Political problems

That's one way of putting it. 

Gov. Jeff Landry’s ambitious plan to overhaul Louisiana’s tax structure has largely been pared down to a more modest goal – cutting state income taxes.

 
Lawmakers are working on a way to make sure the state can pay for that desired tax reduction while not having to make damaging cuts to areas such as health care and higher education.

The paring down was part of the plan, though.

The idea here was always solely about affecting a massive shift in tax burden from the richest (corporate and high income taxpayers) to the poorest (people who pay sales taxes on every day essentials.) The feint at lessening the blow by cutting out special exemptions and tax credits was a ploy to establish buy-in to the scheme as various lobbying groups mobilized to save their own privileges. Mission accomplished. 

This week, the Senate declined to fully roll back some of the state’s expensive business incentive programs, such as its movie and television tax credits and historic preservation tax breaks that collectively cost the state hundreds of millions of dollars annually.

A plan to eliminate a state inventory tax credit, which covers taxes businesses pay to local governments, has been delayed until 2026, and a proposal to increase a tax on heavy machinery and equipment used by industrial employers has also been scrapped.

And now we're back to where Landry and Richard Nelson always planned for us to be. Legislators will approve a higher sales tax than their own bill originally targeted vs. the prospect of more cuts to health care and higher ed. A win-win for them despite the conventional reporting that posits it could lead to "political problems." 

If he doesn’t find a way to make up for that money, Landry runs the risk of revisiting the same political problems that plagued former Gov. Bobby Jindal.

Jindal also cut income taxes without replacing the lost revenue or finding a permanent way to cut government spending. His policy led to chronic budget problems for years and made the former governor deeply unpopular when he left office.

Bobby Jindal left office after having steamrolled to a second term and launching an ambitious (although comically hubristic) Presidential campaign. You could say he was unpopular, but he never seemed to notice that. He seems to be living well. More to the point, the income tax cut Jindal pushed through (quite similar in nature to the one Landry is proposing now) set the stage for budget cuts and the currently regressive taxation regime that are core elements of the Republican ideological project.

And now they are about to build on that. If those are "political problems" they're not "plaguing" Jindal or Landry so much as they are Louisiana's poor and working classes instead.

"Government approved protest"

 The best kind of protest, as everyone knows.

House Bill 127, sponsored by Rep. Mike Bayham, R-Chalmette, received final House concurrence in a 83-15 vote. The measure is now pending approval from Gov. Jeff Landry, who has called for harsh punishments against protestors. 

The proposal expands a state criminal statute that outlaws obstruction of a highway, road, railway, airport runway or navigable waterway by adding a conspiracy component.

Under current law, the crime is considered a misdemeanor punishable with a $250 fine, six months in prison or both. It applies to anyone who physically performs an act, such as protesting or placing an obstacle on a street, that makes it harder for vehicles to pass.

Bayham’s bill increases the fine to $750 for the misdemeanor act of obstructing a road. It adds a new provision to specifically go after protest organizers by applying the statute to anyone who conspires or assists others in a demonstration that blocks or slows down traffic. 

There was no debate ahead of final passage for the bill on the House floor Tuesday.

In a previous floor debate, Bayham said his bill would still allow people to lawfully assemble for a government-approved protest, and he added it would protect public safety by preventing protests from slowing down emergency vehicles.

I dunno. All this seems bad to me.  Can't really say what to do about it. All the options appear to have become illegal. 

The larger context of all of this is we're entering a period of greater austerity. This will be on a level not recently experienced by the middle class American kids who were raised to think they had some sort of stake in the greater societal project and therefore a credible say in how it is directed. But the line separating the circle of people who matter from the larger number of people who do not is being drawn in tighter than it has been in a long while.  You can't ask this many previously comfortable people to go quietly into that. The only way to enforce it is through stepping up the capacity for state surveillance and state violence.   

