Amendment 2 would take Louisiana in the wrong direction

Louisiana voters will decide on March 29 whether to overhaul the section of the state constitution that governs tax and budget policy. The vote follows a November special session where lawmakers rewrote Article VII of the constitution with little public debate. Invest in Louisiana’s Jan Moller spoke to the Baton Rouge Press Club on Monday about the serious issues with Amendment 2. Dillon Lowe of the Baton Rouge Business Report was there: 

“It’s really a rewrite of the longest section of the state constitution,” he said. “I’m not being facetious when I say I defy you to find five people in the state of Louisiana who can comprehensively explain everything that you are going to be voting on in this constitutional amendment.” 

Moller explained how the teacher pay “raise” mentioned in the ballot language is actually replacing a stipend that public school teachers are already getting and how a proposed growth limit could force budget cuts even when money is available.

“If you’re a teacher, you’re getting the same exact amount of money next year as you’re getting this year,” Moller said. … “What that means in practical terms is even if Louisiana were to somehow find itself with more revenue than it expected, if that revenue exceeds the government growth limit, it could not, under any circumstances, be plugged into additional programs,” Moller said. “It could only be spent on one-time items.”

Note: At Gov. Jeff Landry’s request, legislators cut state income taxes, eliminated the corporate franchise tax that is mainly paid by large corporations, and raised the state sales tax during the November special session. Together, these changes cement a regressive state tax structure where Louisianans with low and moderate incomes pay a higher rate of tax than the wealthy. 

Who runs private school voucher programs?

The rise of private school vouchers has created a lucrative niche for private companies that states hire to run the programs. As ProPublica’s Alec MacGillis reports, it hasn’t always gone smoothly.  

The work can be lucrative, but it has also proven so daunting that in several states, the companies that carry it out have ended up losing contracts to their rivals — sometimes less than a year after winning them — as questions arise and audits and lawsuits pile up.

Louisiana is paying Odyssey $910,000 to oversee the rollout of its new private school voucher program. Members of Louisiana’s top school board asked about problems other states have experienced with the New York corporation. The launch of the program also faced delays due to a dispute between Odyssey and its spurned competitor. 

Work requirements (still) don’t work 

Republican leaders are pushing burdensome work reporting requirements for Medicaid enrollees. While work requirements are effective at increasing hardship through loss of health coverage, they do little to increase employment. That’s because, as the Economic Policy Institute’s Hilary Wething explains, these policies don’t address the real barriers to work: 

My analysis shows that there are still plenty of barriers that keep low-income adults out of the workforce, but insufficient incentives are not one of them. When labor market conditions are right, low-income workers do work and earn more than they do when unemployment is high, suggesting that macroeconomic policy has more to do with low-income adults’ ability to work than any work requirement-imposed threat to take away their health care or nutrition assistance. If policymakers were serious about creating opportunities to work, they would pass policies like secure scheduling laws and affordable care policies that would meaningfully reduce barriers low-income adults face in gaining employment.

Red state pursue sweeping immigration measures

Lawmakers in red states, buoyed by President Donald Trump’s deportation policies, are proposing legislation targeting undocumented immigrants. The policies include allowing bounty hunters to track down individuals, cash rewards for information that lead to arrests, and upending a constitutional precedent by charging undocumented children to attend public schools or preventing them from attending altogether. The Washington Post’s Molly Hennessy-Fiske reports: 

Presented with “inconvenient constitutional limitations,” he said, lawmakers have resorted to “workarounds” such as tallying costs and certifying bounty hunters. Beyond testing the boundaries of federal law, they’re also sending migrant communities a message, according to Su. “The main mechanism for these things is the chilling effect,” [professor at the University of North Carolina School of Law Rick Su] said. … And Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry ordered state officials to track costs associated with undocumented immigrants, noting that the order was designed “to determine the financial burden our citizens are being forced to carry because of those who do not follow the law.”

Number of the Day

16 million – Number of workers who unionized in 2024. (Source: Economic Policy Institute)