Metro Council picks firm to search for downtown revitalization project developer
A news release from Visit Baton Rouge said Hunden was the top choice of the Project Oversight Committee led by Councilmember Carolyn Coleman. The project aims to revitalize the downtown riverfront. It will also complement other developments, such as the planned LSU Arena.
The River Center will host mid-size events, while the LSU arena will handle large entertainment and university sports.
Raising Cane's River Center plan moves forward at Metro Council meeting
'With every step forward, this project to reimagine and revitalize Baton Rouge's downtown riverfront picks up steam,' said Mayor-President Sid Edwards. 'I look forward to being a big part of helping lead the development of this revitalization project.'
The developer selection process may take up to 24 months. Hunden brings national experience from similar projects and has already assessed Baton Rouge's entertainment venue potential, according to the news release.
'An expanded, first-class downtown convention center and a new, high-end headquarters hotel will transform the downtown riverfront into the vibrant tourist destination and hub for locals we have always known it can and should be,' said Visit Baton Rouge President and CEO Jill Kidder, who also serves as vice-chair of the Project Oversight Committee.
The 11-member oversight committee was formed last year and includes council members and community stakeholders.
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Metro Council picks firm to search for downtown revitalization project developer
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Los Angeles Times
29 minutes ago
- Los Angeles Times
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On May 1, 2003, George W. Bush announced, 'Major combat operations in Iraq have ended.' He was standing below a giant banner that read, 'Mission Accomplished.' At the risk of inviting charges of understatement, subsequent events didn't cooperate. But it took a while for that to be widely accepted. We're in a similar place when it comes to President Trump's experiment with a new global trading order. 'Tariffs are making our country Strong and Rich!!!' proclaims Trump, making him not only the first Republican president in living memory to brag about raising taxes on Americans, but also the first to insist that raising taxes on Americans makes us richer. MAGA's mission-accomplished groupthink relies primarily on three arguments. The first is that Trump has successfully concluded a slew of beneficial trade deals. The truth is that some of those deals are simply 'frameworks' that will take a long time to be ironed out. But Trump got the headlines he wanted. The second argument is a kind of populism-infused sleight of hand. The 'experts' — their scare quotes, not mine — are wrong once again. The White House social media account crows, 'In April, 'experts' called tariffs 'the biggest policy mistake in 95 years.' By July, they generated OVER $100 BILLION in revenue. Facts expose the haters: tariffs WORK. Trust in Trump.' But the high-fivers are leaving things out. The most-dire predictions of economic catastrophe were based on the scheme Trump announced on April 2, a.k.a. 'Liberation Day.' Trump quickly backed off that plan ('chickened out' in Wall Street parlance) in response to a bond and stock market implosion. Saying the experts were wrong under those circumstances is like saying experts opposed to defenestration were wrong when they successfully convinced a man not to jump out a window. The third argument, made by the White House and many others — that tariffs are working because they're raising money — is a response to a claim no one made. To my knowledge, no expert claimed tariffs wouldn't raise money. The estimates of these revenues from Trump world are stratospheric. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick expects somewhere between $700 billion and $1 trillion per year. Last month, the government collected $29 billion. It's likely this number will significantly increase as more tariffs come online and businesses run down the inventory they stockpiled earlier this year in anticipation of more tariffs to come. Normally, Republicans don't exult over massive revenues from tax hikes. But Trump's defenders get around this problem by insisting that money is 'pouring' and 'flowing' into America from someplace else. It's true that tariff revenue is pouring into the Treasury, but that money is coming out of American bank accounts, because American importers pay the tariff. Even Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent cannot deny this when pressed. So yes, tariffs are 'working' the way they're supposed to; the problem is Trump thinks tariffs work differently than they do. It's possible some foreign exporters might lower prices to maintain market share, and some American businesses might absorb the costs — for now — to avoid sticker shock for inflation-beleaguered consumers, but what revenue is generated still comes from Americans. Ultimately it means higher prices paid here, reduced profits for businesses here or reduced U.S. trade overall. Sometimes, when pressed, defenders of the administration will concede the true source of the revenues, but then they say the pain is necessary to force manufacturers and other businesses to build and produce in the United States. It's backdoor industrial policy masquerading as trade policy. That, too, might 'work.' But all of this will take time, no matter what. And, if it works, that will have costs, too. Manufacturing in America is more expensive — that's why we manufacture so much stuff abroad in the first place. If this 'reshoring' happens, our goods will be more expensive, and less money will 'pour in' from tariffs. It's difficult to exaggerate how well-understood all of this was on the American right until very recently. But the need to grab any argument available to declare Trump's experiment a success has a lot of people not only abandoning their previous dogma but leaping to the conclusion that the dogma was wrong all along. Maybe it was, though I don't think so. The evidence so far suggests that problems are looming. The dollar is weakening. Prices continue to rise. The job market is reeling. The stock market (an unreliable metric, according to MAGA, when it plummeted after Liberation Day) is holding on, thanks to tech stocks. The truth is we won't have real evidence for a while. It's worth remembering that Americans don't live by headlines and press releases and they don't live in the macro economy either. Declaring 'Mission Accomplished' for the macro economy won't convince people they're better off in their own micro-economies when they're not. @JonahDispatch