Didn't happen overnight, I know. For a while, it was possible to paper over the erosion of the social infrastructure by buying off strategically significant segments of the population with pretty stories and hollow treats. But we're getting the part where there's enough pain deliberately dealt out to enough people that we have to change the strategy from carrots to sticks. And so that's where we are.

Seems bad

Another one of those things where there isn't much to say. They're basically making every form of organized political dissent a major felony.  Once you open the box that allows you to start categorizing types of organizing as "terrorism," this is inevitably where you wind up. So it's not like no one could see it coming a mile away. It's just that this is where we are now.

House Bill 205, which adds rioting to crimes that can result in racketeering charges, also passed the Senate last week, with one significant amendment.

Originally, the bill, by Rep. Brian Glorioso, R-Slidell, added 10 crimes to that list, but an amendment by Sen. Blake Miguez, R-New Iberia, added seven more crimes to that tally, bringing the total to 17.

If the law passes, those who riot, vandalize historic buildings, block highways and or commit other offenses, and those who organize events where such crimes occur, could face up to 50 years in prison and a $1 million fine. The crimes would have to take place on more than one occasion to be covered under the statute.

Critics, including the American Civil Liberties Union of Louisiana, argue the bill would allow police to roundup protesters — including those who were not complicit in any crimes that occurred during an event — and to charge them as they would organized criminals.

Seems bad. Not sure what anyone is gonna do about it. Especially since it's the supposedly liberal party that's pushing the envelope on repression at the moment.

What has this all been about?

I still don't know if the constitutional convention is happening for real.  But those of you who wrote in, "Make the state subsidize petrochemical industries, private schools, and rich people in general by raising taxes on the poor" as your answer, you were correct.  

Two of Gov. Jeff Landry’s allies in his effort to overhaul the state constitution would personally support weakening protections around popular state sales tax breaks for residential utilities, prescription drugs and food purchased for home consumption. 

State Rep. Beau Beaullieu, R-New Iberia, and former Louisiana House Speaker Jim Tucker, a Republican, on Friday said they would not personally want to lift those sales tax exemptions, but they don’t think such granular tax policy belongs in the state’s foundational governing document.

Beaullieu and Tucker support moving those types of tax items from the constitution to state statute during a constitutional convention proposed for this summer. The two men spoke during an online webinar sponsored by the Public Affairs Research Council of Louisiana.

Beaullieu said he also thought cigarette tax restrictions should be shifted from the constitution to statute as well. Louisiana cannot tax cigarettes below their 2012 rate because of a constitutional mandate.

Not to put too fine a point on it but...

 They're messing with you. 

GOP donors Lane Grigsby and Boysie Bollinger aren't concerned about the restrictions placed on the constitutional convention in the enabling legislation passed by the House.

They don't think they're enforceable, per @LaPoliticsNow. #lalege #lagov pic.twitter.com/yUoG9J87nC

— Julie O'Donoghue (@JSODonoghue) May 10, 2024

Again, they are just messing with you

They just passed new laws that say insurance companies don't actually have to, you know, provide insurance. 

Gov. Jeff Landry on Tuesday signed a series of bills that make it easier for insurance companies to drop policyholders, raise rates and have more time to pay claims after a storm, a controversial plan that aims to attract more companies to the state.

Hilariously, they say this is supposed to make it easier for you to buy insurance. It won't.  But more importantly, they don't actually believe that anyway.  What they do believe in is holding a big public signing ceremony for this farcical legislation just to rub it in everyone's face. In addition to ripping you off and putting your home in danger, they are also messing with you. Seems bad.

Seems bad

Not really sure why anyone is wasting their time and energy under the delusion that the reactionaries in the legislature can be stopped or even reasoned with.  At some point you have to recognize that there's no reason to play in these sandboxes with them. 

State Rep. Jerome “Zee” Zeringue, R-Houma, flashed a thumbs-down Wednesday while away from the voting machine on his desk, indicating to the House speaker he was voting no on a controversial bill restricting union activities among government workers. The speaker acknowledged his vote, and his name lit up in red on the tally board. 

