HB
238 by state Rep. Patrick Williams
would change the way the Telecommunications Fund for the Deaf gets funded. Instead
of the current 5 cent tax per local line per month, a 2 cent charge would hit
for all lines except those non-telephonic and prepaid. This would increase the
amount of money coming in by about $1
million a year. Williams claims the change is needed because the number of
landlines continues to fall.
But Gov. Bobby
Jindal objects to the bill because it is a tax increase, and Jindal has
said consistently he will not support any measure that does so or any set of
them that raises taxes in aggregate. Williams, nor any of his many co-sponsors,
which comprise a majority of the House members of the Legislative
Black Caucus, several other white Democrats, and a few Republicans, have
addressed why an increase is needed, as opposed to lowering the proposed rate to
keep the alleged funds erosion at bay.
For his part, Jindal appears to agree for needing more funding by
stating he would look to find elsewhere in the budget the extra $1 million, and
a representative of his office has stated in public meetings that more money is
needed. To this point this offer seems to have gotten a cool reception from
Williams, seemingly set on picking up extra revenues and denying the obvious
fact that it does increase taxes on many individuals.
Unfortunately, the evolving debate ignores a salient point: the fund in
question is awash in money. For fiscal year 2012 completed last June the subsequent
supplemental schedule from the state’s Comprehensive Annual Financial
Report for FY 2012 indicates the fund held a balance of $3,110,000, down over
$1 million from the previous year, but reporting that as committed. Whether
that has gone entirely to finance assistive technology for individual Louisiana
residents is another matter. For example, in FY 2012 over $2.7 million of the
fund was budgeted
towards financing activities of the office of the Secretary of Health and
Hospitals; for this upcoming year, the figure is budgeted
at over $1.9 million. The money in the fund may be “committed,” but the
question is how much of that commitment actually goes to devices and how much
to funding current operations. Past supplemental report numbers of fund inflows
and outflows suggest a pattern where more goes to the latter than the former.
Yet there’s a larger question here, and that is whether a dedication of
this sort is the optimal policy approach for this issue. If in fact it is
generating more money each year than can be used for purchase of assistive
devices to be loaned out to citizens, then the bill addresses a non-existent problem.
Jindal’s response then constitutes only a half-measure; by untying the additional
money from a dedication, this creates more flexibility to fund at an
appropriate level, but it still does not address whether the original, current
funding mechanism provides too much money for the intended use of that money.
For good policy-making purposes, Williams and/or Jindal’s offices need
to use historical figures on the expenditures for the loaned units, and then
build a proposal around that it. If they’re lower than the typical annual
revenue from the tax, the bill still can spread the taxation around but at a
necessarily lower rate than is being proposed. Alternatively, the tax could be
abolished and money come out of the general fund annually to fund these, if the
historical data show fairly predictable expenditure demands.
Meanwhile, beginning today the self-styled “fiscal hawks” of the
Legislature witness some of their proposed
legislation up for discussion in committee. Much,
but not all of their package, is good, yet they do not address the
fundamental problem as explained above: correcting a fiscal structure that
misallocates money in a way not amenable to proper prioritization. Instead,
they regularly have validated, and continue to do so with some of this
legislation, the existing system by proposing it become more inviolate, by
preventing corrective mechanisms designed to reallocate on the basis of priority
– although there are some signs they finally are beginning
to understand it is the disease, not symptoms, they need to address.
1 comment:
Is there any way we could create a humanity test to eliminate such petty and small people as this man from our public payroll.
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