Blueprint Louisiana releases revised platform

Blueprint Louisiana, a business-backed nonprofit organization, has released the latest version of its Blueprint Agenda for the fall legislative elections. The agenda focuses on five items: a performance-based education accountability program; funding for a broader, unified pre-kindergarten program; “structural and systemic changes” to public pension and health care plans; forming public-private partnerships for primary care clinics; and crime reforms intended to lower costs and recidivism. The revision is the result of meetings throughout the summer with various groups and individuals, and marks the first change to the agenda since it was originally drafted in 2007. Blueprint spokesman Jim Harris says the pre-K consolidation and crime reforms represent new points of focus for the group. He says the group had considered pre-K as an issue in the past but that “it got sidetracked a bit by the state’s financial situation.” Another change is in the approach to public pension reforms, for which Harris says Blueprint now supports “a number of different scenarios” rather than specific legislation previously outlined. Harris says the group will ask legislative candidates and the state Board of Elementary and Secondary Education to support the agenda. Blueprint will also undertake a $100,000 ad campaign throughout the state and employ lobbyists to encourage reforms. “We know it all won’t happen this year,” Harris says. “It’s a work in progress.” Blueprint Louisiana bills itself as “a citizen-driven effort to identify and implement essential changes to fundamentally improve life and economic opportunity in the state.” See the 2011 Blueprint Agenda here. —Ian McGibboney