Horton, Seabaugh making themselves hard targets

Let’s just say the timing of the old Bossier political establishment isn’t great this legislative election cycle.

The Benton courthouse gang and major portions of the Bossier Parish School Board and Bossier City Council prefer compliant state legislators who won’t work in support of forcing accountability and limited government onto local governments and will carry their water to milk the state as much as possible for their preferred interests. By those metrics, a couple of area legislators have provoked the establishment’s ire.

As a result of reapportionment, six districts will represent substantial portions of Bossier Parish from 2024 on. One is a new House district that extends south of the parish line and three others involve unquestionably fiscal and social conservative incumbents: GOP state Reps. Danny McCormick and Raymond Crews and Republican state Sen. Robert Mills. In their initial elections, both Crews and Mills faced establishment-backed candidates (brothers, in fact), but won.

LA needs well-defined initiative process

An initiative process isn’t a bad thing. Yet HB 165 by Democrat state Rep. Mandie Landry that would introduce this tool of direct democracy doesn’t get that job done and needs significant improvement to merit its passage.

The bill would add to the Constitution an initiative procedure to allow a popular vote to pass a law, repeal a law, or amend the Constitution. Such an idea works well when a sufficient mass of the public desires one of these things, as the Legislature may find itself pressured by special interests to keep things from entering code. After all, even a well-funded special interest will find it much easier to exert pressure on just 144 legislators rather than a couple of million voters.

But problematically, Landry’s bill doesn’t define these parameters and leaves these in the hands of the Legislature. If going to the trouble of amending the Constitution, exactitude is necessary. A review of the states that allow for an initiative process shows about half do so, and of those for altering statute the median is 10 percent of votes cast for governor in the previous election. Most also have geographic requirements that ensure at least some broad-based assent across their states.

Social liberal Edwards losing grasp on power

Besides offering more evidence of the unsuitability of Democrat Gov. John Bel Edwards to hold that position, or any other elective officer above that of dogcatcher, recent comments by him against legislation to protect children, parents, and teachers reflect changing political circumstances that have accelerated the erosion of his rapidly-waning power, to the state’s benefit.

His remarks referred in part to HB 648 by Republican state Rep. Gabe Firment, which would prohibit surgery or chemicals to alter the sex of a minor; HB 466 by GOP state Rep. Dodie Horton that would ban classroom or extracurricular expressions extraneous to educating students that focus on sexual activity and gives parents control over the names and pronouns that refer to their children; and HB 81 by Republican state Rep. Raymond Crews that basically duplicates the regulation of naming conventions in Horton’s bill. All have passed the House.

That’s in marked contrast to last year, when Firment offered a similar bill that never received a committee hearing and Horton had the same minus the naming regime that had to be forced out of committee in a parliamentary move rarely seen, although it advanced no further. The naming controversy in the past year has become increasingly visible over revelations that some schools intentionally keep parents in the dark about their efforts to encourage children to identify differently than their biological sex (no Louisiana schools have been reported to do this).

Senate threatens fiscally conservative bills

Louisiana’s Republican voters need to have an intervention with some of their party’s state senators over their grasshopper free-spending preferences, a task with which their party’s state representatives can assist.

Earlier this month, the House delivered a general appropriations bill to the Senate that recognized the state’s spending cap and sensibly prepared for a future of reduced revenues. The false economy produced by catastrophically-high debt spending from Democrat-controlled Washington (now starting to punish the American people with historically high inflation, negative relative wage growth, and lower workforce participation with a double-dip recession in the offing) artificially inflated state tax collections, with a threat ahead in about two years when the sales tax increase of 2016, modified in 2018, will roll off the books. This means the state, starting in fiscal year 2024, will see a retrenchment in the hundreds of millions of dollars annually.

The House version of HB 1 wisely adhered to the state’s expenditure limit that filters out the false economy, meaning that forecast surpluses for this and presumably next fiscal years can’t in total be spent in FY 2024 without a supermajority in both legislative chambers to override. Instead, the plan increased paying down more of constitutionally-mandated reductions in pension liabilities, which in turn frees up future dollars for state and local governments, particularly school districts.

Port fends off bill to clip its override power

Having potentially grifted future Bossier City water customers, the Port of Caddo-Bossier might start putting things people don’t want next to their backyards – with local governments powerless to stop that.

The now-notorious Oct. 17, 2022 meeting of the Port Commission produced Resolution #19 that enticed Bossier City to give it enough money to build a water distribution facility. If the city in future years decides to use even one drop from that, city ratepayers will be on the hook for as much as an estimated $62 million with no asset in return.

But another vote taken then may lead to an even more profound impact on the entirety of Bossier Parish, and Caddo as well. Resolution #20 ratified a complicated arrangement that will deprive some local government entities of tax dollars they otherwise would collect as well as points to the possibility that decisions like this could override local land use regulations.

