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Voters to Consider How Louisiana Manages Money

Robert Travis Scott
Public Affairs Research Council of Louisiana

As you may have heard, we have an election coming up this month. Aside from voting on a new governor, Louisiana voters will be asked to weigh in on four proposed constitutional amendments. To help voters better understand these amendments, the Public Affairs Research Council of Louisiana puts out a guide every year. It just came out last week. PAR President Robert Travis Scott helps explain the story behind each amendment.

Robert Travis Scott: Only four on the ballot this year.

Ann Marie Awad: I know, it's  not as action-packed as last year.

RTS: 14 last year.

AA: I know. So I guess let's start from the top, amendment number one.

RTS: Really, the story behind this is Senator Robert Adley from Northwest Louisiana really saw a need for more transportation funding, so he wanted to create a new fund and sort of use money from the "rainy day fund" that the state had - it's called the Budget Stabilization Fund. He saw a lot of money sitting in that rainy day fund that wasn't being utilized and thought 'well in the future maybe we can use some of that money for transportation.'

AA: And amendment number two would allow the state treasurer the option of investing in the state infrastructure bank, another infrastructure amendment.

RTS: [Rep.] Karen St. Germian has seen the need for an infrastructure bank. What this amendment would do - it would allow one way to capitalize that bank. It would allow the state treasurer, in all his very is various investments that he does for the state, to invest our public money and try to get a return on turn it. Those monies that we're not immediately using or that are in various trust funds. It would allow allow him to make this one of his investment vehicles, it would be a revolving loan program that would loan money to local governments to do highway projects and local road projects.

AA: Okay, and amendment three would provide new guidelines for legislation in a fiscal session.

RTS: Yeah, the story behind this is  Rep. Julie Stokes from the Metairie area,  she wanted to bring a number of tax-related bills in the the latest fiscal session. The state has a legislative session every Spring, and on even-numbered years it's called a general session, and on odd-numbers years it's called a fiscal session. Well, the two have looked more and more alike over time, but there's still some restrictions in a fiscal session. It's supposed to mainly be about fiscal matters and taxes. Well, she wanted to bring some bills that deal with tax collection, tax administration - issues around taxes that weren't necessarily tax increases, but they were saying 'well they're not really allowed as a fiscal bill, they're a general bill.' So she was limited in how many she could bring, and she wanted to change the Constitution to loosen things up.

AA: Okay - and the final one - amendment four would allow local governments to tax property within their jurisdictions that is owned by local or state governments outside of Louisiana. This one sounds a little confusing.

RTS: Well the story behind this one is Rep. (Charles) Bubba Chaney - he helps represent West Carroll Parish in the Legislature - and his Parish has a facility there, a private facility, that stores gas for a utility in Memphis, Tenn. So the parish said 'well that's regular property inventory that we would we would tax for anybody else for property taxes, so we'll just go ahead and tax this one too,' and then Memphis all utilities said 'well wait.' So it went to court and the court said 'hey yeah we're going to exempt the Memphis utility from having to pay property taxes in West Carroll Parish.' So they said 'well, we're going to have to change the Constitution to make sure it's clear that we can collect property tax on that. The number of times this is going to come up is probably extremely rare.

AA: Robert, thank you so much for helping clear this up

RTS: Well always glad to help and we have the guide online please go to parlouisiana.org and take a look.