A vote in the full House to override Jindal’s Tuesday veto of a bill that renews 4 cents of the state’s tax on cigarettes failed. Seventy votes — that’s the original number of representatives who voted May 24 to renew the tax — were needed to override Jindal’s veto. But 11 representatives who originally voted to renew the tax jumped ship, tethered their lifesavers to Steamship Bobby and voted against the override.
The tax generated only $12 million in revenue dedicated to health care for the state annually, but supporters of the renewal argued that Louisiana stood to leverage an additional $38 million in federal matching funds by renewing the tax. So, as the bill’s sponsor pointed out on the House floor Thursday, failing to renew the tax amounts to a $50 million hit against a state grappling with a devastating budget shortfall.
“What could you spend that money on?” sponsor Harold Ritchie, D-Bogalusa, asked rhetorically of his fellow lawmakers before the vote. “That’s almost half the money that we moved for the [Medicaid Coordinated Care Network], twice as much as we would need to keep five prisons open, 20 times more than we would need to operate school-based health care clinics. You know, what the governor has done with this veto is repudiate his life’s work and he’s given a 10-percent tax break to 20 percent of the people who smoke who cost this state hundreds of millions of dollars each year that the other 80 percent of us have to pay for.”
Rep. John Bel Edwards, D-Amite, also spoke on behalf of Ritchie’s House Bill 591 heading into the vote: “It takes a lot of courage to take on the governor of the great state of Louisiana, even when the governor’s demonstrably and egregiously wrong as he is in this matter — it still takes a lot of courage,” Edwards said. “If the veto stands, the tax on cigarettes falls by 4 cents; if the override is successful, the tax on cigarettes stays the same. So, who’s talking about raising cigarette taxes? Nobody — that’s not what this bill does. The veto message is off target, as has been the governor from day one on this issue.”
The 11 state representatives who voted in May to renew the tax but lost their spines on Thursday and are directly responsible for the override’s failure include, sadly, two from Lafayette: Republican Nancy Landry and Speaker Pro Tem Joel Robideaux, no party, were joined in scuttling the override by Reps. Robert Billiot, D-Westwego, Steve Carter, R-Baton Rouge, Charles Chaney, R-Rayville, Jim Fannin, D-Jonesboro, Hunter Greene, R-Baton Rouge, Frank Hoffmann, R-West Monroe, Kay Katz, R-Monroe, Thomas McVea, R-Jackson and Thomas Wilmott, R-Kenner.
MAY 21 Gambit columnist Clancy DuBos writes about the Mother's Day shooting, and how the stages of shock and blame and healing mirror those traveled by the same city following Hurricane Katrina. The city will recover, just as it did following the storm, by reaching out to help the people injured most seriously by the event, DuBos writes. It's how we heal, he says.
MAY 21 Here's a post on the Advocate (but buried on a subpage, not on the front) that reports something Louisiana Voice reported some time ago: a top DOE official lives in Los Angeles and "commutes" to Baton Rouge. The positioning of the story caused a stir on Facebook Monday, with several posters asking if the Advocate was covering someone's hiney. Sentell's stories on DOE are notoriously soft, and this one is no different: don't expect any hard questions in here.
MAY 21 Here's another post from blogger Tom Aswell about the "course choice" program. He's already reported on kids being signed up without their consent or knowledge, and has more here: For example, he tells of a six-year-old who was signed up for high school Latin. He also digs a little deeper into the sister companies of the main one operating in Louisiana; all of them seem to have complaints against them. Stinky.
MAY 21 Given the 80 percent cut in higher ed funding since he's been in office, it's clear Gov. Jindal would rather give tax cuts to out of state companies than have a functioning system, blogger Dayne Sherman argues in this post. The cuts have been such a disaster, Sherman says, that it will take 30 years to fix what's been broken. He says he believes the aim is to shut down most of the schools before Jindal leaves in 2016.
MAY 21 Blogger CB Forgotston says there are too many elections in Louisiana, and they're costing us too much money. The proof is in the pudding: turnout for most of these nonsensical pollings gets worse and worse, CB opines, even as millions of dollars that could be spent on health care or higher ed go down the tubes. The legislature must take action to stem the tide of pointless elections, he says.
MAY 21 Here's an interesting investigative piece by WVUE on the retirement benefits of some Jefferson Parish public employees. According to the story, the taxpayers are paying 100 percent of the retirement contributions of employees who started work prior to a certain date in April 1986 -- and have done for more than 30 years. It costs the parish millions annually, and might not be legal, the story reports.
MAY 21 This post on Bayou Buzz provides insight from Louisiana's intrepid pollster, Bernie Pinsonat, on the winners and losers from this year's legislative session. But to hear Bernie tell it, there's almost nuttin but losers: Jindal, the Republican party, the Fiscal Hawks all get big goose eggs in his win column.
MAY 20 This post on The Lens takes a look at a huge (either $500K or $250K) bill that one NOLA charter now has for school lunches. The RSD says the charter group didn't fill out the proper paperwork for federal reimbursement, but the story details how the RSD didn't ensure the people running the charter had the proper training, despite requests from hapless charter employees trying to fill out forms. Either way, somebody's asleep at the wheel.
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There I go again, assuming the best.