Veto overrides are rare in Louisiana — this is only the fourth one in 50 years. Overriding a veto requires a two-thirds majority vote from lawmakers in both chambers. The Louisiana Constitution mandates a veto session on the 40th day after adjournment of the regular session unless a majority of either the House or Senate votes not to return. This year only 12 members of the Senate and 31 members of the House mailed in ballots stating the veto session was unnecessary. The 2023 Veto Session, which convened Tuesday, July 18th at noon, is only the third in the state’s history since the 1974 Louisiana Constitution was adopted.
The governor vetoed a total of 26 bills from the 2023 Regular Session including line item vetoes from the budget package. The most controversial bill, HB 648, was the only bill that both chambers mustered the two-third vote necessary to override a governor’s veto clearing the way for the “Stop Harming Our Kids Act” to become law. The bill prohibits healthcare professionals from providing gender affirming care or altering a child’s appearance to validate the minor’s perceptions of his sex. The Legislature adjourned following the vote of the Senate. The ban ultimately passed the House with a 75-23 vote and passed the Senate with a 28-11 vote.
Lawmakers did not override any of Edwards’ other vetoes.
Of the three states with gubernatorial elections this year - Louisiana, Kentucky and Mississippi - a Democrat currently holds the top office in both Louisiana and Kentucky.
A poll for who may be Louisiana's next Governor was recently conducted by Kaplan Strategies, an independent polling group out of Florida. According to the results, Attorney General Jeff Landry sits at 30% followed by former Secretary of Transportation Shawn Wilson at 20% with the rest of the candidates in the race left with single digits numbers. But another number that stands out is the 24% who say they’re undecided. The poll was conducted of 1,077 likely voters in Louisiana from June 30-July 2. The margin of error was 3%.
The qualifying period for candidates is Aug. 8-10. The top two candidates in the October 14th primary, regardless of party, will advance to the runoff election to be held on November 18th.
Legislators may have to return to Baton Rouge yet again later this summer or fall for a special redistricting session following the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling that allows the ongoing challenges to Louisiana’s congressional maps to move forward. The Louisiana order follows a June 8 decision in which the high court upheld a section of the Voting Rights Act and ordered a new map in Alabama, a state that, like Louisiana, has only one district where Black voters make up a majority. The courts so far seem to believe a second Black majority district should be added to our congressional map, and lawmakers may (or may not) want to draw the revised lines themselves, rather than leaving it to a judge.
According to an article in RollCall.com, one incumbent in danger of finding his now-safe Republican district redrawn to give Black voters a majority, or greater power to influence the result, is 6th District Rep. Garret Graves, a five-term incumbent who served as Speaker McCarthy’s point man on recent negotiations with President Joe Biden’s administration over raising the debt ceiling. Voters in the 6th District favored President Donald Trump over Biden by 30 percentage points in 2020.
Alternatively, the Republican incumbent put in danger could be 5th District Rep. Julia Letlow, who won a 2021 special election in the 5th District after her husband, Luke Letlow, was elected in 2020 but died before he took office, or 4th District Rep. Mike Johnson, a constitutional lawyer first elected in 2016. Trump’s margin of victory in Letlow’s district was also 30 points, while it was 24 points in Johnson’s.
Senate majority leader and gubernatorial candidate, Senator Sharon Hewitt, chaired the committee that drew the district maps. She said the current district lines “were passed by a supermajority of the Legislature and comply with the law.”
According to Republican House Speaker Clay Schexnayder and Republican Senate President Page Cortez, a veto session is "inevitable". Thursday, July 13th is the last day "opt out" ballots can be turned in by state legislators to vote against a veto session; however, it appears that the House and Senate leadership already know there is support for overrides - in the House, at least. The veto session would be an attempt to overturn Democratic Gov. John Bel Edwards' rejection of anti-LGTBQ measures and a bill to create a new canvass of the state's voter rolls.
Schexnayder said the top two targets are House Bill 648 by Republican Rep. Gabe Firment of Pollock to ban gender-affirming healthcare for minors, which can range from counseling to puberty blockers to hormones to surgery, and House Bill 646 by Rep. Les Farnum of Sulphur, which targets voters who have been inactive 10 years. Other vetoed measures that could gain override traction.
"I can absolutely say the House will choose to come in," Republican House Speaker Clay Schexnayder said in an interview with USA Today Network. "And I can say with confidence that there is support in the House for overrides."
If a veto override session occurs, the Senate and House will convene on July 18th and cannot last more than five days. Veto overrides require a two-thirds vote in both the House and Senate. All of the bills in play passed by veto-proof margins during the regular session, but that doesn't always translate to an override vote.
Gov. John Bel Edwards vetoed 25 bills, including a slate of measures aimed at LGBTQ+ identity. Edwards, a Democrat who is term-limited, had until last Friday to decide which of the Republican-led legislature's bills he would reject. Gov. Edwards restored Thursday a surprise $100 million reduction to the Louisiana Department of Health along with $7.5 million for early childhood education. Edwards, who has the authority to veto specific line items in budget bills, added back $100 million in state general fund cash to the health department by slashing $125 million in retirement debt payments. That is likely to frustrate House conservatives, who during the session prioritized paying off debt and secured hefty extra payments to that end in chaotic last-minute budget negotiations.
Lawmakers will decide if they want a veto session to try to override the governor. A majority vote in either the House or Senate can cancel the veto session. Ballots that went out to lawmakers to vote to hold a veto session are due by July 13. If veto session is held, it would start July 18th.