Moments later, it flashed to green. The bill passed 53-39, barely clearing the 53-vote threshold to pass the House. 

House Bill 571 by Rep. Raymond Crews, R-Bossier City, prohibits public sector union members, except for police and firefighter unions, from discussing or organizing union activities while working or on paid leave. It also nullifies any employment contracts that provide compensation, including paid leave, for the performance of such activities. 

Crews’ bill is opposed by several labor organizations, who have raised concerns that the bill violates the First Amendment. The bill would allow citizens to sue and be awarded costs for catching violations of the prohibition. The attorney general or a district attorney could also bring enforcement action. 

“Taking away the voices of thousands — tens of thousands — of workers, their rights to assemble and their freedom of speech is very alarming,” Matt Wood, a lobbyist for the Louisiana AFL-CIO said in an interview with the Illuminator. 

Zeringue was not the only member to have their vote changed. 

Rep. Jack McFarland, R-Jonesboro, had stepped outside the chamber at the time of the vote. Although didn’t give any other member permission to vote for him on Crews’ bill, he was recorded as a “yes” on the proposal. The final tally should have shown him as absent.

All of these outcomes are pre-determined. Why even bother with it? Why waste your time, your breath, your sanity? Nobody is listening. All they are doing is messing with you. 

During the convention, Landry and Beaullieu have also said no laws would be immediately changed. Instead, the governor has proposed only moving language out of the constitution and into what he has called a “super statute” in regular state law. 

“We are not rewriting the constitution. This is a refresh of the constitution,” Beaullieu said.

While relegating language from the constitution into statute won’t immediately change any law, it will make it easier for legislators to eliminate or change those provisions at a later date.

Constitutional language can only be removed with approval of two-thirds of the Louisiana House and Senate and approval from voters on a statewide ballot. A “super statute” would only need approval from lawmakers to eliminate or alter. 

In spite of Beaullieu’s assurances on protecting certain areas from constitutional cuts, legal experts have questioned whether that is possible. 

Several lawmakers and attorneys believe state law doesn’t allow for a “limited” constitutional convention, where certain items are declared off limits. If a convention is held, delegates could open up any portion of the constitution for alterations if they wanted, they said.

Bullying, "gaslighting" whatever you want to call it, they're gonna do whatever they want.  This is a fight that was lost a long time ago. Seems bad. What else is there to say?

Fitting way for all of this to end

Over a decade of struggle to protect what's left of New Orleans's neighborhoods from having the life sucked out of them by Airbnb; all of the research, the planning commission studies, the overheated social media debate, the marathon city council meetings, the good times, the bad times, the shit times; is about to be brought to an abrupt end on Monday in the state legislature. 

Just as cities and parishes across Louisiana such as New Orleans, Lafayette, and St. Tammany Parish have been ramping up their enforcement of short-term rentals, HB 591 would make AirBnB immune to important oversight. Rep. Lyon’s bill, which will be heard in House Commerce Committee Monday morning, would destroy local government’s abilities to enforce city regulations, which are critical to ensure bad actors cannot continue to illegally operate short-term rentals in our neighborhoods.

Jeff Landry says he wants the city to "operate like Charleston." Charleston is one of the fastest gentrifying cities in America, thanks, in large part, to the conversion of neighborhoods into clusters of vacation rentals. 

New Orleans, as we all know, has already been bled nearly to death by the phenomenon. And, yet, every turn in the long saga has left us with some hope that we'd finally get our local electeds to listen to us even a little bit. The most recent twist found a judge (after an extended delay) finally upholding the current version of our not quite restrictive enough ordinances. But since then, nothing has happened because 1) the administration has neither the capacity nor the inclination to enforce the rules and 2) the landlords are appealing the ruling anyway. In the meantime, it's back to business as usual.  Nobody actually lives here. The rent is too damn high. And homes continue to become hotels while city leadership looks the other way.  

