As the state awaits the release of Gov. Bobby Jindal’s grand tax swap plan, his press office is in campaign mode, responding rapidly to any discouraging words, particularly those spread in the media. Deputy communications director Michael Reed, in fact, was hard at work Sunday morning ferreting out perceived skepticism and innuendo in the daily prints regarding the tax plan and the state’s economic performance. Two back-to-back email messages in my inbox entitled “Setting the Record Straight” were not duplicates, but rather separate records in need of straightening. The first email detected “a skeptical view” in an Advocate story toward the Tax Foundation’s state business climate rankings, which the governor seeks for Louisiana to boost by eliminating its personal and corporate income taxes. Thus, the press officer cited an array of other statistics from other sources to underscore how Louisiana would benefit from repealing its income taxes. The second email found fault with a Gannett News column that stated while Louisiana has “supposedly” created thousands of jobs, some “wonder where they are.” To set that record straight, Deputy Reed listed a half-dozen facts attesting to Louisiana’s lowest unemployment rate in the South, as well as its above-average growth in jobs, population, net in-migration and personal income. Those two straightened records, set side by side, though impressive, do raise the question: If the Louisiana economy is doing so swimmingly under Gov. Jindal, why, instead of tweaking what already is working, are we contemplating radical surgery on state tax policy? Can the tax system be so bad for an economy that the facts show to be humming? Read the full column here.
(John Maginnis publishes LaPolitics Weekly, a newsletter on Louisiana politics, at LaPolitics.com.)
