Oh my god he admit it

Decades of trying to push the bullshit line that we "create jobs" by giving away tax breaks to wealthy people and corporations. And now the minute they have enough power that they don't have to sell it anymore, they just drop the bullshit and say what they mean. 

Manufacturing companies can qualify for lucrative property tax exemptions even if their investments don’t create or retain jobs, under an executive order that Gov. Jeff Landry signed on Wednesday that marks a significant shift in the way the state incentivizes economic development.

Landry’s order, which he signed Wednesday but announced earlier this month, reverses a big change to the Industrial Tax Exemption Program, better known as ITEP, that then-Gov. John Bel Edwards made in 2016 and again in 2018.

“We have removed the job requirement because this program is about capital investment. It is not about job creating,” Landry told a crowd at the annual luncheon in Baton Rouge of the Louisiana Association of Business and Industry, the state’s most powerful business lobby.

Hot streak

 Always nice to be thought of as a global leader. 

The last 12 months were the hottest ever recorded on Earth, and New Orleans had the second-longest streak of days with extreme heat across the world, a new study found. 

Climate Central, a nonprofit news organization that analyzes and reports on climate change and energy issues, released the study to the public on Thursday and looked at major cities across the globe that had long streaks of extreme heat.

Houston had the longest streak with 22 days, and the extreme temperatures lasted in New Orleans for 17 days. The Crescent City tied with Jakarta and Tangerang in Indonesia, according to the study.

Can't say we haven't earned it.  Everyone knows well the amount of Louisiana's public capital and natural resources are sacrificed each year to make the demon live. Today The Lens highlights only one recent example. 

Now, a new industrial operation is taking shape in the unincorporated community of Port Sulphur, which remains a working-class, rural area. The silhouette of Venture Global’s colossal LNG gas-export terminal looms over the surrounding marsh, visible from miles away to cars driving downriver from New Orleans on Louisiana Highway 23.

When the plant is finished, natural-gas-fired turbines will supercool gas down to -260 degrees Fahrenheit to turn it into a liquid 1/600th its original volume that can be shipped overseas. But at this point, it’s still in progress, a 630-acre construction site, with tower cranes and 130-foot storage tanks peeking over its walls. 

Venture Global did not respond to questions about its terminal under construction in Plaquemines Parish. Once complete, it’s expected to employ 300 operational workers, according to Board of Commerce and Industry meeting notes. 

Those 300 jobs are subsidized to unbelievable levels, thanks to the Industrial Tax Exemption Program (ITEP), a state tax-incentive program for manufacturers, created with the goal of luring jobs to Louisiana. 

For its local payroll of a few hundred workers, Venture Global’s ITEP abatement over a 10-year period totals $834 million, said Erin Hansen of Together Louisiana, which monitors ITEP incentives and jobs created. 

That works out to $2.8 million in tax breaks per Venture Global job, Hansen said.

During the campaign, Jeff Landry (sort of) led the public to believe that he would let John Bel's rather moderate limits on ITEP remain in place.  We'll see how that plays out.  I do have my doubts.

Teachers aren't going to break the budget

There's a certain logic to what the so-called "fiscal hawks" are arguing. We do not want to repeat the Jindal era cycle of de-funding critical public services through tax breaks for rich people and shell games like school vouchers and medicare privatization while covering up for it by dropping "one time money" into places that will eventually need recurring revenue to avoid more drastic cuts. Even now, while the state is flush with federal COVID relief, we're still just a few years away from the next "fiscal cliff" as temporary sales taxes start to roll off the books.  

None of this should mean that teachers have to suffer for it, however. But for some reason, they're still the first thing that comes to mind when lawmakers want to talk about being cautious with the budget. 

Geymann’s amendment to House Bill 1, the state’s operating budget, is written in an English that can only be described as “technical.” It basically blocks using extra money expected to be “recognized” by the REC on Monday to add another $500 to proposed pay raises for educators or any other expenses that will become part of the annual operating budget and have to be paid in the future. Geymann said the additional funds needed to increase teacher pay raises from $1,500 to $2,000 can and should be found in the recurring revenue stream.

It's ok to give the teachers their raise and find the money in the budget later.  Nobody ever said corporate tax exemptions need to keep happening, for example.  Although the legislators don't seem as worried about those.

Continuing with the quality work up there

There's so little to say about the Legislature at this point. We know who they are and what they're about.

The Republican majority in the House Labor committee voted Thursday – four times – against establishing a minimum wage and setting the rate above $7.25 per hour.

They keep complaining about a "labor shortage."  I don't actually think that is real and I plan to talk about that in a different post soon. But if it were real, if the bellyaching bosses who own and operate this state really were in desperate need of help but unable to find anyone willing to work, I wonder what could be the reason.

In any case, no one is asking the bosses to give up their subsidies. 

Facing stiff opposition from Louisiana’s business and oil and gas industry lobbies, a state senator on Wednesday shelved a bid to enshrine in the state constitution local government’s newly won authority over the state’s most generous corporate tax incentive.  

This week we also learned that Folgers is suing to keep hold of tax money it has owed the city of New Orleans after having had its ITEP denied.

In its suit, Folgers, which is owned by The J.M. Smucker Co., does not contest that it will owe taxes going forward. However, the company argues there is a conflict in the procedures outlined in the state law allowing assessors to adjust prior years’ assessments and requirements laid out by the state Constitution and says because of that, the bills for years’ past should be thrown out.

Of course, if this Legislature refuses to make local discretion permanent and future Governor Jeff Landry changes the rules, then companies like Folgers will again be off the hook. 

So, once again, brilliant work up there.  Can't wait to find out what else they've been up to... oh. Oh no. 

Will we ever Make It Right?

We have to say it's a remarkable trip the City of New Orleans has been on with short term rentals for the better part of the last decade only to end up right back where we started. We've been through years and years of hearings, hotly debated regulations that don't work, hotly debated revisions to those regulations that continue to not work, at one point we even decided to go the whole nine and turn enforcement responsibility over to an industry profiteer.  A whole lot of things have happened. But also nothing has changed.  This article says it's "inexplicable" but is it?  

With New Orleans' spring tourism season in full swing, the Cantrell administration’s stated plan to crack down on illegal short-term rentals is inexplicably stalled, leaving scofflaw operators to freely list unpermitted rentals on Airbnb and other online booking platforms.

Pinning down just how many unpermitted rentals are available is nigh impossible, but data provided by the technology firm Granicus, combined with City Hall's short-term rental registry, suggests they outnumber legitimate ones at least 3 to 1.

There's probably a very simple explanation, actually. Helena Moreno seems pretty close to getting it right here. 

Council member Helena Moreno said she is baffled by the administration’s flagging enforcement efforts. 

 “With the lack of enforcement and slow-walking of accountability measures, it makes me wonder whether this is purposeful,” Moreno said.

