BATON ROUGE (AP) — Louisiana's medical marijuana program will offer raw, smokable cannabis to its patients, and the state will tweak its calculations for state income taxes as more than two dozen new laws take effect Saturday with the start…
BATON ROUGE (AP) — The new year will bring a rerun of several political debates in Louisiana, while also adding the once-a-decade battle over redistricting and an expected uptick in heated rhetoric as officials ready for the next statewide election cycle.…
BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) — Louisiana will expand its Medicaid program in January to provide coverage to more children with developmental disabilities whose parents made too much money to qualify for the taxpayer-financed insurance under prior eligibility rules. Federal…
BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) — As lawmakers ready for a February session to redraw Louisiana's political districts, advances in technology have added a new wrinkle to the once-a-decade debates, with advocacy groups and people interested in the work submitting their own…
BATON ROUGE (AP) — Louisiana's new deal with the New Orleans Saints gives state legislative leaders a victory, with lower-than-expected payments to help cover Superdome renovations, the ending of a stadium manager debt that irked lawmakers and cuts to office lease…
BATON ROUGE (AP) — Gov. John Bel Edwards' administration and Louisiana's legislative leaders appear to have struck a deal to use $27 million in federal pandemic aid to help pay for a portion of the renovations to the New Orleans…
Louisiana’s latest search for contractors to manage the health care services of nearly 1.6 million Medicaid patients is taking longer than expected, blowing past an early November timeline for announcing the contract awards. The last bid process started by Gov.…
BATON ROUGE (AP) — A bipartisan group of Louisiana lawmakers Monday voted against Gov. John Bel Edwards' coronavirus vaccine requirement for some students, but the Democratic governor intends to overrule the rejection and add the shot to the immunization schedule starting…
BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) — When lawmakers set aside $300 million in federal pandemic aid in June to help upgrade Louisiana's antiquated water and sewer systems, they talked about the urgent need for improvements and maintenance. But the dollars have taken longer…
BATON ROUGE (AP) — The Louisiana Legislature's “roadshow” to hear from the public about the redrawing of the state's political maps is halfway done, and already the hearings have offered a glimpse of how personal and heated the redistricting work…
BATON ROUGE (AP) — Louisiana voters may have rejected a constitutional amendment to start the centralization of the state's sales tax collections, but that doesn't mean lawmakers and outside groups are giving up on trying to make the change. A coalition…
BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) — Members of Congress are still bickering over the wisdom of passing a $1 trillion infrastructure package, but Louisiana lawmakers and state officials have moved to developing plans for spending the influx of cash for roads, bridges,…
BATON ROUGE (AP) — Louisiana lawmakers are trying a new approach to determine how much the state will spend on Medicaid services each year, as the program has ballooned to more than one-third of the state's budget and added hundreds…
BATON ROUGE (AP) — With his trip to an international climate change conference, Gov. John Bel Edwards acknowledged Louisiana's obvious front-row seat to the problems of a warming planet while raising his profile on an issue few of the South's…
BATON ROUGE (AP) — After a five-week postponement, early voting begins Saturday in Louisiana’s hurricane-delayed fall election, with four constitutional amendments the only thing facing all voters statewide. The weeklong period for voters to cast their ballots in advance of…
BATON ROUGE (AP) — Louisiana will receive $595 million in federal disaster block grant aid to help with housing restoration and other recovery needs from last year's back-to-back blows of Hurricanes Laura and Delta, the state's two U.S. senators announced Tuesday.…
BATON ROUGE (AP) — Louisiana is ending its statewide indoor mask mandate after emerging from its latest and worst coronavirus spike of the pandemic and seeing a sharp decline in new COVID-19 infections, Gov. John Bel Edwards announced Tuesday. The…
BATON ROUGE (AP) — Rather than crush state finances, the coronavirus pandemic is sending a glut of money to Louisiana's treasury, with Gov. John Bel Edwards and lawmakers facing another year of decisions about how to spend piles of cash…
BATON ROUGE (AP) — Louisiana's legislative leaders balked Thursday at a $63 million debt forgiveness plan for the Superdome's oversight board that Gov. John Bel Edwards' administration framed as a key piece of striking a new deal with the New…
BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) — Two years after a contract appeared near to keep the Saints football team in New Orleans for decades, Gov. John Bel Edwards' administration is trying to persuade legislative leaders to commit to putting up…
BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) — Hurricane Ida’s destruction across southeastern Louisiana will force thousands of voters to cast their ballots at different polling locations for next month's election, with some voting sites relegated to large tents because few area…
BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) — Louisiana's top higher education board is asking for a nearly $220 million state budget increase next year, saying the money would aid its work to boost the number of people obtaining degrees and professional…
BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) — A Louisiana House leader offered blistering criticism Monday of Gov. John Bel Edwards' temporary housing program for people with severe home damage from Hurricane Ida, slamming the effort as moving too slowly to assist suffering residents.…
BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) — Louisiana lawmakers are moving behind-the-scenes conversations about redrawing state political maps to public hearings around the state over the next three months, to discuss the once-a-decade process that decides how people are represented in…
BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) — Employees in the Louisiana Senate will get an 8% pay raise starting this month, a move Senate President Page Cortez described Friday as a “little bit of a makeup” because he said the workers…
BATON ROUGE (AP) — Hundreds of thousands of Louisiana homeowners, many of them still digging out of Hurricane Ida's destruction, will soon see rising flood insurance bills. But the federal government is providing few details about how much its recalculation…
BATON ROUGE (AP) — Louisiana health officials said Tuesday they are revoking the licenses of nursing homes that were evacuated to a warehouse where seven residents died amid deteriorating conditions deemed too squalid to be safe after Hurricane Ida. The seven homes…
NEW ORLEANS (AP) — Hundreds of thousands of homes and businesses in Louisiana, most of them outside New Orleans, still didn’t have power Tuesday and more than half of the gas stations in two major cities were without fuel…
NEW ORLEANS (AP) — Hundreds of thousands of Louisianans sweltered in the aftermath of Hurricane Ida on Tuesday with no electricity, no tap water, precious little gasoline and no clear idea of when things might improve. Long lines that…
NEW ORLEANS (AP) — Tropical Storm Ida swirled toward a strike on Cuba on Friday as a rapidly intensifying storm that could speed across warm Gulf waters and slam into Louisiana as a Category 3 hurricane on Sunday, the National…