And now comes Marrero Democrat Rodney Lyons with the Deus Ex Machina, a bill that finally takes the entire question off of the desk of anyone in local government.  You can bet that they're all hoping Lyons's bill passes for that reason alone. It makes their lives a lot easier if all they have to do is say they feel bad that you got evicted and no one expects them to do anything about it anymore.

Seems bad

 Everything they do seems bad. Throw this on the pile as well. 

Cloud’s Senate Bill 482 goes the furthest of those bills by gutting from the list of records eligible for public access all documents that detail “deliberations” in government work. It would exempt documents containing "advisory opinions, recommendations and deliberations” that feed into any government decision or policy-making choices.

Watchdog groups and attorneys dealing with public information issues decried the bill Wednesday. Melia Cerrato, a Sunshine Legal Fellow at Tulane University’s First Amendment Law Clinic, called it “extremely alarming” and said it risked violating the state’s constitution.

“This will create government secrecy on a level that should alarm people regardless of where they are on the political spectrum,” Cerrato said. “This is bad government.”

Anyway, I don't know what else to say. It's all bad.  

The Louisiana governor is already thought to be all-powerful, but a handful of legislative proposals would give Jeff Landry more control over the state government than any of his recent predecessors. 

Two proposed constitutional amendments would allow Landry to pick most members of the Louisiana Supreme Court and state Civil Service Commission, which oversees hiring and firing guidelines for state workers.

Another bill gives Landry control over the Louisiana Board of Ethics, after it dinged him for taking a private flight from a campaign donor last fall. 

There’s also legislation to empower Landry to pick the chairpersons and other officers of hundreds of other state boards and commissions.  

Most lawmakers who drafted the bills said Landry is not pushing the proposals, though the sponsors include some of the governor’s biggest supporters in the Legislature.

But we did know it would be this bad. Everyone knew and they knew for a long time.  But what happens when the Democrats and the press remain inert for the whole two years of the statewide election cycle leading up to this?  Well, it gets bad. This must be what they wanted on some level. So here we are.

Seems bad

Comedy is finally legal again at the Louisiana Legislature. Every stupid joke of an idea they've had batted away in the past is back. And they're having the greatest time of their lives up there. 

Nearly 10 months after Gov. John Bel Edwards vetoed a controversial bill that would create a 25-foot buffer around law enforcement officers, a Louisiana House committee greenlit a similar piece of legislation Tuesday (March 26), effectively reviving the proposal. 

House Bill 173 by Rep. Bryan Fontenot, R-Thibodaux, states that “no person shall knowingly or intentionally approach within twenty-five feet of a peace officer who is lawfully engaged in the execution of his official duties after the peace officer has ordered the person to stop approaching or to retreat.”

Anyone found in violation of the law can be fined up to $500 or imprisoned up to 60 days.

Cops can arrest you for just being around now.  

Put these alongside the anti-labor intolerable acts that started moving through committee today, and you can see the kind of world we're headed for over the next few years. 

Seems bad

I don't really know what else we're supposed to say about the legislative session.  Every week is just gonna be a new load of very bad ideas cruising right on through.  Today, the latest scheme for de-funding public education passed out of committee without objection. 

Elected school board members also are starting to speak out against ESAs. On Thursday, just hours after the pro-ESA rally in Baton Rouge, the Livingston Parish school board discussed the bills at a special meeting.

One board member warned that a reduction in state funding could force the district to close schools and lay off teachers. Superintendent Joe Murphy said that an ESA program open to all families could guzzle up tax dollars, leaving less money for the “minimum foundation program,” or MFP, the state’s public school funding formula.

“I think this absolutely has the potential to devastate our schools from an MFP standpoint,” Murphy told the board. After all, money for the ESA program “has got to come from somewhere.”

The money coming out of the public schools' MFP will be at least half a billion dollars a year, in fact. But that's far from the only way in which our "fiscally conservative" legislature has determined to bankrupt the state this year.  Keeping in mind the already much talked about half billion dollar "fiscal cliff" that approaches in 2025, lawmakers spent the special session on "crime" adding tens (growing perhaps to hundreds) of millions of dollars to the budget for throwing people in prison and keeping them there. And the current session may expand that further. Bills are advancing that would jail people for panhandling on the streets or perhaps attending professional conferences. Maybe those are the same thing. Or at least one leads to the other. I haven't quite worked it out. 