It's hard not to think that. Otherwise, it would be difficult to explain why the city would be leaving so much money on the table. As Moreno also points out, the city has somehow never managed to give anyone a straight answer as to how much money it actually collects in fees and fines under the current STR enforcement regime. Strange behavior for an administration that has been otherwise diligent in chasing down drivers ticketed by its robots or shutting down any street parade or music venue not able to pay the premium fees. We know the city wants to collect its money.  It's just particular about who actually has to pay. 

Now I'm not honestly recommending that any normal person with actual things to do tries this, but, for those who really must, you can view last Wednesday's meeting of the city revenue estimating conference here.  Watching these meetings one gets a (rather grim) feel for what this administration's ideas are about the city's economy and who it is supposed to serve. For example, during a discussion on employment numbers, Gilbert Montano briefly references the "Great Resignation" to signal his sympathy with the "people don't want to work" myth popular among bosses these days. (Actually the labor participation rate is nearly back to pre-pandemic status now. But that isn't going to stop the ownership class from demanding we continue to shred what's left of the social safety net just in case any workers out there feel even the slightest hope.) At the REC, the Cantrell administration generally sound like they are the corporate board of a big hotel. Almost all of the metrics highlighted in their presentation are based on how well the tourism business is going; how many visitors fly in and out, how many hotel rooms are occupied, etc.  The first time I saw LaToya Cantrell speak publicly about short term rentals her comments were already very much shaped by a hospitality management mindset. Even while she assented to the point that they may be raising housing costs, she basically looked past that to assert that New Orleans is a "destination city" and that STRs are a source of revenue.

But Cantrell is "the mayor right now" and somehow all that revenue isn't finding its way into city coffers. Property values are up, rents are way way way up,  but according to city projections, property tax revenue is down slightly.  At the meeting, much of the discussion about that centered on assessor Erroll Williams. In September, Williams granted across the board breaks to property owners following Hurricane Ida.  The fact that Williams's office has apparently granted some invalid corporate exemptions was also mentioned. 

Near the end of 2020, three local government agencies denied tax breaks for planned improvements to the Folgers coffee plants in New Orleans East. But only now, more than a year later, has the assessor put the properties onto the tax rolls, making the company liable for $5.1 million in real estate levies.

Assessor Erroll Williams blames the Louisiana Department of Economic Development for the delay. That agency blames Williams.

That T-P story details circular arguments from the assessor and from LED about who is supposed to inform whom about ITEP denials. But, I dunno, I think one thing an assessor might do in a case like this  is call somebody and ask?

Williams said his office was following its standard practice: Don't put properties on the rolls while their applications for tax breaks are still pending. He said his office asked the state about Folgers in February because the state database did not yet show the tax breaks were denied and he had received no formal paperwork from any agency saying a decision on the breaks had been made.

"This office hasn’t gotten a letter from the School Board, city of New Orleans or the Sheriff’s Office that they’ve decided to vote the contract down, so I can’t put a taxpayer on the rolls based on what I read in the newspaper," Williams said.

The status was not changed to “denied” until March, at which point Williams said his staff began working to put the properties on the tax rolls.

The state agency said it “does not notify local taxing authorities about the actions of local government entities involved in the ITEP application review process. Questions about when and how the exemption is applied at the local level are best directed to each local taxing authority.”

Hard to believe these people can't all get together and talk one way or another. This just isn't that big a town.  Especially now that nobody actually lives here. Who can afford to, anyway?

Anyway, not to give the REC any more work to do but it turns out there are other places to dig for lost property tax money if they're feeling hard up. 

In total, Make It Right owes $14,972.81 in back taxes and fines, which are added to a property’s tax bill once they become delinquent. Most of that debt was accumulated in 2021, when the foundation failed to pay taxes on any one of its properties. And It’s possible that number will grow even higher for unpaid 2022 taxes, which are due today, March 31. 

According to the city’s online tax records database, the foundation owes $9,493 in 2022 property taxes. But The Lens was unable to confirm that the foundation has not paid that down. It appears that the city’s digital property tax records haven’t been updated to show whether property owners have yet paid their 2022 taxes. Officials did not respond to questions about the group’s 2022 property taxes.

Or maybe this is another thing where they've got to wait on Erroll to update the spreadsheet. 

One last point about the REC. Montano et al are still being extremely cautious with their use of the American Rescue Plan dollars by projecting it out over the course of a five year hypothetical revenue gap instead of applying it toward the addressing the city's numerous critical human services and infrastructure needs. (Notice how they are not shy about throwing that money at police as fast as they can, however.)  Back in August, we wrote more about how this administration's ideological conservatism informs its approach to budgeting.   On Wednesday, the projections we saw did not account for the next tranche of ARP dollars promised to cities because there was still talk in Washington about clawing those funds back in the next spending authorization.  As of this writing, though, it looks like that money is still coming.

Under the emerging deal, Mr. Romney, said, most of the $10 billion would be repurposed from the $1.9 trillion pandemic law Democrats muscled through without Republican support last March. But direct funds for state and local governments would likely not be touched, after Democrats balked at this money being clawed back. Mr. Romney said negotiators had discussed taking back some funding from a program that allowed states to give grants to local businesses.

That's pretty good news. But it could be better.  The way it looks right now the primary benefit of the federal bailout is it allows the city to keep letting wealthy property owners slide on their responsibility at the current rate. Without it, they'd still do that, of course. But they'd have to crack down even harder on the poor than they currently do to make up the difference.

Let's see if they notice

Remember those old Foldgers Crystals commercials?  You know the ones where they go into some fancy dining type setting and surreptitiously replace the gourmet coffee with the instant product like they're doing a Candid Camera type prank to "see if anyone notices." We have a new version of that in New Orleans. See what happens is Assessor Erroll Williams continually replaces Foldgers's tax liability on his spreadsheet with some fake number he doesn't bother to explain.

But this week, Together New Orleans issued another memo claiming the assessor is still leaving out $1.6 million from Folgers’ bill. And, the group says, his undercount suggests a troubling internal practice that could be erroneously giving extra tax breaks to hundreds of millions of dollars of business property throughout the city. 

To make matters more confusing, the Assessor’s Office has since admitted that the $6.5 million figure it released last week was itself inaccurate, but not because of the reasons cited by Together New Orleans. 

Williams’ spokesman Devin Johnson would not tell The Lens why that number was inaccurate, only that “the preliminary estimates missed the mark” and that the office would release more accurate numbers once they were finalized.

“I wouldn’t read too much into the numbers on the spreadsheet,” he said. “The final numbers are going to be significantly different.”

Johnson also accused The Lens of trying to produce “clickbait that’s biased and factually inaccurate.”

“So nothing new there,” Johnson said.

This isn't the first time a city official has published incorrect data only to turn around and scold a reporter for correctly reading what was disseminated.  Last year the City Attorney's Office withheld information from The Lens about short term rental fees until after their story was published. The subsequent release of data forced a "correction" of sorts.  I'm starting to wonder if this a deliberate tactic. 

Anyway, regardless of what his spreadsheet says, Williams is clear enough about his priorities. 