Seven high-profile bills that got the ax include:
Charitable giving in the United States declined in 2022 -- only the fourth time in four decades that donations did not increase year over year -- according to the Giving USA report. Total giving fell 3.4% in 2022 to $499.3 billion in current dollars, a drop of 10.5% when adjusted for inflation. The decline comes at a time when many nonprofits, especially ones providing services to those in need, report an increase in requests for help.
Decision makers for donations are “not mom and pop donors, they’re wealthy individuals,” Bergdoll said. “That is indicative of where the money is coming from now versus 30 or 40 years ago.”
According to the report, 64% of donations in 2022 came from individual donors, 21% from foundations, 9% from bequests, generally through a will or estate plan, and 6% from corporations. In 2022, corporations donated 0.9% of their pre-tax profits in the United States, though Bergdoll said the report does not track whether multi-national corporations donated more in other countries.
The U.S. Supreme Court issued an opinion in the Biden v. Nebraska case holding that a pandemic-era law that gave the U.S. Department of Education (DOE) flexibility to “waive or modify” student loan provisions during a national emergency doesn’t give DOE the authority to cancel student debt. As a result, the Biden Administration cannot move forward with its plan to cancel up to $10,000 of student debt per borrower and up to $20,000 in student debt per borrower with a Pell Grant. Many nonprofit employees, and many people who receive services from nonprofits, would have benefitted from this debt cancellation proposal. In light of the Court’s decision, the Biden Administration has indicated that it will try other regulatory or administrative approaches to reduce student debt. While some nonprofit employees will be disappointed by the Court’s decision, they should note that the ruling has no impact on the Public Student Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) program, which provides for student loan forgiveness (separate from the Biden Administration’s debt cancellation proposal) for borrowers who work for charitable nonprofits for 10 years while paying off their student loans. Unlike the $10,000 debt cancellation proposal, a federal statute expressly authorizes the loan forgiveness in PSLF. The National Council of Nonprofits posted an analysis of the implications of the student debt court decision (and a second related case that the Court decided last Friday) for nonprofit employees.
The Louisiana Legislature concluded its legislative session for 2023 on June 8. During this session, seven constitutional amendments were passed, adding to the existing one that was referred to the 2023 ballot in the Legislature’s 2022 session. Altogether, there will be eight amendments on the statewide ballot for 2023.
A two-thirds vote is required in each chamber of the Legislature to refer a legislatively proposed constitutional amendment to the ballot for voter consideration. The governor’s signature is not required. PAR (Public Affairs Research Council) and CABL (Council for a Better Louisiana) will have a more in-depth look at the amendments and the ballot language closer to the fall elections.
Four amendments will be on the Oct. 14 ballot and four will be on the Nov. 18 ballot.
On Oct. 14, voters will decide the following constitutional amendments:
On Nov. 18, voters will decide the following constitutional amendments:
The 60-day legislative session came to a dramatic end at 6pm on Thursday, June 8, 2023. With approximately 1,000 amendments that had to be added to the budget bills (HB 1) in the last hours of session, the House and Senate passed the budget package in the final half-hour with the House doing so with only minutes to spare before final adjournment. While the bills were being negotiated behind closed doors in conference committee in the final hours, tensions began to mount in the House Chamber as many lawmakers expressed frustration that they were given little to no time to vet the spending plans that have been major points of contention throughout session.
Health care and education were slapped the hardest. The budget included a surprise $100 million cut to the Louisiana Department of Health (LDH) and a $2,000 teacher pay raise became a one-time stipend in lieu of being funded by the MFP—the funding formula for Louisiana Public Schools.
Despite LDH’s cut, the department’s $15 billion budget was still increased by $144 million. According to Rep. Jerome Zeringue, R-Houma (who is Chairman of House Appropriations Committee), the reduction was based in part on an accelerated timeline for Medicaid redeterminations.
In addition to healthcare and teacher salaries on the chopping block, early childhood education efforts landed at $44 million in the budget – down from the originally slated $52 million budget. The $2.2 billion in excess cash lawmakers fought over all session got squeezed into a supplemental bill, where local government leaders will find spending for roads, bridges and other services. Lawmakers will also get to say they made $690 million in additional debt payments. A veto by Governor Edwards and a legislative veto override session are sure to follow the drama of the last day of the session.
The data is in and it shows that the universal charitable deduction that Congress put in place temporarily in 2020 and 2021 during the pandemic worked. Taxpayers who took the standard deduction on their 2021 tax returns were able to claim an additional $18 billion in donations to the work of charitable nonprofits thanks to the universal charitable deduction, according to interim data released by the Internal Revenue Service last week. More than 47 million households utilized a tax incentive enabling individuals to claim $300 in charitable deductions and couples to claim up to $600 in deductions even while also taking the standard deduction. One-fifth (21.3%) of those donations came from taxpayers with adjusted gross income of less than $30,000. In 2020, when the special deduction was limited to $300/household, 42.2 million households claimed $10.9 billion in additional giving. The universal charitable deduction expired after 2021.
This is great information to include in conversations with members of the Louisiana Congressional delegation or their staff. Passage of the Charitable Act (S.566 / H.R. 3435), an improved version of the giving incentive, is a major legislative priority of the charitable nonprofit community this year.
Source: National Council of Nonprofits
Search our Site
