A late Christmas gift for tens of thousands of people in the greater Baton Rouge area. Andrew Greenstein reports.
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Two years ago today, Governor Jeff Landry officially took office. Jeff Palermo looks back at the first half of his four-term.
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It’s a late Christmas gift for some 17-thousand people in the greater Baton Rouge area. The Huey and Angelina Wilson Foundation and Undue Medical Debt teamed up to erase their medical debt, totaling 22-million dollars. Tristi Charpentier (SHARP-in-tay), the vice president of people-centered initiatives at the foundation, says those people didn’t have to do anything – the national nonprofit Undue Medical Debt took the first step.
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Charpentier says the foundation researched the people who owed the debts to determine which ones met its qualifications to have those debts wiped out.
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Charpentier says in the ten-parish Capitol area, there are many people who could use the assistance when faced with medical expenses.
While the endowed foundation has donated more than 90-million dollars to increase access to healthcare in the region over the last 25 years, this is the first time it has done a medical debt relief program.
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The Louisiana Department of Economic Development is celebrating the state’s second straight Platinum Deal of the Year. This year, the publication Business Facilities singled out the Hyundai Steel mill in Ascension Parish for its top honor. Secretary Susan Bourgeois says one of the biggest wins with that project was Hyundai building it in Louisiana in the first place.
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Bourgeois says the Hyundai Steel mill will be innovative in every way.
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Louisiana has become the first state to win two straight Platinum Deal of the Year awards from Business Facilities. Bourgeois says now the big challenge is to do it again.
Last year’s Platinum Deal of the Year was the Meta A-I data center in Richland Parish. Bourgeois says the two projects speak to the diversity of the economic development projects going on in the state.
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Today marks the two-year anniversary of when Jeff Landry was sworn in as the state’s 57th governor. Political analyst Bernie Pinsonat says Landry’s biggest accomplishment was the tax reform legislation he urged legislators to approve in 2024.
A flat income tax rate of three percent went into effect on January 1st, 2025.
One month after he took office in January 2024, Landry called a special session that resulted in several tough on crime bills being passed, including legislation that rolled back reforms approved in 2017.
His first year in office also saw the passage of a bill that requires public schools to display the Ten Commandments in every classroom. The courts have yet to rule if that legislation is constitutional, but the governor also signed bills that prohibits public school teachers from discussing sexual orientation, and a transgender bathroom ban was enacted. Pinsonat says Landry will focus more on economic development in the next two years of his term.
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Pinsonat says Landry has done a good job in getting most of his legislative agenda approved. The Louisiana Senate failed to go along with his idea for a constitutional convention, and Landry has received criticism for getting too involved in LSU athletics, the firing of A-D Scott Woodward and having a live tiger on the field for the 2024 Alabama game. Pinsonat says those missteps have not hurt him too much.
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