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.

LA SNAP changes to help most poor, taxpayers

Louisiana may have whiffed on one kind of food stamp policy, but starting next month as a consolation prize it looks to emulate the rest of the south on another kind that will save taxpayer dollars and stimulate economic growth.

 This spring, state executive branch officials wisely planned to opt out of an expansion of school meals program hawked by the federal government to include cash payments during the summer. Unfortunately, the Legislature blinked and mandated it, costing the state several million dollars to add already to generous Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program benefits for families with children.

But, fortunately, legislators (in practice, Republicans) came through with Act 308. The law, which takes effect at the beginning of next month, disallows the state from seeking exceptions from SNAP waivers in regards to able-bodied adults without dependents (ABAWDs), where the program requires some hours of work, volunteering, or studying in order to draw, depending upon income level for a single individual, as much as about $10 a day for unprepared food.

Lawfare impeding beneficial LA LNG project

Believers in the faith-based, evidence-free theory of catastrophic anthropogenic global warming continue to try to make life worse especially for the poor and threatens national security through sitzkrieg tactics, picking up a judicial ally for an agenda that generally harms Louisianans even more.

It all began several years ago when political, technological, and economic conditions made the time right for America to export liquified natural gas. This started a process that led to construction and operation of LNG terminals that helped to send a lower-cost energy source to places around the world to help particularly people in poorer parts of the world, to assist allies in accessing energy instead of buying from more hostile states, and to provide economic expansion for Americans.

Louisiana ended up a big beneficiary of this, with construction of facilities on the state’s southwestern coast that provided jobs there and upstream where the gas is collected and piped south. In just a few short years now with America becoming the world’s largest LNG exporter, markets continue to favor expansion of this.

BC councilors channel their inner George Wallace

In the name of the greatest people that have ever trod this Council, I draw the line in the dust and toss the gauntlet before the feet of the people, and I say no term limits now, no term limits tomorrow, no term limits forever.

That’s the message that Bossier City Councilors Republicans David Montgomery and Vince Maggio and Democrat Jeff Darby sent when they voted – again – to violate the city’s Charter by failing to permit consideration of a measure to place on the Dec. 7 ballot two term limits measures. This was nothing new, as over and over again they had violated the charter and their oaths of office in the process on the matter of calling such an election several times over the past year or so, as the Charter mandates the Council do so upon certification of a petition to amend the Charter. The petition forwards a pair of propositions that places a retroactive lifetime three-term limit on holding the mayor’s office and city councilor spots.

But something new this time, in emulating Democrat Alabama Gov. George Wallace’s efforts to resist court orders regarding desegregation over six decades ago that featured an inaugural address attacking it and months later briefly physically blocking integration at the University of Alabama, was that Montgomery, Maggio, and Darby deliberately defied a court order issued last week mandating that the Council follow the Charter and pass a resolution permitting the State Bond Commission to move forward. The SBC approves of the items and then sends them to the Secretary of State for ballot inclusion.

Competing Monroe agendas call for compromising

Monrovians can look forward to an awkward dance between independent Mayor Friday Ellis and the Democrat-majority City Council over the next four years, if the current state of their relationship holds.

To say it’s been a rocky beginning isn’t an understatement. Since old hands in elected office but new councilors Democrats Rodney McFarland and Verbon Muhammad have taken office, joining with holdover Democrat Juanita Woods they have shifted the Council into a more combative posture than what Ellis experienced in his initial term in office. That last term, Ellis succeeded in swaying what then also was a Democrat-run council to support him on a number of big-ticket items.

Not so in the opening weeks of this term with an increasing roll call of dustups, where on a number of issues the new members were like Jacks-in-Boxes popping up to oppose whatever the Ellis Administration proposed – bond election, new purchasing rules, appointments, capital outlay spending – sometimes instituting delays, other times attempting to overrule. They constantly have complained that they aren’t consulted with enough and/or southside Monroe, where theirs and Woods’ districts are, doesn’t receive enough attention, especially in the form of dollars. Even when they go along with an administration-backed request, it has been like pulling teeth to get it to happen, as in the case of opening bids on an emergency project in Republican Councilor Doug Harvey’s district that Muhammad held up as an example of Ellis disregarding the southside.

Caddo again mulls destructive minimum wage hike

Economic dunderheads all, Caddo Parish commissioners look to compound a mistake that will set back hopes of parish economic development.

In August, the Commission followed the lead of some Louisiana governments, including Shreveport, that have raised their minimum wages above the state level to pass an ordinance doing the same, in this case $15 an hour which is more than double the state’s. It applies at present only to what the parish pays its employees, to take effect at the start of next year.

Discussion on the matter actually began in February in a committee. Rookie Democrat Commissioner Greg Young spearheaded the move, which he characterized as one that addressed economic and crime concerns, in that by taking more tax dollars and/or reducing services in other areas to meet the increased personnel costs employees below the $15 level brought them closer to a “living wage” and that would reduce poverty and therefore the temptation to commit crime.