Metro Councilman John Delgado is asking the East Baton Rouge Parish Attorney’s Office to study the types of financial incentives available to lure a hospital to north Baton Rouge to fill the void left by the closures of Earl K. Long and Baton Rouge General’s Mid City emergency room.
Delgado says the property tax abatements available in his proposed Economic Opportunity Zone would be useless in this case because hospitals do not pay property taxes.
So what else is available? Well, that’s what Delgado, who announced in January that he is running for mayor, wants to know.
“As a lawyer, I typically know the answer to the question before I ask, but this time I don’t,” he says.
Delgado wants to see if any federal or state grant money is available or if a tax increment financing district would apply to a hospital. He also suggested using the extra millions the city-parish pays annually for mental health and medical care for East Baton Rouge Parish Prison inmates since Earl K. Long’s closure to subsidize a north Baton Rouge hospital.
Earl K. Long closed in spring 2013, and Baton Rouge General shuttered the emergency room at its Mid City campus last March. Community care and urgent care clinics have begun sprouting up to try to fill the healthcare void those areas.
Delgado says he began pondering the issue while recently discussing the proposed Baton Rouge Health District. The Metro Council will vote on Feb. 17 whether to amend the Urban Design and Neighborhoods Element of the city-parish Comprehensive Plan to adopt the master plan for the district.
Delgado says he fully supports the district, but it raises the question of what can be done to alleviate the need for a hospital in north Baton Rouge and what the council can do to address the need.
—Ryan Broussard