Anyway, the legislature has the big checkbook out. But we know how much these fiscal hawks like to talk about prudent budgeting. So they must have some pretty great expectations of future revenues. Wonder where that's going to come from.  One things for sure, it won't come from the oil companies. 

The state House on Monday passed a bill that would cut the oil severance tax rate by 4 percentage points, a measure that aims to revitalize Louisiana’s oil industry but could leave an $80 million gap in state tax revenue.

House Bill 259, sponsored by Rep. Beau Beaullieu, R-New Iberia, faced virtually no pushback on the House floor, passing the chamber 86-13. It now heads to the state Senate.

With a vote of 96-6, the House also overwhelmingly passed a second Beaullieu bill, House Bill 418, which would halve the tax currently levied on oil and gas produced by wells that have been orphaned and inactive.

The Louisiana Budget Project.. or whatever the hell they call themselves now.. these NGOs "re-brand" themselves all the time for no reason..  estimates the severance tax cut could end up costing the state $80 million year.  Seems bad. 

Speedily warped

As the regular session of the legislature begins, I just wanted to flag this particularly good Gambit summary of where we are so far in Jeff Landry times.  The "crime" special session alone should be considered a human rights violation.

During his campaign for governor, Landry painted New Orleans as a lawless city that only he could fix, vowing to “bend the city” to his “will.”

While the city has struggled with gun violence and high rates of poverty and trauma, the rate of violent crime dropped significantly in 2023.

Violent crime increased nationally during the pandemic, from 2020 to 2022, especially in New Orleans. But, by last October, the city’s murder rate had fallen by 24%, with similar declines in nonfatal shootings, armed robberies and aggravated batteries. The national rate of violent crimes also dropped, but the rate in New Orleans declined twice as much.

Still, Landry kept his promise to call a special legislative session on crime, which ran from Feb. 19 to Feb. 29. During it, lawmakers speedily passed traditional failed “tough on crime” measures that certainly will put — and keep — more people behind bars in a state that already has one of the highest incarceration rates in the country.

The previous legislature seemed to understand that in 2017 when lawmakers passed a bipartisan set of reforms to the criminal legal system. The changes reduced penalties for nonviolent crimes and expanded opportunities for parole by allowing a state board to release certain nonviolent offenders from prison early.

The current legislature, fueled by Landry’s support, undid much of those reforms last month — in some cases making the system harsher than it was before 2017. He’s already signed most of them into law and is expected to soon sign the rest. Once signed, they’ll start taking effect over the next six months.

I've already said this but those 2017 reforms were the result of decades of hard work and struggle while people waiting on relief from the cruel punishment state suffered.  All that's been wiped out in an instant. It will take generations of more suffering to fix that. 

Much more damage to come this spring.

Lock him up!

Looks like Clay didn't do so well in court this morning.

While he was on the witness stand, the judge zeroed in on Schexnayder, one of the state's most powerful leaders.

The most dramatic moments of the hearing took place when Dick asked the speaker why he should not be held legally accountable because he filed a bill that mirrors the current map the judge rejected, not one with a second majority-Black district that she ordered.

She noted that federal penalties for failing to follow a court order include imprisonment and fines.

Unfortunately, by now, we should all know that putting politicians in prison is too much to hope for.  Which is why I have no idea why anyone is even watching the January 6 hearings this week. I mean they couldn't even put Mitch Landrieu under house arrest.  What makes anyone think they would actually put Trump in jail?  It should be clear we're well beyond even the pretense that anyone in our elevated political class will be held accountable for anything anymore.  It's pretty much granite countertops for all from here on out. 

So Clay might as well go on bucking the judge's orders.  Otherwise, why spend all this money on lawyers you aren't going to use?