Soon after that, the City Council formally called on the assessor to create a new written policy for reviewing exemptions granted through what has historically been the state’s largest tax subsidy program — the Industrial Tax Exemption Program, or ITEP.

But the request was passed in a non-binding resolution. Because the assessor is an independently elected official — not a part of city government — the council has no legal authority over his office. 

Williams explicitly told The Lens at the time that his office would not create a new policy. Instead, he would stick with the process he already had, even though, he admitted to The Lens, it was flawed and wasn’t adequate to catch the kind of mistake that Together New Orleans had discovered.

“The review process is not going to catch it,” Williams told The Lens in 2019. “It’s not the greatest priority for our office, obviously.”

Now, the office has once again undercounted Folgers’ tax bill. And, as was the case in 2019, the mistake raises the questions of what would have happened if Together New Orleans had not identified the error, as well as what other errors may be in the city’s tax rolls.

There's also some back and forth in the article between Williams and Together New Orleans over when or whether he is considering every appropriate factor in drawing up his assessments. Apparently the answer there is mostly "sometimes."  So, it still takes an exacting palate to tell the difference. 

Every time you think you've seen the worst Louisiana Legislature of all time...

.... along comes the worst Louisiana Legislature of all time. 

And whooo boy this has been a bad one.

On Monday night this past week, some of us tuned in to observe the latest reverberation of the session's loudest (but also emptiest) controversy thus far. Rep. Valarie Hodges brought a bill before the House that would introduce a specific requirement to the state's high school curriculum. 

Fallout from the Louisiana Legislative Black Caucus’ fight with Rep. Ray Garofalo (R-Chalmette) is to blame for the tense debate on the Louisiana House floor Monday over a bill requiring that high schoolers learn about World War II and the Holocaust, Rep. Tammy Phelps (D-Shreveport) said Monday evening.

Rep. Valarie Hodges (R-Denham Springs) got HB 416 through the House to the dismay of Black lawmakers who couldn’t win support for their attempts to simply have the state Board of Elementary and Secondary Education consider adjustments to the curriculum.

Hodges told the chamber that “the sacrifice our country and our forefathers made in the part of a worldwide attempt at domination of the Third Reich” are worthy of being taught in every high school.

“The Holocaust is a study in how much the future of our nation depends on its citizens to stand up to the forces that divide us and stand up to hate among us,” she said. “Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.”

It's been a while since the leges have had this much interest in writing curriculum directives directly into state law.  That article references "fallout" over an earlier bill this session introduced by Ray Garofalo that would have barred the teaching of "divisive concepts" such as, for example, the idea that capitalism produces racist or sexist outcomes, or even that racism can be a central theme in the description of US history. 

In other words, it was a pretty bad bill and bringing it to the legislature at all is clearly a deliberate provocation on Garofalo's part.  Interestingly, though, media coverage of the "controversy" has too often elided the nature of the bill as an issue and focused instead on some words spoken by Garofalo while debating it. Take a look at how this Advocate story is framed.

Garofalo first ignited controversy last month when, during a discussion of his bill on how racism is taught in colleges, he referred to how a hypothetical case of a classroom discussion on slavery could include "the good, the bad, the ugly."

He quickly walked back his comment about the "good" in slavery, and allies contend he has been ridiculously portrayed as somehow sympathetic to slavery.

All of a sudden we're no longer talking about the bill he introduced specifically to outlaw academic questioning of white supremacy and are concerned instead with whether or not he's being treated unfairly by critics.  Even now, after his somewhat dramatic removal from his committee chairmanship, Garofalo is presented almost as a sacrificial lamb to petty Democrats. 

At one point Garofalo said, even with his measure, college classrooms were free to air discussions on controversial topics, including “the good, the bad, the ugly” of slavery.

The lawmaker quickly corrected himself on any suggestion of “good” surrounding slavery. But the Louisiana Legislative Black Caucus and Gov. John Bel Edwards said he should be replaced as chairman for multiple reasons.

It's probably true that the Black Caucus did force Garofalo's demotion by threatening to hold up a key tax bill until he was punished. They should have killed the tax swap bill altogether anyway but that's for a different post, probably. Either way, the press coverage over the past few weeks has unhelpfully obscured the reason they acted in the first place.  Actually, instead of "the press" I should just say Tyler Bridges in particular because most examples of this are form his reporting.  In this passage, for example, we see that Clay Schexnayder has pretty good handle on a problem that Tyler is nonetheless intent on turning into something else.

But the alliance between the two ended after Garofalo insisted on presenting House Bill 546, which sought to address concerns of conservatives that left-wing educators are teaching “critical race theory” concepts centered on the notion that racism is systemic.

The night before, Schexnayder advised Garofalo that having his committee hear HB546 would be racially divisive.

Garofalo forged ahead. In explaining his bill, he made an offhand comment about the “good” of slavery but then immediately disavowed it.

The damage was done, however. The exchange went viral, and in the days that followed, the Black Caucus called on Schexnayder to remove him as the Education Committee chairman, while Garofalo said he didn’t think he had done anything wrong.

No doubt people will think I am picking at nits here. But the way that is written, the reader is expected to conclude that a racist bill that says you can't teach about racism might have been a fine thing to pass if not for the "good of slavery" gaffe that went viral. 

Still, it is probably safe to assume that Garofalo is being punished because his fumbling presentation endangered a tax bill and not because Republicans were all that set against his trolling foray into legislative pedagogy. If it were otherwise, there would have been far less enthusiasm for Hodges's bill on Monday. Mark Ballard puts in a pretty good explanation today of how her bill and Garofalo's are really aimed at the same purpose.  

The first thing caucus chair Rep. Jack McFarland, R-Jonesboro, said was that tax policy, not culture wars, is the foremost interest of most House Republicans.

Still, they voted for transgender restrictions and school curricula impositions, such as requiring public schools to teach World War II and the Holocaust in greater detail as well as an emphasis on the nation’s important documents.

Not that such subjects are bad for Louisiana students to learn, but “patriotic education” is a strategy that crowds out conversations about race and its impact on American society. Louisiana educators oppose legislators dictating curriculum.

Another thing we have to point out about these "culture issue" troll bills is that they do not bubble up from the local constituents. They are dropped in from above by well funded national conservative agitators.  For example, Louisiana was one of thirty some odd states to advance bills cribbed from the national right wing grievance-cruelty template that bar transgendered kids from participating in high school sports.  Here is the House breaking out in applause over its passage.

Here it is. Over ten seconds of cruel, heartbreaking, inhumane celebration after passing a bill that would deny thousands of Louisiana children and youth the right to be part of a team, to play sports with their friends. #lalege #lagov #protecttranskids #letthemplay pic.twitter.com/zTHL6IOV4L

— Dylan Waguespack (@DylanMercury) May 28, 2021

What has made this session more frustrating than most, though, has been the ease at which bills like this have made it all the way through the process. During a session with the more weighty matters of hurricane recovery, coastal restoration, and the distribution of COVID relief funds on the agenda, why are we stopping to argue about any of this foolishness? 

