Salutary panel recommendations need implementing

An underappreciated reform agenda sought by Republican Gov. Jeff Landry continues to bear fruit reorganizing the way that Louisiana makes policy regarding it energy and natural resources.

Last week, a panel established by Landry intended to review the state’s natural resource management issued its preliminary report. It drew the conclusion that this function suffered both from compartmentalization and incoordination, and recommended establishment of a steering commission that would provide overall policy leadership over at present disparate agencies such as the Departments of Energy and Natural Resources and Transportation and Development and the Coastal Protection and Restoration Agency. This Commission would have as members the secretary of DENR; his deputy that heads the new Office of Land and Water that is to manage all of the state’s energy and state-owned resources, ostensibly another DENR employee representing both its new Natural Resources Trust Authority – designed to provide a modernized financial security system for energy, and natural resources-related projects – and planning; ostensibly someone sitting on the CPRA Board or Authority to represent coastal interests; and a commissioner dedicated to a broad portfolio of planning for energy, overseeing infrastructure as it relates to resource management, and coordinating outside grant and other funding opportunities.

Rules to follow for successful LA fiscal reform

As it appears Republican Gov. Jeff Landry is gearing up to call a special session of the Louisiana Legislature later this year to tackle fiscal reform, he needs to draw from lessons of the past to ensure its success.

This perennial topic has become more urgent with plans to allow tax increases under his predecessor to fade away at the end of the current fiscal year. Ideally, reform puts the state in the posture that increased efficiency/decreased distortion in its taxing and spending structure prompts greater economic growth that causes higher tax revenues without raising marginal rates and targets better expenditures towards genuine needs.

Most important and basic, reform must undertake goals realistic to the political resources at hand. This doomed reform efforts in the Republican former Gov. Buddy Roemer era, where he aimed too high and missed.

Bossier tax hike looms funding anti-family agenda

Bossier Parish property owner tax hikes were led off by Republican Sheriff Julian Whittington, and waiting in the wings are Bossier Parish and the Port of Caddo-Bossier. But most consequentially of all, now stepping to the plate later this week is the Bossier Parish School District, ready to fuel an anti-family agenda by taking more from families.

Quadrennial property tax reassessments occur this year, and according to the Louisiana Constitution for continuous owners of unimproved property through the previous assessment the taxes derived from the aggregate value of their property parish-wide by default cannot change, although for some individuals their property values may rise and for others it may fall. This means the millage rates levied must change, going lower if in the aggregate values for these owners rose and going higher if these fell. (This doesn’t apply to new owners from the last assessment or if improvements were made to the property.)

However, a taxing entity may choose to “roll forward” millage rates to maintain their present level by a two-thirds or better vote for a plenary governing authority, increasing taxes on every property owner except those whose assessments for whatever reason in percentage terms decreased more than the percentage increase possible in the rate when rolled forward. Legally, an entity must hold a hearing prior to a meeting to do that, and the Bossier Parish School Board has scheduled that for Sep. 19.

Scrap over new Monroe bid law counterproductive

Picking a needless fight over a salutary public bid law isn’t something on which the Monroe City Council should waste its time.

Earlier this month, the Council put up for consideration essentially a repeal of Ordinance 12,225 enacted only three months ago. This changed the city public works contracting process by raising the dollar amount for Council approval of these to $250,000 and for associated materials and supplies to $60,000, in line with Louisiana’s Public Bid Law.

Less than a month later, two new Democrats joined the Council, with one replacing a defeated incumbent who had voted with the Council’s two Republicans to pass the ordinance favored by independent Mayor Friday Ellis. Both with the holdover Democrat last month passed an ordinance to reverse the ordinance, but Ellis vetoed that and with the two Republicans could sustain that.

Bossier sheriff strikes first with tax hike

Republican Bossier Parish Sheriff Julian Whittington may have been trying to be clever in splitting the baby on half, but his recently announced tax increase isn’t explained adequately enough to justify it, if it is justifiable at all.

Whittington last week kicked off what might become an orgy of tax increases in the aggregate on Bossier Parish property owners. This is the quadrennial reassessment of property values in Louisiana, where for properties held throughout the period by the same owner the Constitution sets as a default for the collective of these owners that the amount of tax paid in the aggregate be the same as it was four years earlier. That means the maximum millages that may be levied by taxing entities are changed to match, in most instances reduced to offset increased property values. To set a different level between this and the existing maximum millage, the entity must hold a public hearing prior to announcing that decision.

Thus, Whittington did – as an elected executive, he makes the call solo – where he announced that instead of allowing the automatic roll back from 14.9 mills to 12.7, he would roll it forward to 13.75, raising this year an estimated $1.5 million more. He justified this by saying existing full-time deputies could expect an across-the-board $2,500 hike in pay while new deputies would see their starting annual salary go from $42,600 to $44,100, or fifth to third among local agencies. This means, unless the value of an existing property declined more than about 7 percent, Bossier property owners will pay more in taxes to fund Whittington’s office starting this year.