During the 2025 legislative session the Louisiana Legislature made sweeping changes to targeted areas of state law, significantly reorganized key state agencies, and tapped a state savings account and trust funds to spend billions of dollars to fund a long list of key state initiatives.
Though this was a session designed to focus largely on fiscal matters, lawmakers went far beyond that and by any measure their work was major in its scope.
Leaders for a Better Louisiana commends lawmakers for many of their efforts, particularly in areas focused on improving the state’s economic competitiveness, enhancing education and workforce opportunities, and bringing new jobs to the state.
This session addressed several of the challenges that have held Louisiana back while setting the stage for significant economic growth opportunities in the future.
Leaders for a Better Louisiana Policy Initiatives
While Better Louisiana was involved in a wide range of bills this session, the organization took the lead championing four pieces of legislation designed to enhance educational, training, and career opportunities for citizens:
- HB 533: Combines two existing tax credits into a single credit for apprentices and interns and aligns them with the new work-based learning requirements in the state school accountability system. It is designed to encourage employers to expand work-based learning opportunities for more students and workers.
- SB 233: Expands an existing tax credit for businesses that pay a portion of the costs for employee childcare. Its goal is to increase access to quality early learning experiences for children and address one of the critical workforce issues faced by employers.
- SCR 38: Creates a task force to study ways to implement education-to-career counseling at Louisiana colleges to help connect students to career and job opportunities in Louisiana early in their studies. This is intended to retain talent in Louisiana after graduation to help address the state’s challenges with outmigration.
- SCR 29: Creates a task force to study Louisiana’s Incumbent Worker Training Program, evaluate the workforce needs of Louisiana businesses, and consider ways the program could be better utilized to enhance workforce training.
Both of these resolutions are intended to shape policy recommendations for the 2026 legislative session and beyond.
Economic Development
The Legislature again took a number of steps to significantly enhance the state’s economic development efforts. Key bills include:
- SB 161: Continues the organizational changes begun last year to LED, giving the department more budgetary flexibility and additional authority over land leasing and the purchase and sale of land.
- HB 433: Creates the Site Investment and Infrastructure Improvement Fund which will receive $150 million for the first year to help make Louisiana more competitive in developing workable sites for major companies looking to locate within the state. This fund is closely linked to the new LED strategic plan that Better Louisiana supported last year. Its funding represents the state’s largest ever investment in economic development site development and enhances Louisiana’s competitiveness with other states.
- HB 1 & HB 461: Appropriate $272 million from the Revenue Stabilization Trust Fund to the Louisiana Economic Development Initiatives Fund. Besides making the initial payment of $150 million to the Site Investment fund, this appropriation also supports:
- Rapid Response Fund: $65 million to provide immediate funding for projects to create or retain jobs in Louisiana.
- Marketing Fund: $5 million for talent recruitment and state marketing efforts.
- Major Events Incentive Fund: $10 million to support events such as the Super Bowl, NCAA Final Four, and other events that have a significant economic impact for the state.
- Various Other LED Initiatives: $42 million
- HB 507: Creates the new High Impact Jobs Program. It is a grant-based incentives program which replaces the tax credit approach used in the Quality Jobs Program repealed in last fall’s special session.
- HB 365 & 366: This constitutional amendment and statute revisit changes to the business inventory tax that were part of Amendment #2 which failed at the ballot in March. Together they provide a mechanism for local governments to voluntarily phase out, repeal, or reduce the business inventory tax. This tax has been a longstanding obstacle in attracting new companies to Louisiana.
Agency Reorganizations
Last year the Legislature undertook a major reorganization of Louisiana Economic Development. This year, with SB 161 they updated portions of that reorganization, but also approved major changes in the Department of Transportation & Development, the Workforce Commission, and the Department of Children & Family Services.
The DOTD reorganization is the most sweeping. HB 528, HB 556, and HB 640, begin the process of transforming the way Louisiana handles highway maintenance, construction, and repair. Among other things, this package of bills:
- Changes the organizational and operational structure of DOTD.
- Creates the Office of Transformation with a director charged with developing and implementing more innovative and efficient ways to deliver highway projects across the state.
- Creates the Office of Louisiana Highway Construction. It would oversee the 4,800 miles of state roads that do not receive federal funding and would have the ability to accelerate the implementation of projects on those roads.
- Allows much greater use of privatization and outsourcing for engineering work, project planning, construction, and other services.
Two bills, HB 617 and HB 624 reorganize DCFS and transfer a number of family and support programs from that agency to the Louisiana Workforce Commission. The goal is to create a “one-door” system, where someone seeking job training from LWC will also have access to various other types of support to facilitate their training and help ensure they are able to participate in the workforce. This could include such things as Medicaid enrollment, SNAP benefits, or childcare assistance if eligible. LWC has been renamed Louisiana Works.
Lawmakers also reorganized the Department of Energy & Natural Resources and gave the agency its third name in as many years: The Department of Conservation & Energy. And they merged the Governor’s Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness into the Military Department, which oversees the Louisiana National Guard.
Insurance
In an effort to address the high cost of auto insurance in Louisiana (see: Better Louisiana insurance report), the Legislature debated numerous bills focusing on legal reforms to address some of the cost-drivers that contribute to our high auto insurance rates, as well as some actions affecting property insurance issues.
- Modified Comparative Fault (Act 15): Prevents drivers who were 51% or greater at fault from receiving damages. More than half of U.S. states apply some form of modified comparative fault.
- Repudiation of“Houseley Presumption” (Act 18): Rolls back a court-created presumption that injuries were the result of an accident if the plaintiff did not have the condition prior to the accident. Requires plaintiffs to prove their injuries stem from the accident.