The key observation is that this group of lawmakers doesn't play the game with the same um.. restraint.. that previous bodies might have exercised.  There are a couple of reasons for that.  Recall that 2019 was a wave election for reactionaries and we're seeing what happens when they get to run the whole show with little or no check aside from a Governor who is himself too hands off.  The other problem is this is yet another legislature seeing the effect of a term limits law that has weakened the overall competence of the body as members have less experience and independence and rely more on permanent $$ people to really run things. 

We've seen bills come out of committee this year with obvious problems one might have expected to get "fixed' on the full floor (or killed if they are altogether bad.) But now the customary brakes seem to be off. And, yes, of course the bar  for was very low already but my point is this bunch has managed to go even lower. 

A few examples of that: 

First, a couple weeks ago we saw the final failure to pass even a modest $28 boost to one of the country's cruelest unemployment insurance payments, in part, because House Republicans insisted (falsely) that the current $300 federal enhanced payment that expires this fall is "disincentivizing" work. 

Not willing to let facts flummox a good narrative, a murderers’ row of a half dozen self-described conservatives in the Louisiana House, one after another, pounced on Democratic Harvey Rep. Rodney Lyons’ proposal to increase Louisiana’s miserly unemployment benefit by $28 a week. The increase would move the state from the 49th lowest benefit to 48th by paying no more than $275 per week. Most would get less, and in any case the increase would start in January 2022, four months after the federal enhanced benefits expires.

When Lyons's bill was in committee, it was amended to also include a bizarre provision for one time $1,000 bonus payments to people who take a new job and end their UI benefit.  Accepting the bonus payment would then make the person ineligible for future unemployment benefits for a period after.  That amendment, questionable as it was on legal and moral grounds, was considered a political "poison pill" intended to tank the bill altogether.  However, it's also exactly the sort of thing that a previous House might have removed in time to pass a reasonable bill as clearer thinking heads prevailed.  That wasn't the case this time. 

The House failed again to listen to reason on Thursday when Barry Ivey (R- Central)  practically begged them not advance Rick Edmonds's (R- Baton Rouge)  blatant attempt to hide information about corporate tax breaks granted by the state from public view. 

House lawmakers on Thursday voted 59-38 for a bill that would change the public records law to allow the state economic development agency to hide certain corporate tax incentive records from the public. 

House Bill 456, sponsored by Rep. Rick Edmonds (R-Baton Rouge), proposes to make an exception to Louisiana’s public records law for certain records under the Louisiana Economic Development (LED) tax incentive programs, including the Industrial Tax Exemption Program, Louisiana Quality Jobs Program and Louisiana Enterprise Zone Program. 

“It is imperative, members, that we do not let this instrument go across to the other side (to the Senate),” Rep. Barry Ivey (R-Central) said during floor debate Thursday. He said HB 456 is one of the most problematic bills he has seen.

What the bill would do is make it impossible for anyone to gauge whether or not recipients of the various "incentive" are actually hitting their targets in terms of workers hired and wages paid instead of  just hoarding all the money in the form of executive compensation, for example. In years past, there would still be a good chance the Senate might "fix" this later on.  But maybe not this year. 

If anything, it looks like they're "fixing" things in the wrong direction. Take for example this teacher pay raise that seemed to shrink overnight without explanation. 

The Senate Finance Committee on Monday approved its version of the state's nearly $37 billion operating budget, including $800 pay raises for teachers and other certificated personnel and $400 pay boosts for support workers, including cafeteria employees and school bus drivers.

The action marked a turnaround from April 28, when Senate Education Committee Chairman Cleo Fields, D-Baton Rouge, said House and Senate leaders were getting behind raises of $1,000 per year, more than double Gov. John Bel Edwards proposal to boost pay by $400 annually.

Nobody says why the money was taken back out.  Louisiana Federation of Teachers' lobbyist Cynthia Posey does point out that the state spends over $9 billion a year on the kind of tax credits and exemptions that Edmonds's bill will shield from scrutiny.

Anyway it's not like there isn't enough money to go around.  This is the first "fiscal session" in quite a while that hasn't played out int he shadow of some massive budget shortfall or impending "fiscal cliff."  Between the federal COVID rescue plan and just better than expected revenues in general, lawmakers have plenty to play with while formulating a budget. 

The Senate Finance Committee on Monday released their mark-up of the state's multibillion-dollar spending plan for the budget year beginning July 1 with spending bumps for higher education, juvenile justice and dozens of other favored pets projects. 

Lawmakers in the upper chamber had the rare opportunity to divvy up hundreds of millions of dollars in better-than-expected tax revenues after the state last week forecasted $355 million in excess funds for the current fiscal year and $320 million in additional collections for the next fiscal year.

Too bad for the teachers, though.  Guess they had to wait in line behind -- this stuff. 

Senators also added dozens of earmarks for favored projects in their districts, including $12 million in road projects in Lafayette, the city where Cortez lives, and $2 million to the athletics foundation in White's hometown of Central. Other dollars would go to recreational facilities in Jefferson Parish, a skate park in Ruston, fire departments in Ascension Parish, the River Road African American Museum and the National World War II Museum

LOL, yes, there again is the big money pit of special tax credits, sweetheart bank deals, and public-private partnering we all know as the National World War II Museum.  According to the budget bill as currently written, they're getting $7.5 million in general funds for something called an "FP&C Management Plus Liberation Pavilion." Here is what will go on there. 

Following their immersive journey through the war, visitors to The National WWII Museum will enter the Liberation Pavilion. Three building levels will explore the closing months of the war and immediate postwar years, concluding with an explanation of links to our lives today. The first floor, Liberation, will provide visitors with opportunities to contemplate the joys, costs, and meaning of liberation and freedom. The second and third levels will focus on what the war means today, with exhibits developed through the lens of democracy and freedom.

The second floor of the Liberation Pavilion will present richly layered, interactive experiences that explore the postwar years: how the world—and America's place in it—changed after World War II. Dramatic and thought-provoking exhibits will explore selected themes from the postwar era, ranging from the readjustments faced by returning military service members to international tribunals seeking justice for war crimes. We will trace the war's lasting legacies at home and around the world, as America's elevated role as a world power and freedoms secured by Allied forces are continually tested—even to the present day.

One wonders if Valarie Hodges is aware of this appropriation.

See also:  Couldn't really fit it into the narrative here but go ahead and read this Bayou Brief feature on Hodges and the attendant controversies to her bill.  Among other things, it's a good reminder to check your spelling.

These two items are not related

The way this story presents the information, a casual reader might conclude that Caesar's "pledged" to uphold its obligations under its licensing agreement because Erroll Williams gave them a tax break. Rest assured this is not the case. 

Part of Caesars' pledge on the license extension deal was that it would continue to employ at least 2,400 people and add 500 staff after the hotel was built. It also committed to pay for various state and city infrastructure projects, including $19.5 million over three years to New Orleans.

