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Thank you.

2024 was a busy year in the Louisiana Legislature.

Lawmakers tackled everything from redistricting to crime to taxes.

We'll see where we stand heading into the new year.

And it was a year of extreme highs and lows for Louisiana athletes.

Victor Howell will break down the past year in sports.

And we are wishing farewell to a key member of our team.

We'll look back at Clay Fourier's lasting influences on LPB.

Let's get started.

Let's do it.

Hello, everyone.

I'm Karen LeBlanc, and I'm Dorothea Wilson.

Joining us is Barry Erwin, president and CEO of Council for a Better Louisiana.

This week, we're looking back on major developments in the legislature over the past year and taking the temperature on where things stand going forward.

Right.

Lawmakers spent months at the Capitol dealing with a wide range of issues.

2024 got started with a new administration, and Governor Jeff Landry came into office promising better lives for everyone in Louisiana.

The people sent us here to repair and reform their government and to unleash innovation and production.

So their future in the future of their children are made better.

The governor's inauguration speech focused heavily on the state's economy and addressing crime.

That's right.

Now, Barry, in a broad sense.

Do you feel that the governor made good on his promises this year?

Well, I think he has a lot of room to make that claim.

If you really look at the course of the entire year.

Of course, as you mentioned the campaign, he focused a lot on crime.

We had a crime special session.

He passed a lot of legislation during that.

During the inauguration, he also talked about education, savings accounts and things to help people with school choice.

That passed.

And then again talking about the economy and business.

We had a whole fiscal session or a special session, I should say.

Talking about taxes and trying to make the state more competitive.

So I think when you put all those together, there were a couple of missteps along the way or maybe missed opportunities.

But I think he has room to claim that he was pretty successful.

Absolutely.

Now, shortly after taking office, Governor Landry called the year's first special session, like you mentioned, to deal with redistricting.

Yeah, lawmakers worked tasked with creating a congressional map to create a second Majority-Black district.

Now, they eventually redrew the sixth district.

And Cleo Fields won that Senate seat in November.

Even so, the district is still tied up in legal limbo.

Now, Barry, can you explain the litigation and what you foresee happening?

Yeah, well, it's been a complicated series of events over the course of the year.

The legislature came in and drew a new district, but it did not contain another minority district.

The court said, you can't do that.

You need to go back and redraw the district again.

They did.

And that's where we ended up with what we have now that Clio Fields just got elected to.

But some other voters came and challenged that, saying that it was racial gerrymandering.

An appellate court actually agreed with them.

And so now it's in the hands of the US Supreme Court, who just recently agreed to hear that case.

Supreme court kind of says politics is okay.

Racial drawing is not.

So we'll see where it lands.

Yeah.

Well, that was quickly followed up by a nine day special session focusing on one of the biggest items on the governor's agenda.

Louisiana's crime rate.

The legislature passed numerous laws aimed at addressing crime, but many of those measures were strongly opposed by Democrats.

The call for this special session does not allow us to truly address crime, and a holistic approach that the people of Louisiana need and deserve.

Very.

Have we seen any indication that these new laws are effective?

Yeah, they passed a lot of legislation.

Some of it didn't even go into effect until August.

So I think it's kind of early to say whether these things had anything to do with it.

I will tell you, a lot of local law enforcement people will say, the work that they've been doing in terms of policing, technology, additional resources, they had a big effect.

But everybody kind of takes credit when the crime rate goes down.

Now, another issue at the forefront of many people's minds is the price of homeowner's insurance after storms in 2020 and 2021.

Many insurers pulled out of Louisiana, sending insurance rates soaring.

That's right.

And in this year's regular legislative session, Governor Landry signed several laws to bring those rates down.

Now, very much after this has been enacted, where are we now?

I think this is another case where the jury is still out.

Again, we passed a lot of legislation on property insurance during the special session and maybe a little bit more during the regular session.

But again, some of those laws, only started to take effect in August.

You know, a lot of what we did was based on what happened in Florida, and it took a while for theirs.

They've seen some some positive changes, but it's taken a year to 18 months for them to begin to see some of those.

So we're probably on the same timeline is then, so probably a little bit more time before we see some of the relief that we hope is coming.

Well, good.

It's good to hear that there is light at the end of the tunnel now.

Also, during the regular session, lawmakers considered the governor's request to hold constitutional convention.

He argued that the document had gotten unwieldy and limits the tools that lawmakers have to balance the state's budget.

The convention was ultimately rejected.

But, Perry, do you think that, this is something that maybe could resurface in 2025?

