Louisiana voters will decide the fate of four proposed amendments to the state constitution on March 29. Amendment 2 is the most detailed change to the constitution since voters approved a new constitution in 1974.

Amendment 2 proposes to amend Article VII (the finance section) of the state constitution. It took 115 pages to list the many provisions of the amendment in the bill that was approved during the Legislature’s third special session on tax reform last year. The House approved the amendment 81-15, and the Senate vote was 39-0.

From 1978 through 2024, 321 proposed amendments have been on the ballot and 221 (68.8%) have been adopted by voters. They approved all four amendments on the Dec. 7, 2024, ballot.

The odds are that most voters won’t have the time or the patience to read all of Amendment 2. However, there will be a lot of money spent to explain it by those who think it’s a good move and those who don’t like it.

So here is some of what has been said about it so far:

“The proposed amendment, to put it mildly, is complicated. The ballot question itself will be long and technical,” said The Advocate | The Times-Picayune.

“Expect (Gov. Jeff ) Landry to sell the eye-catching parts of it.”

One of those eye-catching parts is a proposed $2,000 permanent pay increase for teachers and $1,000 permanent pay raise for school support workers.

Local school districts would be able to finance the raises by the state paying off $2 billion in teacher retirement debt that the districts have been paying. The state would help districts that don’t have enough money to give the full pay increases.

Three education trust funds are being eliminated to free up the $2 billion needed to pay off the retirement debt.

Although there hasn’t been much opposition yet, some university professors think getting rid of the Louisiana Education Quality Trust Fund is a bad idea.

Two of them in a letter to The Advocate  said, “Clearly, if we eliminate these trust funds, Louisiana higher education institutions, public and private, will lose the seed money to invest in research and innovation and attract and retain exceptional faculty, staff and students.

“Do we really want to kill the goose that lays the golden egg? We don’t think so.”

Amendment 2 would also merge two state savings accounts and allow Landry to use some of that money to pay parishes to drop the unpopular inventory tax that is levied by local governments.

The newspaper said Landry is expected to raise a lot of money from wealthy donors to finance a yes campaign for Amendment 2.

Landry explained his goal in a March news report last year by the Louisiana Illuminator.

“The idea here is to have Louisiana’s constitution act like it was supposed to … so that we finally strip out the things that don’t belong in the constitution,” Landry said. “We can take whatever we take out of that constitution and put it into a separate super statute.”

The Illuminator reminded its readers that any laws or language removed from the constitution and put into a statute would be easier to amend or repeal.

The proposed March 29 amendment doesn’t change the popular homestead exemption, state pay supplements for first responders and the provision that no state sales taxes can be levied on food sold for home consumption, residential utilities and prescription drugs.

Among other items on the ballot, Allen, Beauregard, Calcasieu, Cameron, Jeff Davis and Vernon parishes will be voting for an associate justice of the state Supreme Court’s 3^rd District along with voters in six other parishes. Calcasieu Parish also has two 14^th Judicial District races.

There will be other races for Lake Charles mayor and seven city council members, Vinton mayor, Vinton chief of police and five members of the Vinton City Council.

We can expect Landry and many members of the Legislature to support the four proposed constitutional amendments on March 29, but voter turnout will be low in many parishes that don’t have major contests.

The statewide voter turnout was a dismal 11.3% on Dec. 7, 2024, when voters approved four constitutional amendments. Turnout was only 8.6% in Calcasieu Parish.

Jim Beam, the retired editor of the American Press, has covered people and politics for more than six decades. Contact him at 337-515-8871 or jim.beam.press@gmail.com.

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