By Kaylee Poche
The Senate Education Committee on Thursday voted 4-2 to reject a bill that would have prevented schools from punishing students with lunch debt even though the bill had easily passed the House earlier this month.
The committee also voted 5-1 in favor of a bill allowing school employees to participate in student-initiated prayer during the work day if all of the students had obtained signed permission slips from their parents.
Read the story in The Town Talk.
By Luke Jeanfreau, LSU Daily Reveille
As anyone who watches the news can see, the White House press secretary is often in a tough spot.
“I’d liken the job to being a human piñata,” Mike McCurry, who was a press secretary for former President Bill Clinton, said Tuesday night at LSU’s Manship School of Mass Communication. “The press corps just kind of whacks at you to see if anything will spill out.”
Read the story in The News-Star.
By Tryfon Boukouvidis
Louisiana senators agreed Wednesday to cooperate on a comprehensive compromise bill that would fortify Louisiana’s policies against sexual harassment in state agencies.
The Senate and Governmental Affairs Committee sent the bill to the Senate floor to be considered next week after senators negotiate changes in the language.
Read the story in Gambit/bestofneworleans.com.
By Natalie Anderson
Legislators expressed concern Tuesday with a potentially unfair application process the Louisiana Board of Pharmacy is conducting to determine which locations throughout the state are granted permits to distribute medical marijuana.
Read the story in The Advocate.
By Natalie Anderson
A statewide measure to prohibit smoking in bars, casinos and sports arenas is still on the back burner as one Acadian lawmaker is working to ensure businesses aren’t harmed.
Rep. Dustin Miller, D-Opelousas, postponed House Bill 881 — an effort to protect nonsmokers from secondhand smoke — last week in the House Health & Welfare committee after concerns with the bill’s implications for business owner.
Read the story in The Advocate.
By Paul Braun
A House committee voted down a bill Tuesday that would remove non-violent and non-sex offenses from habitual-offender law that currently limits judicial discretion and gives prosecutors the upper hand in plea negotiations.
Read the story in The Shreveport Times.
By Kaylee Poche and Devon Sanders
Louisiana State University leaders picked a good moment to celebrate their annual “LSU Day at the Capitol,” coming right after both Gov. John Bel Edwards and House Republicans proposed adding more money for TOPS scholarships back into next year’s budget.
But after a painful decade of dealing with cuts in overall spending on higher education, officials from LSU’s campuses and medical schools in Baton Rouge, Alexandria, Eunice, Shreveport and New Orleans descended on the Capitol Tuesday to lobby for more stability.
Read the story in The Daily Advertiser.
By Ryan Noonan
The state House rejected a hotly debated bill today that would have opened waters for public access and navigation.
The bill, which failed 58-38, would have allowed recreational fishermen to fish in some privately owned waterways without fear of legal consequences.
Read the story in The Courier/houmatoday.com.
By Tryfon Boukouvidis
After a contentious debate, the House Appropriations Committee voted Monday almost along party lines to approve a state budget that would fully fund TOPS while slashing health services for the state’s most vulnerable citizens.
A set of amendments sponsored by the committee’s vice chairman, Franklin Foil, R-Baton Rouge, would allocate $233 million to fund the popular TOPS scholarships and $13 million to fund Go Grant, a program that provides need-based financial aid.
Read the story in The Bossier Press-Tribune.
By Ryan Noonan & Kaylee Poche
A survey by the LSU Public Policy Research Lab found that a majority of Louisiana residents support criminal justice reform and Medicaid expansion, two major policies pushed by the John Bel Edwards administration.
The survey comes at a time when legislators are considering proposals to scale back last year’s changes in criminal justice and cut funding for some Medicaid programs.
Read the story in KALB-TV/kalb.com.
LSU Manship School Statehouse Bureau 