Treasury Leads Efforts To Streamline Investment Statutes
                                                                                      State Treasurer Says Bill Remains Fiscally Neutral

BATON ROUGE, LA – State Treasurer John Kennedy’s proposal to standardize and update the State investment statutes through House Bill 907 passed successfully out of the Senate Tuesday night. The bill passed through the House last month, and now moves to the Governor for her signature as the final step in the enactment process.

“These revisions will modernize the investment statutes in a way that reflects the many changes in government accounting standards, the securities markets and securities rules and regulations since the statutes were originally drafted,” said Treasurer Kennedy. “The bill brings the statutes up to date to reflect current investment practices and incorporates investments that were allowed through other venues, such as Attorney General’s opinions.”

The original statutes were drafted over four decades and amended on a piecemeal basis through the years. The General Fund statutes were first written in the 1970s, the LEQTF statutes in the 1980s, the Millennium Trust statutes in the 1990s and the Medicaid Trust statutes in 2000. As a result, the laws often did not describe the same investments in the same manner.

Prior to filing the bill, State Treasury staff, led by State Chief Investment Officer John Broussard, discussed the legislation with the House Staff, the Senate Staff, the Division of Administration, the Louisiana Board of Secondary and Elementary Education (BESE), the Board of Regents, the Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals (DHH), and the Louisiana Nursing Home Administration and received no objections. Copies of the proposal were also supplied to the Legislative Fiscal Office and the Legislative Auditor.

“The revisions we suggested will neither increase nor decrease the investment power of the State,” said Treasurer Kennedy. “However, it’s very important to keep the language of the various statutes consistent with one another and as current as possible.”



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