Lawmakers to ask voters to steer more money to highways
WikimediaBATON ROUGE, La. (AP) — Lawmakers are seeking to pump more money into road repairs and bridge work across Louisiana.
The proposals by Sen. Robert Adley, the Senate transportation committee chairman, received final legislative passage with a series of Senate votes Tuesday.
The constitutional amendments would change the rules of the state’s “rainy day” fund to help provide more financing for roadwork.
They would steer dollars that currently would go into the rainy day fund instead to transportation work, generating an estimated $21 million over the next five years for projects — but much more in later years, estimated at as much as $100 million annually.
Because they would change the constitution, they would need voter approval.
Louisiana has a $12 billion backlog of transportation needs.
Lawmakers vote to let state agents enforce sea turtle law
BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) — State wildlife officials should soon be able to enforce federal laws that require shrimp nets to include escape hatches for sea turtles.
With a 99-0 vote Tuesday, the House gave final passage to a bill that will remove Louisiana’s enforcement ban, enacted in 1987.
Supporters of the bill say some big-box retailers have boycotted Louisiana shrimp because they objected to the law and raised concerns about the state’s handling of protections for endangered sea turtles.
The bill by Rep. Dorothy Sue Hill, D-Dry Creek, heads next to Gov. Bobby Jindal’s desk. If Jindal agrees, the law change will take effect Aug. 1.
The Monterey Bay Aquarium’s “Seafood Watch,” a program that recommends seafood choices to consumers and is popular with environmentalists, has recommended at least since 2013 that people avoid Louisiana wild-caught shrimp — which are caught mostly in state waters — because of the ban. Some major restaurants and retailers pay attention to the recommendations.
“This will accomplish the goal for the Louisiana shrimpers to be able to sell their shrimp caught in Louisiana waters,” Hill said.
Conservation group Oceana applauded the bill’s passage.
“This bill will lead to the Louisiana shrimp industry having access to 13,000 additional restaurants and stores across the country to sell their product. As the industry battles cheap shrimp imports from around the world, it needs every available market to sell its wild catch,” Gib Brogan, fisheries campaign manager for Oceana, said in a statement.
All sea turtles found in U.S. waters are endangered or threatened. In the mid-1980s, when Louisiana’s law was passed, the federal rule requiring “turtle excluder devices” in shrimp trawls was new and contentious.
Hill’s bill will require Department of Wildlife and Fisheries agents to wear body cameras while enforcing laws dealing with the escape hatches, but that requirement won’t start until June 1, 2016, and will expire at the end of 2018. Lawmakers stripped a provision that would have made any seafood retailer who boycotts shrimp caught in Louisiana ineligible for state incentive programs.
La. House refuses 72-cent per pack cigarette tax increase
BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) — Lawmakers in the House may be willing to raise costs on cigarette smokers, but they balked at the size of the price hike pushed by senators.
The House voted 81-15 Tuesday to reject the 72-cent per pack tax hike sought by the Senate, which would have raised the state’s tax rate to $1.08 per pack. The House previously had agreed to a 32-cent increase.
House members also objected to senators sweeping other tobacco products into the tax hike, like e-cigarettes and smokeless tobacco.
Rep. Harold Ritchie, D-Bogalusa, a long-time smoker, supported the price hikes, saying they would discourage smoking. Rep. Lance Harris, R-Alexandria, leader of the House Republicans, countered that lawmakers shouldn’t support such a hefty tax hike on “working people,” also predicting it would harm small businesses.
A final version of the cigarette tax will be hammered out in a legislative conference committee, part of overall budget negotiations.
Boosted judicial budget wins final legislative passage
BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) — While lawmakers are still negotiating over budget cuts, the House and Senate have agreed to raise spending $3.5 million next year for the state judiciary.
The House voted 94-0 Tuesday to give final legislative passage to a $179.6 million budget that finances the Louisiana Supreme Court and other parts of the state judiciary for the fiscal year that begins July 1.
Senators disagreed with the House decision to provide a standstill judicial budget and added more than half of the spending hike sought by the Supreme Court justices. The House vote approved the Senate increase, sending the beefed-up budget to Gov. Bobby Jindal.