Earlier this year, Caesars got a big break on one of its biggest city bills. The casino operator was one of the prime beneficiaries of a decision by the Orleans Parish Assessor to cut property valuations for 2021 — and thus cut property taxes — for businesses in the area because of the unprecedented effects of the coronavirus pandemic. Hotels saw the highest valuation cuts, at about 58%, which translates into an annual savings for Caesars of an estimated $1.5 million to $2 million.

The license agreement has nothing to do with the property tax assessment. The license agreement was negotiated with the legislature in the spring of 2019. The tax break is part of a larger corporate giveaway cooked up by the Assessor's office this year. Just after homeowners saw their assessments go up dramatically and as housing costs remain high while workers are being laid off left and right during a pandemic, Erroll Williams and Michael Sherman arranged to hand over $42 million to commercial landlords with deep corporate pockets.  I know the placement of the two paragraphs above in today's story might make it look like this has something to do with Harrah's/Caesar's lease. But it does not.  

Meanwhile, Did You Know.. next Friday your beloved City Council and School Board are scheduled to approve a series of back-tax exemptions that would cede another $25 million to Folgers. Last month when the state Commerce board gave its preliminary approval to the exemptions, a certain parish assessor took their side. 

At Friday’s meeting, Folger consultant Jimmy Leonard said the company requested the delay simply because it wanted the board to consider the application along with the company’s other newer applications at the same time. Leonard also presented a letter to the board from Orleans Parish Tax Assessor Erroll Williams describing Folger as a good taxpayer that has been transparent with him throughout the process. 

Together Louisiana members were armed with a letter of their own — from New Orleans Councilwoman Helena Moreno — that painted a different picture.

“A recent investigation by journalist Lee Zurik on WVUE-TV brought this matter to the public’s attention in August, due to the alarming length of time of not paying millions of dollars of taxes and now seeking a loophole to get a pass,” Moreno wrote in the Oct. 26 letter. “The total owed could be as high as $12 million…We cannot afford for a large corporation to not pay its fair share when our residents and small business owners are being asked to sacrifice so much.”

The board, nevertheless, approved Folger’s application because it was up to the tax assessor to place the property on the tax rolls, which he never did, Board Chairman Jerald Jones said.

Together New Orleans has scheduled a rally and press event at City Hall to discuss the Folger's situation. Although, at the moment that page says the event is Friday in the headline and Monday in the text. So maybe check back when they have it sorted out.

Super Polluters

Louisiana based chemical facilities are charting well.

The "Breath to the People" report analyzed the latest batch of self-reported industrial pollution emissions data from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's 2018 Toxics Release Inventory. The report ranked the worst emitters by giving extra weight to the most toxic chemicals released. The analysis focused on plants within a mile of populations of at least 250 people.

In Louisiana, the Sasol Chemicals complex in Lake Charles ranked No. 2 nationally in the listing of the top 100 so-called “super polluters,” while the BASF Corp. and Shell Chemical complexes in Geismar were also in the top six.

Ranked third and sixth, respectively, the BASF and Shell facilities are located in Ascension Parish, a few miles from Dutchtown High School, the state's largest high school by student population, and the parish government-owned multiuse complex Lamar-Dixon Expo Center.

It will probably come as no surprise that each of these "super polluters" receives a generous subsidy via the state's Industrial Tax Exemption Program. Those subsidies are expected to keep rolling on in.   The ITE for BASF's recently announced expansion will cost Ascension Parish schools $43 million over the next 10 years. Shell's Geismar expansion will cost the same parish over $100 million.  Sasol was approved for an additional $10.1 million exemption last year.

Also not terribly surprising, but at least disappointing, is the Governor's decision to roll back some of the discretion he recently granted local government taxing authorities  to reject ITEs that fall under their jurisdiction.

The move tilts the Industrial Tax Exemption Program, or ITEP, back toward the state, four years after Edwards overhauled the program to give locals a vote for the first time. The Board of Commerce and Industry, which for decades approved nearly every exemption request that it voted on, can override the vote of locals if the locals reject an exemption for reasons that “conflict” with the state board’s rules.

The board voted to pass the resolution despite fierce opposition from activists and over the objection of three of 24 board members. Together Louisiana, a grassroots group that has pushed for more stringent standards for ITEP, inundated board members with emails and spoke out against the change at Friday’s meeting.

“This is a move backwards in the reform efforts that we have worked on together,” said Together Louisiana organizer Edgar Cage. “We urge you not to approve this resolution.”

Edwards’ administration said the move would only apply to instances where local officials have “rules” or standards that are at odds with the state’s rules. But virtually all standards adopted locally are different from the state’s rules, and the resolution doesn’t spell out which ones are being targeted.

Basically this means that a local city council or school board can still reject an ITE. But the state can step back in and void the rejection. John Bel isn't taking away their right to say no, he's just ensuring that it won't mean anything.

Meanwhile the new legislature is going into session in a couple of weeks. Baton Rouge State Senator Bodi White has filed a bill that would amend the state constitution to remove John Bel's or any future Governor's authority to interpret the ITEP rules one way or the other.  Presumably this would allow the legislature to void local control over these exemptions altogether thereby clearing the way for Louisiana's "super polluters" to benefit from our support indefinitely. So, you know, big things to look forward to.

Has Jeff Landry resigned yet?

Can't imagine anyone would have the nerve to keep showing up and claiming to be the top law enforcement agent in the state in light of this sort of thing.

Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry, who has railed against loose borders and lax immigration policies during his four years as the state’s top lawman, went into business in 2017 with a Houston labor broker named Marco Pesquera, who had become rich by helping his clients defraud the immigration system to import more than 1,000 Mexican laborers to the Gulf South.

They set out to make millions by winning federal approval to bring in hundreds of skilled Mexican construction workers to help build a massive liquefied natural gas terminal in Cameron Parish.

The Cameron LNG plant is subsidized by one of the largest Industrial Tax Exemptions in the state, by the way.  Landry isn't just profiting from a scheme to traffic exploited Mexican workers and drive down wages in Louisiana. He's also indirectly helping Cameron rip off the state in the process.

Anyway this story broke almost a week ago now. At the time it seemed pretty obvious what ought to happen next. 

Labor unions that have been left out of major construction projects in southwest Louisiana are blasting Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry after The Times-Picayune |The Advocate reported Friday that companies owned by Landry or his brother brought in hundreds of Mexican workers to handle the jobs instead.

“He needs to resign,” said Dennis Miller, who represents Laborers Local 99 in Louisiana and Mississippi. “You have a guy who represents Louisiana, supposed to represent the people to uplift our state, and doing something like this … It’s just unacceptable.”

I know time kind of feels stopped right now in the middle of Mardi Gras and all but there should have been enough time for this to have gotten done by now. 

