With the 2017 legislative session reaching the halfway point, the House of Representatives has sent a budget to the Senate that is sure to get a lot of scrutiny, if not outright revision. In doing so the House chose not to appropriate the full amount of available revenues, voting instead to budget only 97.5-percent of […]

Now that action has been taken with regard to the governor’s Commercial Activity Tax proposal, it is time to take the next step and move forward with other ideas, during this session, to address the fiscal issues that have troubled Louisiana over the last several years. Key to that is a tax structure that is […]

After two weeks the 2017 legislative session is off to a lumbering start with more questions than answers on the table, especially with regard to the state’s fiscal affairs. Most of the activity has been in House committees where the two panels dealing with money matters have been meeting on a regular basis. On the […]

The 2017 legislative session is underway and the big question that looms over the entire proceeding is a pretty basic one: what are lawmakers going to do about tax reform? The answer that seems to be coming back is probably not much. That’s unfortunate. This year was supposed to be the year the Legislature was […]

Governor John Bel Edwards has unveiled his fiscal proposals for the upcoming legislative session and they are sure to get a lot of scrutiny. Clearly, there are some positive elements coupled with others that are raising cautionary flags. That is no doubt to be expected with any tax proposal. More research and understanding of key […]

Leading into this year’s legislative session there’s just one simple message that lawmakers really need to hear. Fix it now. For most of the last decade we have moved from budget crisis to budget crisis. Look at what’s happened: Higher education has been severely cut, tuition has skyrocketed, and TOPS is no longer fully funded. […]

It’s happened relatively quietly, but over the last six months a group of 39 Louisiana educators and other experts have been working to upgrade our state’s academic standards in science. This week those standards won final approval from the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education, and that’s great news for all of our students. To […]

The opening line in 24/7 Wall Street’s description of Louisiana’s business climate could hardly be more damning: “No state is worse for business than Louisiana.” That unfortunately coincides with another new ranking list, this one from U.S. News & World Report, that landed Louisiana at number 50 in its index of the best states. At […]

Going into the just-completed special session there were a lot of questions about what the outcome would be. First, a number of lawmakers didn’t even want to have the session. What kind of obstacles would they put up? Many, particularly in the House, wanted to make cuts without using the state’s Rainy Day Fund – […]

With the session basically halfway over, it’s difficult to tell what the outcome will be, but some things are certainly becoming more clear. One is the fact that no matter how much people want to continue to cut state government, it’s hard for them to find the places where most even generally agree that they […]