Louisiana Government News

Yellow Sheet Pork Carcass Cutout Value - Quote: $0.856 Week Ago: $0.861 52 Weeks Ago:0.876 $0.873 The Environmental Protection Agency has issued cease and desist administrative orders to two chicken broiler facilities in Lincoln Parish, Louisiana, for discharging chicken litter into a tributary of the Dugdemona River.

In a turn of events that threatens to lay waste to the central theme of the GOP challenge to Barack... If chocolate's the thing for your sweetie on Valentine's Day, why give plain old candy when you can... Louisiana, and Acadiana maybe most of all, have had reason to welcome economic news recently.

Work on the La. Highway 3170 bridge at LSUA Cutoff Road will close the bridge beginning Monday, according to the Louisiana Department of Transportation and Development. The bridge will be closed from 8 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. Monday through Wednesday. A detour will be available via La. Highway 457 (Latanier Road) and U.S. Highway 71. There will be no width restrictions.

Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal's administration plans to close J. Levy Dabadie Correctional Center in Pineville, transfer the 330 low-risk offenders at Dabadie to the Avoyelles Correctional Center in Cottonport and then sell the Avoyelles Parish prison to a private company. Jindal included the details on the prisons in the 2012-13 proposed $25.5 billion budget he unveiled in Baton Rouge on Thursday. Total state job layoffs could approach 2,700 in the fiscal year that starts July 1. Jindal said the closure of Dabadie and privatizing the Avoyelles prison could save the state $7.2 million by 2014. He also said the proceeds from the sale of Avoyelles, which he estimated would fetch $35 million, would go into the state's Rainy Day Fund. Pineville Mayor Clarence Fields was not pleased to hear the news, the latest involving state government layoffs of local residents. 'We're getting slammed here in Central Louisiana,' Fields said. 'It's going to be devastating.' Fields said Dabadie, which is off Esler Field Road, employs more than 100 workers who live, eat, shop and reside in or near Pineville. The Dabadie news comes after downsizing the past few years at Central Louisiana State Hospital and Pinecrest Supports and Services Center, both in Pineville. Jindal ran into loud opposition last year after he announced he'd privatize Avoyelles and Dabadie and close other prisons in Louisiana. During discussions last year on what to do with the prisons, the Department of Corrections said Avoyelles had about 295 employees and Dabadie had about 108 workers. At a stop in Alexandria last year, Jindal told a Town Talk reporter there were discussions about closing Dabadie then. Jindal said Dabadie wasn't marked for closure in 2011 'because we wanted to keep those jobs here.' That has changed. 'We gain a few jobs, then we lose a hell of a lot more,' Mayor Fields said. 'I'm sorry, but in Central Louisiana we just seem to be getting it.' Rep. Robert Johnson, a Democrat from Marksville who fought the privatization of Avoyelles Correctional Center last year, said he and others would fight the effort this year. Privatizing Avoyelles would take legislative approval, Johnson said, adding he thought shutting Dabadie down could be at the governor's discretion. 'It amazes me that a governor can turn over a budget and tell the people of Louisiana who elected him that he can't run the prison system right so we're going to go ahead and get a private company,' Johnson said, adding that privatizing prisons would be more costly in the future. 'He had a fight on his hands last time, but he won't believe the fight he'll have on his hands this time,' Johnson said. Twenty Dabadie employees would be kept on the payroll for six months, and six would have permanent jobs with the Department of Corrections, monitoring local jails in eight Central Louisiana parishes that house state prisoners, Jindal said. Jindal said that once the Dabadie prisoners are housed in the Avoyelles prison, they would be bused from the Cottonport prison to Camp Beauregard for six months to continue working at the National Guard installation. "Dabadie exists as a maintenance facility for support to the Louisiana National Guard (at Camp Beauregard) "¦," Jindal said. Dabadie inmates also provide labor for cleanup crews in Pineville, in Alexandria and at England Airpark, local officials said. Sen. Rick Gallot, who represents a sprawling district from Ruston to south Rapides Parish, said he worries about how prison closures and privatizations could affect public safety. 'What's paramount is: What kind of effect does it have on public safety?' Gallot said. He also questioned the budgetary relevance of the estimated $7.2 million savings from a closed Dabadie and a privatized Avoyelles. 'In a $25.5 billion budget, that doesn't seem to have a significant impact,' Gallot said. He is concerned about the ripple effect on the economy with so many people losing their jobs. Rep. Lance Harris, R-Alexandria, said he is 'concerned about the inmate labor force that a lot of our cities and institutions use disappearing. I'm also concerned about the reduction of state workers. And sometimes a private company doesn't run a prison as well.' Gallot said it would be expensive to bus inmate crews from Cottonport to England Airpark and other sites to do maintenance work. Calls seeking comment from Rep. Chris Hazel of Ball, whose district includes Dabadie, and Sen. Eric Lafleur of Ville Platte, whose district includes the Avoyelles prison, were not immediately returned Thursday afternoon. Gannett Capital Bureau reporter Mike Hasten contributed to this story.

A project to overlay 13 miles of Interstate 10 in Lafayette and St. Martin parishes is expected to begin by the end of 2013.

The Louisiana State Pardon Board could be abolished if House Bill 85 gets approved by lawmakers and voters by Nov.

It's a sad but true fact that the world we live in today is very much a "do more with less" sphere.

A former State Representative from Winnsboro is now working with the State Department of Insurance.

Turner's lawyer, James Craig with the Louisiana Capital Assistance Center, asked Reeves to stop the execution.

Two U.S. senators have filed a bill to clarify that agent compensation should be excluded from the federal health reform Medical Loss Ratio requirement for the individual and small group markets.

Three people have died in less than a year in crashes at the intersection of LA 1 and Sugar Plantation Parkway in Addis.

Louisiana residents contributed more than $1.8 million last year to 2012 presidential candidates, with most of that going to Republicans.

The chief executive of LSU's hospital system says hundreds of system employees could lose their jobs as LSU moves to close a $29 million budget hole.

Nearly four years ago, the state launched an ambitious program that paid private insurance companies millions of dollars to take thousands of homeowner's policies from Louisiana's insurer of last resort.

Louisianans can help fight hunger when filing their 2011 state income tax returns by including a contribution to the Louisiana Food Bank Association on line 53.

Aetna Better Health has asked a state district court to throw out contracts awarded to three private companies involved in the state's new health care delivery system for the poor.

Louisiana State Police representatives, from left, Sgt. John Cannon, Trooper Chase Huval, Col.

Cuts to hospitals within the LSU System are just another in a long line of cuts to those within the health care community.

I am deeply concerned about the poor choices that some of our state education policymakers and legislators are offering the citizens of Louisiana.

It's now been a week and most of us are still trying to digest this implausible fact: The New... An alligator, a turtle and a Cajun band walk into a bar ... Well, not so much a bar as a market in New York City.