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.
Whether Whittington had to reach deeper into taxpayers’ pockets is questionable. The latest 2023 comprehensive annual financial report for his office showed an improving financial picture. Further, trends suggest this could accelerate in the future, meaning more excess cash generated that could have been used for handing out raises instead of taking more from citizens.
In 2023, the Bossier Parish Sheriff’s Office had a healthy $35.6 million banked in cash, or about two-thirds of what it collected in revenues that year. Total revenues taken in exceeded expenses by over $4.2 million, and adding a couple miscellaneous items boosted all monies kept in various funds by over 10 percent to nearly $40 million.
In large part this happened because of both ad valorem and sales tax collections well above budgeted levels, just under $16 million for property taxes and just over that for sales taxes which together were $3.5 million more than expected. Personnel expenditures, at $36.7 million, were about $2.3 million lower than expected.
Unfortunately, BPSO has no web version available of its general fund budget adopted Jun. 21, 2023 for fiscal year 2024 and the CAFR for that period won’t be available for several more months. But BPSO did post online its FY 2025 budget, which apparently didn’t incorporate something similar to the actual tax increase. Originally, Whittington had conceived of an increase closer to $2 million that should have brought the amount to just over $20 million, but the numbers don’t quite add up as the budget listed $18.36 million.
At the imputed $19.5 million, that represents a hefty boost of nearly 22 percent in property tax revenues in just two years. Sales taxes were down, however, by about $1.5 million, or a little below budgeted FY 2023. The final major sources of revenue, from the state for holding prisoners, was up over $1.5 million over the two years to $9.3 million.
By themselves, revenues seemed sufficient to support a raise without a tax increase. Buttressing this is two trends, both dealing with state policy. First, the state chronically has underfunded pension plans, but in recent years has made strides towards full funding. This has resulted in local agencies that use a state fund, as does the BPSO, having to make extra contributions to it. Yet that excess proportion has been declining and, for the BPSO, by 2022 almost was at the point it didn’t have to pay extra. A change in accounting actuarial assumptions reversed that starting in 2023, but the trend continues favorably that should be close to zero extra contributions by 2028, freeing up money in future years.
Then there’s the criminal justice changes made earlier this year that basically restore the legal environment to that of about seven years ago. This likely will increase the dollars coming in for holding state prisoners above what was budgeted in future years, as numbers of state prisoners held in local jails sagged after standards were relaxed. Of course, there are costs involved, which the reports don’t specify, but clearly more state prisoners pad a sheriff’s bottom line.
However, the FY 2025 budget contains a large increase in personnel costs, going from $36.7 actual in 2023 million to $40.5 million, which can’t reflect the extra pension contribution as that actually will be lower than in FY 2023. That does seem to include the pay raise, contemplated prior to the decision to raise property taxes values of which weren’t then officially available.
But what really stands out is a massive over $11 million increase to nearly $14 million in “capital purchases,” compared to the amount of “capital outlay” in FY 2023 (the CAFR categories and the circulated budget figures use different categories and many fewer for the budget, making one-to-one comparisons difficult). That drives FY 2025 budgeted expenses to nearly $65 million, while revenues were pegged at over $51 million – actually almost $2 million lower than in 2023, to create a substantial deficit.
It's not immediately clear, according to any web information, why capital spending is anticipated several times higher in 2025 than in previous years, but the BPSO carries no debt and would have to use its ample reserves to cover this. And it’s become increasingly obvious that sales tax collections continue to be down across the parish, belying somewhat the narrative that the Bossier economy is humming along.
So, in reality the tax hike is more like a response to the huge planned capital spending. Without that, a pay raise without hiking taxes likely was sustainable, given the trends about extra pension contributions and state prisoners. And taking more from the people still might not have been necessary, given the likely one-time nature of the capital expenses being absorbed by the flush reserves.
In the final analysis, just saying pay raises should be delivered isn’t enough justification to assure the public that raising taxes on it was necessary – even if Whittington might try to soften the blow by not taking the maximum. Unfortunately, he likely won’t be the first to foist this on Bossierites, as it would seem the Port of Caddo Bossier, Bossier Parish, and the Bossier Parish School District, among entities with a parish-wide presence, all contemplate doing this over the next month.
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