I think it's possible, but I will tell you, I think because of the recent special session that we had dealing with the tax issue, that was a big part of the impetus behind the constitutional Convention to rewrite a lot of our tax code.

We did that.

And in fact, there's going to be an article on an amendment of articles seven of the Constitution and an entire article on the ballot in March.

And if that passes, that's going to probably accomplish a lot of what people wanted to do in a constitutional convention.

Well, and, you know, we just finished up a tax session, right.

And actually, there was some substantial impactful legislation that came out of there.

What do you think that highlights more of that?

Well, I think the big thing and the one that the governor was pushing, pushing heavily, was to try and make the state more competitive.

We have pretty much low tax burden in our state, but we have high tax rates, and that's because of the way the structure is.

It's kind of complicated.

What we did though was lower rates, on, personal income tax and corporate income tax.

But we paid for it with sales tax.

So our sales tax was going to be going up.

But our income tax rates are going to be going down substantially.

And a lot of the corporate taxes are going to be you know, going down as well in terms of that.

I think the goal is to try and make Louisiana more competitive.

States around us have lower income tax rates than we do.

We want to keep pushing lower.

At least that's kind of what the agenda has been in the state.

So we're seeing that for sure.

The question is, does it achieve the goal that the governor and the legislature wanted, which is one, to bring more business and economic development into the state because of this?

And number two, to bring people back, and keep them here to stay as well.

Thank you very much.

And that was the governor's promise he campaigned on to bring people back to Louisiana.

So that remains to be seen.

Thank you so much for your insight.

Absolutely.

All right.

Well, you can't review the big stories of 2024 without including some of the many highlights in sports.

Now, 2024 has been rough.

A rough year for a lot of Louisiana teams, but we've also seen huge success from individual athletes competing at the 2024 Paris Olympics.

35 years he's been in the newspaper business here in Baton Rouge.

We have been in school together.

It's great to have Scott Rabelais here from The Advocate for outstanding columnist, reporter and bearers.

Good to see you, friend.

Thanks for coming in.

My pleasure.

Thank you.

We'll look back on, on the year that was in sports.

And we start with football, obviously the biggest sport, and the one that gets the most attention.

You know, it's a big year for LSU.

100 years of the stadium and then 60 miles down the road.

They're celebrating 50 years of the Superdome.

Some big milestone for both of those stadiums here.

Oh yeah.

So it's unfortunately the seasons of the two teams had maybe didn't quite you know capture that.

But it was great to look back on all those great memories and you know, the great games a great times.

And then, you know, the Superdome just said as we were talking before we got on, that, this huge renovation to keep it relevant because they're, they're going to be part of the college football Playoff with the Sugar Bowl, is going to host a quarterfinal game on New Year's Day, and then the Super Bowl is returning once again.

So, is it important?

Is it, is it needed to keep, New Orleans in the loop?

Absolutely.

Yeah.

11th time they'll host the Super Bowl in February.

Then, of course, LSU put out the book and all.

As you mentioned, all the memories from Tiger Stadium.

Hopefully the team will have better years next year than they did this year.

But while we're talking football, it was big news this year for the Saints out of the fact that they got rid of Dennis Allen, Mitzi's Eason.

This is not a franchise that is used to making coaching changes mid-season.

That's something that was very rare.

Definitely.

Yeah.

It's, it's not been their M.O.

over the years, but, it, it begs the question, will they stick with with, you know, really, the special teams coach he's is done to, to this point, you know, a decent job as the as the interim coach or will they, look outside?

I'm of the opinion that it's time to kind of blow the whole thing up and rebuild from the ground up, but that has not been the state's M.O., either.

So, so we'll see, because, right now they're just in the mode of just trying to be a division contender, and it's not getting them anywhere close to playing in a Super Bowl, just hosting one.

Absolutely.

No, I agree.

Let's talk about some of the positive things that happened over the calendar year.

And I'll start, here in Baton Rouge on the women's basketball side.

What a year.

Simona Augustus had inducted into the four halls of fame and then gets hired on as an assistant coach for Kim Mulkey and the Lady Tigers.

You just know those practices must be something.

But like myself, you covered it back from the high school days, and we've seen her growing.

And now to see this.

But what a year she had being honored in four different halls, including the Naismith.

Well, it's not often that you have a legend, to a coach.

And you figure when they got to, you know, with Kim Mulkey, they're both in the Naismith Hall of Fame, right?

And, must be something, Victor.

Or go to work every day going past your statue.

Right?

That's right.

That's that's the feedback.