- No Pay, No Play (Act 16): Raises the bar for recovery of bodily injury and property damage for a driver without auto insurance. Previously, state law barred recovery for the first $15,000 of bodily injury and $25,000 of property damage, and this bill increased the bar to the first $100,000 for both injury and property claims.
- Medical Transparency (SB 231): Provides transparency during jury trials involving bodily injury to show how much was actually paid to cover medical costs following an accident versus the often-higher amount that a health care provider bills.
- Other actions: A handful of other positive changes will assist homeowners including doubling the income tax deduction for those who privately retrofit their roof to the latest construction code, an additional $10 million for roof fortification grants, as well as creating a new, dedicated fee for ongoing funding of these roof grants.
We have concerns about one of the pieces of legislation on insurance issues, HB 148 or Act 11, that was signed into law. The bill places the Commissioner of Insurance in the position of declaring rates “excessive” under a subjective standard, meaning the Department could reject rates without data-supported evidence (actuarial analysis) as has been required prior to this law. More concerning still, the law allows the Commissioner to order refunds by a company to the state where a rate—even one that had previously been approved and is in effect—is deemed excessive.
The bill did not include an end-date to how far back in time an Insurance Commissioner can look at past rates. The bill also adds a change in the rate-filing process that potentially exposes carriers’ confidential and proprietary information to disclosure to competitors, which could affect the insurance products that companies are willing to offer in Louisiana. These elements of Act 11 make Louisiana an outlier and could deter insurers from entering the market due to the potentially volatile regulatory environment made possible by these changes. Unfortunately, given this new uncertainty, we worry that the passage of this bill could undercut the impact on rates that could be realized from the positive legal reform measures described above.
Education & Workforce
Often in education and workforce, legislative sessions focus on changes in policy. There were a few of those this year, but in most cases the big items dealt with money.
- HB 466, HB 473, & HB 579: These bills worked in tandem to bring back the effort that failed with Amendment #2 to provide a permanent pay increase for teachers and school personnel. Together they liquidate three education trust funds, use about $2 billion from the funds to pay off debt in the teachers’ retirement system, and utilize savings to fund a permanent teacher pay raise of $2,250 per year. This package includes a constitutional amendment which voters will have to approve next year before it takes effect.
- HB 77: Creates a new higher-tier TOPS awards of up to $12,000 per year for students who earn a 3.5 GPA in high school and score a 31 or above on the ACT. This is designed to encourage Louisiana’s highest-performing students to continue their education at a Louisiana institution.
- HB 566: Creates a streamlined procurement process to speed up routine deferred maintenance projects on college campuses
- SB 72: Continues a bond issuance program to raise almost $44 million per year to fund eight capital projects on community college campuses.
- Higher Education Campus Revitalization Fund: $43 million will be deposited into this fund from the Revenue Stabilization Trust Fund. Almost $30 million of this will go to pay for deferred maintenance and capital improvement projects on college campuses. The rest helps fund graduate assistantships, campus security, new buildings, and debt payments at UNO.
Revenue Stabilization Trust Fund
The state has two savings accounts, the Budget Stabilization Fund (“Rainy Day”) and the Revenue Stabilization Trust Fund. The Revenue Fund has been holding about $3.9 billion and can be tapped by lawmakers with a two-thirds vote for almost any purpose. They did that with HB 461, transferring $1.2 billion from the fund for a variety of uses. Some of these are mentioned above.
- Louisiana Transportation Infrastructure Fund: $709 million
- Louisiana Economic Development Initiatives Fund: $272 million
- Criminal Justice & First Responder Fund: $23 million
- Higher Education Campus Revitalization Fund: $43 million
- Modernization & Security Fund: $67 million
- Water Sector Funds: $75 million
- Voting Technology Fund: $10 million
Bills of Concern
Better Louisiana also had concerns about a number of bills and was able to help defeat or mitigate several of them, particularly on education policy issues. A few others on broader subjects stand out.
- HB 674: This was a major rewrite of the state ethics code. The original bill raised many concerning issues. Working with legislators and PAR, a number of its more problematic issues were either removed or changed before final passage. Still, we have concerns about the higher bar it establishes for the ethics board to investigate possible ethics violations.
- HB 160: This bill went even further in some ways to impede ethics violation investigations. Though it passed in the House it was never voted on in the Senate.
- SB 8: This constitutional amendment, which will be decided next year by voters, gives the Legislature the sweeping authority to create new unclassified civil service positions in state government. While we support comprehensive civil service reform, we are concerned that passage of this amendment could politicize the state workforce in ways we have not seen in Louisiana in decades.
- HB 633: After Katrina, CABL was instrumental in reforming levee boards in the New Orleans area and creating a system to help remove politics from the process of levee board appointments. For nearly 20 years, CABL had a designee to the nominating committee that vetted and recommended levee board appointments to the governor. In the original bill, that nominating committee was abolished for one of the two major New Orleans-area levee boards. In working with legislators and other stakeholders the nominating committee was restored, and Better Louisiana was added to replace CABL on that committee. There are still concerns about the governance of these levee boards because of legislation passed last year to allow the governor to choose the board chairs, but that was not addressed in the final legislation that passed.
Conclusion
Better Louisiana believes the 2025 session yielded several major wins for the state as we work to grow our economy, improve educational and training opportunities for our citizens, and retain top talent in Louisiana. No session is perfect. Certainly, there were some disappointments along the way and actions taken where the ultimate outcomes are uncertain. But overall, we believe this session builds on the groundwork laid with last year’s tax reforms and better positions Louisiana for a more prosperous future.