Bag fine recycling

Earlier this week Cantrell Administration officials appeared before City Council where they all commiserated with one another over the millions of dollars in costs incurred as a result of the Cyberattack and Hard Rock disaster.  So far it looks like the costs of computer boo boos will be (barely) covered by emergency funds and insurance. The Hard Rock costs will likely become a protracted legal and political dispute.

Estimated costs from the the Hard Rock collapse came to $11.7 million by the end of 2019. That includes about $4.8 million in costs and lost revenue for the Regional Transit Authority, which had to reroute its buses around the disaster site.

But Montaño told the council that the city plans to get the bulk of the costs for both incidents reimbursed through their cybersecurity insurance, the Hard Rock developers’ insurance and, if necessary, through litigation with the Hard Rock developers if the insurance payments don’t cover everything.

“This will at some point will be handled by a court,” Montaño said. “The city should not bear those costs and we have no plan to bear those costs.”

Montaño went on to say that he is "confident and secure we do maintain a healthy fund balance" even though he seemed pretty fuzzy on the details of that.  He must not be too too confident, though, because he also told City Council he was "going to be cautious" and delay "major expenditures" until after summertime.

That sounds prudent, I guess.

Anyway, I know this is what you might call a different pot of money, but it does look strange for the Council to then turn around that same week and hand a half million dollars in tax breaks over to a plastic bag factory.

The New Orleans City Council on Thursday approved two five-year Industrial Tax Exemptions for a new factory in eastern New Orleans that will produce plastic packaging. The exempted property is worth $7 million, and the city stands to lose out on $435,634 in tax revenue over the first five years of the exemptions as a result of the vote, according to a presentation by Tracey Jackson, the Industrial Tax Exemption administrator for Mayor LaToya Cantrell’s Office of Community Development.

We should point out one detail the Lens story doesn't mention explicitly, but the T-PAdvocate does.  This is the first ITE approved by the city under its new wage and job requirements. Although, it looks like the plastic company may have gamed the rules a bit.

Still, the Iriapak deal has irked critics of the tax breaks, who argued that one of Iriapak's subsidy applications didn't meet the city's jobs requirements.

Iriapak actually submitted two applications for the tax exemptions. Its first application was for a $5 million investment, which represented its 80% stake in the project. The second application represents $2 million that an affiliated real estate partner is investing in the project. That firm, Iriapak RE, owns a 20% stake.

Together New Orleans, a group that has long criticized ITEP tax exemptions, argued that the investment partner should be required to meet the city's jobs rules for the construction jobs it is financing. For those and other reasons, the group urged a denial.

That argument found supporters in council members Helena Moreno and Jared Brossett. Both voted against the application.

The larger concern, though, is happy to hand out large corporate tax exemptions during a time of fiscal uncertainty. This is going on even while the city continues to nickel and dime ordinary people playing keep away with ill gotten traffic ticket money, for example.

For another example, we read here that the float riders may be fined up to $500 for tossing plastic bags into the crowd this parade season. Maybe they should just forward those citations to Iriapak so the city can recover its funds.

So long and thanks for all the ITEP

You sure did a fine job turning out in record numbers to very narrowly save the Governor's bacon in November, New Orleans.  As a reward you get.... your local authority to tax rich people taken away.

The new tweaks of the state’s Industrial Tax Exemption Program center around the role local governments play in handling the tax break, which exempts manufacturing companies from paying property taxes that would otherwise go to local budgets.

For months, including during a heated reelection campaign last fall, Edwards has alluded to “process changes” his administration plans to make to the Industrial Tax Exemption Program.

Matthew Block, the governor’s general counsel, said in an interview those changes include an effort to prevent local governments from instituting blanket bans on exemptions for projects that are already completed or under construction. That has been a goal of business groups that have sought changes to the program since Edwards overhauled it in 2016.

The system works.

Might be a good time to do some business with St. John Parish

The school board there just denied Marathon Oil a tax exemption that will result in something like $25 million in revenue for the district. This is good news, of course. The state has been handing over massive public subsidies to petrochemical interests for decades. Thanks to John Bel's decision to revert ITEP authorization to the local level, the public is only now beginning to recoup their losses. Had Eddie Rispone been elected Governor last week... and he very nearly was... we'd be preparing to forfeit all of this progress.

At the same time, knowing what we know about how local government works, we can't help but wonder about the inevitable side effects of this.

But the $25 million is small potatoes compared to larger, expiring exemptions looming on the horizon for St. John Parish.

Although Marathon is the parish's biggest taxpayer, it also enjoys industrial tax breaks on a whopping $3.1 billion in property. Those exemptions are set to expire next year, which would mean a $44 million windfall in parish property tax collections.

That would push St. John's total property tax revenue, now around $55 million, according to the Assessor’s Office, to close to $100 million.

That's a lot of money about to suddenly fall into the laps of some heretofore small time criminals... erm... elected officials.  No telling where it all ends up eventually.  But, still, it's important to remember that even if a school board member's brother-in-law gets a chunk of the money sunk into a new school building, well, that is still a new school building. And it's all a much better way to blow money than on kickbacks to Marathon Oil.

How unforseeable is unforseeable?

Nobody at Bayou Steel wants to say why 376 people had to lose their jobs all of a sudden. And we do mean, very very all of a sudden. 

Officials on Wednesday offered more details on the closure, which came seemingly out of the blue and surprised union officials who had been in contract negotiations with management up until last week.

David Delaneuville, the district representative for the United Steelworkers union, said his negotiations with Davis and Kristen Barney, Bayou Steel's human resources manager, had gone normally and they reached a three-year deal last Thursday to give workers a 4% pay hike in the first year and 3% in each of the subsequent two years.

Apparently, as far as plant management knew, there was plenty of room available to grant modest pay raises. But then, some "unforeseen business circumstances" happened.

(St. John the Baptist Parish President Natalie) Robottom said she is worried that the sudden notices of closure and bankruptcy and the wording of the letter sent to her mean the company is trying to skirt obligations to pay its workers.

"It is concerning, especially how their letter was written, that they may (have been) writing it in that manner so that they don't have to fulfill the obligation of following the (Worker Adjustment Retraining Notification) Act," she said, referring to passages in the letter that cited "unforeseen business circumstances and the inability to secure necessary capital," as well as a paragraph specifically saying the company did not acknowledge any obligations under the WARN Act.

Ordinarily the WARN act would require the company give at least a 60 day notice, otherwise they would be on the hook for back pay. One of the exceptions written into the law specifically uses the term "unforseeable business circumstances"

Unforeseeable business circumstances: When the closing or mass layoff is caused by business circumstances that were not reasonably foreseeable at the time that 60-day notice would have been required (i.e., a business circumstance that is caused by some sudden, dramatic, and unexpected action or conditions outside the employer's control, like the unexpected cancellation of a major order); or Natural disaster

So, then, what was this "sudden, dramatic, and unexpected" occurrence that Bayou Steel could not have forseen?  They still aren't saying.   It can't have anything to do with their Industrial Tax Exemption expiring next year.  That strikes us as imminently forseeable.  It's a lot of money, though.

