CD5 GOP nod to turn more on hopefuls than issues

Republican candidates for Louisiana’s Fifth Congressional District, perhaps appropriately given the job for which they audition (as least as it stands for now), had to hop around its elongated boundaries last week in about 24 hours to participate a couple of forums, which perhaps turned more on presentations of competence and knowledge than on policy.

Thursday before last, all seven, including the main four – Board of Regents head Misti Cordell, state Rep. Mike Echols, and state Sens. Rick Edmonds and Blake Miguez – appeared at one sponsored by Livingston Parish GOP women’s clubs. Last Friday, all but Edmonds, who is from the southern terminus in Baton Rouge and begged off because of dealing with the shooting tragedy there, participated in another sponsored by Monroe’s public radio station KEDM, the University of Louisiana Monroe, and two local chambers of commerce. Cordell and Echols are from Monroe, while Miguez is domiciled outside the district about 75 miles south of it.

Edmonds might have used the opportunity, as the only independent poll to date of the contest has him behind second-place Echols by ten points, who trails leader Miguez by three, and Cordell is way back in single digits. However, almost half of respondents didn’t name a preference, leaving plenty of chances for candidates to collect voters through performance in somethings like these.

LA needs to prevent alarmism jackpot justice

Proactive legislation addressing the potential costs of climate alarmism could save Louisiana businesses much time, money, and hassle, in creating a fairer business climate for the state.

HB 804 by Republican state Rep. Brett Geymann would prevent suits against companies for greenhouse gas emissions that weren’t in violation of the specific permits issued for the emitter or those not violating the Occupational Safety and Health Act. Those gases are carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, and fluorinated gases.

Passage of this bill would obviate the possibility that these concerns in state would have to battle nuisance suits brought by climate alarmists. Elsewhere in the country, increasingly Chicken Little local governments have sued firms that produce these gases, alleging these caused individuals’ deaths or maladies or even possibly could, amounting to over two dozen such actions. A smattering of individual plaintiff cases also have begun to circulate.

LA case decision invalidates leftist election tool

This week, a U.S. Supreme Court majority tore the fig leaf off of a major strategic election tool used by Democrats and the political left, in declaring unconstitutional Louisiana’s congressional map in deciding Louisiana v. Callais.

The Court, in a monumental decision widely expected and inevitable to anybody with a passing knowledge of constitutional law, said the current district arrangement was an impermissible racial gerrymander. In 2024, the state had reapportioned specifically to avoid a potential district court redraw based upon a decision (on a notion underscored in the ruling as faulty) that it was discrimination not to have roughly an equal proportion of majority-minority districts as a minority group (generally defined as eligible for this treatment in a 1986 case) existed proportionally in the population.

The decision reaffirmed that when government deliberately intended to discriminate against people of a certain race because of racial animus that Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act would provide protection against that. However, it went further to clarify that this statute could not be perverted to match the dictum of a far-left scholar who famously declared that “[t]he only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination. The only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination.”

Transparency bill to challenge LA govts

An overdue update to transparency laws working its way through the Louisiana Legislature would force sunshine onto some places that don’t really want it, with Bossier Parish exemplifying that.

HB 615 by Republican state Rep. Mike Johnson would require any public body that can levy taxes or fees, if in a municipality of at least 10,000 population or is parish-wide if the jurisdiction has at least 25,000 population or if it a state entity (which would account for multi-parish agencies as well), to transmit live (or near-live) by video their meetings and to archive these for at least two years on the Internet, with social media as a permissible outlet, starting this August. It would apply to these bodies’ committees as well under existing law but also adds to this roster state entities that can promulgate rules. This comes on the heels of changes a few years ago that first mandated that taxing bodies transmit or archive.

As Johnson noted on the House floor, current law, even if expanded a few years ago, comes up short. It requires only live (or near-live) video or audio transmission or archiving by taxing bodies (not by single executives who don’t have meetings, such as sheriffs, assessors, and coroners), and carries no requirement that archiving (which is optional if transmitted live) be for a specific length of time nor that it may be made readily available to the public, such as through the Internet. Therefore, in the vast majority of instances citizens must deploy public records requests to obtain archived transmissions, if they exist. The bill would leave in place the video/audio transmission and/or archive regime for all those local entities that didn’t meet the population requirements.

Excise exception to stop bad camera law attempts

All in all, for those in Louisiana concerned that traffic enforcement devices – mainly red light and speed cameras – serve as little more than an excuse for a money grab by local governments have to consider this session of the Legislature in a positive light there being no harm, no foul, but as well a stepping stone for the future.

That conclusion is disheartening when considering recent progress on the issue. In recent years, the Legislature has acted wisely in circumscribing use of such devices. Most recently, it created much more stringent criteria on which vehicle owners could be charged with an infraction such as speeding, like limiting their use to school zones just at the beginning and end of a school day, and with penalty limitations. Still, they leave too much room for actions more consistent with maximizing revenue-raising than safety which additional strictures could address. Worse, Democrat state Rep. Dustin Miller managed to except Opelousas from these.

