House rejects tax bump for roads

BATON ROUGE – Lawmakers in the House refused a 1-cent sales-tax hike Thursday that would help pay for a $12 billion backlog of needed improvements to Louisiana’s crumbling roads and bridges.

Shortly after the proposal was shot down, the measure’s sponsor decided not to take up a separate road construction proposal that would raise the state gasoline tax by 10 cents.

While Rep. Karen St. Germain could continue to push her bills, chance of passage seems like a long-shot with only two weeks remaining in the legislative session and tax hikes requiring a hefty two-thirds vote for passage.

St. Germain, D-Pierre Part, said the state has neglected its transportation needs for too long: “We’ve kicked the can down the road so long that we’re still digging it out of a pothole.”

The House voted 52-42 for the sales-tax hike — far short of the 70 votes it required to pass.

Bill supporters say neighboring Texas has moved forward on many large-scale construction plans, pouring billions into road improvements. That makes it more difficult for Louisiana to compete for economic development projects, they say.

“This helps the quality of everybody’s life,” said St. Germain, who chairs the House Transportation Committee. “When you’re ten minutes away, it shouldn’t take you 45 minutes to get there.”

The proposals would have raised an estimated $1 billion in the next budget year and $5.7 billion over five years, according to financial analyses of the bills.

St. Germain, who is term-limited, has long sought a way to pay for infrastructure improvements. But even though both bills made it to the House floor, final passage was seen as unlikely in a Legislature that has been reticent to raise new taxes. Additionally, Gov. Bobby Jindal doesn’t support a tax increase without a corresponding cut in the same amount.

With local sales tax rates included, Louisiana already has one of the highest combined average sales tax rates in the nation. St. Germain’s bill would have bumped it to the highest, according to data from the Tax Foundation.

The proposal would earmark much of the sales tax money to a list of specific highway and bridge projects considered major economic development drivers in regions around the state. A slice of the money also would be placed in an infrastructure bank for local road projects.

The gas tax increase would be the first such increase since 1984. It would bump up Louisiana’s gasoline tax to 30 cents per gallon from 20 cents per gallon.

Both tax hikes would run for 10 years.

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Online:

House Bills 777 and 778 can be found at www.legis.la.gov