Author: manshipxgr

By: Lauren Heffker & Tryfon Boukouvidis, LSU Manship School News Service

Published: May 15, 2019

BATON ROUGE — Legislation that would limit or ban abortion in Louisiana easily cleared House and Senate committees on Wednesday, echoing a surge of similar bills in Republican-controlled legislatures in the South.

Pro-choice advocates protested the bills inside the state Capitol. The protests led to several arrests after demonstrators poured fake blood onto the marble floors in Memorial Hall.

The House Health and Welfare Committee advanced a controversial proposal that would outlaw the abortion of a fetus with a detectable heartbeat, which usually occurs around six weeks.

The “fetal heartbeat” bill, sponsored by Sen. John Milkovich, D-Shreveport, has received bipartisan support and was approved last week by the Senate. Gov. John Bel Edwards, a pro-life Democrat running for re-election, has publicly supported it.

In March, Edwards said he would be inclined to sign the bill into law.

“States across the nation are saying, ‘We are no longer going to devalue life,” Milkovich said. “We are going to acknowledge the sanctity of human life.’”

Read more in The Advertiser.

By: Sheridan Wall, LSU Manship School News Service

Published: May 14, 2019

BATON ROUGE–Special education classrooms in Louisiana public schools might be monitored by cameras under a bill advanced by the House Education Committee on Tuesday.

The bill, by Rep. Mark Wright, R-Covington, would allow parents of children in self-contained special education classrooms to request that a camera be installed to monitor class activity.

“Under no circumstance was this bill meant to be a criticism of schools or teachers or any kind of gotcha moment,” Wright said. He added that his proposal is meant to be a “dispute resolution tool first and foremost.”

If installed, a camera would remain throughout the duration of the school year. Parents could submit a request the next year if they wanted their child’s classroom to continue to be monitored. Schools would be required to store camera footage for a month.

Wright said the idea resulted from a recent lawsuit in his district involving poor classroom treatment of special needs children. The bill might need to be considered by other committees and also would require passage by the full House and Senate.

Kathleen Cannino from St. Tammany Parish, the mother of a child with a genetic disorder, said she supports more accountability. She added that the cameras could “save a lot of heartache for a lot of parents and children.”

Read more in KALB.

By: Hunter Lovell, LSU Manship School News Service

Published: May 14, 2019

BATON ROUGE–The House advanced a bill Tuesday that would allow patients to inhale medical marijuana.

The bill, sponsored by Rep. Ted James, D-Baton Rouge, passed in a 73-3 vote and now goes to the Senate.

James said the bill would not permit smoking. The medical cannabis would be breathed through a device similar to an asthma inhaler.

The sale of the raw plant form of marijuana is still prohibited in Louisiana.

James also included an amendment that would allow doctors who live outside the state to recommend therapeutic medical marijuana usage. Current law only authorizes licensed in-state physicians to approve marijuana treatments.

Patients must have “debilitating medical conditions” to legally use medical cannabis in the state. Those conditions include cancer, epilepsy, Parkinson’s disease, intractable pain, and human immunodeficiency virus, or HIV.

It is still not clear when medical marijuana will be administered to patients in the state. Both chambers passed legislation in 2015 to allow the drug to be used by patients with debilitating conditions.

Read more in KALB.

By: Lauren Heffker, LSU Manship School News Service

Published: May 15, 2019

BATON ROUGE–A Louisiana Senate committee moved to advance a bill Tuesday (May 14) that would make 18 years old the youngest possible age for a person to get married in the state

The bill, sponsored by Sen. Yvonne Colomb, D-Baton Rouge, will now move to the Senate floor, where it is expected to be amended.

There is currently no legal minimum for marriage in Louisiana. Presently, 16 and 17-year-olds must have parental consent to be wed, and anyone under the age of 16 must also obtain permission from a juvenile court judge.

In neighboring states like Texas, the minimum age is 16 and requires a judge’s consent. In Mississippi, parental consent is required for men aged 17 and women aged 15 and above. In Arkansas, the minimum age for minors to marry is 17, with parental consent.

Senator Rick Ward III, R-Port Allen, said although made with good intent, the bill will not guarantee a solution.

“A lot of times we make an attempt to take corrective action to something, but as we all know, just because we put something in law that doesn’t necessarily mean that the bad actors follow that law,” Ward said.

Read more in Fox8 News.

By: Madeline Meyer, LSU Manship School News Service

Published: May 14, 2019

BATON ROUGE–The House Administration of Criminal Justice advanced controversial bills on Tuesday that would abolish the death penalty and lower sentences for first-time marijuana possession.

Rep. Terry Landry, D-New Iberia, who pushed for abolishing capital punishment in both 2017 and 2018, sponsored that bill. It passed 8-7, reviving a roposal that was rejected by the Senate last weekp.

“Death by the government is wrong, and that is why I bring this bill,” Landry, a former superintendent of the Louisiana State Police, said.

Landry said he had had a change of heart about the death penalty over the years. He also disclosed that he would not seek re-election, emphasizing that his proposal was not politically motivated.

His bill is similar to one sponsored by Sen. Dan Claitor, R-Baton Rouge, that was rejected on the Senate floor.

Louisiana is among 31 states that continue to implement the death penalty.

Read more in The Advertiser.

