The third and final round of public forums on the Lafayette Comprehensive Plan is upon us.
Exactly what this one says we’ll leave up to you.
Proposals to tie public funding to student performance and issue letter grades to Louisiana's public and private early childhood education programs are finding easy passage through the Legislature.
After days of closed-door negotiations, Louisiana House leaders are supporting a $24.7 billion compromise budget, rather than the proposal submitted by Gov. Bobby Jindal.
Coin enthusiasts are getting a glimpse of more than $100 million worth of rare money, including some of the crown jewels of money collecting at the National Money Show in New Orleans.
New Orleans Saints general manager Mickey Loomis says first-round pick Kenny Vaccaro and three other draft choices have signed four-year contracts on the eve of the first rookie camp practice.
The Louisiana House coalesced Thursday behind a rewritten, bipartisan budget compromise that dumps many financing plans sought by Gov. Bobby Jindal in favor of cuts to tax breaks and dollars expected from a tax amnesty program.
The Louisiana House is considering substantial tweaks to an alternative proposal to Gov. Bobby Jindal's budget for next year.
Saying a majority of Louisiana's colleges and universities won't reach the graduation rates of the Southern regional average by 2016, the House Education Committee chairman angrily killed his own tuition increase bill on Wednesday.
Mississippi Republican Sen. Thad Cochran has proposed amendments to a federal water resources bill to protect coastal areas from flooding or storm surge threats that might result from a new flood control proposal for Louisiana.
Though the money is there for the taking, DA Mike Harson has apparently neglected another of his responsibilities: collecting bond forfeitures, funds that benefit not only his office but several other entities of the 15th Judicial District.
MAY 17 Here's a column from James Gill, this time in the Advocate. Gill, who has jumped ship from the Picayune, writes about the absurdity of dueling polls in this post. The numbers are so wildly different, it is obvious that both sides are "cooking the books," he writes. In particular, he looks at Sen. Mary Landrieu, and how her recent actions in DC have been received by those polled. Gill's acerbic, amusing prose is a welcome addition to a paper so conservative as to be occasionally lacking in personality.
MAY 17 Blogger Tom Aswell continues delivering bombshells about the state education department and Gov. Jindal's education "reform" efforts. In this post, he reports that students in the Shreveport area have been signed up for a charter school without their knowledge or consent. Most interesting to Aswell is how this Texas-based charter (with ties to GOP types) got the personal student information it has, if the students didn't give it.
MAY 17 This post by JR Ball in the Baton Rouge Business Report is an interesting tongue-in-cheek look at recent Baton Rouge economic development efforts. Among the items he examines is the idea that gaining a Costco makes BR a "world-class city." (Really? All you need is a different brand of Sam's? MK!) This effort, and other recent ones, are all built on the taxpayer's back, with tax zones, tax incentives and tax rebates, Ball writes.
MAY 17 Blogger CB Forgotston is critical of the legislature's reliance on a revenue-estimating committee's decision to include projected tax amnesty income in this year's forecast. That's a problem, CB posts, because the deadline for these people to pay their taxes is June 30, 2014. So when do you think these people who haven't paid taxes in years are going to pay their taxes? Surely not before June 30, and that means the money won't be there for this year's budget, he argues.
MAY 17 Here's an interesting blog out of California by a Hollywood writer, attorney and academic named Brian Alan Lane. He blogs about higher ed, and was a whistle-blower in a scandal over false credentials. In this post, he takes aim at LSU's new top dog, King Alexander. It's convoluted and a little confusing, but it sure makes Alexander a lot more interesting than he was yesterday.
MAY 17 Blogger Robert Mann writes about the LSU Board's refusal to allow Dr. Fred Cerise to testify before the legislature about Gov. Jindal's plan to close down all the state's charity hospitals and dump the poor on the private system. It's hard to imagine anyone more qualified than Cerise to testify about that, so why would anyone try to prevent him doing so? Mann thinks it is because the powers that be aren't interested in hearing any truth about the plan.
MAY 17 This post on the Louisiana Sinkhole Bugle, a blog that notes developments in the Bayou Corne and Jefferson Island salt domes, talks about a proposed expansion of the salt dome storage under Lake Peigneur in Iberia Parish. Residents are working against it for several reasons, including two biggies: the sinkhole disaster in Bayou Corne and the continuing, unexplained bubbling on the surface of the Lake.
MAY 17 NOLA police arrested more people Thursday accused of either being involved in the Mother's Day shooting or hiding the suspect afterward, this Gambit story reports. The NOLA police chief said he suspects the whole thing was gang-related and throws out a challenge to the gangs: he's got informants now, he says, and he knows a lot more than the gangs want him to know. The people who live in the neighborhoods terrorized by gangs are ready to talk, he says.
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