Toward the end of this year’s regular session, legislators experienced the all-too-familiar frustration of trying to overcome budget deficits while they approved new ways to give declining revenues away through tax rebates. As Rep. John Bel Edwards, D-Amite, put it: “So we’re gonna live within our means, but we continue to give our means away.” That this was a so-called non-fiscal session did not stop them. While the state constitution bars the Legislature from considering “exclusions, exemptions, deductions, credits, refunds” in even-numbered years, it says nothing about “tax rebates,” so that’s what they called them. Lawmakers recognize that many of the existing 442 tax breaks do a lot of good, but they aren’t sure which ones, or whether a fraction of the $6.8 billion total would not be better spent on health care and higher education. So, as they often do when they are not sure what they are doing, they formed a study commission, to examine what they should do differently. The Revenue Study Commission just began its work when its thunder, if you can call it that, was stolen by Gov. Bobby Jindal’s announcement that tax reform would top his agenda for the next legislative session. For both branches to focus so intently on so essential an issue is encouraging, but the prospects for major change emanating from either is not. Even if suitable targets can be found, the first hopes to be dashed are those of lawmakers seeking to recapture major revenue. Read the full column here.
(John Maginnis publishes LaPolitics Weekly, a newsletter on Louisiana politics, at LaPolitics.com.)
