With roughly a week to go until the regular session can be adjourned, lawmakers are tying up loose ends.
The state operating budget has been sent to the governor and there are enough tax bills in play for conservatives to eventually claim that reforms were passed. The House Education Committee chairman has likewise been removed over his controversial remarks regarding slavery, as requested by the Black Caucus, capping off a long-running political drama at the Capitol.
But lawmakers are also creating new, last-minute issues, like what to do with the temporary .45% state sales tax expiring in 2025.
As initially introduced, HB514 by Speaker pro tem Tanner Magee, R-Houma, would have applied the full 4.45% state sales tax to marijuana flower, which is expected to be added to Louisiana’s medicinal program this year. When the Senate passed the bill last week, however, it included an amendment from Sen. Rick Ward, R-Maringouin, that would phase out the state sales tax on business utilities by 2031 and make permanent the temporary .45 percent to be used on roads and bridges. (It’s worth noting here that the Ward amendment was supported by Senate President Page Cortez, R-Lafayette.)
Recent legislative history has taught us two things. First, if lawmakers need money in a quick and dirty way, the state sales tax structure will always be a target. Second, if lawmakers can wait on making a decision, they will wait. That’s all to say the Legislature is flush with cash right now, and lawmakers don’t have to make a final decision on the temporary sales tax structure for another three or four years.
As for Magee, he said Friday that he hadn’t had enough time to review the Ward amendment carefully but will possibly decide on a stance over the weekend. “I’m keeping an open mind about it,” Magee said.
Opponents, meanwhile, are ready for a fight. James Lee, the state director of Americans for Prosperity, said his organization has already launched a “full-scale accountability effort on lawmakers who vote for it, with mail, digital ads and phone calls into their districts.” The sample mailers provided for this column claims supporting lawmakers “broke his/her promise not to raise taxes” by $400 million.
“Tacking a permanent extension of the ‘temporary’ sales tax onto HB514 is government at its worst,” Lee says. “Louisiana lawmakers wonder why Louisiana voters don’t trust them—what we saw this week is exactly why.”
A couple of lawmakers made a hard push this session to increase the gas tax and to pass other measures related to transportation funding, but they couldn’t find momentum.
AFP may get a little help from across the aisle in opposing the Ward amendment. The left-leaning Louisiana Budget Project has expressed concern as well, noting that the “the gas tax hasn’t been raised in more than 30 years, but the Senate voted to shift $500 million per year that supports health care, education and other services into transportation projects, while also reducing the sales taxes paid by large industrial corporations.”
LBP Executive Director Jan Moller added, “I don’t question the motives, and those guys on the west side need a bridge, so this is not a personal criticism of Sen. Ward, but this is terrible policy and creates investments that are badly needed on the backs of poor people.”
Lawmakers redirected the bill to the Senate Finance Committee for further debate and, if passed there, will return to the Senate for another floor vote. From there, the proposal moves back to the House, where representatives have been hesitant to take any positions on the temporary sales tax structure, perhaps because the sales tax matter is a last-minute issue in a session that’s quickly coming to a close.
Jeremy Alford publishes LaPolitics Weekly, a newsletter on Louisiana politics, at LaPolitics.com. Follow him on Twitter, or on Facebook. He can be reached at JJA@LaPolitics.com.
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