NO Port veto doesn't work against accountability

Disposition of a bill from the just-adjourned regular session of the Louisiana Legislature reminds why informed consumers of Louisiana political news need to be discerning to understand what truly goes on in state government.

This week, Republican Gov. Jeff Landry vetoed SB 89 by Democrat state Sen. Joseph Bouie. The bill would have added Senate confirmation to nominees to the governing board of the Port of New Orleans, which actually encompasses three parishes. Various special interests through a convoluted process come up with three names for each of the seven commissioners when a slot is open from which the governor may select.

Landry’s veto message noted the process that provides maximal input and ties his hands to a certain extent, claiming introduction of more “bureaucracy” through Senate involvement wouldn’t bring benefits. Few of Louisiana’s nearly 30 ports require such confirmation, but among the five deep draft ports, three do and the other besides New Orleans effectively has members elected. The trio also have special interests submit names to the governor for selection.

Bills regulating pharmacy behavior beneficial

Like a solar flare suddenly erupting, in the last week of its session after little attention to the issue the Louisiana Legislature appears poised to enact significant and almost unprecedented legislation aimed at levelling the playing field for pharmacies and potentially aiding consumers of their products even as one pharmacy holding company threatens to leave the state over this.

Two bills would impact pharmacy benefit managers, an entity that has become popular over the last decade. Conceptually, these are supposed to induce efficiency into the system that saves money, by negotiating deals among drug manufacturers, insurers, and pharmacies which include creating formularies, negotiating rebates from drug manufacturer, processing claims, administering pharmacy networks, reviewing drug utilization, and managing mail-order specialty pharmacies.

But a good portion of that doesn’t appear to be directed into consumer’s pockets. The field is somewhat concentrated with the so-called Big Three – CVS Caremark, Express Scripts and OptumRx – disproportionately charging more for specialty generic drugs through affiliated pharmacies, while costs were lower for the unaffiliated. Having available networks of pharmacies also facilitates a practice known as “spread pricing,” or billing their plan sponsor clients more than they reimburse pharmacies for drugs. Along with Prime Therapeutics, the four control 70 percent of the specialty prescribing market and the Big Three have 80 percent of the total prescribing market.

Bill to give GOP leg up in constitutional changes

One of the most consequential bills of the Louisiana Legislature’s 2025 regular session – especially for reformers and Republicans – that has received no media attention now awaits the pen of Republican Gov. Jeff Landry to sign it into law.

HB 625 by GOP state Rep. Rhonda Butler would expand the municipal/party primary election date on Apr. 18, 2026 to include constitutional amendments. Otherwise, those amendments would be next eligible for ratification in 2026 on Nov. 3.

As of this writing, over half a dozen potential constitutional amendments remain realistically alive for supermajority approval in each chamber. While some would go to the voters on Nov. 3, three significant ones favored by Republicans and generally opposed by Democrats were amended to appear on the earlier Apr. 18 date – and in each case by doing so, raise their chances of passage.

Amendment could increase LA govt responsiveness

If you want to find out who has cornered the market on red herrings, look no further than the opponents of SB 8 by Republican state Sen. Jay Morris.

The bill would amend the Constitution to create another exception to the kinds of employees that have civil service protections under the State Civil Service Commission. It would allow the Legislature to create these by statute, meaning the job positions involved could have their occupants more easily removed from these, among other things.

A merit-based civil service is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, it promotes responsible government by attempting to place qualified individuals free of extraneous influences into government jobs as the best way to ensure quality, fair, and impartial discharge of their duties. On the other hand, it detracts from responsive government because it allows incubation of individuals who use their job protections to carry out their own agendas when these differ from those of their bosses accountable to the voting public’s preferences, if not use their insulation to perform their jobs poorly or to behave badly with almost zero chance of punishment or termination.

Chickens come home to roost for failed BC venture

This was how it always was going to end: the reckoning of Bossier City throwing away tens of millions of taxpayer dollars on something that now is little more than a rejected waystation for electric vehicle chargers.

For many years the writing has been on the wall concerning what’s now known as the Louisiana Boardwalk Outlets. Opening just over two decades ago to great fanfare, the outdoor mall most recently sold for less than a fifth of its cost to build and since continues to hemorrhage lessees. In the past month, four tenants, including three of the hospitality venues leaving now only two, have abandoned the area, making almost 40 retail spaces empty.

That adds to a completely discouraging picture. At the middle of last month, of the 185,000 square feet of leasable space, about 77 percent was available. Since then, the subsequent closures will add a few thousand more feet of empty space – keeping in mind that most of the remainder is dominated by the two remaining restaurants, a movie theater, and a church.

Start wringing liberal populism out of LA budget

Liberal populists largely may have been evicted from power in Louisiana, but their ethos lives on, according to budgetary politics in the Senate to date for next year’s state spending plan.

