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.
That fee could top out at $300 a year by the fall of 2017.
The City-Parish Council on Tuesday approved an introductory ordinance that, if approved as a final ordinance in two weeks, will allow the city-parish attorney to subcontract with lawyers to file suit agaisnt people who have unpaid citations issued through the SafeLight/SafeSpeed programs as well as outstanding parking tickets.
MAY 24 Blogger Robert Mann posts this entry about the Baton Rouge Chamber's recent report on Louisiana's higher education system. It's critical to economic development, and yet our system is facing a "funding crisis" with no way to resolve it, the report says. The Chamber says control of tuition and fees must be returned to the higher ed governing boards.
MAY 24 Here's a NBC33 story about Tyrann Mathieu. He has signed with the Arizona Cardinals, inking a $3 million, four-year deal. He gets a signing bonus of $265K, but gets another, larger bonus if he doesn't get cut from the team for doing drugs. The deal reportedly includes mandatory tests and meetings for the player.
MAY 24 Jarvis DeBerry posts here about the redonkulus rhetoric that would have us believe NOLA is a safe city with a murder problem. Maybe the city's crime stats don't compare with its murder stats because you can't manipulate a murder, he says: a dead body's a dead body. It just doesn't make sense, he says, and his readers agree: a poll asks if they believe the city is safe, and more than 90 percent say no.
MAY 24 Jindal administration officials announced Thursday that the privatization of public health care is going to cost a lot more than they budgeted for, the Advocate reports here. "I'm so surprised," said no one. Anywhere. The cost they're projecting now is more than $1 billion - a lot more than the $626 million budgeted for it. And, it's more than it cost the state to operate those hospitals. So why are we doing this again?
MAY 24 Blogger CB Forgotston ridicules the recent PR campaign by the state GOP in the wake of a legislative auditor's request to both major parties. The GOP (apparently unaware that the Dems got the same request) started yammering about being targeted because it had "killed" a tax increase. CB finds that laughable, but it's also pretty funny that the GOP was comparing this episode to the IRS scandal (Because the President has so much to do with our state auditor. Right?).
MAY 24 Politico details some recent fund-raising efforts by Sen. David Vitter, which have raised the question of his future political plans. This time, it is a $5,000 per head "bayou weekend" that includes "Cajun cooking" and an all-caps "alligator hunt," the story reports. Funds raised go to a super PAC that can spend money to support Vitter in federal or state races, the story points out.
MAY 24 The pink building on Royal in the quarter was sold at a sheriff's sale Thursday, this Picayune story reports. An injunction that would have halted the sale wasn't enforced because the family failed to post a $150,000 bond, the story reports. So the owner of the mortgages on the building bought it, for nearly $7 million. Now the feuding family will have to negotiate with that company to get a lease on the building that has housed their business for close to 60 years.
MAY 23 This post in Louisiana Voice tells us about a bill by a Winnsboro lege that would require all public high school students to take at least one Course Choice online class in order to graduate. (What?) Blogger Tom Aswell says it's a monument to "waste and corruption," especially in light of the problems he's exposed with the program in recent weeks. Idaho had a similar program, but voters removed it by a 2-1 margin, Aswell says.
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