Governor John Bel Edwards holds a bill signing today for Baton Rouge Representative Patricia Smith’s legislation that restores voting rights to individuals who have served time on felony offenses, and have been out of prison for five years, but are still on parole or probation. Edwards says giving people back their rights reinvests them in their communities.
Edwards says many convicted felons deserve a second shot at life.
Its estimated voting rights will be restored for 70,000 Louisianans.
The Governor also put into law the “Max Gruver Act” which tightens and strengthens Louisiana’s anti-hazing laws, making partic8ipating in a hazing event that leads to a death punishable by up to five years in prison.
An anti-bestiality law has been signed by Governor Edwards despite initial pushback by supporters of Louisiana’s unconstitutional anti-sodomy law. Louisiana Director of the Humane Society of the United States, Julia Breaux Melancon, was surprised by the early objections, but the new law will strengthen prohibitions on bestiality and animal cruelty…
The governor is signing legislation by New Iberia Senator Fred Mills that’s aimed at pushing down drug prices by requiring prescription benefit plans (that prescription card in your wallet) inform consumers when they get rebates from drug manufactures. Mills says before, your drug plan could hide those rebates, and pocket money that should have been going back to you, but now…
Cut 9 (10) “prescription drugs”
Similar legislation has passed that would require benefit plans provide that information to the state, so the state can negotiate lower Medicaid prices.