile’s probation. Sen. Rick Ward, R-Port Allen, said the bill gives prosecutors time to look over any changes.

Read more at The Advocate

 

Published: June 1, 2020

By: Katherine Manuel, LSU Manship School News Service

LAFAYETTE–“I can’t breathe.” “Black lives matter.” “No justice, no peace.” “Hands up, don’t shoot.”

Chants such as these were heard along Johnston St. and University Ave. in Lafayette Sunday as protesters lined the sidewalks and spoke out against the death of George Floyd, who died Monday in Minneapolis after a police officer pressed his knee into Floyd’s neck even though Floyd could not breathe.

The demonstration was one of several in Louisiana over the weekend as civil rights activists here joined in with the protests sweeping across the country. Protesters also took to the streets in New Orleans, Baton Rouge, Shreveport and Monroe.

Crowds gathered at Girard Hall at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette where members of the host organizations spoke. Then they stood on the sidewalks before marching to the Lafayette Police Station at the end of University Ave.

Mark Mallory, a UL student, helped organize the protest and spoke to the crowd in front of the hall. Mallory said he was there in solidarity with anyone fighting for justice around the world.

“We must be ready to lose the world as we know it and survive together into the new one,” he said.

The Lafayette protest was organized through a Facebook group hosted by local organizations like the NAACP.

NAACP Lafayette President Marja Broussard also addressed the crowd. She offered her condolences to the families of those killed by police violence and said she stands with those in Minneapolis.

“The brutal and horrible murders of George Floyd, Breanna Taylor and Ahmad Arbery have shaken the United States of America,” Broussard said. “Words cannot accurately describe what that feels like.”

Read more at avoyellestoday.com

Published: May 27, 2020

By: Kathleen Peppo, LSU Manship School News Service

The Senate voted 28-6 Wednesday to approve a bill to make medical marijuana more widely available across the state.

The bill would lift regulations that require doctors to register with the state to recommend it and that limits its use in treating diseases.

Under the bill, any state-licensed physician could recommend medical marijuana for the treatment of debilitating health conditions. The Senate approved several amendments to the bill, which had already passed the House, so it will now go back to the House for final consideration.

Before the vote, Sen. Fred Mills, R-New Iberia, gave a personal anecdote about the legal use of marijuana making a positive impact on real Louisianans.

He said that a few months ago, he ran into a daughter of former Gov. Kathleen Blanco in a small grocery store in Lafayette. “She was crying and she told me that day was the first day that they could legally access medical marijuana,” he said. “They thought that they were going to have to say goodbye to mom, but with her ability to use med marijuana, she was walking, playing cards, eating.” Blanco later died from cancer.

Meanwhile, the Senate Health and Welfare Committee voted 5-1 Wednesday to advance two other bills specifying other diseases suitable for medical marijuana treatments.

Read more at KALB

 

Published: May 27, 2020

By: Maria Marsh, LSU Manship School News Service

BATON ROUGE—A House committee last week pushed forward a package of bills that closely reflected the revised budget plan that Gov. John Bel Edwards presented in response to a loss of more $1 billion in revenue from the Coronavirus shutdown.

The House Appropriations Committee advanced without objection a spending plan that would allocate nearly $1.2 billion of federal aid dollars from a COVID-19 relief act to prevent harsh budget cuts that many Louisianans feared would be a byproduct of the pandemic.

The plan would not only balance this year’s budget but also alleviate much of the nearly $900 million in budget cuts that legislators had feared would be needed in the next fiscal year, which starts July 1.

But the plan still includes a $22 million cut to higher education, a $40 million cut to the Louisiana Department of Health and smaller cuts to other services. Higher education and healthcare tend to receive the most cuts because the state constitution and laws mandate many other expenditures. TOPS scholarships, however, would remain fully funded.

Edwards had proposed a budget prior to the outbreak that would have boosted funding for higher education by $35 million and added $25 million for early childhood education. He also had proposed $1,000 pay raises for K-12 teachers for the second year in a row.

But he had to drop all those plans for spending increases after the virus hit and the economic shutdown slashed projected tax collections.

Edwards and House budget leaders were often at odds in recent years on how to raise and spend money. But Jay Dardenne, Edwards’ commissioner of administration, said he and Rep. Jerome “Zee” Zeringue, R-Houma and the new appropriations chairman, were almost entirely on the same page in their budget plans.

“We agree on a lot more than we disagree,” Dardenne said.

Republicans also were impressed at how Dardenne had figured out how to maximize the revenue that the state could draw from the federal COVID-19 relief act. The money can be used only for virus-related expenditures, and Dardenne said the state will receive $1.8 billion in federal aid.

Read more at The Ouachita Citizen

 

 

 

Published: May 27, 2020

By: Maria Marsh / LSU Manship School News Service

A committee on Wednesday pushed a bill to the House floor that seeks to invalidate environmental lawsuits filed by coastal parishes against oil and gas companies.

The House Natural Resources and Environment Committee voted 9-3 to advance Senate Bill 440, by Sen. Michael “Big Mike” Fesi, R-Houma. Advocates say the bill requires the money that the parishes would have spent on the lawsuits to go to coastal restoration efforts.

“If we’re going to believe that these lawsuits are about restoring our coasts, then we need to put the money where our coast needs to be restored,” Archie Chaisson, Lafourche parish President, said in support of the bill.

The committee voted to add amendments by Rep. Philip Devillier, R-Eunice, that would give the Department of Natural Resources, and Attorney General Jeff Landry sole discretion over the lawsuits instead of the parishes.

“In one of largest disasters–this global pandemic–in the history of the world, and I have to be here, fighting for our right, St. Bernard Parish, to sue a company that polluted our parish,” Guy McInnis, St. Bernard Parish president, said.

The amendment mirrored parts of a bill that Sen. Bob Hensgens, R-Cameron, withdrew last week. That bill was designed to get the lawsuits out of the hands of private trial lawyers who have been representing the parishes in the suit.

Opponents say that neither the Natural Resources Department nor the Attorney General’s office have the money to cover the full cost of the lawsuits. Last week, the department estimated the cost of each of the 42 cases at about $4.3 million, or an aggregate of over $180 million.

Fesi’s bill narrowly passed in the Senate by a 20-15 vote last week after debate over the bill’s purpose. If the bill is passed in the House, it will move to a Senate committee because today’s amendment was not part of the bill when the Senate passed it.

The committee also approved a resolution by Sen. Sharon Hewitt, R-Slidell, that calls on local governments to drop the lawsuits against oil and gas companies.

Read more at KALB

Published: May 20, 2020

By: Kathleen Peppo

The Senate Health and Welfare Committee voted 5-1 on Wednesday in favor of HB819, a bill to make medical marijuana more widely available.

The bill would make the drug more accessible by lifting regulations that require doctors to register with the state to be able to recommend it and that limit its use to patients with certain diseases.

Under the bill, any state-licensed physician could recommend medical marijuana for the treatment of practically any condition.

The bill, written by Rep. Larry Bagley, R-Stonewall, had already been approved by the House and now goes to the full Senate.

Sen. Fred Mills R-New Iberia, the chairman of the Senate committee, noted that the bill is a step toward treating medical marijuana more like an opioid in terms of state regulation.

“Opioids, which can kill people, can be prescribed by any licensed physician in the state,” Mills said. “For medical marijuana, physicians need a license.”

Medical marijuana, on the other hand, has been inaccessible to many patients whose conditions would justify its use.

Currently, medical marijuana is only available to patients with certain conditions, such as debilitating pain and Parkinson’s disease.

Read more at KALB