Landry veto encourages genuine Catholic action

As previously noted, while Republican Gov. Jeff Landry’s line item vetoes reflected generally fiscal probity while signaling even more emphasis on that in the future, he also made a statement about unwarranted political activism within Louisiana’s Roman Catholic Church’s bureaucracy.

Landry’s vetoes in three appropriations bills followed a general guideline he included in accompanying messages: that gifts of state money had to fulfill state purposes. In some instances, projects he zeroed out were too narrow geographically or too disconnected from state priorities, while others didn’t provide information to determine that.

Not that he didn’t manage to use the power simultaneously to pull political benefits from frequent opponents. The best example of that came from the axed $250,000 from The First 72+, a charitable organization backed by several prominent election officials that seeks to aid the recently incarcerated. According to its Internal Revenue Service Form 990 from 2022, that would have exceeded the entire contribution from government grants, and represents around 15 percent of its revenues. But no request ever was filed, as by Legislature rules, so that made it easy for Landry to vacate.

Landry delivers warning on dubious line items

On a small scale with appropriations bills, Republican Gov. Jeff Landry gave warning he was going to party like it was 2008.

This week, Landry revealed his line item vetoes of HB 1, HB 2, and HB 782 – the general, capital outlay, and supplemental appropriations bills, respectively. The governor has the power to excise individual items in each, which historically never have been overridden.

He didn’t pare much. HB 1 lost four items worth $2.125 million, HB 2 had three items lopped off worth $1.75 million (although one item was a bureaucratic direction), and HB 782 saw 16 items off into the ether worth around $3.5 million.

Vax hesitancy, media mistrust related in public

The same reason why Louisianans appear to be a bit more skeptical about vaccinations generally is behind why Americans have fallen to just about record lows in trust of the media – with a perfect example recently teed up by the state’s largest newspaper.

Last week, the Baton Rouge Advocate ran a piece with scare headline “Anti-vaccine movement gains steam with Louisiana politicians. Here's why doctors are concerned.” It contended that “An unprecedented number of bills and resolutions aimed at weakening vaccine requirements are now law in Louisiana following a wave of successful legislation taking aim at public health authorities.” Hold on to your hernia belts, as “The anti-vaccine movement … is becoming more mainstream in the Louisiana statehouse, causing concern among doctors and public health officials who worry it is eroding decades of health policy and will result in more disease and death.”

Of concern, the article offers, is the drop in kindergarten vaccination rates from 90 to 86 percent, and similar drops in other age groups. The absolute number is small, but it’s contended even a little erosion can be risky to allow a breakout of disease. Charles Stoecker, a Tulane health economist, laments that if there comes something like this, “we'll have only ourselves to blame.” Dr. Mark Kline, physician in chief at Children's Hospital New Orleans said alleged “dismantling” of vaccine policies runs “counter to everything we know about the legitimate practice of public health. It jeopardizes all of our safety, and particularly the safety of people who have medical conditions that make them vulnerable to these diseases.”

Move now to fix LA fiscal policy, next budget

With a constitutional convention apparently off the table for the immediate future, Republican Gov. Jeff Landry appointee Department of Revenue Sec. Richard Nelson has a difficult task to lead in steering state fiscal policy away from deficit shoals.

The convention would have proposed transferring some revenue and spending imperatives out of the Constitution so that the Legislature in 2025 would have had more flexibility in dealing with the disappearance of a temporary 0.45 percent sales tax first imposed in 2016, as well as a 2 percent tax on business utilities purchases for fiscal year 2025. Only the political far left – ironically as it alleges to support lower income households yet sales taxes disproportionately hit those individuals – is advocating keeping the sales tax.

The sales tax generates about $455 million annually, the utilities tax generates about $211 million, and the estimated state budget shortfall without this revenue is $558 million for FY 2025. Landry and Nelson now hope to have a special session of the Legislature meet late this or early next year to tackle the expiration, after legislator fatigue of two special and a longer regular session this year that turned sentiment against a special session acting as a convention this summer.

BC establishment ready to chuck new charter

Months of work on potential Bossier City Charter changes circle the drain, an apparent victim of a feature, not a bug, of the process shaped by City Council graybeards and their allies.

This week, the city’s Charter Review Commission attempted to meet for one last time to complete votes for changes and to pass an enabling motion sending the whole package to the Council. That officially would compel the Council to place the changes, shaped as a replacement (despite the questionable legality of that) of the document, on the Dec. 7 ballot.

At its previous meeting, taking advantage of a couple of absences among the five appointees of city councilors against term limits – Republicans David Montgomery, Jeff Free, and Vince Maggio, Democrat Bubba Williams, and no party Jeff Darby, the only votes originally in favor of establishing the Commission – the four other appointees added into the package of consensus and voted-upon approvals a retroactive three-term limit for the mayor and councilors. With eventual voter approval, all but Maggio would be ineligible to run in next year’s city elections as a result.

