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.

LA must encourage generational opportunity

Louisiana policy-makers, from Republican Gov. Jeff Landry to the Legislature to the Public Service Commission, can’t blow the huge generational economic opportunity that, whether entirely intended, has come the state’s way.

In the past three months, two separate data center campuses have hit the drawing board in the state. The projects by Meta and Hut 8 (which may team up with Meta) if completed (scheduled within the next year or two) will change and in quantum fashion the state’s high technology sector. It’s part of a sweeping trend in the industry that plays exactly to the state’s strengths.

As cloud computing and artificial intelligence gain wider penetration into the global economy, areas that have three assets will win economic development based on these that in each instance attracts billions of dollars in investments and creates hundreds, even thousands, of well above-average paying jobs: lots of relatively inexpensive land, loads of relatively inexpensive energy sources, and a workforce enabled to service it all. And in these, Louisiana has hit the jackpot.

Edwards exit, Landry agenda spur development

Just under a year into the Republican Gov. Jeff Landry Administration it’s instructive to see how from night to day went the state’s economic development prospects.

Recently, Louisiana Department of Economic Development Secretary Susan Bourgeois related the process of how Meta will bring billions of dollars of investment to the state in Richland Parish. The technology company snapped up a state-owned site for a data center that will create hundreds of well-paying jobs that will necessitate Entergy Louisiana to build three gas-powered generation sites, two nearby, just to provide enough energy for the complex.

She said not long after Landry’s election Meta came calling, and a years-long process ended up only taking months to complete. Hastening the process was Act 730 passed this year, which exempts data centers creating a minimum of fifty new direct, permanent jobs in Louisiana and involving at least $200 million in new capital investment in the state between Jul. 2024 and Jul. 2029 from paying any state or local sales tax on data-related equipment for 20 to 30 years.

Fleming to pose tough challenge to Cassidy

There’s nothing like getting an early start it seems for Republican Treas. John Fleming, who two years out from the 2026 Senate election has declared his intention to take on vulnerable GOP incumbent Sen. Bill Cassidy.

He may not be the last quality candidate to enter the fray from his party. In the past, Cassidy might have expected only token opposition from anywhere on the political spectrum. Finishing two terms off a convincing 2020 win, he has banked through the third quarter of 2024 $5.8 million.

However, immediately after reelection he began making controversial votes, principally in favor of convicting after impeachment Republican former Pres. Donald Trump and for an enormous spending bill Democrats favored that ballooned the deficit further and ignited inflation that had little relatively in worthwhile or sensible objectives. If he took this course because he wanted to obviate a challenge from prominent conservatives by throwing bones to moderate and even liberal voters because of the blanket primary system in place where all candidates regardless of party run together in the general election, it backfired.

Race cannot dominate Monroe fire chief pick

Democrats on the Monroe City Council have embarked upon an unwise and disappointing course that puts ideology over good administrative practice.

At the last Council meeting, the trio rejected independent Mayor Friday Ellis’ nomination of 24-year veteran Daniel Overturf to become the next fire chief of the city. He would have replaced longtime chief Terry Williams. The two Republican councilors supported the decision.

The vote perturbed the union that represents the Monroe Fire Department’s and apparently much of the rank-and-file, a number of whom appeared in his support at the meeting. An anonymous survey sent out revealed 85 percent of respondents approved of Overturf’s nomination, and numerous professionals recommended him. He was one of 17 to take and pass the hiring exam, which was conducted through the state, for the position, ranking tenth on education and experience.

Black voter antipathy to Broome denies last term

And now Louisiana can say its second through eighth largest cities have Republican chief executives (and the ninth-largest has a non-Democrat; fifth largest will be St. George whose first elected mayor inevitably should come from the GOP), now that East Baton Rouge Parish has elected Republican Sid Edwards to boot out of office current Democrat Mayor-President Sharon Weston Broome – thanks to black voters.

Broome had a fight on her hands for a third term when she trailed Edwards by five percentage points in the general election, not even cracking 30 percent of the multi-candidate field. Incumbents showing that poorly are in trouble, and this weekend Edwards, a high school football coach of renown and school administrator but rookie politician, closed the deal with voters.

He did it because of turnout. The 331 precincts can be parsed by race of registrants to determine this, assigning these to “favorable” or “unfavorable” precincts for each candidate, where from Broome a favorable precinct was one with greater than 80 percent black registrants – overwhelmingly Democrats – and an unfavorable one was where more than 80 percent of registrants were white – a plurality if not a majority of Republican typically. For Edwards, the definitions for each would swap.