Jeremy Alford and David Jacobs: After a dozen years, no new amendments in 2025
By JEREMY ALFORD and DAVID JACOBS
For the first time since 2013, Louisiana’s increasingly swollen constitution won’t be expanded this year.
Voters rejected a slate of potential amendments in March, including the much ballyhooed Amendment 2 backed by Gov. Jeff Landry to rewrite the tax code. There are no other amendments planned for the remainder of the calendar year.
So, if anyone is eager to further inflate our guiding charter, ratified in 1974, they’ll have to wait until 2026, when six proposed amendments will appear on two statewide ballots in the spring and fall. All of the amendments were part of the policy yield from the recent regular session.
Lawmakers and governors collectively share a 68% success rate when it comes to amendments, having asked voters for 325 constitutional changes since ratification and gaining approval for 221.
This win rate, however, drops to 59% when calculating the last five years of amendment elections, with 19 out of 32 passing. The March election, of course, saw all four of its amendments tank, with none receiving more than 36 percent support.
Some scholars and politicians suggest there may be voter fatigue over constitutional bloat, and a new constitution or article rewrites could be needed. Alas, Landry and many others have failed to pull off such feats in recent years, seeing both convention pitches and amendment packages go down in flames.
In lieu of bold moves like these, it’s just going to be more of the same old same old, beginning April 18.
That’s the election hosting five of the six (so far) proposed constitutional amendments on tap for next year, including a pair of provisions that were plucked from the pages of this past spring’s doomed Amendment 2, which the governor and his allies pushed as a revised version of Article VII on taxation and money.
It’s also the ballot that will introduce voters to a new closed party primary system with, among other contests, a hotly-contested U.S. Senate race. With big names aiming to unseat incumbent GOP Sen. Bill Cassidy, these amendments should find a conservative-leaning electorate.
In fact, John Couvillon, founder of JMC Analytics & Polling, said Republican turnout for the April elections could exceed 60%, which is promising for the GOP-led Executive and Legislative branches. “Theoretically, you’re creating the maximum possible Republican turnout by placing the amendments at that time,” he said, “which was certainly not the case when March was chosen for the first go-round of amendments.”
On the April ballot will be the following remnants of this year’s Amendment 2:
• HB 366 by House Commerce Chair Daryl Deshotel would give parish governments the option of not charging an inventory tax. Supporters say about 40 parishes would be willing to forgo the tax. Business leaders despise the inventory tax, which is not levied in most states. But it’s an important source of revenue for some parishes, so making the repeal voluntary rather than mandatory was important politically.
• HB 473 by House Ways and Means Chair Julie Emerson would dissolve three education support funds and dedicate the money to teachers’ retirement debt. School systems that participate in the Teachers’ Retirement System of Louisiana would be required to use the savings to provide salary increases of $2,250 for teachers and $1,125 for non-certified personnel. Making the stipends educators have been receiving permanent was perhaps the most popular aspect of Amendment 2, even among people who voted against it, so the chances of the standalone measure passing seem pretty high.
Clear communication will be important for passage, especially since voter confusion was part of the problem with Amendment 2.
“I think the best strategy is to try to inform the voters about what’s going on,” Public Affairs Research Council President Steven Procopio said. “At the end of the day, if people don’t understand things, they’re not going to vote for them.”
While there’s a political background story for both of these proposed amendments, the drive to un-classify state employees could be the noisiest item on the April ballot. SB 8 by Senate Judiciary C Chair Jay Morris would give the Legislature the ability to remove positions from Civil Service protection.
Many conservatives see Civil Service as an obstacle to streamlining government, while many good-government advocates warn that those protections are meant to ensure hires and promotions are based on merit, not politics.
Two more proposed amendments are slated for the April ballot:
• HB 63 by Rep. Kyle Green would raise the mandatory retirement age for judges from 70 to 75. This is the only amendment out of the six that a Democrat sponsored, and it passed with bipartisan support (and opposition). Couvillon expects a bipartisan “no” on this one from voters, thanks to their innate suspicion of things that seem to be politically motivated.
• SB 25 by Senate Education Chair Rick Edmonds would give the St. George community school system in East Baton Rouge Parish the same authority granted to parishes to operate a school system. This one is fairly obscure outside of EBR. Couvillon said St. George backers will need a campaign to garner statewide support.
HB 300 by Rep. Shane Mack, the only one that will appear on the November 2026 ballot, would increase the income limit to qualify for the special property tax assessment level from $100,000 to $150,000, with the limit adjusted annually for inflation beginning in 2028. Other qualifications, such as being 65 or older or having a service-connected disability, would not change.
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