So far, Republican Gov. Jeff Landry has shown he has what it takes to advance historic and needed fiscal reform for Louisiana government, perhaps even if here and there pops up a disgruntled Republican over it.
A basket of bills Landry championed to remake the state’s fiscal structure has met with almost no resistance during an ongoing special session largely called to deal with the issue. His plan reduces income taxes but retains almost all of a temporary sales tax hike and expanding significantly the number of services subject to this tax while excising credits and exemptions from both, rejiggers state funding mechanisms to lower unfunded accrued liabilities of teacher pension plans and converts that into pay raises for them, forces local governments to accept the few sales tax exemptions left but lets them tax the new added services and optionally allows them to exit collecting subsidization from the state for the inventory tax credit by making them a large one-time payment, and moves certain items out of the Constitution to statute.
Everything made it out of House committees almost unchanged, and several have passed the chamber and head to the Senate. To date, GOP unanimity on these items has been nearly complete, with only Republican state Rep. Joe Stagni against measures as often than not, and on only one, extending the sales tax to some digital purposes, joined by any other Republican. Even bills which featured perhaps the heaviest lift of the session, eliminating the Motion Picture Production tax credit, passed easily.