One of the plant's parcels had been approved by the state for an industrial tax exemption, which cut the $1.4 million in assessed taxes on the plant by roughly $300,000 annually. Gauff said the 10-year exemption was set to expire in 2020.

I'm reminded here of something industry shill Loren Scott once told us about the "bonanza" waiting for us at the end of these 10 year tax exemptions.

"As an economist, I can only say,'Wow. Holy Cow,'" said Loren Scott, a Louisiana economist who has studied the state for 40 years. "We typically measured expansion in terms of hundreds of millions of dollars. Something like that makes your eyes bug out." He expects, for instance, that once 10-year tax-abatement deals expire, schools boards will "find themselves with a bonanza."

*Bonanza not guaranteed in the case of "unforseen busienss circumstances," I guess. Still, as we say, an expiring tax exemption isn't an unforseeable circumstance so there must be something else going on. 

Another thing we learned here is Bayou Steel is controlled by a private equity firm called Black Diamond.  Apparently, their investment was seriously underwater.

On Tuesday, the parent company of Bayou Steel Group filed for bankruptcy protection. In the filing signed by President and Chief Operating Officer Alton Davis, the company, which is controlled by a Connecticut private equity firm, said it had as much as $100 million in outstanding debts and less than $50,000 in assets.

Whoah how does something like that happen in such a sudden and unforseeable manner?  Those of us not intiated in the priesthood of high finance would very much love to know more about that.  Is it possible the wizzards were unable to cope with the "unforseeable" impact of Donald Trump's metals tarriffs?  The Governor certainly seems to think so.  And with good reasoning too as this Slate article explains.

This is a slight variation on a problem that plenty of critics saw coming when Trump announced his tariffs last year. While many American steel companies manufacture the raw metal from scratch, a number of them don’t. Instead, they specialize in making steel products out of cheap, semi-finished slabs of the material that they buy from abroad. The levies posed a serious threat to that segment’s business model. The administration has tried to skirt around this issue by granting companies waivers allowing them to import steel from countries like China and Japan duty-free, but the process has been contentious and has sometimes led to funny results, such as when one steel company that had spent a year praising Trump’s tariffs later sued the administration after it was denied an exemption from them.

Bayou Steel's operation apparently relied on imported scrap metal subject to the tariffs.  So it makes sense to suspect the tariff as a primary factor in the closure.  But as Slate also points out, steelmakers in similar circumstances have been complaining for a while now.  Bayou Steel was about to hand out pay raises to its workers.  Now they aren't.  And they're also about to tell those workers they aren't owed compensation due to the unforseeable nature of the situation.  Given that the tariff has been in effect for over a year now, is that a credible assertion? Or are they just trying to protect Black Diamond's investors?

In the public health department

Let's see what day was this?  It was a long weekend and I have no idea what I did with most of it.  Was it Friday?  I think it was Friday.  Anyway I went to see Tim Faust speak at Garden District Book Shop.  The book he's promoting is called Health Justice Now: Single Payer and What Comes Next.  I'm sure it's very good. I did buy a copy but it's at the bottom of a pile quite similar to if not worse than this one from the middle of the summer. I'll get there eventually.  If you've seen, read or heard any of Faust's work advocating for a better health care system than the nightmare we live and die at the hands of today, then, well, this talk was very much like that.

In his talk, Faust says the US is "the most dangerous place to be sick the most dangerous place to be poor, the most dangerous place to be black or brown, the most dangerous place to be disabled, the most dangerous place to be queer..." There is a mutually reinforcing relationship between poverty and illness. The so-called "health-wealth gap" in the United States adds up to a 20 year difference in life expectancy between the richest and poorest. All of these states of precariousness are direct reflections of an unjust health system. 

By that, he means the US health care delivery apparatus is fraught with such waste and unfair distribution that the negative health outcomes compound upon each other. "In the US all prices are fake," says Faust. The costs of primary and preventative care are grossly inflated as large corporate providers force smaller health clinics out of business in order to charge hospital rates for everything. And, of course, insurance companies can only profit by denying patients care when they need it. 

Unjust wealth allocation leads to unequal health outcomes in all sorts of ways.  Faust travels all over the country talking to people about health care and gave a few examples. In Houston the prisons have become warehouses for people with untreated mental illness. In Memphis environmental racism has led to a situation where black children die at 20 times the rate of white children.  When Indiana Governor Mike Pence inhibited needle exchange programs during the height of an opioid crisis, it  resulted in "one of the biggest HIV outbreaks in decades."  These are all essentially questions of resource allocation.

The day after I saw Faust talk, I read in the Advocate that the state has finally responded to public pressure at least to the point of agreeing to study the effect of the Denka neoprene plant on cancer rates in St. John Parish. As we know, the State of Louisiana subsidizes the proliferation of plants like Denka to the tune of billions of dollars each year.  Poor Louisianians are subsidizing the profits of the petrochemical industry with their very bodies.

The US spends over $3.6 trillion annually on health care. According to Faust at least 1/3 of that is "waste." It would cost approximately 10 percent less to implement a single payer system. And the savings can be applied to giving people better housing, better transit, better food access, a fairer criminal justice system etc. all of which support better health outcomes.  So the fight for health justice really is at the center of a struggle for a radical societal overhaul.  Efforts to combat the problem at the margins via schemes like Obamacare or Medicaid as we know it are not good enough. It is in Faust's words a question of giving people "insurance or emancipation."

Which is why the expansion of Medicaid under Obamacare that John Bel Edwards' reelection campaign touts as a major accomplishment doesn't get us where we want to go. In Louisiana, Medicaid is privatized. And the MCO contracts, in addition to just being inefficient means of shoveling money to for-profit insurers and providers, amount to one of the biggest slices of political patronage a Governor can hand out. This year, the dispute over those contracts has left over half a million Medicaid patients in a wholly unnecessary state of uncertainty just as the start of open enrollment for next year looms. 


Finally, Faust fielded a few skeptical questions from audience members about whether or not a single payer system would garner support from doctors, some of whom, at least, might find certain aspects of their practices less profitable. But, while that isn't really true for most doctors,  the question did remind me that a professional association of Louisiana doctors has endorsed Ralph Abraham for Governor.

The Louisiana Medical PAC hasn't issued an endorsement in the most recent governor's races, but jumped at the chance to endorse one of their own.

“It’s been a number of years since we decided to take a position in the governor’s race, but we have one of our own running,"  Dr. Robert Bass, chairman of the PAC, said in a statement. "We believe that physicians supporting physicians is important, and when you have a candidate like Dr. Abraham, it’s very easy to make this decision.

"Dr. Abraham has a wealth of knowledge that is critical to helping Louisiana improve healthcare outcomes."

That's interesting. As it happens, this week the Bayou Brief provides us with an example of one health outcome Dr. Abraham has used his "wealth of knowledge" to bring about.