More often than not, after the general appropriations bill HB 1 makes it way from the House of Representatives where constitutionally it must start the Senate will make a few significant changes. The most far-reaching change came concerning Republican Gov. Jeff Landry’s initiative to open up voucher-like programming to families beyond the current eligible pool of students coming from lower-income households who otherwise would attend lower-ranking schools to include those from any lower-income household, wrapping all into an education savings account format called LA GATOR.

Landry asked for $43.4 million to cover the existing pool and then $50 million to expand it to a least a small portion of newly-eligible families. But instead, the Senate Finance Committee stripped the additional funds. GOP Sen. Pres. Cameron Henry led the charge, questioning whether the cost of the program would grow too big, too quickly.

Any publicity good for long shot Senate hopeful?

If as a political candidate have little in the way of campaign resources commensurate to the office you seek, a shot of free publicity surely can’t hurt – unless it threatens to make you appear to be a crank.

That’s the situation in which Republican Senate challenger Sammy Wyatt finds himself. Next to no one in the state probably paid attention to his entry into the contest to knock off GOP Sen. Bill Cassidy, which he formally announced in mid-March. Wyatt, from Shreveport originally who worked in local law enforcement mainly in Bossier City and then in security in the private sector before decamping for graduate study at Louisiana State University (after a failed run for Bossier City Marshal), returned to serve currently as Chief Compliance Officer and Investigation Officer for Louisiana State University Health-Shreveport, a senior administrative position, although in 2022 he did apply unsuccessfully for the police chief’s position in Shreveport.

Wyatt positions himself as a consistently ideological conservative in line with the agenda of Republican Pres. Donald Trump. It’s unknown how much financial support his campaign has picked up, since he first filed with the Federal Election Commission on Apr. 1, the day after a quarterly report would have been required with the next due at the end of the month, but likely it is very little.

Insurance reforms diluted by rate-setting bill

The two steps forward, one step back approach Louisiana policy-makers have taken towards insurance reform seems unlikely to make much positive impact, because they keep coming up short in addressing the most prominent impediments to reducing premiums.

Insurance reform has been the topic of this year’s legislative session. While some effort has been made on immovable structure insurance, most and most attention has gone towards vehicle insurance. Indeed, with pomp and circumstance last week Republican Gov. Jeff Landry signed several bills on the subject that he had supported, although a few more that he does not languish in the legislative pipeline.

The most controversial was HB 148 by GOP state Rep. Jeff Wiley, which actually started out differently. That bill gives the insurance commissioner, at present Republican Tim Temple, the power to set rates, potentially on any basis even arbitrary, filed by insurers regardless of how competitive is the market; until then, the commissioner could review a requested increase for noncompetitive noncommercial lines for an “excessive” increase, but not those that were deemed competitive, with competitiveness now not a factor for the criterion of “excessive.”

Another LA blackout, another renewable own goal

The advice Dr. Zaius gave to Taylor at the end of Planet of the Apes applies very well to the likes of hard left politicians on the Louisiana Public Service Commission and the New Orleans City Council, in reference to the blackout that hit the New Orleans area some days ago which brings both lessons and warnings.

Parts of four parishes, including Orleans, were hit by what power companies euphemistically call a “load shed” last weekend. Over half were in New Orleans, and nearly 100,000 total customers had lights out for several hours because, with one of Entergy’s nuclear reactors down, another shut down unexpectedly presumably over concerns that if left unaddressed could have blacked out even more ratepayers and for longer.

This echoed two similar events in northern Louisiana in April. Affecting about a third of customers compared to the one in south Louisiana, as part of its meeting the Public Service Commission held a gripe session earlier this month about those incidents, where both the utility involved, Southwestern Electric Power Company, and the regional transmission organization Southwest Power Pool tried either to blame the other or shrugged them off as acts of the Deity.

Ignore naysayers, pass Medicaid integrity bill

It’s a bill that would improve matters tepidly, but you would think it heralded the end of the world from the rhetoric emanating courtesy of the far left that favors government as a redistribution machine.

SB 130 by Republican state Sen. Heather Cloud would increase moderately the oversight that the Louisiana Department of Health maintains over Medicaid eligibility: all of regular, expanded, children’s, and waiver provision of the program. It requires LDH to verify independently eligibility information, prohibits relying solely on automatic renewals (and for future waiver program operation prohibits these entirely), prohibits sole use of self-attestation to verify income and assets and mandates verification of residency, and mandates data matching use from a variety of sources on quarterly, semiannual, and annual bases.

Unfortunately, until the last couple of years since Democrat former Gov. John Bel Edwards had entered office, LDH didn’t often utilize these efforts listed in the bill. Vast swaths of verification occurred through self-attestation and what data-based verification did occur usually came in perfunctory form, asking for very little and skipping the finer points of eligibility requirements.