About midway through the first redistricting session in February, the Illuminator reported that GOP leadership contracted with a private law firm for “redistricting advice” at taxpayers’ expense, which the contract now places at $60,000 per month. Few details have been made public about the work BakerHostetler is doing for lawmakers, and only a few select GOP legislative leaders have been given access to their counsel.

And then what happens?

 The Louisiana Legislature is the Bad Place

The Senate initially opted not to accelerate debate on bills by Fields and Hewitt, the latter of which mirrors the current map.

"I have a bad taste in my mouth on how we just started this short session," said Sen. Gerald Boudreaux, D-Lafayette. "I think we are in a bad place."

After a plea from Cortez, the Senate voted to send both bills to the Senate & Governmental Affairs Committee, which Hewitt chairs.

On Friday at 10 a.m. the House & Governmental Affairs Committee will hear four bills, including measures to create a second majority-Black congressional district by Duplessis and one by Schexnayder that mirrors the current outline.

They've got six days to either do what the court ordered them to do and make a fairer map that better represents the electorate or.. not do that and see what happens.  It's hard to imagine they're very worried about what might happen.

Just being mean on purpose

The majority of your legislators are just mean people who are motivated entirely by a politics of being mean. 

All but one of the Republican members present on a House committee voted Tuesday to end the “Raise the Age” law that keep 17-year-old arrestees from being imprisoned with adult convicts.

On a 6-5 vote, the House Committee for the Administration of Criminal Justice advanced for a full House vote Senate Bill 418, which the state Senate already has passed. “Raise the Age” law was approved with great fanfare allowing Louisiana to join 47 states that put most 17-year-old offenders in the juvenile justice system.

Article goes on to report that Rep. Marcus Bryant pointed out that this means throwing minors who have merely been arrested into cells with adults who have been convicted of serious crimes.  That may sound bad to normal people, but it is absolutely a thing these jerks are doing on purpose. 

Similarly,

For the second consecutive year the Louisiana Legislature on Monday approved and sent to the governor a bill that would bar transgender athletes from competing in girls and women's sports.

The Senate voted 32-6 to go along with minor changes made in the House last week after the Senate endorsed it in April 19.

There was no debate Monday.

The House approved the measure last week 72-21.

The proposal, by Senate President Pro Tem Beth Mizell, R-Franklinton, is Senate Bill 44.

John Bel vetoed that same bill last year calling it "a solution in search of a problem that does not exist in Louisiana."  There were no transgender students attempting to participate in girls' sports teams at the time.  I don't know if there are any such cases this year. Regardless, our legislators are determined to be mean to them. And that's really the "problem" they are trying to "solve."  They need an excuse to be mean and this gives them one. 

There are material reasons this sort of politics gains ascendancy. But the immediate goal of this politics is to be mean.

Give it another fifteen years, I guess

Joseph Bouie's very mild attempt at giving the Orleans Parish School Board a little bit more of a direct legislative instruction to do its ostensible job overseeing public schools in New Orleans has failed. 

Senate Bill 404 by state Sen. Joe Bouie, D-New Orleans, would have amended Act 91 — the law that returned the charter schools in the Recovery School District to the Orleans Parish School Board — to give the School Board the power to decide what freedoms charter operators should have. As it stands, decisions such as faculty and staff hires, what students learn and how they learn it are all left to individual charter operators. 

Despite its death, the bill and surrounding debate lay bare the tensions that still exist between pro-charter groups and those who see the system as an experiment that worsens inequalities in public education. 

In an interview this week, Bouie said he senses momentum building among residents and families for a change to the public school system, despite the bill's failure. 

“It was a hard sell legislatively, but the community’s response is getting stronger and stronger,” Bouie said. “All that support was really the result of the last 15 years, and what our communities know as the state-sponsored educational experiment.

Not sure we've got another 15 years to "build momentum."   The very idea that all children have a right to public education is fading. It's not clear there how much longer there will even be a school system here.  

