LSU Manship School Statehouse Bureau

By Samuel Carter Karlin

BATON ROUGE — For the first time in the history of the Taylor Opportunity Program for Students (TOPS), the state’s flagship tuition-paying scholarship for in-state students who meet average academic benchmarks, lawmakers are cutting the program to help balance the budget.

Students will pay 30 percent of their tuition bills this upcoming school year — meaning a $1,000 to $1,700 increase in their bottom lines at most schools. While the Legislature moved into the night on budget negotiations, leadership said the TOPS funding will remain at 70 percent.

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By Justin DiCharia

BATON ROUGE — Since 2014, the Louisiana has enacted eight laws to crack down on the state’s pandemic of human sex trafficking. State Sen. Beth Mizell of Franklinton, doesn’t see that record as sufficient.

On the second-to-last day of the Legislature’s second special session, Republican freshman Mizell offered a resolution to recommit the Joint Human Trafficking Study Commission, whose research spanned those eight laws after it terminated in 2014.

Read the story in The News Star

By Justin DiCharia

By Justin DiCharia

BATON ROUGE – A recent national employment survey has New Orleans and Baton Rouge as the two worst cities for net employment in the U.S. this summer.

But the Department of Economic Development (LED) holds that those figures fail to show Louisiana’s positive year-to-year economic growth.

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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.

Continue reading “Milkovich and his biblical bloc” →

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.

Read the story in The Daily World

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.

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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.

Read the story in The Shreveport Times

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.

Read the story in The Shreveport Times

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.

Read the story in The Daily World