The Blueprint for Reform

Blueprint Louisiana is a citizen-driven effort to identify and implement essential changes to fundamentally improve Louisiana. This nonpartisan effort is led and supported by community and business leaders from across the state.

Blueprint Louisiana is guided by these simple, but powerful, principles:

Maintain a process of the highest integrity. Focus on what is best for the state. Don’t avoid the tough stuff. No hidden agendas.

Be a catalyst for civic engagement. Change happens when you build a decisive level of public support that is visible and clear.

Establish excellence as the target. Big problems require bold and daring solutions. Small steps are not enough. We can be the best.

Recognize government as part of the solution. Our elected leaders are our partners. They need our support to make the hard decisions that real progress requires.

Focus on a few vital issues. Reform efforts are most successful when resources are focused on a few breakthrough improvements.

This last principle, focusing on a vital few, is most challenging. Louisiana, like many states, has a long list of problems and critical needs. As a result, the Blueprint Agenda does not address a number of ongoing efforts that are central to the future of this state, including:

• Our New Comprehensive Master Plan for a Sustainable Coast that is focused on the grave need for hurricane protection and coastal restoration.
• Louisiana’s New Uniform Building Code and Other Smart Growth Strategies to build Louisiana better, safer and stronger.
• A New Master Plan for Higher Education that is being developed to address our higher education funding and delivery.
• Louisiana’s Top-Rated School Accountability System focused on measuring student achievement and improving school performance.

These efforts, too, are vital to our future, and they merit the full support of Louisiana’s citizens and elected leaders. Blueprint’s agenda will complement these efforts. It takes the hands, hearts and minds of many to move Louisiana forward. Together, we can create the state we deserve.