By Justin DiCharia
BATON ROUGE – The Christian Right looms in the Louisiana Senate Education Committee, and if the committee’s biblical bloc doesn’t change over the next three years, hot-button issues involving sex education, increased regulation of charter or home schooling, and evolution will likely receive a proper Christian burial.
By Jack Richards
BATON ROUGE — The Senate Revenue and Fiscal Affairs Committee Thursday unanimously approved a bill to require some nonprofits, for the first time, to track and report certain tax exempt sales to the Department of Revenue.
By Jack Richards
BATON ROUGE — The Senate Revenue and Fiscal Affairs Committee unanimously sent to the full Senate a bill Wednesday to change the way multi-state corporations calculate state income tax that would favor some companies over others.
House Bill 20 by Rep. Gene Reynolds, D-Minden, stirred controversy after Rep. Jim Morris, R-Oil City, was unable to explain the effect of an amendment he said would to help oil and gas companies.
By Samuel Carter Karlin
BATON ROUGE — Senators approved roughly $400 million in tax increases here Thursday, nearly half of which head to the Governor for final approval as lawmakers approach a June 23 deadline well short of the money needed to fill a $600 million budget hole.
By Jack Richards
BATON ROUGE — Republican State Treasurer John Kennedy lambasted the Gov. John Bel Edwards administration’s approach to state contracts in an interview Monday, while five Statehouse floors below, Commissioner of Administration Jay Dardenne was wrapping up a preliminary contracts review to a joint legislative committee.
Dardenne’s long-awaited presentation to the Legislative Committee on the Budget came as legislation by Rep. Barry Ivey, R-Baton Rouge, and Sen. John Milkovich, D-Shreveport, inflicted additional reporting requirements on contracts.
By Samuel Carter Karlin and Justin DiCharia
BATON ROUGE — Louisiana lawmakers in every prism of the political spectrum are reeling from what they say are the pitfalls of eight years of budgets which one lawmaker said were constructed with “spit, tape, and gum.”
And as those legislators now grapple with a $600 million budget shortfall, “honest” budget practices are putting pressure on them to make either painful cuts or raise taxes.
By Justin DiCharia
By Jack Richards
BATON ROUGE — The group given the responsibility of developing long-term budget and tax solutions to the state’s fiscal woes took up the state’s messy sales tax system Friday, struggling to figure out which economic demographic bears the heaviest burden.
It turns out Louisiana’s current sales tax system may not be as regressive as traditionally thought and the state’s efforts to level the playing field may hurt the lowest income bracket more than helping it.
By Jack Richards
BATON ROUGE — .@2016legis you won’t believe who is hashtagging the special session!! #pointoforder
As legislatures struggle with modernizing laws and making state operations more efficient and transparent in an effort to keep pace with changing times, they also have to figure out how to keep up with a changing constituency.
By Justin DiCharia
BATON ROUGE – House Bill 2, which is being debated in the second special session of the Louisiana Legislature, passed the House Thursday 90-8 and dedicates $1.4 billion in cash lines of state money to public construction projects throughout the state.
While it passed without the drama from the general session when the bill withered in the House during closing hours, a few legislators expressed dismay with the political misuse of the bill that coerces members to vote one way or the other.
LSU Manship School Statehouse Bureau 