Additional time: The Baton Rouge Area Chamber is lauding a decision by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to delay implementation of new ground-level ozone standard enacted during the Obama administration. EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt sent letters to governors last week, notifying them that the agency would put off for one year a deadline for states to submit air quality plans to meet the standard. The EPA, under former President Barack Obama, lowered ground-level ozone to 70 parts of ozone per billion, down from 75 ppb, in 2015. Kyle Zeringue, BRAC’s senior vice president of business development, testified before a U.S. Senate committee in May in support of legislation that would give states more time to enact the air quality standards. Read more.
Here’s the deal: House Republican leaders made their initial offer Tuesday for a $28 billion-plus Louisiana operating budget. As The Associated Press reports, lawmakers are calling the offering a good-faith effort to broker a compromise in the limited days of the special session. The GOP-crafted proposal was advanced in a 15-6 vote by the Appropriations Committee, on a nearly party-line vote with Democrats opposed. The full House will debate the spending plan today, hoping to strike an agreement with the Senate and Gov. John Bel Edwards before the special session must end Monday. The plan would use $100 million less than is forecast to be available for spending in the financial year beginning July 1. Read more.
Case closed: A New Orleans jury has ruled that Johnson & Johnson and Bayer AG aren’t responsible for the death of a 67-year-old woman whose family blamed the blood-thinning drug Xarelto, Bloomberg reports. The verdict is the second straight win for the companies, which jointly developed the drug. There are still more than 18,000 patient lawsuits over Xarelto, which has been linked to at least 370 deaths, according to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. The patients claim Xarelto can cause unstoppable bleeding and that Bayer and J&J failed to provide an antidote or inform doctors or consumers of a blood test that could measure a patient’s bleed-out risk. Bayer and J&J say Xarelto is safe and bleeding risks are fully outlined in the drug’s warning label. Read more.