Schexnayder political fortunes clearly waning

Events over the past couple of weeks signal trouble ahead for Louisiana House of Representatives Republican Speaker Clay Schexnayder.

Term-limited, Schexnayder spent months expressing interest in various statewide offices to continue his political career. Finally, after current Secretary of State Kyle Ardoin surprisingly announced he would desist from reelection, Schexnayder threw in his lot for that post.

That pits him against former SOS candidate and current Republican Public Service Commissioner Mike Francis, who carries a hefty war chest and extensive connections with state Republicans from his past party service including a stint as chairman. Grocery chain owner Brandon Trosclair also stands in his way.

Despite big improvement, reject film tax credit

Even if playing with house money that eventually sunsets the program, Louisiana legislators should reject allowing the state’s Motion Picture Investors tax credit to bleed, even if reduced fashion, the state for another dozen years.

In this session, legislators have the option of extending the life of the exception past its scheduled end-of-fiscal year 2025 sunset. HB 562 by Republican Speaker Clay Schexnayder would give it another decade of life after that, and originally would have freed it from a $150 million annual cap on issuance although the $180 million annual cap on redemption would remain.

The credit allows for reimbursement of expenses in film or television production anywhere from 25 to 55 percent of expenses from a base amount of $50,000 to $300,000 on state income taxes; alternatively, these may act as a refundable credit at 90 cents to the buck (minus two percent as a transfer fee). Almost all monies paid out occur through this route, as according to the latest data nearly 97 percent goes to corporations, and overwhelmingly to out-of-state entities that have minimal Louisiana income tax liability. Simply, it’s taxpayer dollars siphoned directly into the pockets of filmmakers, only some of which makes it back into the state’s economic stream.

Left hopes coming soon to racetrack near you ....

(It was Cinco de Mayo when the actual event occurred, not Apr. 1. But, given the views of leftist political elites these days, maybe this isn’t so far-fetched ….)

Activists and Democrats from the White House on down hailed as historic the victory by Heemaneh in the Kentucky Oaks, the premier race for three-year-old fillies, as the first win ever in a Grade 1 stakes race by a transgender horse.

As Louisiana-bred Heemaneh, who goes by the pronoun “zir,” has done since zir transitioning began at the start of the year, zir decimated the field, as trainer Bob Baffling’s bettor favorite smashed the race record and won by double-digit lengths. Standing a couple of hands higher than any of zir competitors, from the time they left the gate all they saw of zir was zir rear heels.

Unfunded mandate hits NWLA residents hardest

Concerning water issues, not only do Shreveport and Bossier City residents have to worry about the fiscal health of their city-run water utilities, but also many now must face an unfunded mandate in the hundreds of dollars annually despite the best efforts of the state senator who represents both cities, an issue that may impact elections this fall.

This week, the Louisiana Department of Health issued grades to water systems through 2022. Using an extensive rubric, all in the state received a score from 0 to 100 (technically 110, as bonus points were awarded to those systems with an asset management plan). Shreveport didn’t fare that well, scoring only 75. It lost half of the 10 points available for fiscal sustainability, all 20 for infrastructure, and all 10 for customer satisfaction (a point off for each valid complaint about the system water quality or quantity). Without the bonus for the plan, it would have scored among the bottom 15 percent of systems in the state.

Its deficiencies don’t surprise. Woefully behind on fixing long-identified shortcomings that led to a consent decree with the federal government about a decade ago, the city remains hundreds of millions of dollars away from finishing required repairs within the next four years, so far behind partially because elected officials hesitated in raising water and waste fees due to the political unpopularity of that response.

Panel follows science in protecting children

All the ignorance, fibbing, and emoting doesn’t change the facts that make Republican state Rep. Gabe Firment’s HB 463 worth enacting, if not vitally so, into law.

The bill would prohibit any procedure that physically or hormonally changes the sexual physiology of a minor, except in the very rare instances of disorder of sex development or dealing with the consequences of previous attempts to change sex. Science unimpeachably supports the proposition behind the bill that these permanent alterations to children almost always cause more harm than good, and out of an abundance of caution under the watchful waiting protocol typically practiced in Europe that plays out to allow for developing physical, mental, and maturity until adulthood for those who at some point believe they want to try to change their sex, this protects children from rash decision-making by them and others affecting their adolescent lives.

Unfortunately, this area of investigation suffers from a plague of poor research quality. Common problems of these studies feature unrepresentative samples, lack of adequate controls, and unjustified inferential leaps. The efforts that do the best in avoiding these pitfalls shatter common myths circulated by advocates of making permanent physical changes to children who at some point identify as transgender.