By Sam Karlin
Gov. John Bel Edwards made his case Jan. 27 for combining the state’s “rainy day fund” and spending cuts to fix a $304 million mid-year budget shortfall, warning lawmakers that funding reductions will be “deep” and “painful” no matter what.
By Matt Houston
By Matt Houston
By William Taylor Potter and Christian Boutwell
BATON ROUGE — Baton Rouge Attorney Brian Eddington and State Tax Commission chairman Lawrence Chehardy entered a heated discussion Wednesday during the Tax Commission’s meeting Wednesday whether local assessors or the commission has the more authentic authority to assess values for property tax purposes.
Neither was persuaded otherwise.
Continue reading “Tax Commission, Assessors wrangle over authority”
By Matt Houston
The Restore Louisiana Task Force voted Friday to approve a distribution budget for the $1.2 billion allocated by the federal government for flood relief, but not all affected residents will receive full assistance.
By William Taylor Potter
BATON ROUGE — Bren Haase, chief of planning and research, painted a bleak future for Louisiana’s coast during the Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority board meeting Wednesday (Jan. 18) should no counter-actions be taken by the legislative and executive branches. He presented a draft of the 2017 coastal master plan that calls for $50 billion worth of projects aimed at flood risk reduction and minimizing land loss.
By Laryssa Bonacquisti
By Nicholas Chrastil
Louisiana’s chief election officer, Secretary of State Tom Schedler, says voters don’t have to worry about a “rigged election,” and charges his party’s presidential standard bearer, Donald Trump, with “overplaying the fraud card.”
Manship News Service Statehouse Bureau alumnus Justin DiCharia joined other journalists, policy analysts and political observers to review the 2016 legislative sessions on Louisiana Public Broadcasting’s Louisiana Public Square. The program originally aired Wednesday, July 13, 2016.
By Justin DiCharia
BATON ROUGE — In Louisiana, there are hundreds of bureaucratic fiefdoms referred to as boards, commissions or task forces, for nearly everything — marriage and families, strawberry marketing, polygraphs, crawfish promotion, grandparents raising grandchildren, polysomnography (the record of a person’s sleep patterns).
Collectively, they cost the state hundreds of millions in taxpayer dollars annually. The precise amount is nearly impossible to calculate. And for a majority of these bodies — some large, some as small as five people, some powerful, some insignificant, some with executive authority, some merely advisory — efficient governmental checks and balances do not exist.
LSU Manship School Statehouse Bureau 