The lead author behind these changes, Republican state Sen. Stewart Cathey, ever since has tried to foment even more positive outcomes. In addition to the valuable changes last year, he also had a bill that would have exposed the hypocrisy of local governments relative to revenues and safety by requiring all revenues after expenses remitted to the state for use in youth programs. Not surprisingly, it was shunted to a committee that could sit on it.

Hammons sets sights on taking down good old boy

Regardless of the outcome, Bossier City Republican Councilor Brian Hammons’ entry into the city marshal’s race should shine a needed light onto a largely-superfluous office and presents a chance that taxpayers could save some bucks.

Almost 50 cities in Louisiana, some with populations in just four figures, have a city court and thus a city marshal attached to it. A carryover from the 19^th century, at their basics marshals serve a court’s orders and provide for its security. But as the positions are set in statute with lots of variations, and that these offices can contract with local governments to perform additional tasks, revenues, expenses, employees, and functions can vary wildly.

Statute defines Bossier City’s marshal (technically, the constable of Ward 2) in a single place. He is allowed to appoint a deputy marshal and he is to earn at least $5,000 a year from the city and $2,200 a year from the parish. Everything else has been made up over the decades.

Keep public notice to make bills great again

A pair of linked bills potentially would pare Louisiana’s election calendar a bit and encourage more voters to vet local government bills that involvement taxation, but with a reduction of transparency that needs correction.

Two decades ago, Louisiana suffered more election dates than excess judges today in Orleans Parish. Over the years, breaching silly complaints about the necessity of having so many eligible election dates, gradually statutory changes reduced the number of eligible days so that the 46 separate election dates from 2000-04 dropped to just 26 from 2020-24.

That number may fall further with Republican state Rep. Bryan Fontenot’s bills HB 393, a constitutional amendment, that would open the door to having his HB 400 reduce the number of elections on which local taxing and referendum items may appear. Essentially, for these it would make eligible annually only a single election, in the fall in even-numbered years and gubernatorial election years, and in the remaining year in the spring except for Orleans Parish in the fall, which also would exclude general election runoffs. In other words, the eligible dates are those that promise the highest potential turnout because of other local, state, or national elections sharing the ballot.

Caddo-Bossier Port deal exemplifies CCS obstinacy

The Octopus of the Red River flexes its arms again, and that’s one reason why anti-carbon capture and sequestration efforts, as well as attempts to rein in the Port of Caddo-Bossier that have been blunted, in Louisiana seem destined to fail.

Over the years, fueled by a property tax, the Port has built up a considerable kitty, as well as increased powers the envy of governments whose elected officials actually face elections. Most prominently, the Port’s Board of Commissioners, all appointees of various local governments, can make economic development deals involving tax abatements anywhere within the two parishes that override the desires of the elected (and in some cases appointed) officials of the local governments involved.

But that power spreads even further. Recently, a Louisiana House of Representatives panel defeated an attempt to deny the use of eminent domain for CCS purposes. Given that the practice carries at best microscopic environmental or economic benefits and is driven solely by federal government subsidization through tax credits that becomes economically viable at vastly expanded scale only as part of an artificially-constructed market for carbon reduction credits, yet is full of question marks for safety and environmental degradation at vastly expanded scale, taking away the ability to force CCS on property owners made sense.

Trump endorsements not conveying big advantages

So far, Republicans in northeast and north central Louisiana and the entire state aren’t quite on the same page with GOP Pres. Donald Trump’s endorsements for the Senate and Fifth Congressional District races.

In February, Republican Rep. Julia Letlow announced her challenge to incumbent GOP Sen. Bill Cassidy, who last year had drawn Republicans Treas. John Fleming and state Sen. Blake Miguez as challengers, on the back of Trump’s declaration of support for her if she ran. Almost immediately thereafter, Miguez abandoned that quest and announced for the Fifth with Trump’s endorsement.

The nods by Trump were supposed to seal the deals for Letlow and Miguez. Both were well-funded and his imprimatur would assure more dough rolling in to enrich campaigning efforts as well as loosen the purse strings of sympathetic groups to spend independently for them and would serve as a signal to distinguish these candidates from others in the field for voters. Together, observers believed these would separate them from their competitors.

New LA Medicaid weight-loss drug benefit unwise

Louisiana legislators may not have learned their lesson as they try to put taxpayers on the hook for a new Medicaid benefit that may end up causing any or all of wasted money, much higher expenses, and potentially avoidable harm to recipients.

Last year, a line item tucked into the state’s general appropriation bill would have made funding available to give semaglutide, a receptor agonist for human glucagon-like peptide-1 which is the basis for several drugs such as Wegovy, Ozempic, Monjauro, and Rybelus, to state employees that suffered from obesity. Republican Gov. Jeff Landry vetoed that.

And wisely so, for the monthly injections would have imposed a tremendous cost that must continue for effectiveness to kick in and stay in. Lifestyle changes, of which Landry has signaled at least indirect support for through his healthy eating initiatives, would just as effective if not even more so for weight loss and shedding of problems related to obesity. It would cost the state little to engage in campaigns urging personal responsibility to eat right and less, and to exercise more.