Recent editorials from Louisiana newspapers:
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Sept. 23
The Houma Courier on Louisiana fishermen requiring federal aid to make up for losses.
Fishermen and others in the industry are going to require federal aid to help them recover from spring flooding that decimated seafood stocks in much of southern Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama.
Officials are still tallying the losses, but it’s clear it will take years for the industry, a mainstay of Terrebonne and Lafourche parishes, to recover.
Much of the destruction comes from fresh water diverted through spillways to relieve pressure on Mississippi River levees as rain and snowmelt from the Midwest caused levels to rise dangerously high, posing a flood threat to cities and communities along the way. Some of the water was diverted down the Atchafalaya River, which forms much of Terrebonne’s western border.
The fresh water killed oysters along the coasts of all three states, officials told The Associated Press last week. Mississippi alone lost half of its blue crabs. Three-fourths to all of the oysters on several of Louisiana’s public reefs were killed. Louisiana oyster landings were down 28% on private reefs and 91% on public reefs from March through May. Brown shrimp, crab and finfish catches are down significantly in the Mississippi and Atchafalaya river basins. Louisiana officials estimate that at least $20 million worth of oysters died, a figure that will almost surely increase as more is learned.
The three states’ governors asked U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross to declare a fisheries disaster, a designation needed to secure federal grants for those affected. Twelve months of data are necessary to compare seasonal losses, and a 35 percent loss qualifies a fishery for a federal disaster declaration. That means getting help where it’s needed will take time.
In south Louisiana, an area still struggling economically from a persistent Gulf of Mexico oil bust, anything state and federal officials can do to speed that aid will help.
Online: www.houmatoday.com
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Sept. 23
The (Lake Charles) American Press on record-high numbers of Louisiana residents obtaining health care coverage:
Louisiana has more people with health care coverage than ever before, and that reality is definitely worth celebrating in a state that doesn’t always chalk up enviable records. The decision of Gov. John Bel Edwards to expand Medicaid, the federal-state health care program for low-income Americans, is credited for giving many Louisianans health care coverage for the first time.
The state’s uninsured rate dropped from 8.4 percent in 2017 to 8 percent in 2018. The Advocate said the Census Bureau in 2013 reported that Louisiana’s uninsured rate was 16.6 percent and it is less than half that now. It is one of 15 states that saw a drop in their uninsured population last year.
The newspaper said, “Beyond health care, experts said a drop in uninsured rates has implications for productivity and stability in a state that often falls on the bottom of all the ’good’ lists and the top of all the ’bad’ lists.”
Meanwhile, the number of Americans across the U.S. without health insurance rose for the first time in a decade. Nationally, 27.5 million people, or 8.5 percent, were without health insurance in 2018. That is up from 25.6 million in, or 7.9 percent, in 2017.
In the southeast, The Advocate said Louisiana is an island among states like Texas, Mississippi, Georgia, Oklahoma and Florida, all of which have uninsured rates between 12 percent and 17.7 percent.
Stacey Roussel, policy director for the Louisiana Budget Project that reports on how public policy affects low- and moderate-income families, said the low uninsured numbers say something is going right in Louisiana.
Although Medicaid expansion was a good move, things didn’t always go right in the beginning. Too many ineligible people were enrolled and the number on the rolls climbed to over 505,000 people. Thanks to a new computer system at the state Department of Health that is making quarterly rather than annual eligibility checks, that number is now down to just over 450,000.
Thanks to Medicaid expansion, those with coverage for the first time are being treated for previously undetected illnesses and they are allowed to see a doctor on a regular basis. That helps them keep better track of their medications.
Louisiana has 1.7 million people on Medicaid because of its high poverty numbers and health care is expensive. The program has its critics, and some of the criticism is justified, but Medicaid expansion was the right move for the state.
Online: https://www.americanpress.com
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Sept. 22
The Advocate on the debate over Louisiana’s efforts to decrease incarceration rates:
One of Louisiana’s real accomplishments is its effort to stop being one of the world’s leading jailers for a jurisdiction its size. That initiative, bipartisan and difficult to achieve legislatively, has earned admiration from the White House - even though Gov. John Bel Edwards is a Democrat and President Donald Trump hails from the GOP.
So why do some Republicans want to scuttle the reforms so soon?
To do so would not be in the interest of taxpayers, because prisons cost so much, nor public safety, because a major goal of the reforms is to prepare inmates to become functioning members of society once they get out.
At a forum before a Republican women’s group in Baton Rouge, two leading GOP gubernatorial candidates criticized the incumbent, and that’s fair enough. Although at that event, businessman Eddie Rispone spoke more sensibly on criminal justice reform, he has since repeated a charge that “thousands of dangerous criminals have been released” during Edwards’ term.
Rispone said he wanted to tweak the reform package, passed in 2017 with support from business leaders, GOP think tanks and legislators across party lines. The package is a work in progress, but the overall goals should be embraced by any candidate seeking to portray himself as a fiscal conservative.
The other major GOP candidate, Ralph Abraham, a congressman from north Louisiana, took the wrong tack in Baton Rouge. He vaingloriously declared that those convicted of violent crimes are “not going to get out early under my administration.”
That echoes the criticism of the reforms that has been advanced by two other leading Republicans, Attorney General Jeff Landry and U.S. Sen. John N. Kennedy, of Madisonville.
All these officials ought to rethink their stands. The lock-them-up, throw-away-the-key attitudes of grandstanding politicians is what got us into a prison funding crisis.
In a statement to the Council for a Better Louisiana, which also backed the prison reforms, Abraham said his view is informed by “data and numerous conversations with district attorneys, sheriffs and victims” and said there are “countless cases” of violent offenders released to commit more crimes.
If so, those cases are very few. And if so, Abraham and Rispone should remember that more than nine out of 10 inmates in prisons will eventually get out. The goal of the criminal justice reform is reinvestment, to spend more on training the large numbers of offenders who can’t read or write, or hold a real job that is their one real hope of staying out of prison.
We agree with Abraham that local input is vital in this process, but he’s misinformed if he thinks that has not been going on at the State Capitol during the yearslong debates and compromises on the reform package.
Online: www.theadvocate.com
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