Posted May 25, 2011 at 11:18 pm
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BATON ROUGE ? A Senate bill that would repeal the state?s corporate and individual state income taxes was re-routed to another committee here Wednesday, a move its author said is designed to kill it.
Sen. Rob Marionneaux, D-Livonia, said his bill got a fair hearing in his Senate Revenue and Fiscal Affairs Committee. He said the vote to report it favorably was 7-1.
Sen. John Alario, R-Westwego, made a motion to send the bill to the Senate Finance Committee.
?We need to get this slowed down somewhat,? he told fellow senators at the end of some four hours of debate. ?We can send it to Finance and see what the full effects are.?
The vote to reroute the bill was approved 23-14. Sens. Dan ?Blade? Morrish, R-Jennings, Willie Mount, D-Lake Charles, and John Smith, R-Leesville, voted to send the bill to the Finance Committee. Sen. Eric LaFleur, D-Ville Platte, was against.
Marionneaux said his legislation isn?t a slap at Gov. Bobby Jindal. He said he introduced a similar bill in 2007 when Kathleen Blanco was governor.
?I have tried to be consistent. It?s the right thing to do,? he said.
?This is not a bill about Republicans or Democrats. We need to do things differently that we have done since the 1930s.?
States without income taxes do well economically, he said. Those states are Alaska, Florida, Nevada, New Hampshire, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Washington and Wyoming.
People are asking him how the state could afford to repeal billions of dollars in income tax revenues, he said.
?Some of you may not like my plan,? he said. ?It?s a work in progress.?
Marionneaux said his bill would phase out the income taxes over a 10-year period. He said one way to make up for the lost revenues would be to remove some of the $7.1 billion the state gives in tax exemptions.
Among the exemptions he mentioned were those on income, severance and sales taxes.
The senator climbed atop a ladder and unfolded a long list of those exemptions. He said the list could probably be stretched as high as the 24 floors of the state Capitol.
Those exemptions could be cut across the board, he said, or legislators could cherry-pick those they want to rescind.
?There?s the plan,? he said. ?Here is your opportunity.?
?If I thought it would do any harm, I would withdraw the bill myself. This is our chance to change Louisiana this day and this moment,? he said.
Senate President Joel Chaisson, D-Destrehan, said the bill needed to go to Finance to talk about its effects on this year?s budget and on budgets to come.
Sen. Daniel Martiny, R-Metairie, objected to Sen. Jean-Paul Morrell?s reference to people wanting to send the bill to another committee as cowards and hypocrites. Morrell is a Democrat from New Orleans.
?Some of us might believe it needs to go to Finance,? Martiny said.
Sen. Mike Michot, R-Lafayette, is chairman of the Senate Finance Committee. He said the legislation will get a fair hearing. Tax exemptions have to be considered carefully because of the jobs some of them create.
?We have to do what we can to keep businesses here,? Michot said.
Sen. Robert Adley, R-Benton, said he supports the bill and drastic measures have to be taken to cure the state?s financial problems.
?We have dedicated away 70 percent of our budget,? Adley said. ?It won?t stop until the money is gone.?
Sen. Fred Mills, R-New Iberia, voted to send the legislation to Finance. He said he likes the bill, which he called Plan A, ?but I want to know what Plan B is.?
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