2013 LEGISLATIVE PRIORITIES

BRAC's executive vice president and chief operating officer, Erin Monroe Wesley, will be tweeting live from the Louisiana Capitol throughout the legislative session. You can stay up to date on BRAC's legislative agenda by following @BRAC_BatonRouge and #BRACatCAP on Twitter. If you have questions about the legislative session, tweet at @BRAC_BatonRouge using #askBRAC. You can also sign up to receive our weekly updates via email here.

2013 Legislative Session

During the 2013 Legislative Session, BRAC will support the following items:

Higher Education:

  • Reforms that return control over tuition and fees to higher education management boards
    BRAC views higher education as critical to economic development, especially as global shifts to a talent and workforce economy continue to develop. While state funding continues its downward trend, Louisiana’s higher education institutions lack autonomy over their tuitions and fees. The Grad Act helped to increase tuition autonomy, however, Louisiana is still the only state where the state legislature has final authority over tuition and fees, and requires a two-thirds vote. As such, Louisiana’s net tuition and fee revenue per four-year college or university student ranks fourteenth out of sixteen compared to Southern peers. Furthermore, Louisiana’s net tuition and fee revenue ($5,783 per four-year FTE), is approximately two-thirds of the Southern average ($8,932 per four-year FTE). Read more here.
  • The merger of the Baton Rouge, Folkes, Jumonville, and Westside campuses of Capital Area Technical College (CATC) with Baton Rouge Community College (BRCC)
    The unification of the two systems will create a funding stream for higher-cost career and technical education (CTE) programs by enabling BRCC to move revenue over from lower-cost programs. The merger will be a step in furthering the efforts of the Louisiana Community and Technical College System (LCTCS) to respond to the state’s continuing need for industrial construction and skilled craft labor. Read more here.
  • Differentiated tuition
  • Tuition per credit hour

K-12 Education Reform:

  • The reenactment of teacher tenure reform
    Act 1 of the 2012 regular session of the Louisiana Legislature, to ensure that there is a quality teacher in every classroom. BRAC worked aggressively during the 2012 regular session to secure key wins in K-12 education reform that empowered our most effective educators, established tools for parents to make quality choices in better schools, and provided school leaders with greater autonomies to manage their local school systems. The organization feels that this piece of legislation in crucial to the success of the K-12 education system, in addition to the reforms already in place. Read more here.
  • Superintendent autonomy
  • Reduction in force policies

Economic Development Funding:

  • Secure a dedicated revenue stream for Pennington Biomedical Research Center
  • Increase Tier 1 funding to allow for the marketing of our region nationally
  • Support the East Baton Rouge Redevelopment Authority in their efforts to tackle crime through the reduction of blighted and adjudicated properties

Erin on the Go! Weekly Updates

If you would like to receive weekly email updates from BRAC regarding activity at the capitol during the 2013 Legislative Session, please sign-up using the form below.