News

In Boyce, La., St. Mary’s Residential Training School offers both residential care and educational services for individuals with developmental disabilities.

This concludes our two-part series on the state’s goal to wind down the number of individuals living in places like St. Mary’s.

The House Appropriations Committee has approved a proposed constitutional amendment that seeks to try and maintain the level of funding to hospitals that take Medicaid patients.  

Jim talks with Danny Bourgeois, with the Louisiana Marathon, who was at the Boston Marathon yesterday.

Conservative activist Judge Darrell White and Libertarian Michael Wolf discuss another attempt this year to repeal Louisiana's Science Education act, which allows teaching divine creation theory in public school science classes.

Local ophthalmologist Dr. Pam Williams, discusses proposed legislation (HB 527)that would allow optometrists to perform certain ophthalmological procedures. She is opposed.

Joe Chrest and Jason Bale,  actors appearing in LSU's Swine Palace production of "All The King's Men". 

Last week Governor Bobby Jindal announced his main priority this session would be repealing the income tax. Lawmakers took that off of the table on Monday.

Chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, Representative Joel Robideaux, said he’d spoken with constituents, House leadership, and policy analysts. There’s little support for bills that repeal the income tax without making up the revenue. “As a result of my conversations and review of the analysis," Robideaux said, "I would prefer if we indefinitely shelve bills to repeal the income tax. It’s a difficult, but I believe necessary measure.”

Now that the governor’s plan to replace the income tax with a higher and broader sales tax is off the table, lawmakers, policy analysts and other officials are coming up with new ideas. 

Governor Jindal isn’t requiring a new plan to make up for lost revenue, but eliminating the income tax would cost the state 23.7 billion dollars if it’s phased out over the next ten years.

Louisiana's efforts to move more individuals with developmental disabilities out of congregate living and back into the home with supports actually started pretty late compared to the rest of the country.

In the 1980s when other states were beginning to shut down their large, state-run facilities as part of the national de-institutionalization movement, Louisiana was still building. Only in 2005, after Hurricane Katrina forced the shutdown of the New Orleans metropolitan facility did the state start ramping up its de-institutionalizing efforts.

This is the first of a two-part series exploring the progress of that effort over the years since.

Dr. Karen Elkind-Hirsch is part of a group of researchers from Pennington Biomedical Research Center and Woman's Hospital who will be following 306 pregnant women with smartphones.

Many of the best plants in Louisiana's flower beds are known for their ornamental leaves, rather than their blossoms.

A visit with former state lawmaker Reverend Raymond Jetson, to discuss efforts to repeal incomes taxes at the State Capitol, and the Reverend's grassroots efforts to improve public schools in Baton Rouge.

Former LSU Journalism Professor Jay Perkins talks about media coverage of Governor Bobby Jindal, and the state of modern journalism in general.

Jim chats with Dr. Daphne Cain, of the LSU School of Social Work.