Applications to enroll in NOLA Public Schools district charter schools — including new students and those seeking transfers — dropped by nearly 30 percent between the 2019-2020 school year and the 2021-2022 school year, according to a report presented to the Orleans Public School Board on Thursday. While some of that can be attributed to the COVID-19 pandemic, and the upcoming school year has seen a slight recovery, officials and experts believe the overall trend will be downward in the coming years, following a slow-down in the city’s population growth over the past decade, and a more recent decline in the past few years. 

School board members heard the report on declining enrollment at their Thursday night meeting, part of a process NOLA Public Schools officials have called “right-sizing” the district, which could include more closures and consolidations of city charter schools.

It's easy to say that enrollment is declining because nobody actually lives here anymore.  

Declining public school enrollment comes as the city has experienced slower population growth over the past several years. 

After New Orleans’ massive post-Katrina loss of residents, the population grew quickly in the early part of the last decade. Yearly Census estimates put the city at well over 390,000 residents, up from 343,000 in the 2010 Census. But that growth slowed as the city approached the 2020 Census. And New Orleans’ official 2020 Census count was about 384,000, 

Reid noted that a slower rate of people moving to New Orleans and lower birth rates have come as the city has become significantly less affordable for families, noting that housing prices have “increased incredibly” in the last five years.

But, then, it's just as important to understand the denial of core public services, such as a functioning school system, is a key contributor to that phenomenon.  No doubt the "right sizing" of the district will provide opportunities to sell off property to real estate investors. So we can build more nice things for rich people. Where nobody actually lives.  

Been watching them play this game for.. well, for over 15 years now. We know how it goes.

Teachers aren't going to break the budget

There's a certain logic to what the so-called "fiscal hawks" are arguing. We do not want to repeat the Jindal era cycle of de-funding critical public services through tax breaks for rich people and shell games like school vouchers and medicare privatization while covering up for it by dropping "one time money" into places that will eventually need recurring revenue to avoid more drastic cuts. Even now, while the state is flush with federal COVID relief, we're still just a few years away from the next "fiscal cliff" as temporary sales taxes start to roll off the books.  

None of this should mean that teachers have to suffer for it, however. But for some reason, they're still the first thing that comes to mind when lawmakers want to talk about being cautious with the budget. 

Geymann’s amendment to House Bill 1, the state’s operating budget, is written in an English that can only be described as “technical.” It basically blocks using extra money expected to be “recognized” by the REC on Monday to add another $500 to proposed pay raises for educators or any other expenses that will become part of the annual operating budget and have to be paid in the future. Geymann said the additional funds needed to increase teacher pay raises from $1,500 to $2,000 can and should be found in the recurring revenue stream.

It's ok to give the teachers their raise and find the money in the budget later.  Nobody ever said corporate tax exemptions need to keep happening, for example.  Although the legislators don't seem as worried about those.

Continuing with the quality work up there

There's so little to say about the Legislature at this point. We know who they are and what they're about.

The Republican majority in the House Labor committee voted Thursday – four times – against establishing a minimum wage and setting the rate above $7.25 per hour.

They keep complaining about a "labor shortage."  I don't actually think that is real and I plan to talk about that in a different post soon. But if it were real, if the bellyaching bosses who own and operate this state really were in desperate need of help but unable to find anyone willing to work, I wonder what could be the reason.

In any case, no one is asking the bosses to give up their subsidies. 

Facing stiff opposition from Louisiana’s business and oil and gas industry lobbies, a state senator on Wednesday shelved a bid to enshrine in the state constitution local government’s newly won authority over the state’s most generous corporate tax incentive.  

This week we also learned that Folgers is suing to keep hold of tax money it has owed the city of New Orleans after having had its ITEP denied.

In its suit, Folgers, which is owned by The J.M. Smucker Co., does not contest that it will owe taxes going forward. However, the company argues there is a conflict in the procedures outlined in the state law allowing assessors to adjust prior years’ assessments and requirements laid out by the state Constitution and says because of that, the bills for years’ past should be thrown out.

