Recent editorials from Louisiana newspapers:
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Dec. 20
The Houma Courier on future coastal project plans:
Just over a dozen projects in Terrebonne and Lafourche are scheduled to get under way through 2021 in the state’s latest coastal spending plan, released Wednesday.
Under the draft, released Wednesday, the Louisiana Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority would spend about $958 million across the state’s coast over the next two years. Money is expected to come from federal offshore oil revenue, state taxpayers and fines assessed against BP and others for the 2020 Gulf of Mexico oil spill.
Locally, none of the projects are surprises; all are included in the state’s long-term plan for coastal restoration and hurricane protection.
An initial review shows the planned work addresses some of the area’s most important needs. For instance:
- Construction on the Morganza-to-the-Gulf hurricane-protection system in Terrebonne Parish would get $4.7 million
- Another $103 million would be used to shore up three barrier islands off Terrebonne’s coast.
- $30 million in BP oil spill fines would go toward the Houma Navigation Canal Lock Complex, assuming the state receives that money by 2021.
- About $50 million would get work started on the $80 million Bayou Chene Floodgate in St. Mary Parish, a key to protecting parts of northwest Terrebonne and Lafourche from spring flooding when water rises in the Mississippi and Atchafalaya rivers.
- Another $5.6 million would help bolster the south Lafourche hurricane protect levee.
The Courier and Daily Comet listed these and the other projects in a story Thursday. And you can review the entire plan at coastal.la.gov/OurPlan/Annual Plan.
The state coastal agency will open the floor to residents’ questions and concerns during a public meeting scheduled for 5:30 p.m. Jan. 7 at the Houma-Terrebonne Civic Center.
It’s a great chance for anyone concerned about these critical issues — and that should be everyone — to learn more and add their voices to the mix.
Online: https://www.houmatoday.com/
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Dec. 19
The (Lake Charles) American Press on increasing funding for colleges and universities:
Louisiana’s colleges and universities earlier this year got additional funding for the first time in a decade. Gov. John Bel Edwards has also promised them higher education will get more money in his proposed budget for the next fiscal year.
State Rep. Cameron Henry, R-Metairie, blocked an optimistic revenue forecast that could jeopardize that new money. However, he said Edwards could do what he did last year and still include those additional funds in his budget proposal. Whether Republicans who control both houses of the Legislature will agree to add the new money remains to be seen.
The Advocate noted that Louisiana led the nation during the past decade in budget cuts to higher education. That policy led to institutions limiting course offerings, faculty members leaving and buildings falling into disrepair.
Students and parents had to cover much of the drop in state support that led to the doubling of tuition at four-year schools - to the tune of about $4,800 more - between 2008 and 2018. The state started the decade providing 70 percent of the support received by colleges and universities, but that dropped to 30 percent eight years later.
Edwards and members of the Legislature managed to stabilize state budgets in 2018 when lawmakers approved a seven-year, 0.45 percent increase in the state’s 4 percent state sales tax. That resulted in budget surpluses that made it possible to give higher education an additional $47 million this fiscal.
Republicans increased their numbers in both the House and Senate during statewide elections in October and November, and how they feel about keeping that sales tax remains to be seen. Without those revenues, higher education may not get those additional increases Edwards has promised.
Edwards said he would revisit the sales tax issue, but would refuse to tinker with the tax if it would result in more budget deficits. The surpluses have also made it possible to do long-delayed maintenance on higher education buildings, replenish the state’s rainy day fund, do some one-time construction projects and finance additional coastal restoration work.
Higher education officials have come up with a master plan that calls for 60 percent of working age adults to have some training beyond high school by 2030. Achieving that goal is going to take additional financing, and that is the major unknown with so many new legislators taking office Jan. 13.
We urge the new lawmakers to make it easier financially and otherwise for Louisiana’s young people to get a post-secondary education that equips them well for the jobs that will secure their futures.
Online: https://www.americanpress.com/
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Dec. 17
The Advocate on paying for environmental enforcement:
Over the last dozen years, a story of damaging budget cuts is not hard to find in Louisiana, whether in agencies dealing with battered kids or paroled convicts, consumer protection or environmental enforcement.
That’s because of a national recession in 2008 and self-inflicted budgetary wounds created by bad decisions in the State Capitol over more than a decade.
But the last example is a striking case that public health and safety are being protected by far fewer folks and with far less money, even as the state Department of Environmental Quality must oversee a dramatic expansion of industrial facilities in Louisiana since 2008.
The governor and legislators ought to be willing to take a harder look at DEQ’s budget and staffing in the coming year.
The Environmental Integrity Project in Washington chastised many states for cutting enforcement of clean air and water laws over the 10 years since 2008. But DEQ was among the worst cut, with its budget slashed by nearly 35 percent and its staff cut by almost 30 percent, the group’s report said.
The report pointed out that since 2012, Louisiana has approved 42 new major petrochemical manufacturing or natural gas exporting projects and has 11 more new projects awaiting permit approvals.
The national report is part of a policy debate in the nation’s capital, as the Trump administration seeks to devolve more enforcement activities to the states. And the report argues that many states have cut their environmental enforcement budgets, calling into question the federal initiative.
Whatever the outcome of that discussion, we would like to see a real focus on DEQ’s budget here. For all that we favor expansion of oil and gas facilities in the Bayou State, the reality is that effective science-based environmental enforcement must go hand-in-hand with new plants.
Technology can allow many government functions to be performed with fewer people. But constructive reform is based on getting at least the same, if not more, output from an agency.
DEQ has some wins to its credit, including attainment status for air pollution standards in 63 of 64 parishes, St. Bernard being the only exception.
Its budget was also somewhat protected during the harsh reductions of the Jindal administration until 2015 because money comes from fees or fines levied on the industries, or because its functions are tied to federal funding sources like the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. The state budget has been more stable since 2015, but environmental enforcement is not a politically popular priority.
It defies common sense to have DEQ stretched thinner at a time when the state’s leadership is avidly seeking to expand petrochemical manufacturing. If we want the jobs and payrolls of the plants, we must ensure that clean air and water are protected.
Online: https://www.theadvocate.com/
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