State House Republican leaders believe it is not a good idea to use the Rainy Day Fund to offset Louisiana’s 313 million dollar mid-year budget shortfall. Michelle Southern has more…
CUT 1 (31) “I’m Michelle Southern”
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The Guttmacher Institute finds there was an 18-percent decline in the number of abortions in Louisiana between 2011 and 2014. Halen Doughty has more…
Cut 2 (29) “I’m Halen Doughty”
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Despite floods, droughts, and freezing temperatures, experts say Louisiana strawberries are doing just fine. Whitney Wallace with the LSU AgCenter doesn’t think there will be too much damage to this year’s strawberry crop. She says the freeze affected some farmers worse than others, but all in all, it should be a good season.
Wallace says the multiple floods that occurred last spring and August weren’t as devastating to strawberry production as they were to other crops, because farmers weren’t planting strawberries yet when the floods hit. She says many farmers did what they could to protect their blooms from the freeze earlier this month.
Wallace says fortunately, most of the strawberry crop made it through the freeze unscathed, which means we should see a good crop in March and April. She says this is great news because strawberry farming is an important industry for the state.
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Several Republican in the state House say it would be a bad idea to use the Rainy Day Fund to reduce the state’s 313 million dollar mid-year budget deficit. Alexandria Representative Lance Harris, who chairs the House Republican Delegation, says the state has to stop dipping into the Rainy Day Fund every time it has budget troubles.
But Commissioner of Administration Jay Dardenne says using the Rainy Day fund is necessary to soften cuts critical services like higher education and healthcare.
Harris says when he entered the legislature five years ago, the Rainy Day Fund had over 850 million dollars in it, and today it has 357 million dollars. He says the state has a spending problem.
It will take a 2/3 vote in both the House and Senate to access money from the Rainy Day Fund. Dardenne says even with the Rainy Day Fund, more cuts will be required. He says this fund is designed to address a situation like the state is currently facing.
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New research finds there was an 18-percent decline in the number of abortions in Louisiana between 2011 and 2014. Guttmacher Institute researcher Rachel Jones says nationally, there was a 12-percent decline over the same period. She credits better use of contraceptives for the decrease in abortions.
The study found there were less than one million abortions in the US in 2014, the lowest rate since the Roe v. Wade ruling. Jones says more effective birth control would explain the decline in states that support abortion rights. She says in some other states, women have less access to abortions than they used to.
Jones says Louisiana was one of the states that experienced a large decline in abortion clinics, with 29-percent of the clinics in the state closing during the time period studied. She says Louisiana also imposed stricter regulations on abortions.
cut 12 (09) “to access abortions”
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Three people are dead after a fiery crash in Vernon Parish. State Trooper Scott Moreau says around 1:40 a.m. troopers responded to a crash on Highway 1146 near Rosepine. He says there were three people inside a 2009 Chevy Malibu, when the driver apparently veered off the roadway and hit several trees.
Moreau says all three occupants were pronounced dead at the scene. He says it’s not yet known if the occupants were wearing seatbelts or if the driver was intoxicated. He says they are not releasing the suspected identities of the victims, as the investigation is ongoing.
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A 37-year-old Chauvin man has turned himself into State Police for allegedly hitting a man on LA 56 in Terrebonne Parish just after midnight. Trooper Jesse LaGrange says Christopher Little saw the press release put out this morning looking for the driver of a Chrysler 300, responsible for the fatal hit and run of 39-year-old Taylor Thibodeaux.
LaGrange says Little’s vehicle had damage consistent with hitting a person and he was brought in for questioning where he was later arrested and charged with felony hit and run driving and improper lane usage. He says the lesson here is to pull over and search if you think you’ve hit something while driving.
Cut 16 (07) “vehicle received”
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