Landry Regents picks, agenda to shape policy

While conservatives aren’t wrong in expressing concern over some of Republican Gov. Jeff Landry’s appointments to the Louisiana State University Board of Supervisors, understand that in policy terms that it does little injury to their cause.

Last week, after a June meeting where several just-expired appointees served, Landry made his picks to replace them. Some weren’t and rewarded with new terms, while other new picks were promising. However, three irked observers on the political right because these new supervisors, especially in one case, hadn’t been their allies if one having been an outright opponent.

The choices of Jimmy Woods and Rémy Starns appeared to be forms of political payback. Holdovers, Woods is an ally of Landry non-enemy Democrat state Sen. Cleo Fields, who fronts the most extensive network of black Democrat party activists in the state and who stayed largely out of the governor’s race last year despite Landry facing his main opposition from a black Democrat, while Starns is the state public defender who went to bat for Landry’s reforms of the soon-to-be-renamed-to Office of the State Public Defender, but who otherwise has stumped for Democrats.

BC term limits subject to last ditch power play

The empire will try to strike back at the upcoming Bossier City Charter Review Commission meeting, aided by questionable collusion, but potentially failing to bear fruit depending upon who shows up and perhaps what courts of law may have to say in the future.

Of course, the issue in question is term limits, which at its last meeting were voted in favor to forward for citizen approval as part of the entire package, three terms and retroactive in nature starting at the end of this year in advance of next year’s city elections. It passed 4-3 with two absences, one of whom by past rhetoric seemed likely to vote against it.

The Commission generally has been debating changes, classifying them as consensus or not, with the intent of bringing the latter to a vote at this, the final meeting. But at the previous one, term limits was moved and approved already, to the chagrin of the political establishment whose membership comprises the four city councilors – Republicans David Montgomery and Jeff Free, Democrat Bubba Williams, and no party Jeff Darby – who could not run for reelection with these limits in place, plus rookie GOP Councilor Vince Maggio. Lights began burning late at night at City Hall to come up with a countermove to prevent the measure from going to a vote of the people, utilizing the appointees of these five who make for a majority of the Commission.

Graves political exit not likely to last long

The announcement by Republican Rep. Garret Graves that he will not seek reelection might constitute a short-term setback for him, but leaves him other valuable opportunities in the future.

Graves faced an uphill battle to preserve the seat he has in the Sixth District. It was redrawn dramatically earlier this year to create two majority-minority districts in response to a Middle District federal court decision that declared the 2022 map that had kept the Sixth little changed as one of five out of six non-M/M districts likely violated the Voting Rights Act – into a form that a Western District special court panel recently declared was unconstitutional.

But that district and map on which it is part will stand for fall elections, as the U.S. Supreme Court enjoined throwing it out for now on the basis that the impending election created too little time to administer voting properly if suddenly changing the map. That transformed Graves’ district into a majority-minority district almost all of which he never has represented and which would favor a black Democrat, one of the prominent of which, state Sen. Cleo Fields, already has started campaigning to represent it.

BC term limits edging closer to reality

The high-stakes game of poker goes on between citizens rebellious to the Bossier City political establishment and those insiders who will fight by any means necessary to suppress any threat to their power, which may include a tactical retreat on term limits that, once again, is consumed by lawfare?

That may be at issue after the latest meeting of the city’s Charter Review Commission, which over the past four months has plowed through proposed charter changes. Upon releasing a final product, the charter dictates that the City Council must accept it and schedule for an election. The earliest possible date for citizen approval would be for the Dec. 7 general election runoff, which means if approved changes would go into effect prior to 2025 city elections.

The whole rationale for commission formation came as a result of a near-miss for the establishment on the issue of term limits. A petition amending the charter to include a three-term retroactive limit for all elected officials gained enough signatures to land it on the ballot last year, but a City Council majority – comprised of Republicans David Montgomery and Jeff Free, Democrat Bubba Williams, and no party Jeff Darby, all of whom would have become ineligible to run, plus GOP rookie Vince Maggio – a few times voted to violate the Charter by not scheduling the vote of a certified petition, and then went to court to knock out the petition through a legal technicality about its format.

New standards boost LA education accountability

After years of tolerating a somewhat misleading evaluation system of individual schools and their districts, starting in academic year 2025 Louisiana will enjoy an improved version that provides better information for families and policy-makers.

The Board of Elementary and Secondary Education today promulgated new rules to determine accountability, which didn’t happen overnight. An attempt failed two years ago, made from a growing recognition that the scoring system under use aligned poorly with actual student proficiency, as measured by testing, as they progressed and received diplomas which had the effect of making some schools and districts appear to be doing a better job than they actually were.

This attempt replaces a more complicated computational exercise, and reverses emphasis on proficiency, or knowledge and skill gained, and growth, or how much students improve in achievement. Through the eighth grade, the growth factor is increased at the expense of proficiency.