Blue Bell is back: Blue Bell ice cream will again be available in Louisiana and Jackson, Mississippi, on Dec. 21 following a listeria contamination this spring that halted sales and prompted cleanup of production plants. Blue Bell on Tuesday also announced the return of 115 workers put on paid furlough after the April voluntary recall of all products, The Associated Press reports. The company will employ about 1,000 workers—including at plants in Alabama and Oklahoma now supplying consumers in those states, plus Texas. The company this month resumed production in its hometown of Brenham, 70 miles northwest of Houston. Sales from that plant have not yet restarted amid continued regulatory scrutiny. Blue Bell was linked to 10 listeria cases, including three deaths from the bacteria in Kansas.
More budget maneuvering: Ballots have gone out to state lawmakers, asking them to decide whether Louisiana should tap its “rainy day” fund to rebalance this year’s budget. The Associated Press reports that Gov. Bobby Jindal is asking House and Senate members to use $28.2 million from the fund to help close a midyear deficit and protect public colleges from cuts. Using the Budget Stabilization Fund, as it’s officially known, requires support from two-thirds of lawmakers in both chambers. Ballots are due by 5 p.m. on Dec. 8. It’s the last piece of Jindal’s plan to address a $487 million deficit in this year’s $25 billion budget. Lawmakers already agreed to the rest of the governor’s recommendations, though they acknowledged the rebalancing plan leaves hefty problems for Gov.-elect John Bel Edwards when he takes office in January.
Not quite yet: While he pledged to expand Louisiana’s Medicaid program on “day one” in office, Gov.-elect John Bel Edwards is finding out that might be trickier than he thought. The financing plan enacted by lawmakers is caught up in a swirl of legal questions, and Edwards said after winning the weekend election that it might take a bit longer to expand Medicaid than he promised, The Associated Press reports. Whatever the delay, Edwards says providing the government-funded health insurance to the working poor remains a top priority for his new administration. Term-limited Gov. Bobby Jindal, a Republican who recently ended his presidential campaign, refused to take the billions in federal health care money to expand Louisiana’s Medicaid program. He opposed it as too costly for the state and as an inappropriate expansion of government spending. Read the full story.