So, but it's great to have someone back.

Obviously, she brings just this huge name and credibility.

She's one of the one of the biggest athletes in the history of the state.

Yeah.

You know, in any sport.

And, and she's trying to get her, coaching career off the ground.

And she decided to to come back.

And Kim Mulkey found a place for her.

And, it's it'll be interesting to see where this partnership goes from here, because she she's learning, and she'll tell you that.

But she can bring so much, so, so much skill and so much insight to these players.

And I so take them off the dribble.

She probably has to have that crossover.

Of course, she was tabbed as maybe the most important recruit and signing for LSU in any sport, at any time.

Of course, the women's basketball team plays in the Mac.

How about the women's gymnastics team?

Jay Clark finally gets some over the top after all those years with Didi Breaux and getting close and getting close, he finally gets them over the top and they win the national championship.

That, of course, is at the beginning of the calendar year or midway through the calendar year.

But what an outstanding performance for them to finally be crowned national champs.

That was an April.

Yeah.

They the door swung open for them.

They had a great team, and they won the SEC championship at the Smoothie King Center in New Orleans in March.

Then in April, they went to Fort Worth, for the national championship.

And Oklahoma, who was the prohibitive favorite to win again?

They bombed out in the semifinal, you know, had a bunch of falls on vault.

So the opportunity was there for LSU, a lot like the women's basketball team the year before in Dallas, the final Four when South Carolina lost and they they came through.

They were trailing.

It was very dramatic.

They trailing by, just a fraction going to the final routine there on beam, which is toughest final.

But yeah, definitely.

And and they need to finish it in the very last one.

Of course, she goes on to the, the Olympics for the Philippines, her mother's home country, and all she did is like a 9.625, and she nails a 9.95.

And as soon as she landed, she knew she'd done it, and they knew she'd done it was it was a wonderful moment.

And like you said, they've come close many times.

And to finally get over the hump, that's the most difficult part is to get the first one.

And they have a great team coming back with Haley Bryant, the NCAA all around champion.

For this year, we have about a minute left.

And let's talk about maybe what was the biggest one.

And it was international.

And you have the good fortune of being there.

And that's the Olympics, of course, the Olympics globally.

But Louisiana was represented very well.

Maybe none better than Mondo Duplantis, who did not compete for the U.S. but of course, you know, was an else for Tiger.

He was recently here in our studio for an interview, but you had a chance to be there.

And what was that like to cover it, but also see the LSU athletes and those from Morgan City and ever represent Louisiana so well?

Oh, yes.

I mean, there was a, the 35 athletes with LSU and or Louisiana ties in the Summer Olympics this year.

And Mondo, of course, was tremendous.

Talk about dramatic.

You know, the very last jump, he's already clinched the gold medal.

Very last jump.

Nothing else is happening in the stadium.

All all the eyes are focused on him and he and he clears it to to break the world record.

And since it is broken do it again.

And you know this thing.

It struck me Victor was watching him.

Is that these guys, people like him.

Like, like Michael Jordan and Tiger Woods.

They're their own competition, right?

Yeah.

He's had a class of one on one with he's competing.

Look, also throughout the year, congratulations to southern women's soccer team.

They made the NCAA tournament for the first time.

Will Wade.

And what he did for McNeese making it to the NCAA tournament.

Plenty of stories at 24.

And I'm sure there'll be plenty more in 25.

And if you want to cover your watch, it, make sure you read Scott's columns in the Africa.

It's always great to see.

Happy New Year to you, you two.

We appreciate appreciate you coming and share our stories.

LPB has been on the air for nearly 50 years, and one member of our team has been here through it all.

Clay Fourier is one of the founding visionaries for everything we've done and everything we continue to do.

That's right.

And on the eve of his retirement, executive producer Linda magid sat down with Clay to reflect on his career and his huge list of contributions to LPB and all of Louisiana.

Hello, I'm Linda midget.

I'm the executive producer for Louisiana, the state run.

Normally I am happily on the other side of the camera, but I'm here today for a special reason because, a very special colleague to speak with.

Clay for clay held my position for many years.

Many, many years.

Yes.

But like all good things, that's about to come to an end.

Things always change.

And you're going to be retiring soon.

So we want to sit down with you and, talk about your time here.

You have a really unique perspective because you've been here almost 50 years, starting in 1972.

So I'd love for you to walk us through what your roles have been over the years.

Well, in 1972, first, fresh out of college, of course, I actually, interview with, what became LPB and such, but there was three people there at that point.

