Senate Health and Welfare Chairman Fred Mills said he and his committee are pushing state officials to make a decision soon on how to move forward with Louisiana’s massive Medicaid processing contract.
“We want a decision by September, not something at the last minute in December,” said Mills, R-Parks. Right now Molina Information Systems has a $46 million contract to process the invoices for Medicaid patients. It’s how participating doctors, hospitals and other providers get paid.
The contract ends on Dec. 31 and was last extended for one year in December of 2015. At the time, lawmakers on the health and welfare committees complained that it was unfair to ask them to make such a costly decision just a couple of weeks before a contract expired.
The state had hired the Maryland-based CNSI to take over the job, but former Gov. Bobby Jindal canceled that contract due to various concerns. CNSI’s wrongful termination lawsuit was settled recently for an undisclosed amount.
With the state overseeing its Medicaid expansion, and the processing arm likely to grow in size, Mills said this should be a top priority for the Louisiana Department of Health.
“This is a pretty big fiscal issue,” said Mills. “We need to act on this quickly.” A legislative seat in turmoil With officials like Treasurer John Kennedy calling for the resignation of Sen. Troy Brown, who has now been arrested twice on domestic violence charges, politicos are slowly beginning to turn their gaze to the River Parishes Senate district.
The big questions involve when and if it will become an open seat.
Some potential candidates are beginning to test the waters. For instance, Patrick Mulhearn, executive director of Celtic Studios, said he is “giving it some thought.”
The district is majority black and votes Democratic. Mulhearn has no party affiliation.
Brown was first arrested in November and again last month, but has not been convicted of anything. He has been suspended from his committee assignments in the Senate, though.
Only a vote of the Select Committee on Discipline and Expulsion can remove Brown from his legislative seat right now, unless he decides to resign. The next time the select committee could act is in the spring, when the next regular session convenes.
That committee is made up of the entire upper chamber, minus the accused. The Senate president and pro tem would serve as the chair and vice chair, and each lawmaker on the committee would have to take a special oath before moving forward with the investigation, hearings and votes, according to Senate rules.Voting report shows conservative bentsThe Louisiana Family Forum, the state’s leading faith-based advocacy group, has released its legislative scorecard covering this year’s string of regular and special sessions.
It’s the first scorecard that assesses actions from this new term of the Louisiana Legislature. And more than anything else the scores paint a picture of a state Senate that is slowly growing more conservative.
In terms of absolute support, roughly the same number of lawmakers from both chambers scored 100 percent with LFF’s legislative priorities: 16 this year compared to 17 last year.
The big difference is found in the next tier, where there are considerably more lawmakers — just about double the count — this term voting with LFF 80 percent to 99 percent of the time. In 2015, there were 26 lawmakers who fell into this category. This year, there are 51 lawmakers.
The number of “Life and Liberty Awards,” given to lawmakers who sponsor key bills, also increased, from seven to 10. The Senate, though, shows the biggest differences.
There was only one senator who received a “Life and Liberty Award” last year, compared four this year. Additionally, the number of senators voting with LFF 80 percent to 99 percent of the time shot up from three to 11.
Looking ahead to 2017, LFF President Gene Mills said it’s still early but his group’s developing issues agenda includes criminal justice reform, a “saner” school bathroom policy and end-of-life proposals.
Qualifying looked differentAside from the new law that took effect pushing qualifying earlier into the summer, there are a few reasons why the sign-up period for the fall ballot last month looked remarkably different from previous years.
There were 18 races where no one qualified, mostly for small offices like mayors and chiefs of police in villages. But there were also 176 individuals who were elected unopposed. It’s an improvement, in terms of competition, over the 2015 qualifying period when 44 percent of the 1,150 elections scheduled drew only one candidate each. They Said It“They don’t write good.”—Donald Trump, on reporters at The New York Times, in Politico“If you’re gonna lie about me and make it under a fictitious name, I’m gonna come after you.”—Terrebonne Parish Sheriff Jerry Larpenter, after deputies raided a home in hopes of uncovering who was behind an anti-corruption blog, on WWL-TV
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