The Hill
an hour ago
- The Hill
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The Hill
an hour ago
- The Hill
We need more budget bipartisanship, not less
The director of the Office of Management and Budget, Russ Vought, was recently quoted saying that 'the appropriations process has to be less bipartisan.' While it's easy to think this would lead to less of the frustrating gridlock that can overtake the budgetary process, Vought is both procedurally and substantively wrong: The answer is more bipartisanship. If this sounds naïve, consider the alternative. The first and most obvious issue is realism. Thanks to the Senate filibuster, 60 votes are required to invoke cloture and end debate before proceeding to a final vote on legislation. With only 53 Republicans in the Senate, it's easy for Democrats to grind things to a halt, and vice-versa under Democratic majorities. Unless Vought is implicitly calling for an end to the filibuster — an unlikely event, though Trump has argued for it in the past — expecting government funding bills to be passed without a large, messy bipartisan effort is fanciful thinking. Presumably, Vought wants to make it easier to pass spending cuts such as the recent $9 billion rescissions package. The recissions process is notably exempted from the filibuster, meaning only a simple majority is required to rescind money which was previously appropriated (most likely with some degree of bipartisan support). We shouldn't scoff at those savings, but any frustration on Vought's part is understandable. $9 billion doesn't correct our budget problem. But going after the rest of appropriations won't, either. Last year, we spent $1.81 trillion on discretionary spending — the portion of the budget subject to appropriations — while the entire budget deficit was $1.83 trillion. Instead, we must fix mandatory spending programs — such as Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid — that are on autopilot outside of the appropriations process. But President Trump has repeatedly said these are off-limits. So, sure, we got $9 billion rescinded on a partisan basis. We also got $1.1 trillion in partisan spending cuts in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, a win for fiscal responsibility greatly overshadowed by $4.5 trillion in lost revenue. Indeed, as the act just illustrated, Vought's preferred partisan approach will fail to meaningfully fix our fiscal woes. That's because every large-scale partisan reform invites partisan opposition. For years, Democrats attacked Republicans over the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, deriding it as a giveaway to the rich. Republicans returned the favor in 2021 and 2022, relentlessly hammering Democrats for the American Rescue Plan and Inflation Reduction Act, respectively. Now it's the Democrats' turn again with the 'big, beautiful, bill,',with House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) recently stating that it would 'rip healthcare away … and steal food from the mouths of hungry children, seniors, and veterans.' That's a strong statement about a bill that only cuts noninterest spending by about 1.5 percent over the decade. To be clear, holding politicians accountable for their voting record is essential. But this partisan cycle encourages politicians to accentuate policy differences — which are then used against incumbents during elections — rather than find areas of agreement. Taking away the filibuster or other processes that frustrate the party in power would turn political whiplash into even greater policy whiplash. Already, Republicans have repealed about $500 billion in IRA green tax credits to help finance the recently passed spending bill. For years, they tried to repeal the Affordable Care Act. And it's especially apparent in the back-and-forth we see in regulations and executive orders, with recent administrations immediately seeking to undo the actions of its predecessor. That puts any one-party reforms, regardless of how essential, at risk of being reversed. Even after considering the political blowback and fickleness of partisan reforms, some may dismiss fiscal bipartisanship as unrealistic. After all, Democrats only care about the Green New Deal while Republicans just want to enrich their wealthy donors, or so we're told. Setting these and other tropes aside, there are multiple bipartisan groups in Congress calling for fiscal responsibility and addressing the national debt. Each member of these groups holds different views on how spending should be reduced or revenue increased, but there is clearly a willingness to have those debates. Embracing bipartisanship, rather than lamenting it as so many have done, would bring common ground to the forefront in a way that's been missing. And so, while some will blame a lack of willpower for our fiscal situation, I blame the partisan approach that's been failing lately. It forces politicians more often into choosing between what they believe is right or what gives them the best chance for reelection. Americans deserve better. Let's brush aside the political barriers preventing bipartisanship and work towards our common objectives once again.