By: Tryfon Boukouvidis, LSU Manship School News Service

Published: May 13, 2019

BATON ROUGE–The House Ways and Means Committee on Monday advanced a proposal that would reduce and eventually repeal the portion of the state sales tax that the Legislature extended last year after months of partisan wrangling.

The bill, by Rep. Lance Harris, R-Alexandria, would gradually phase out the extra 0.45 of a cent of sales tax by 2023. It would reduce the tax by one-tenth of a penny every year from 2020 to 2022 and repeal the rest in 2023.

Under the proposal, the state would lose a total of $392 million in revenues by 2024.

“We might be extracting too much money out of the taxpayer’s pocket because we’re continually ending up with surpluses’’ Harris said,” and we continually raise taxes and fees over the last years.”

He said that a survey of his constituents indicated support for the measure.

Gov. John Bel Edwards, who is up for re-election this fall, said Friday that he opposed any measures to significantly rollback the extra revenue created by last year’s sales tax deal, which, he said, returned the state to financial stability.

Read more in KALB.

By: Madeline Meyer, LSU Manship School News Service

Published: May 13, 2019

BATON ROUGE–The House Transportation Committee approved bills Monday to authorize high-occupancy vehicle lanes and study higher fines for drivers who injure or kill motorcyclists and pedestrians.

The high-occupancy lanes, which would be a first for Louisiana, are designated for vehicles with more than one person. The bill, proposed by Senator Dale Erdey, R-Livingston, is intended to reduce traffic overflow by re-labeling lanes with adequate shoulders.

Erdey said one possible place for an HOV lane would be from I-12 in Walker to the I-10 and I-12 split in Baton Rouge. This bottleneck, the committee chairman, Rep. Terry Landry, D-New Iberia, said, causes commuters to get stuck in the corridor between Baton Rouge and Hammond.

Atlanta, Dallas, and Houston all have high-occupancy lanes.

The committee also approved a study that helps motorcyclists and other vulnerable road users.

In 2018, 79 motorcyclists, 163 pedestrians, and 29 cyclists were killed in Louisiana, according to crash data reports provided by LSU. In 2019, motorcycle and cyclist fatalities are projected to increase.

The study, proposed by Rep. Polly Thomas, R-Metairie, will look at ways to increase punishment in an effort to deter accidents.

The current fines, sometimes only $250, are not high enough, legislators contended. “If you are going to cause a fatality,” Rep. Gisclair, “you should not have the privilege to drive again immediately.”

Read more in KALB.

By: Madeline Meyer, LSU Manship School News Service

Published: May 9, 2019

BATON ROUGE–The House on Thursday passed a $30 billion operating budget for next year that includes $1,200 teacher pay raises, $600 for support staff and full funding for TOPS scholarships, but not the $39 million for public schools sought by the governor.

In stark contrast to previous budget debates, the full House almost unanimously approved the bill in a 100-1 vote.

The budget now moves to the Senate, which could push to add in the $39 million for the schools that Gov. John Bel. Edwards originally proposed. Edwards, a Democrat up for re-election, proposed pay raises of $1,000 for teachers and $500 for support workers.
Republican House leaders suggested that the state cannot afford both the teacher pay raise and the $39 million increase for public schools.

House Education Committee Chair Nancy Landry, R-Lafayette, commented after the vote that the big issue between the House and the Senate will be whether to fund both the pay raise and the increase for the schools.

“We feel like we can’t do both right now,“ she said. “It’s too much of an ask, 4.5 percent increase for one year for both the increase in the teacher pay and the increase in the across-the-board funding.”

Read more in KALB.

By: Hunter Lovell, LSU Manship School News Service

Published: May 8, 2019

BATON ROUGE–After the Senate rejected his bid for a constitutional amendment to exempt diapers and tampons from the state sales tax, the bill’s sponsor, Sen. J.P. Morrell, found another way to get the job done.

Late Wednesday, Morrell, a Democrat from New Orleans, changed another bill to do essentially the same thing by statute. That bill passed 29-5.

The main difference, Morrell explained, is that voter approval of a constitutional amendment would have made the tax exemption permanent, while the Legislature could change or rescind its own approval at any time. The House still needs to consider the matter and could reject Morrell’s latest plan.

Morrell also proposed other bills that sought to acknowledge women’s rights and prohibit sending victims of sexual abuse to jail if they decline to testify against their accusers.

Morrell proposed a constitutional amendment to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment. But the Senate struck down that proposal by a clear 9-26 majority.

Read more in KALB.

By: Lauren Heffker, LSU Manship School News Service

Published: May 8, 2019

BATON ROUGE–The Louisiana Community and Technical College System is partnering with Amazon Web Services to implement the tech company’s Educate curriculum, Gov. John Bel Edwards announced Wednesday.

The community colleges also will collaborate with Amazon to offer an associate degree in cloud computing.

“This is all about the talent pipeline,” Edwards said. “We want that in Louisiana, too.”

The partnership is the first step in a broader push to try to increase the workforce for high-paying tech jobs in the state, the governor said. Building an information technology and cybersecurity infrastructure has been one of Edwards’ goals this legislative session.

The credits from the 12 community and technical colleges will transfer to institutions in the Louisiana State University system, the University of Louisiana system and the Southern University system.

“The very nature of work is changing forever,” University of Louisiana System President Jim Henderson said at the briefing.

Read more in WWNO.