Louisiana has the highest average combined state and local sales tax rate (10.11%) in the country for the third year in a row. The Legislature overhauled Louisiana’s tax laws in 2024, replacing the state’s progressive income-tax structure with a 3% flat rate, raising and expanding the state’s sales tax and eliminating the corporate franchise tax. The Times-Picayune | Baton Rouge Advocate’s Meghan Friedmann explains how those changes affected the state’s tax structure: 

Jan Moller, executive director of Invest in Louisiana, a Baton Rouge-based progressive think tank, panned the state’s reliance on sales taxes as “regressive,” in that poor people tend to spend a higher percentage of their incomes on sales taxes than wealthy people do. “Let’s be very clear about what the legislature did in late 2024: they cut taxes on large profitable corporations and wealthy households and they made up some, but not all, of the revenue by raising the most regressive tax that we have,” Moller said. “The result is a tax structure that was already regressive has become more regressive.”

The reductions in income taxes – and the revenue they generate – will help contribute to budget shortfalls in upcoming years. Louisiana faces a shortfall of $329 million for the 2027-28 fiscal year, but the deficit balloons to nearly a billion dollars for the 2029-30 fiscal year:

Also contributing to the shortfall is a state law that will divert motor vehicle sales tax revenue from the state’s general fund, where it can be used for general operating expenses, to a special fund used to pay for infrastructure improvements, according to [President of the Public Affairs Research Council of Louisiana Steven] Procopio. In 2030, a 0.25% reduction in the state sales tax rate is slated to further widen the gap between the state’s expenses and revenues, he said.

Xavier receives $3 million to launch medical school scholarship

The recently established Xavier Ochsner College of Medicine has received a $3 million scholarship fund for medical students from Kentucky-based health insurance company Humana. Verite News’ Madhri Yehiya reports: 

The Humana Health Workforce Scholarship Fund was started in order to reduce the financial barrier to attending medical school and to encourage graduates to stay in Louisiana, according to the company. … “We come from where there’s a dearth of physicians, and it’s growing. It’s not getting better,” he said. “The College of Medicine is specifically addressing access by training more doctors for the Gulf South. Humana, being a value-based organization, makes that connection, and so it’s been a wonderful partnership.” 

The Xavier Ochsner College of Medicine will be just the fifth medical school to be operated by a historically Black university in the United States, and the first in the Gulf South.


College grads are losing their edge 

For the first time since the 1990s, trade workers with occupational associate’s degrees had better employment outcomes than workers with bachelor’s degrees. The Washington Post’s Taylor Telford explains what’s driving this shift and how it’s affecting postsecondary education:

 The soaring costs of a four-year degree, combined with an uncertain outlook amid the rise of AI, are prompting young people to consider alternative routes to economic prosperity. … With more students pursuing occupational and technical degrees in fields with labor shortages such as construction, manufacturing and health care, enrollment at community colleges rose 3 percent in the fall compared with the year before, according to data from the National Student Clearinghouse, more than double the growth seen at public four-year colleges.

EPA rule devalues American lives

The Environmental Protection Agency is no longer considering the monetary value of saving lives when setting air pollution limits, and will only focus on how much those rules cost industry. The Times-Picayune | Baton Rouge Advocate’s Bob Marshall explains:

The agency will continue to determine how much compliance with a regulation will cost an industry’s bottom line and how much it could cost the economy. It will make sure corporate lives are not harmed. But the human lives that have been valued at $10 million to $11 million each in the formula for generations? Well, now they’re worthless. It’s all laid out in “Economic Impact Analysis for the New Source Performance Standards Review for Stationary Combustion Turbines: Final Rule.”

As Marshall explains, the Trump administration’s move is far from normal: 

“Basically, what this administration is saying, that trying to monetize the value of a human life is so complicated that it can’t really trust the numbers — so they’re just not going to include it,” said Rob Verchick, a Loyola law professor. “This is departing from what has been the norm at the EPA in both Republican and Democratic administrations going back to Ronald Reagan where it began.” Verchick should know. He was a deputy associate administrator at EPA during the Obama administration.

Number of the Day

25.2% – Percentage of children in Louisiana’s 4th Congressional District who live in poverty. (Source: Congressional District Health Dashboard)