New Landry panel should cite grifting well deal

There’s a layup waiting for Republican Gov. Jeff Landry’s new Fiscal Responsibility Program which it should take: cancelling the behind-closed-doors grifting by political insiders that has contributed to the state’s inability to reduce the numbers of orphaned oil wells.

This week, Landry created this new board designed to find savings in state government through reviewing spending choices, seeking efficiencies in expenditures, and vetting contracts. One of the very first things it needs to look into is the Louisiana Oilfield Restoration Authority’s sweetheart, if not illegally-administered, deal with the state.

Created during the Democrat Gov. John Bel Edwards Administration, LORA formed in response to a law that attempted to mitigate the incidence of orphan oil wells. These once-productive wells were abandoned by owners when faced with cleanup costs, leaving the state to have to deal with them. This method of contracting out rather than the state handling it (through its own resources or federal grants) sought to build a fund from well production into which owners paid that could be used to address abandoned wells, operating like a form of insurance and less expensively to encourage closure rather than abandonment.

Deficit gone, but only first right-sizing step

The good news is Louisiana appears to have enough revenues to cover continuation costs in state government for the next fiscal year, 2025-26. The bad news is the costs remain too high and a net tax increase had to cover these.

That was the unstated conclusion accepted by the state’s Revenue Estimating Conference at its typically-held December meeting. Its last May meeting had the body adopt a general fund revenue estimate of $11.7 billion, a drop from the predicted just under $12.1 billion for this fiscal year attributed to the expiration of a 2016/18 added 0.45 percent sales tax.

As it turned out, the FY 2025 figure ended up just a bit higher. Yet the FY 2026 forecast came in nearly $450 million higher, thanks to the special session of the Legislature last month where both tax law changes that cut income taxes and eliminated the franchise tax while retaining the 0.45 percent extra sales tax and adding 0.55 percent more (dropping 0.25 percent in a few years) as well as redirecting vehicle taxes, estimated at $280 million annually, that year and the year after away from capital outlay and into the general fund.

Natural gas retailer sale won't harm Louisianans

Expect political leftist climate alarmists and class warriors to try to make a last stand this week at the New Orleans City Council meeting to stop the final step in Delta Utilities’ acquisition of gas distribution throughout Louisiana.

During 2024, the entity, a subsidiary of the private investment firm Berhard Capital Partners, has successfully navigated the regulatory hoops to buy up all of CenterPoint Energy’s and Entergy Louisiana’s natural gas business plus the distribution network throughout the state (as well as Energy gas business in Mississippi, also part of the deal). Only Energy New Orleans remains without such approval, which the Council seems poised to give at its Thursday meeting, adding to the Public Service Commission’s nod from earlier this fall.

Over a billion bucks will go towards the effort expected to be wrapped up the middle of next year. If comments planned for submission to the Council from a variety of business and social organizations spanning the gamut indicate anything, approval will be popular.

But not for a select group of leftists who see the deal as a method of inducing more natural gas consumption at potentially higher prices. The separate deals approved pretty much follow the same script: no changes to existing operation and no price hikes for 15 months, although the New Orleans part also promises (and has been set in motion already) locating Delta’s headquarters in the city, boosting commercial prospects and adding a couple of hundred jobs.

However, the leftists complain there’s no guarantee price increases won’t come in 2026 as they allege rising prices are inevitable because Delta isn’t public which makes it easier for it to raise fees and purportedly the boom in LNG exporting is causing a supply pinch that raises domestic prices. They picked up a big backer in the dying embers of Democrat Joe Biden’s Department of Energy that this week issued a report claiming this.

But that’s merely advocacy literature backing the ideological imperative of climate alarmism following its imperative of faith that burning more of a fossil fuel like natural gas will fuel catastrophic anthropogenic global warming. Higher quality research exposes the weakness of the belief that prices will escalate, revealing instead that as LNG output has expanded and exports begun this has not affected pricing, because the increased demand was met with increased supply and U.S. household prices continue to be among the world’s lowest. The bankruptcy of the CAGW argument has led regulators to dismiss this opposition.

Nor does the transparency argument hold any water. The PSC will continue to regulate gas provision statewide except for New Orleans, where the Council will regardless of whether Delta is private. It still will have to submit almost-entirely public documentation for any rate increase, and if voters don’t think either body holds Delta accountable enough on rates or other activities, they can hold regulators accountable by replacing them at the ballot box.

There’s no good reason the deal shouldn’t go through, and possibly provisional costs will decrease with integration statewide and economies of scale. The Council doing what is expected of it along and long with other regulators performing its due diligence should make consumers under the deal better off in the long run.

Back to basics paying off for younger LA students

The hits just keep coming for Louisiana’s school children, validating state and local policy choices and shifts made over the past four years.

In 2021, the Legislature required development and implementation of an early literacy program to boost reading skills among students in kindergarten and early grades, which was to be based on what colloquially might be called a “back to basics” approach and included literacy proficiency in teaching in preparation programs. It has rolled out now up to third grade and indicates not only does the overall score of a grade continue to rise but also students in the aggregate experience a cumulative increase over the years. That could be good news to a lot of schools, as the law mandates use of these data in compiling applicable school performance scores, which will begin next academic year.

Another law passed in 2023 took effect this year and relies on this data. It prohibits promotion of third-graders if they don’t achieve proficiently enough in reading, an approach taken by about half the states. This generates some controversy because some studies purport to show retention for any reason is associated with greater propensity to drop out in high school, especially for racial minority students. However, research also points out that earlier intervention and especially when combined with individualized intervention, which the Department of Education has started to introduce in Louisiana, mitigates this impact. Keep in mind as well that as studies show retention increases the odds of eventual promotion into high school this demonstrates an associational, not causal, relationship, where the same reason(s) for underachieving early in a school career also explain dropping out, not that retention causes a greater propensity to drop out once aging out of the mandatory schooling age.

Bond panel acts legally to aid illegal BC action

The irony is that by the State Bond Commission reluctantly following the law it rewarded a majority of members of the Bossier City Council for breaking it and their oaths of office.

Last week, the SBC met in its regular meeting to review, among other things, the dozens of local government requests to put items on the Mar. 29 election ballot. Included was Bossier City’s controversial requests regarding the end products of its Charter Review Commission.

A subcommittee in October denied fast-tracking the request to make it onto the Dec. 7 ballot. At the time, the subcommittee, headed by Republican Treas. John Fleming, decided that would be premature to eschew the normal schedule as the items were related to matters under litigation. To be precise, one of the three items would impose a consecutive three-term limit on the mayor and city council offices, while a citizen-led initiative would impose that but make it lifetime and retroactive.

Monroe voters hand Ellis win, rebuff Council

Score that Monroe independent Mayor Friday Ellis 2, Monroe City Council Democrat majority 0, on the issue of extending a city sales tax for capital improvements as a battle over city spending priorities continues.

Earlier this month, the Monroe electorate passed a renewal of the city’s one percent sales tax, first levied in 1994 just for streets but expanded in 2001 for infrastructure of all kinds. During Ellis’ first term in office it was used to raise and spend $120 million on various projects from its generation of $18.8 million annually to back that. The city’s latest five-year capital improvement plan lists $289 million of projects in that time frame, of which the sales tax proceeds would help to fund by backing debt for that.

It was a reauthorization that Council Democrats Juanita Woods, Rodney McFarland, and Verbon Muhammad tried twice to delay. On May 28 the Council, after McFarland and Muhammad had won elections to their seats but before taking them, approved sending the measure to the Dec. 7 ballot – about five years ahead of schedule, with Woods voting against. It was to last 25 years although originally it had been set not to expire at all.