There are more than 1300 bills filed, and that fact makes it difficult to do a creditable job summarizing the legislative session at Louisiana’s Capitol that began Monday and will last until early June. But we can offer a few things worth paying attention to as the session grinds into action in its first week.

This would normally be a big session for “statement” bills – the kinds of things their authors will hold out to constituents as evidence they’re innovative leaders and statesmen who need to be re-elected next year or even given a promotion. But so far, we haven’t seen a ton of really groundbreaking stuff – perhaps because so many of the bigger, contentious issues have been chewed over the past two years.

Not that some of those have been settled fully. Louisiana has taken a lot of “steps in the right direction” on various issues without truly resolving some of the bigger issues of governance that hold us back from the kind of explosive growth neighbors like Texas, Florida and Tennessee have managed.

The problem with “steps in the right direction” is that once those are taken, sentiment at the Capitol becomes “we did that last year” when more steps are proposed.

We’ll see, as this session plays out, whether inertia wins the day or if there are real breakouts on key legislation. And we’ll be spending the next few days going through some of the bills that will be cycling through the legislative process.

But in this post, we’ll talk about three of the dumbest bills we’ve seen. There’s a good chance all of these get killed in committee. Hopefully they will.

First, the Senate’s Labor Committee will almost certainly kill SB 230 by Baton Rouge Democrat Regina Barrow. It’s a proposed constitutional amendment which would establish a “living wage” requirement – meaning they’d put a $10.25 an hour minimum wage into the state constitution.

This garbage is nonstop from Louisiana’s Democrats, it’s a waste of time because it’ll never pass and minimum wage increases do more harm than good. But naturally, it got Barrow a chunk of media attention earlier this week for “fighting for the people.”

Nobody pays workers less than $10.25 per hour unless they have absolutely no skills or they’re utterly unreliable. That’s another way to say if you’re making less than that on your job they’re actually doing you a favor letting you work there, because you probably make more work for others than you actually do.

If you’re valuable at all on your job, in this environment they’ll pay you a lot more than minimum wage. That’s how hard-up employers are to find reliable lower-level employees. Ask any small business owner and they’ll tell you how brutal it is to find good people.

Another bill almost certain to die is Rep. Dixon McMakin’s HB 100, which would make speeding over 30 miles an hour over the speed limit a felony. McMakin does have some good bills this session – he’s bringing the one calling for a constitutional convention, which is a very worthy tilt at the windmills of the Capitol grounds – but this isn’t one of them.

We don’t have a problem with the severity of speeding tickets given out in this state. Local governments make more than enough money off speed traps as is.

McMakin would set it up so that unsuspecting drivers who roll through places like Baskin or Washington or Krotz Springs, where the speed limit drops 30 mph on a dime, become felons at a speed trap.

No thanks. Make this trash go away, House Administration of Criminal Justice Committee.

Another bill which needs a fast death is HB 573 by “Republican” Stephanie Hilferty of New Orleans. Hilferty, who’s best political pals with the Crescent City Democrat cabal fronted by mayor Helena Moreno and City Council president J.P. Morrell, wants to give the New Orleans City Council the power to adopt ordinances that supersede certain state laws governing the Sewerage and Water Board in New Orleans.

This after the SWB has overseen a terror campaign of water main breaks and boil water advisories across the city, while it’s proven incapable of giving its customers accurate water bills.

There is little doubt that the governing structure of New Orleans’ embarrassingly awful water authority needs changing. But giving the City Council, which is a repository of stupid communists who put the city more or less into municipal bankruptcy that the State Bond Commission has now put state taxpayers on the hook for bailing out (I’m oversimplifying the situation, but not all that much), the power to do for the SWB what it did for electric utility regulation is absolutely the wrong answer.

This is a power play by Helena Moreno and she got her little Republican friend from Lakeview to bring the bill giving her independence from the state. It absolutely will not end well and the legislature needs to say no.