Of course, if this Legislature refuses to make local discretion permanent and future Governor Jeff Landry changes the rules, then companies like Folgers will again be off the hook. 

So, once again, brilliant work up there.  Can't wait to find out what else they've been up to... oh. Oh no. 

Going with the feels

 Incredible work by these highly literate lawmakers

With the committee's action to advance SB418 without anyone objecting, the legislation now heads to the full Senate. If repealing the "Raise the Age" is approved in the upper chamber, the measure then would head for consideration by the House.

Murders increased 30% nationally, 35% in Louisiana in 2020. But Louisiana has had highest murder rate for 32 straight years, testified Jeff Asher a data analyst for AH Datalytics that does work for New Orleans law enforcement agencies. The statistics show large increases for violent crimes in red and blue states, big cities, small towns, and suburbs. The rates of murders started increasing in early 2020, accelerated in May 2020, and have stayed elevated since.

Those under the age of 18 account for 4.4% of all murder offenders in Louisiana in 2020 – down from 5% since 2018.

Asher said the data shows no evidence that the implementation of "Raise the Age" contributed to the statewide increase in murder or gun violence.

“You’re saying that for every 100 murders committed in this country roughly five are done by juveniles,” Talbot said. “These statistics don’t make me feel better. Tony Clayton makes me feel better.”

Solving the wrong problem

Today's noladottimespicayadvocate is running a feature article on the carjacking phenomenon. The local one, anyway. The general fact that property crime seems to be up nationally is not surprising given two years of global economic shocks met with a policy response characterized by austerity, abandonment, and reactionary policing. But the particular types of behavior and the networks through which each flows have localized characteristics. This article is the first attempt by a local news organization to examine what's actually been going on in New Orleans. 

Most significantly, the investigation suggests that the local spike in carjackings isn't connected to an organized network of "chop shops" and parts dealers or anything like that.  This isn't to say that such things don't exist. It's just that most of these stolen cars aren't ending up there. Instead, most of them (72 percent last year, in fact) are being recovered, often abandoned not very far from where they were taken. Prior to this information, there had been much talk online and from police and politicians about "car theft rings" run by adults who would supposedly recruit minors to steal cars for them.  This narrative has already been deployed to pressure DA Jason Williams into breaking his campaign promise not to try children as adults. 

But, as it turns out, that story isn't true. Will that change the policy response from our chronically reactionary and out of touch political leadership.  Seems unlikely. 

Because the carjackers may not be profiting from their crimes, it's not clear whether there’s a short-term policy that can address the current surge. State Rep. Jason Hughes has proposed legislation, which passed the House unanimously this week, that would add new penalties for adults who recruit juveniles into carjacking rings, though there’s little sign that’s what’s driving the increase.

Instead, those that work with at-risk youth say that the problem will only abate with more significant and systemic changes: better schools, more activities for teenagers, better wages to give them hope and work healing broken communities.

Hughes's bill, which doesn't actually address the problem is rapidly on its way to passage. But what about these "more significant and systemic changes" that might be of some help?  "Better schools?"  Right now the legislature is considering a bill that would abandon the very concept of public education altogether.   "More activities for teenagers?" Nope! Instead, the legislature is moving a bill that would shame and persecute teens who seek to participate in high school sports on the basis of their gender. "Better wages?"  Louisiana is one of only five states with no minimum wage law, meaning only the federal minimum of a mere $7.25 applies here. (In non-tipped positions, anyway. Service workers have it even worse.) Kyle Green's HB 229 would establish a state minimum wage of $11.25. Denise Marcelle's HB 311 would gradually raise it to $12.00.  Neither measure is even remotely sufficient assuming it passes. Neither will pass in any case. 

So once more we're "solving" a problem that doesn't exist in order to avoid doing anything to help anyone. Which means, among other things, the carjackings are likely to continue.  But hey at least more of the stolen cars are being recovered now. So we've got that going for us.