If he reaches the Louisiana governor’s mansion, Republican businessman Eddie Rispone wants to rewrite the state constitution, drafting a new document to outline citizen protections, government financing and the parameters of agencies’ power and authority.
Rispone promises such a rewrite will create a “sea change” making Louisiana more competitive with other states, mentioning the idea in nearly every stump speech and debate appearance. He talks of overhauling provisions on taxes, revenue, state worker pensions, local government and education.
“I would not be running if we weren’t going to have a constitutional convention to change the structure that we have here,” Rispone, founder of an industrial engineering and construction firm, said at a Republican forum in September.
His opponent in the Nov. 16 runoff, Democratic incumbent John Bel Edwards, calls Rispone’s idea dangerous.
Rispone won’t get into details of what he wants to strike from the constitution. But while the GOP contender is scant with specifics, his allies in the business community and at the conservative think tank Pelican Institute for Public Policy have sought a constitutional convention and offered ideas, providing clues of what Rispone might want to accomplish.
Those changes could strike at entrenched political interests, long-time Louisiana traditions and significant voting groups. Rispone’s allies have suggested:
- Eliminating the statewide property tax exemption for homeowners, known as the homestead exemption, letting parishes decide if they’ll maintain an exemption and its size.
- Ending a constitutional requirement that the state give nearly 12,000 municipal law enforcement and firefighters $500 per month in a salary supplement beyond their local pay.
- Lowering state tax rates in exchange for eliminating many tax exemptions. Barring parishes from charging businesses a local property tax on their inventory.
- Removing constitutional protections for certain funds, making them vulnerable to budget cuts. Among protected areas are the K-12 public school financing formula, dollars for coastal restoration and gas tax money earmarked for transportation projects.
- Resetting Louisiana’s spending caps, to restrict growth in spending.
- Restructuring public college governance.
- Making pension systems less lucrative for state workers and teachers.
Such sweeping changes could run into opposition from Louisiana’s school boards, municipal officials, police juries, sheriffs, district attorneys and superintendents—which might explain why Rispone refuses to detail ideas for a convention ahead of the election. Read the full analysis from the Associated Press.
