For the second year in a row, Louisiana voters will face a long list of constitutional amendments at the polls this fall. The Bureau of Governmental Research (BGR) released its positions today on the amendments that will appear on the October 23 ballot. "The amendments run the gamut from creating a multi-billion dollar trust fund to giving away used asphalt," according to Victor J. Franckiewicz, Jr., BGR’s President and CEO. "The voters will face amendments whose implications are buried in legal jargon. This is particularly true for proposed amendment No. 2, which would create a trust fund with Louisiana’s share of the nationwide tobacco lawsuit settlement. The amendment is complex, confusing, and wordy. It is as long as all of the amendments to the United States Constitution combined. However, despite the additional verbal clutter, the benefits of the amendment outweigh this drawback."

BGR has taken positions on eight of the ten amendments on the October 23 ballot, as summarized below:

BGR is a private, nonpartisan, nonprofit, citizen-supported research organization dedicated to encouraging informed public policy-making and the effective use of public resources in the New Orleans metropolitan area.