So at that time, then I heard about what was known as Louisiana Hospital Television Network, and I got a job there.

I was a production assistant over there, which means I ran the cameras.

I also developed some of the graphics.

I developed animated titles and, I design sets.

Then I heard about LPB going on the air in early 75.

I interviewed and got the job as the, production designer art director, so to speak, for LPB, and was very instrumental in, designing early logos.

We went through about half a dozen names, designing some of the sets, designing all of the look that, LPB would become later on in time.

But my first love was really production, and what I loved was we had a program called Louisiana State run.

I became the photographer on that one.

I had a friend of mine who lugged around the giant decks that we had.

These were big tape decks, very heavy, and we had two reporter producers.

There was a Beth, George Courtney and, Ron Bloom.

And the fun thing was, you got to really experience the history of Louisiana in the making there, the capital, and then dealing with all of the other stories that we, we, we, we shot and edited.

It was a great time to do that.

From then, I decided not to just stay in photography, but become a director.

I wanted to oversee the productions and eventually was promoted to producer, where I produced a number of programs everything from music programs to cooking shows to, computer animated programs and such.

And then from there, I became the head of the department, like you are now, the executive producer, where I oversaw a great deal of people doing a lot of great stuff over the years.

Well, that's quite a tenure, but.

But that means you were here in 1975.

Yeah.

That is the first year that LPB went on the air.

And you mentioned that there were like three people here that.

So a lot of those people that had been with me at the old network that was being closed down, so to speak, they had a lot of television knowledge.

So they moved over to OPB as well.

And it was really great because here we were, a bunch of young people, given the task of putting a television station on the air and beyond that and television network, I got to say, it was it was an exciting time.

It was an adventurous time.

It was an experimental time, too.

I mean, LPB, of course, is now ingrained in Louisiana 50 year anniversary happens next year.

But you were here at a time when it was all a dream.

Really.

It was.

It was.

What could you imagine and how could you figure out how to get there?

We would do programs and we would come up with shadows of the silver screen with David Madden, which was gathering an old movie, an old movie group here, and running a film and then discussing it afterwards.

Please.

Your eyes were amazing.

As a matter of fact, we decided we would go full out with big productions during our plans for us because we didn't know what we were going to do.

So we would end up going, we're going to have a theme.

So we would have a surface theme, as a matter of fact, where we would we would have tents in the background and clowns above, and we'd have magicians and everything that would come in.

I would have like, oh, a country music festival and stuff like that, with square dancers in big hay piles and everybody had to sit on.

It was a major production, and it was one of the main ways we were able to keep the funds coming in to create the Louisiana program that we wanted to make.

I'd love to know what stands out in your mind as a couple of the series that you're most proud of, how y'all are.

I'm glad for you to see me, I guarantee.

Well, I'm going to say that, first of all, cooking was one of the mainstays of us.

Really?

In 1982, we started the Justin Wilson, cooking show, which of course begat the the huge Cajun food fad that was, really part of part of the nation for quite a long period of time.

And we took somebody who had been kind of known, and we made him basically a national celebrity.

It was also the first program that really, I believe, was distributed nationally on PBS that OPB produced.

Well, and I got to say that at one point we will one of the major distributors of locally produced programing that we're off on to PBS, networks around the country.

So we were able to bring a lot of Louisiana stories to all of these folks that only maybe had a vision of Louisiana from some movies of the 30s or something like that.

A couple of other things was, The Power of Algebra, which was an early computer animated series that I did, teaching algebraic concepts to middle school, children.

We had done some studies and found out that that was where they were lacking.

And from that we were able to get ten episodes out, which at one point was, I think it was the second most popular educational programing on PBS, next to reading Rainbow's LeVar Burton season.

So we won a lot of national awards, a lot of local awards for that one.

That was great.

And then the one other program I've got to mention is Louisiana History.

I was the executive producer, and Beth Beth Courtney was the other executive producer on this program, and we had a wonderful set of producers.

I take a load in and now Gordon Moore, that basically were tasked with the idea of just taking all of Louisiana history from the very beginning, all the way up to the present time, as it was at that point, which was about 2000, and putting that into a multi-part series.

It's a beautiful series.

We did a book at the same time, and it also eventually went national as well.

So we're able to get the story of Louisiana out again to everybody out there.

And that also won a very prestigious award.

It did.

It won the DuPont Columbia Award.

As a matter of fact.

So we're very proud of that one, actually.

Just proud of so many of the programs that have been produced and, and, distributed not only locally but nationally to educate, inform and entertain the people of not only Louisiana, Louisiana, but the rest of the country.

