Seven-hundreths of a mill isn’t a lot, but it may have saved the taxpayers’ mother’s milk to the Biomedical Research Foundation of Northwest Louisiana from both voters and the Caddo Parish Commission. Which ensures nearly two more decades of waste of the people’s money.
Recently, voters in Caddo Parish
took to the polls to decide whether to stamp approval on two property tax
renewals. One was for 1.74 mills mostly for the BRF – actually slightly smaller
than its reauthorization in 1997 and original amount in 1993 – to help fund its
activities in attracting small technology-related startup firms, in providing
venture capital, and in running its small medical operation that consists of
overseeing facilities, medical grants, and a subsidiary with a Positron
Emission Tomography scanner.
But less than two years ago, the
BRF got into a whole bigger business – like a minnow swallowing a whale at a
scale more than 50 times larger – when the state awarded it management
responsibilities over two of its charity hospitals, in Shreveport and Monroe. The
only operator of any state hospitals that had no prior experience doing so (technically
through a subsidiary), it has come under criticism for what state
officials and auditors have described as a troubled transition period, with
monetary disputes spilling into the open and intimations that an original
considered partner with the state, Willis-Knighton Health System, should step in
before the initial contract was up.
Before that agreement came into
force, this
space argued that the massive scaling increase meant the BRF should
withdraw, on its own or forced by voters when the renewal came up in 2017, from
the taxpayer subsidy. Perhaps wary of taxpayers wondering why they should fund
an organization the related limited liability company of which was seeing
hundreds of millions of dollars annually flow through it, and that it was
having its difficulties in running the hospitals, BRF went to the parish and
got it to put the tax renewal on the ballot two years early – before the
negative publicity about its management came out, although after one component
of that, a billing dispute with the state, made the news. Citing disappointments
with the organization, only Commissioners Lyndon Johnson, Stormy Gage-Watts, and Ken Epperson voted against
this.
On the first Saturday in May,
voters narrowly approved the measure – passing possibly because since 1997 0.07
mills of the tax went to criminal justice expenditures in the parish, and
enough voters who otherwise weren’t keen on the idea of shoveling public money
to an organization with an record of costing taxpayers more than the tax benefits
it brought and now was rolling in dough nevertheless thought the parish could
use the money. But that didn’t settle matters.
Immediately after the election, led
by the initial opponents to the renewal, the Commission debated whether to even
collect the millage. Little known is that while local governments get empowered
by tax votes to collect property taxes up to a designated level, they must authorize
doing so on an annual basis, and they discussed whether to remove that
authorization for the BRF from the ordinance. However, most of the majority that
had been for the renewal said essentially that voters had spoken and they
should respect that, and the millage in question was retained.
Yet the opponents weren’t done.
They also had introduced during the panel’s work session, where the main
discussion occurred on authorizing the millages, an ordinance
to yank the parish’s allocation for $500,000 to an economic development program
begun in 2014 sponsored by the BRF, arguing that most of it was spent on
administrative costs rather than on business startups as intended. But the
majority said they didn’t restrict its use for economic development and said
any defunding was premature, and prevented another an effort to defund public
dollars to the BRF.
So the gravy train for the BRF rolls
on, even as analysis shows tax outlays to it are roughly three times the size
of tax revenues reasonably attributable to its presence. Born in the era in
Louisiana that embraced the peculiar notion that government venture capitalism
could substitute for private sector-driven economic growth, this tax has
diverted money from better uses and/or from being kept in the people’s pocket
for over two decades, which would have done more to create an environment encouraging
that growth than by throwing this money at one scheme. Unfortunately, too many Caddo
voters and too many of their commissioners can’t seem to get this.
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