2021 Legislation Session

What bills are going to be hot topics for voters

The 2021 regular legislation session is coming up and there are some new bills looking to be implemented by the louisiana house of representatives.

News 1's princess jhane stepherson- lowry joins us in studio as she spoke with a few acadiana state representatives about what those hot topics might be, princess?

Tha's right*and*as the legislation session is approaching state representaive marcus anthony bryant of new iberia tells me that one of the hot topics is easily going to be a centralized tax system.

He says we need a system tha's online with just one data base.

Bryant sot"hypothetically if they have businesses in ten different parishes, having to figure out the parishes operate under.

The forms and the requirements of those parishes as it relates to paying their monthly sales tax, they do't have to deal with that burden."this would bring in more revenue and people could now tax online sales like for amazon and wayfair - another topic is the oil industry where bryant and lafayette state rep jean-paul coussan are working together.coussan phoner sot"basically i's a job creation act by reducing the severance taxes which is the taxes that they impose on pulling oil out of the ground.

I's one of many efforts to try and you know help business and create jobs."this is a part of a tax reform session to lower rates and remove deductions and credits.

And louisian's educational system is going to be a big one too .... we have a 5 billion dollar budget that would give studen's better fiber for virtual learning and pay teache's more.

Bryant sot ""wanting a lot from teachers and wanting them to educate our kids and push our systems forward at a lower rate of pay than other states which makes them take away our competitiveness to attract better teachers."amongst just the southern states in the u.s. louisiana teachers are paid 4 thousand dollars less.

The legislation session would also look to touch on sports betting, the medicinal side of legalizing maryjuana and the wildlife and fisheries department trying to increase fishing license fees - live in the studio, 'm princess jhane stepherson-lowry, news 15.

Wow thanks princess, that was a lot to take in but ther's one more hot topic and tha'd be how the money we got from the government to help stabilize our state as a result of covid-19 should be spent.

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