I know from working with you, you can be very serious, but you have a very good sense of humor.

Oh, yeah.

And I would love to know some of the funnier moments that stick out because, I've seen some of the photos.

Oh.

Have you?

It looks like some wild and crazy times happening back here.

So what sticks out in your mind?

You know, you're going to have a sense of humor.

Are you going saying when you think about some of this stuff, fun stuff really just happens?

You know, we did a cooking show once where the cook was oblivious to the fact that he was on fire and had to and had to blow, had to put him out.

He was not a chef Lambo after that one.

That was all on live TV.

That's what you did.

You just kept on going with it.

And live television was a lot about that one.

Yeah.

What's that like 700.

We also had a lot of fun with sci fi Saturday night.

It was basically a take on the old, horror movie hosts of the 60s where you get a bunch of films, and here we got British TV shows like Doctor Who and like seven and Red dwarf, and we created these characters and we had a huge following with Bring in, science fiction groups.

And it became a really popular and very pledge worthy program.

And the fun thing was that Doctor Who had been tried by a lot of PBS stations, they had never had any luck with it.

So I was called upon to go to all these different conferences and teach them how such British science fiction programs could be profitable if they if they had them on their air.

And so it was a really fun time, weirdness included, for the fact that, at one point we decided, because it was really late night, that the giant mutant chicken would have to be kind of like Larry the Lobster, sacrificed if we did not get the funds.

And we had, like, a head and everything.

We had the body and such like that.

And, we just decided, well, we didn't get enough fun at that time.

And so we had one someone swap down in the head, fell like that, and within ten minutes, the phones rang up, even though it was like 1130 at night, parents were calling because all these tiny children at 1130 at night were watching and thought, well, you killed Big Bird.

And we had to immediately go back.

And it said, no, no, no, here's the giant mutant chickens.

Just fine, just fine.

No problems here.

And by the way, put your kids to bed.

What's this about?

It's far too late to have them out watching this stuff.

It's the combination of really knowing that what we were doing was something that was worthwhile, something that really was substantial for the development of children and adults, which was the the education and the the entertaining of Louisianans that kept us going.

And through the, the, the drought times when the budgets for low and through the halcyon days when the budgets were high.

We still continue and we still believed in that.

I stayed here because I grew up in here in Louisiana, actually, I grew up in Baton Rouge.

I remember going to the beaches, when during the summertime and watching.

Wow, what is that?

It was call Nat, not TVs back then, but it was like there was teaching programs on it.

And I grew up watching Mr. Wizard and the Disney shows that talked about space travel and undersea adventures and so like that.

I wanted to do that, but I wanted to do it for Louisiana.

I wanted to do it for this state.

And when the technology came and it was a time I loved working here for Louisianans to continue the mission of entertaining, educating and informing Louisianans.

And we still do it now.

And we still do it all over the country.

Now, my question to you is, as your as you're fully passing the torch to me and to really a whole new generation of, producers who are here, what are your words of advice or wisdom, if you have any, to share about the importance of LP's mission and what we're doing?

The future of LPB in the future of Louisiana are interconnected.

Teaching children is very important, and with the technology that we have now and that LPB has now more than ever, this is the way to go.

We also our history, providers, we we were the people who have basically collected the history of this state on video since we first showed up in 1975.

And anybody can go to our archives online now, and they can look for inaugurations and, gubernatorial, the base, they can look for the artists, they can look for the, the festivals that we've had, the food, all of that, because it is basically the history of our people and our state that we are collecting and preserving here at LPB and I have to tell you, with people like you and in, in positions now and, and I see these photographers now roaming around, I see the, the new producers working on their scripts and everything like that.

I just smile, I smile because I know it's all happening, it's still happening and it will continue to happen because of the people I see that are working there now.

Well, I thank you on behalf of LPB for all of your contributions over the years.

Some have been seen a lot of them are behind the scenes and and other people I don't know.

But thank you.

We will miss you.

Don't be a stranger.

I have a feeling you'll be coming back anyway for for pledge and such.

Oh, yeah.

But we really wish you the best in retirement.

Thank you very much, Linda.

That's our show for this week.

Remember, you can watch anything LPB anytime, wherever you are with our LPB app.

You can catch LPB news and public affairs shows, as well as other Louisiana programs you've come to enjoy over the years.

And please like us on Facebook and Instagram for everyone at Louisiana Public Broadcasting, we want to wish you a Happy New Year.

I'm Karen LeBlanc, and I'm Dorothea Wilson.

Until next time.

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