Gov. Landry vetoes Senate oversight for his Port of New Orleans board choices
Barges and ships navigate the Mississippi River near Gramercy, Louisiana, on May 1, 2025. (Wes Muller/Louisiana Illuminator)
A bill that attempted to add a layer of legislative oversight to the governor's picks for the Port of New Orleans board was officially sunk Monday with Gov. Landry's veto pen.
Senate Bill 89 by Sen. Joseph Bouie, D-New Orleans, would have required the Senate to approve the governor's picks for members of the Board of Commissioners of the Port of New Orleans. The measure received unanimous approval from both chambers of the legislature.
Currently, the governor has sole authority to choose port board members nominated by a coalition of organizations from Orleans, Jefferson and St. Bernard Parish. The nominating organizations are made up of university leaders, trade associations and local chambers of commerce. Members of the board serve for five-year terms.
Landry cited 'an unnecessary layer of bureaucracy' as grounds for nixing the bill in his veto message, saying the port board selection process was sufficiently rigorous.
'Appointments are locally driven, carefully vetted, and rooted in industry expertise and community representation,' reads Landry's veto message. 'Adding a Senate confirmation requirement would complicate a system that already includes substantial input, oversight, and structure.'
The Port Board of Commissioners is made up of four members from New Orleans, three from Jefferson Parish and one from St. Bernard Parish. As the sixth-largest port in the United States, the Port of New Orleans handles shipments of hundreds of cargo types, from consumer goods such as coffee, clothes and food to industrial materials including metals, wood and rubber.
A major hub of global commerce, the Port of New Orleans ships more than 74 million tons of goods a year, according to a 2025 U.S. Bureau of Transportation Statistics report.
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Miami Herald
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- Miami Herald
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USA Today
an hour ago
- USA Today
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Politico
an hour ago
- Politico
Republicans stuff new tax cuts into their megabill, hoping voters will take note
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Lloyd Smucker (R-Pa.), a tax writer. The strategy comes with some downsides. For one thing, the additional tax cuts are increasing the bill's cost, no small thing amid the mounting focus on government debt. A plan to raise the cap on state and local tax deductions to $40,000, from $10,000, would cost $33 billion in 2025 alone, TPC says. Some Senate Republicans, calling the provision too expensive, are now trying to ratchet that back to $30,000. It's also hardly a sure thing the plan will actually pay political dividends — Republicans never got much credit from voters for the tax cuts that flowed from their original Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. Polling at the time showed many people didn't believe their taxes had gone down. The plan would also put a lot of pressure on Treasury and the IRS, which have faced significant staff cuts, because they would have to quickly sort out the details of how the provisions would work so that people can claim them. 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Aside from increasing the child credit and sweetening the SALT deduction, Republicans plan to boost the standard deduction by $2,000 for couples. They're also creating a string of new breaks: a $10,000 deduction for auto-loan interest, a $4,000-per-person deduction for seniors, a $300 break for people who give to charity, deductions for overtime pay and income from tips, and a new tax-preferred investment account for children. Most people would see their taxes go down under the GOP plan, with those in the middle of the income spectrum receiving an average of $830, the Tax Policy Center says. Low-income people projected to benefit would get relatively little, about $250, and the top 20 percent of earners would get about $2,500. Those averages, though, obscure the fact that benefits would vary widely, even among taxpayers with similar incomes, because so many of the new breaks are narrowly targeted at specific groups. Raising the SALT cap to $40,000 would save someone in the top 1 percent of earners about $4,000, TPC estimates. Parents with two kids would see an additional $1,000 from the child credit increase. The auto-loan interest deduction would be worth as much as $1,200 to a couple making $50,000. Altogether, tax cuts for individuals would run about $140 billion this year, according to TPC. Meanwhile, businesses would get retroactive breaks for research, investment and interest expenses, as well as a new break for building factories — which would cost a combined $57 billion through the fiscal year that ends in September, the official Joint Committee on Taxation says. In order for people to claim all of the new benefits, they'll need to know the nitty gritty of how they're supposed to work, and it will be up to the administration to sort that out. The legislation orders Treasury, for example, to come up with a list of occupations that would be eligible for Trump's new tip deduction. The deduction for auto-loan interest would be reserved for vehicles that had 'final assembly' in the U.S., with a complex rule for how that would be determined. Employers will surely have lots of questions about how business breaks are supposed to work as well. 'Every business is going to say, 'What does this mean?'' said Lankford. 'So the earlier we can get this done, the greater the economic effect that can happen this year.'
