While much of the 2026 legislative session was dominated by battles over congressional redistricting and high-profile partisan issues, for the state’s business lobby, a series of measures designed to ramp up workforce training were a rare bipartisan win.
Bills that would restructure the state’s workforce training programs — and redirect more federal money to the state, expand career programs beginning as early as middle school and create programs to connect college students to career opportunities — passed with support from both sides of the aisle.
“Some of the legislation passed this year is going to have implications for our kids and really is going to have tremendous impact on our state for years to come,” said Will Green, president and CEO of the Louisiana Association of Business and Industry.
Business-backed initiatives seeking to reform the state’s highest-in-the-nation workers’ compensation program and to make it harder to tie climate change to fossil fuel activity also were successful.
And a package of generous incentives backed by Gov. Jeff Landry’s administration to attract aerospace companies like SpaceX sailed through the process.
Local economic development groups also notched victories with measures that include funding for infrastructure projects in New Orleans and a potential path forward to clearing blighted properties in Baton Rouge.
But the session wasn’t a total win for the business community. Workers’ comp reform measures only went so far, and efforts to lower the state’s insurance rates by tackling tort reform stalled.
“Not every session delivers every reform the business community needs,” Green said. “We will continue to work on the missed opportunities and press forward.”
Big win on workforce training
The most significant win, business leaders say, was a package of bills that consolidated power and millions of federal workforce training dollars under Louisiana Works, the former Louisiana Workforce Commission, which was restructured during the 2025 legislative session.
Those federal dollars, which totaled $115 million this year, previously flowed to 15 different regional councils charged with devising and overseeing workforce training in their respective geographic areas. A bill approved during the session would effectively funnel the money and control to the state, which advocates say would allow for greater coordination, oversight and efficiency.
Adam Knapp, president and CEO of Leaders for a Better Louisiana, said the move was “a long-overdue restructuring” that will “move the needle on workforce in ways we have not seen in more than a decade.”
Another measure created the funding mechanism for a new workforce training initiative, establishing the Bayou Growth Opportunity Fund, which also would be administered by Louisiana Works. Modeled after a successful program in Michigan, “BayouWorks,” as the local program is called, would award competitive grants to businesses that partner with qualified training providers to build skills and increase productivity.
Lawmaker did not fund the program. But Green said establishing a framework to get more workers up to speed is an important first step.
“The funding will eventually get there,” he said. “It’s too important not to see through.”
Lawmakers also expanded access to workforce financial aid, expanding the Taylor Opportunity Program for Students’ Tech scholarship to include part-time students, streamlining dual enrollment processes and increasing instructional capacity in community and technical colleges for high-demand fields.
Mixed results on workers comp, tort reform
As in the past, business lobbyists pushed bills seeking to lower the duration and cost of workers’ compensation claims. The state’s claims are among the costliest in the U.S. even though Louisiana has some of the nation’s lowest rates of on-the-job injury.
One measure that business groups claimed as a victory requires the Office of Workers’ Compensation to collect and analyze detailed billing, payment, utilization and access to care data in order to determine why some doctors charge so much more than others when treating workers’ comp claims.
Leah Long, state director for the National Federation of Independent Businesses, which lobbies for small businesses, said the measure is an “important first step towards a more modern and accountable workers’ comp system.”
Key tort reform measures failed, however, with lawmakers opting not to advance out of committee a bill that would have established damage caps in civil lawsuits. Green said the measure had been “a reasonable bill, modeled after other states” that LABI will bring up again in the future.
Other bills, including one that would require expert witnesses to face greater scrutiny in jury trials and another to ensure that medical awards are used for legitimate long-term care medical needs, also died in committee.
Differing perspectives
A victory for the business community on the energy front came in the form of a bill that blocks lawsuits against oil and gas companies over the impacts of climate change.
Business lobbyists also successfully fought back bills by environmental groups and local governments that would have made it harder to move forward with carbon capture and sequestration projects. The measures, Green said, would have created, “more regulation and more uncertainty at a time when we’re trying to create more jobs and opportunities.”
As it did when successfully passing incentives two years ago used to secure the Meta artificial intelligence data center in Richland Parish, Louisiana Economic Development asked lawmakers to sign nondisclosure agreements and pass incentives to benefit aerospace companies like SpaceX.
Invest in Louisiana President and CEO Jan Moeller, whose organization advocates for equitable tax and spend policies and is often at odds with the business lobby, said the widespread use of NDAs for incentives is troubling especially because it’s unclear what the state is getting in return for giving away tax dollars.
On other business issues, Moeller said his group applauds many of the workforce training bills.
“In a session that was so deeply polarized, this was an area where bipartisanship reigned,” he said. “I think people of good will on both sides believes we need to train workers for good jobs.”
He lamented, though, that lawmakers did not address wages for low-income workers.
“You can have all the workforce training in the world and you still are going to need custodial workers, in-home care workers, and without a meaningful minimum wage, they are going to continue to struggle financially,” Moeller said.
Local victories
Local economic development groups supported many of the broader statewide initiatives around workforce training and education and say they represent wins for local communities as well as for the state as a whole.
The Greater Baton Rouge Economic Partnership celebrated the passage of a measure establishing a framework for paid internships that provide high school credits connected to business partnerships.
The group also hailed the passage of a program that addresses the shortage of qualified instructors in high-demand industry sectors. It creates a structure in the Louisiana Community and Technical College System by creating a structure to recruit, train and retain teachers capable of providing technical education that aligns with the needs of industry.
A blight redevelopment initiative backed by the partnership also passed this session. The law sets up a vote in November on a constitutional amendment that would allow for property tax exemptions on blighted and derelict properties that have been rehabilitated.
In New Orleans, GNO Inc.’s Michael Hecht said one of the key highlights was the creation of the Louisiana State Infrastructure Bank, which delivered a new financing tool to deliver more infrastructure projects, leverage public and private dollars, and stretch state resources further.
