Though lawmakers said when they reconvened earlier this month they would only take up budgetary matters, among the bills making their way to final passage in this final week of the regular session is a measure to establish a transition district for the prospective city of St. George.
SB423 by Sen. Mack “Bodi” White, R-Central, would create a mechanism by which the new city—should it survive a court challenge and become officially incorporated—could collect the 2% parish sales tax generated within its boundaries to pay for city services.
A fiscal note attached to the bill estimates the sales taxes would generate some $43 million in 2021 for the new city, though that figure was calculated before the coronavirus crisis blew a hole in parishwide sales tax collections.
“If you don’t plan ahead of time then you’re behind when you get done,” says Andrew Murrell, a spokesman for St. George, explaining why it is important to pass the measure sooner rather than later. “This bill is really simple: It provides a framework for moving forward for the parish and city of St. George. It gives us a mechanism for collecting taxes.”
But Mayor Sharon Weston Broome’s attorney Mary Olive Pierson—who filed the lawsuit and says a decision in the case is months away if not longer—testified against the bill in a Senate committee last week, saying creating the district is premature.
“They claim that if they don’t have a transition bill and they win the lawsuit they’re stuck and cannot move forward,” Pierson says. “They’re not. If they win the case, they can tell the judge how much time they think is reasonable and establish their district then.”
A similar bill was approved during the 2019 session but was later vetoed by Gov. John Bel Edwards, who said at the time it was “unnecessary” since the election on incorporating St. George had not yet been held.
The governor also took issue, at the time, with last-minute amendments to the bill that would have limited St. George’s responsibility for liabilities and other bond indebtedness, should the incorporation win voter approval.
Since then, however, voters have approved incorporation and Edwards, a Democrat, is having to strategically pick his battles with a Legislature that is even more conservative and likely to support St. George than it was in 2019.
The bill currently before the Legislature does not contain language from the 2019 legislation that would preclude St. George from sharing in the cost of certain buildings that serve the entire parish but are outside their boundaries—like the parish public safety complex on the former Woman’s Hospital complex on Airline Highway.
The bill would, however, potentially exclude St. George from having to share in the cost of other projects outside its boundaries—like a $10 million bond to match parishwide drainage improvements—that Pierson says would benefit residents of the prospective city.
“This is an improvement outside of their area but it will benefit them because it fixes the outfall in their area,” she says. “The improvement is not in their area but the benefit goes through their area.”
Murrell disputes Pierson’s interpretation of the legislation and says cost sharing of the drainage project and other issues would be decided through a cooperative endeavor agreement between St. George and Mayor Sharon Weston Broome’s administration.
The bill, which sailed through the full Senate last week, is making its way through the House.
