Louisiana legislators wrapped up the 2023 Regular Session earlier this month, balancing the state’s budget with $43.7 billion for ordinary operating expenditures, a $113.6 million increase over the 2022 to 2023 fiscal year. Approximately 894 bills were filed during Regular Session, 661 of those generated by the House, and 233 brought forth by the Senate.
State Representative Greg Miller of Destrehan, who has held his District 56 seat since 2011, said the number one bill of this recent session he was directly involved in was House Bill 359, which seeks to create the River Parishes Juvenile Justice District for St. Charles, St. John, St. James, Assumption and Ascension Parishes, known collectively as the ‘Holy Parishes.’
“Basically, before [juveniles] go to court and have their trials, sometimes they need to be in a secure setting,” Miller explained of this bill and the need it addresses. “We don’t have the beds – St. Charles doesn’t have the capability, nor does St. John, St. James, Assumption or even Ascension.”
St. Charles Parish and other local parishes have been sending juveniles out to Terrebonne or St. Bernard Parishes for housing while awaiting trial, parishes that oftentimes have limited juvenile beds. Due to capacity constraints, St. Charles Parish is sometimes forced to send juveniles out of state to nearby Mississippi. The entire process, Miller said, has become overly expensive for all parishes involved, from housing, transportation and the specialized supervision of juveniles, and it has also made it difficult for families to regularly visit when their children are sent so far away.
Miller said House Bill 359 lays the groundwork to help solve these problems all at a lower cost for the ‘Holy Parishes’ including St. Charles by establishing a centrally located youth detention center situated closer to home. A commission will first be appointed by sheriffs and district attorneys of the various parishes before developing a plan and budget, which will then be presented to voters for final approval.
Miller said the Louisiana legislature worked hard during the 2023 Regular Session to address the fentanyl drug crisis that has continued to plague Louisiana and several other states. Much of the fentanyl supply making its way into Louisiana, Miller mentioned, can largely be attributed to product brought in from Mexico and China. At least four legislative measures arising out of the recent session – House Bill 586, House Bill 90, SB 49 and HCR 7 -all seek to specifically address fentanyl issues in Louisiana.
“We’ve increased the penalties for fentanyl, and we also passed legislation that would allow U.S. citizens and the attorney general to be able to get the help of private attorneys to sue China, or companies in China, that are shown to be flooding our market with this fentanyl and sending the precursors of fentanyl,” Miller said of the recent measures designed to address fentanyl.
On the education front, numerous bills geared towards improving education were brought forth including House Bill 12, which aims to help prevent children in the third grade from getting promoted to fourth grade when reading deficiencies have not been remedied by the end of their third grade of school. The measure was largely designed to help students, Miller said, rather than punish them, to ensure they are being promoted only after they achieve proper literacy levels.
“It’s not a punitive measure,” Miller said of House Bill 12. “We want to be able to get [third grade students] proficient. If they can’t pass, if they’re not proficient, [we want to be able to] give them extra help and training and not just push them forward.”
Given the property insurance crisis many coastal Louisiana residents have faced, Miller said legislators introduced numerous insurance-focused measures including House Bill 183, which seeks to prevent some of the assignment of benefits problems that plagued Florida’s insurance marketplace in recent years, causing many insurers to go insolvent.
“It was a horrible mess, and it was not serving the insured,” Miller said of the assignment of benefits issues. “We wanted to limit those circumstances in which you could assign your benefits.”
Representative Miller recently announced he would seek the Louisiana State Senate District 19 seat in the upcoming October 14 election. The seat is being vacated by Senator Gary Smith Jr., who is term limited and unable to seek re-election. District 19 encompasses all of St. Charles Parish, generous portions of Lafourche Parish, the majority of the East Bank of St. John the Baptist Parish along with select areas in Jefferson Parish including Waggaman and Kenner.
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