Previously
discussed here was state Rep. Henry Burns’ HB
179, which would have jacked up the occupancy tax for Caddo and Bossier
Parishes and divert those sums to touristic interests and the Advocare V100 Bowl.
There was no financial justification to kill jobs this way, and the bill was
quickly smothered in a House of Representatives committee.
However, Burns did well in getting his HB
717 passed that will make it harder for the mentally ill and felons to buy
firearms. He was joined with getting through a quality bill doubly by state
Rep. Jeff Thompson,
whose HB
8 will punish dissemination of information concerning concealed carry
weapon license holders that could make certain households more vulnerable to
crime, and whose HB
98 makes it easier to have that license across parishes.
But outside of these legislative successes, not much else of valuable policy
got to the governor’s desk for his signature. State Rep. Frank Hoffman’s HB
111 started out as a minor extension on smoking bans, relative to smoking
outside of state-owned buildings except for sports facilities, but found it
amended even more narrowly and then it expired without the Senate acting for no
apparent reason. While it hardly changed anything, even a small gain would have
been appreciated by those in the public with breathing difficulties.
More controversially, his HB
527 that would have permitted optometrists to perform certain procedures that
now only ophthalmologists (who have more advanced medical training) can foundered
early in the process over health and safety concerns. While some states permit
this and it might bring pricing down, discretion probably is the better part of
valor in these medical matters. However, even as his HB
375 required for the first time co-payments for the highest-income families
participating in a popular program known as Early Steps, which provides access
to professional assistance for very young children with learning disabilities, that
allowed the state to continue to fund access to lower-income families which it
otherwise could not have without the co-payments.
State Sen. Francis Thompson
also came up with a clunker, SB
235, that went nowhere. It would have reduced the cost advantages of contracting
out operations of the state’s public-owned hospitals. Legislator backlash
against privatization as a whole, which threatens the bailiwicks of many and
their abilities to take credit for reelection purposes by using
government-as-employer, also found its way into other larger bills but
eventually all met with defeat.
State Rep. Gene
Reynolds’ HB
160 was a rear-guard action to prevent improved school accountability standards
from going into effect for the next year. Opponents to these new rules, which
provide the state’s first-ever quantitative measurement of a teacher’s ability
by assessing progress of students in their classes from year-beginning to
year-end over multiple years, hoped by stalling they could buy time for a
future effort to roll them back, but enough reform senators refused to move the
bill forward after it escaped the House.
Making a bid for coming up with the most odious collection introduced,
state Rep. Marcus
Hunter’s HB
458 not only would have cheapened the right to vote by allowing
incarcerated felons to vote, but also his HB
464 also would have allowed the incarcerated to collect workers’
compensation payments. Neither ended up meriting a real committee hearing as it
turned out.
But the winner for dumbest legislation, and perhaps for whom the reward
should be retired in her dishonor until she leaves the Legislature, is
perennial champion state Rep. Barbara Norton. While
two of her bills intended to become law were very minor and uncontroversial and
made it all the way, the other four absolutely reeked of stupidity.
Her HB
4, mandating the prevention of guns from being in a position to be fired
immediately, would have made more people vulnerable to violence being used
against them and was killed in committee. Her HB
110 would have forced the state to expand Medicaid coverage, when the most
thorough and nonpartisan study of the effects of that change showed by 2020 the
state
would pay more annually than under current policy of care for the indigent,
with a cost of $93 million extra by 2023 and the rate of increase of loss by
then at 15 percent a year, while another study determined that would produce
worse care than by not expanding. Her version was terminated in committee, but
a related measure eventually suffered its demise on the House floor.
Another of her efforts, HB
453, would have raised the specter of lawsuits unless women were paid for work
allegedly using the same skills as men at the same rate, not for the same
actual work done or productivity and output. That was passed over and a watered-down
version that applies only to state employees, who already have civil service
protections, passed both chambers. Problematically, this gives incentive for
her or others to try to expand on that in future years into the private sector
where it would trigger baseless lawsuits and make it harder for employers to
pay on an optimal basis that would negatively affect their business, most
employees, and clients.
Finally, particular to Shreveport, HB
706 would have made permanent a sales tax dedicated to public safety that
periodically presently must be renewed. But
area legislators, particularly state Rep. Thomas Carmody,
objected to the permanency and even though it made it out of committee the
entire House rejected it.
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