With the Louisiana legislative session set to start Monday, the Baton Rouge Area Chamber has prioritized tort reform, employee identity protection and career training as some of its key issues this year.
BRAC revealed its legislative priorities at a regional stakeholders breakfast this morning, where members of the Capital Region delegation also shared their priorities, with many mentioning their support or opposition toward tort reform, which died last year in committee.
“BRAC now has a new energy paired with a new Legislature,” says David Zoller, BRAC’s new government affairs manager, who spent seven years working under former state Rep. Julie Stokes, R-Kenner. “The legislators I’ve talked to seem to support our efforts.”
Throughout the upcoming session, BRAC says it will “strongly support” tort reform efforts, arguing it will reduce the costs of operating a business in Louisiana and make it more attractive to talent. Consequently, it’s taking the lead on a few bills in an effort to lower the costs of insurance and expenses due to litigation.
The chamber will support the Omnibus Premium Reduction Act of 2020 (House Bill 9), which increases the general one-year prescriptive period for delictual actions to a two-year prescriptive period, reduces the threshold for a jury trial to $5,000, provides for reduced damages for amounts paid or payable from collateral sources and repeals the right of direct action against an insurer. Additionally, BRAC will push a bill that would allow reversionary trusts to pay medical costs while also breaking up the special relationships between medical witnesses and plaintiffs’ attorneys.
The chamber is also leading a bill that offers the same confidentiality provisions over employee data disclosed to the Louisiana Department of Economic Development as are offered to employee data disclosed to the Louisiana Department of Revenue and Louisiana Workforce Commission. The bill would effectively protect employee data—such as the partial Social Security numbers, salaries, and addresses often disclosed as required by state contracts—from public records requests.
Ensuring the effectiveness of career and technical education training will mark another key goal of the chamber this session. Specifically, BRAC will lead a bill to direct the Louisiana Workforce Commission to receive and analyze information from Louisiana high schools and the Board of Regents to determine whether graduating students earning an industry-based credential enter the workforce in the occupation for which they trained—a move it hopes will increase the Department of Education’s level of accountability.
Regarding transportation issues, BRAC will take on a more supportive role this year, advocating for securing a new Mississippi River bridge and fully funding the I-10 widening project in Baton Rouge.
BRAC’s other legislative priorities include:
• Protecting Louisiana’s economic development toolkit and economic competitiveness;
• Promoting expansion of early childhood education and protecting K-12 educational reforms;
• Prioritizing funding for critical Capital Region economic competitiveness projects, including early childhood expansion and expansion of air service destinations from the Baton Rouge Metropolitan Airport (from the state general fund) and the expansion of BRCC’s nursing program and the completion of the LSU/City Park Lakes project (from the capital outlay budget).
The session begins at noon March 9 and runs through 6 p.m. on June 1, 2020.
