Bad bet: A new audit says higher education, which has struggled with budget cuts, has been shortchanged more than $15 million it was owed from the Louisiana State Racing Commission. The audit, released Monday by the Legislative Auditor’s Office, says the money should have been paid from a slice of the license fee on wagers at off-track betting facilities. Auditors say under state law the Board of Regents should have received one-third of the license fees collected, a figure tallied at more than $15 million from July 1996 through April 2015. The racing commission disagrees, saying it didn’t have a “mechanism” for distributing the money to the Board of Regents.
Tooting its own horn: Nearly a decade after hurricanes Katrina and Rita devastated Louisiana, hard-hit communities are coming back stronger than ever, according to a release from the Federal Emergency Management Agency. To date, assistance to Louisiana’s residents and communities from the state and FEMA totals more than $19.6 billion. That money has made its way to Louisiana cities, parishes and citizens through FEMA’s Individual Assistance, Public Assistance and Hazard Mitigation grant programs.
Market woes: U.S. stocks deepened their losses after an earlier recovery lost momentum, with the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index again nearing a correction amid a global selloff. Bloomberg reports that all of the benchmark index’s main groups tumbled, with raw-materials shares approaching a two-year low while energy companies slumped to the lowest since October 2011. Citigroup Inc. and JPMorgan Chase & Co. fell at least 2.9% as banks retreated the most since February. The S&P 500 dropped 2.9% to 1,913.99, the Dow lost 409.22 points, or 2.5%, and the Nasdaq Composite Index slid 2.6%. Read more from Bloomberg.