“Opioids—mainly synthetic opioids (other than methadone)—are currently the main driver of drug overdose deaths,” states the CDC. “Opioids were involved in 47,600 overdose deaths in 2017. A staggering 67.8% of all drug overdose deaths are due to opioids, and while nationwide these numbers have declined, Louisiana is one of a handful of states in which deaths from opioid overdoses have increased.

During the past year, overdose deaths went up by 4.7% in Louisiana.

“Louisiana also ranks among the top 10 states with the most opioid prescriptions written per capita, according to its state’s lawsuit against 17 companies, including Purdue Pharma,” according to a report published yesterday by APG Wisconsin. “Since 2007, the state has spent at least $677 million ‘for treatment of opioid use and dependence.’”

During the seven-year timeframe, Abraham’s pharmacy in Winnsboro doubled the number of opioids it dispensed to patients; opioid prescriptions filled at his pharmacy in Mangham, which is located near his former medical clinic, surged a staggering 67%.

In Mangham (2017 population: 638), Abraham’s pharmacy supplied enough opioid medication to provide every man, woman, and child 6.1 doses every year (or 43 pills in total) for seven consecutive years; his pharmacy in Winnsboro (2017 population: 4,652) could have provided every resident 4.4 doses per year (or 31 in total). (Note: Annual doses per person were based on Census estimates, not the most recent American Community Survey).

If a single payer system focused on health justice for all means a less profitable pill pushing scheme for Dr. Feelgood that's just something we are going to have risk.

Keep on ITEPing

Can't think of any reason we would want to re-think this activity.

Westlake Chemical plans to add more machinery to increase its volume of chlorine, vinyl chloride monomer, known as VCM, and used in production of polyvinyl chloride, which is PVC, a type of plastic often used in pipes.

There are three plants on the Geismar site. A chlor-alkali plant produces about 700 million pounds of chlorine and 770 million pounds of caustic soda each year. The VCM plant can produce 850 million pounds each year, while the PVC plant can produce about 730 million pounds of the product annually.

"Global demand for both PVC and caustic soda is expected to exceed the limited global capacity additions," according to the company's 2018 annual report.

Sure is expensive. 

In exchange, the company would be eligible for the Industrial Tax Exemption Program, which could offset 80% of its property taxes for up to 10 years. Westlake Chemical would need to obtain approval from the state and local leaders before the incentives would kick in.

The market value of real and personal property taxes for the company's Geismar site is nearly $600 million, according to the Ascension Parish Assessor’s office. The assessed value, or what the company will pay taxes based on, was about $89 million due to existing tax abatements, records show.

But we're all so pleased with the way this sort of thing has worked out thus far so, you know, carry on.

Update:  It's all part of staying in that top 10, baby!

But a Bloomberg Environment analysis of the U.S. EPA’s air toxic emissions data shows that the top 10 ethylene oxide emitters in the nation were actually chemical plants in Louisiana and Texas. Dow Inc.'s sprawling 2,000-plus-acre Union Carbide Corp. petrochemical complex in Louisiana’s St. Charles Parish topped the ranking, followed by Huntsman Corp.'s chemical plant in Port Neches, Texas, according to the 2014 data, the latest available.

That sounds bad but, really, we are working on it. Trust us.

The Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality said it is working with the EPA to address concerns about ethylene oxide. At the same time, the agency is considering permits for Taiwan’s Formosa Plastics Corp. to build a $9.4 billion plastics complex in St. James Parish, which would be allowed to release up to 7 tons of ethylene oxide a year.

Many residents oppose the “Sunshine Project,” which would be a mile from an elementary school. St. James Parish is bordered to the north by Ascension Parish, home to petrochemical plants owned by BASF Corp. and Shell Chemical, which were the fifth-highest and ninth-highest emitters of ethylene oxide in the nation. Shell Chemical is the petrochemicals arm of Royal Dutch Shell Plc.

Gregory Langley, spokesman for Louisiana’s environmental quality department, said the state’s regulators sent letters and met with some facilities permitted to emit ethylene oxide in the state, to ask them to develop strategies to lower their emissions and make sure they report emissions accurately. Langley added that “LDEQ is early in the process but will continue to work with EO emitting facilities and EPA to develop a path forward.”

No, seriously, really, we've got our biggest guns on it just as soon as they, um, learn about the problem at all. Maybe they can read about it on the plane.

Louisiana Sen. John Neely Kennedy (R) said he was committed to “clean air” but acknowledged he was unaware of the problem caused by ethylene oxide. And Louisiana’s senior senator, Bill Cassidy (R), did not respond to repeated requests for comment.

On the House side, Louisiana’s lone Democratic lawmaker, Rep. Cedric Richmond, whose district includes the Union Carbide plant, brushed off questions about ethylene oxide, saying he was rushing to the airport. His office did not respond to subsequent questions.

Piece of the pie

Here's a hint at what they're giving away to the nostalgia company so it can make fried beef tallow and sugar mounds again.

To secure the project, the state of Louisiana offered Hubig’s a competitive incentive package that includes the comprehensive workforce solutions of LED FastStart– the nation’s No. 1 state workforce development program. Hubig’s also will participate in LED’s Small Business Loan and Guaranty Program, and is expected to utilize the state’s Industrial Tax Exemption and Enterprise Zone programs.

“Hubig’s has been a staple in greater New Orleans for generations,” Jefferson Parish President Mike Yenni said. “The Parish Council and administration stand at the ready to support the Hubig’s team as they continue to make strides toward their relaunch.”

“JEDCO is pleased to play a role in bringing this iconic regional brand back into commerce,”said Jerry Bologna, the president and CEO of the Jefferson Parish Economic Development Commission. “Through financing opportunities, we are doing our part to help Hubig’s commence production as soon as possible. This project will further advance the vibrant food manufacturing industry in Jefferson Parish, which is an area of focus for JEDCO.”

Congratulations to all those about to be fattened. 

Oh no poor SASOL

I didn't realize the plant that just opened had been been grandfathered in to new ITEP rules.

So far, the Lake Charles chemical production plants have "quickly shown capability to run at full range," Thomas said.

Sasol's economic incentive application for the state's Industrial Ad Valorem Tax Exemption Program, known as ITEP, where companies get a 10-year property tax abatement, was grandfathered in when the program being revamped in June 2018.

They're paying zero in property taxes for 10 years (at least.) That's working well for them. So well, in fact, they are making plans to expand production.  Better look out, though. Under the new rules the next facilities will only be exempt from almost all of their taxes.

If Sasol follows through with plans for an expansion, the company would be eligible for no more than 80% of its property tax bill being forgiven for 10 years under new rules. That means local taxing entities would see a boost in property taxes during the first year.

But, again, it's going well for them and they're planning for expansion now even as they apply for exemptions under the new rules. So what is this even the point of this back and forth?

Sasol's executive was asked by a Commerce and Industry Board member whether the company would still be able to turn a profit if it had only been awarded a 10-year property tax abatement of only 80% rather than 100% when it planned the facility that is being built.

"If we had proposed a lesser incentive … I would have to run the numbers, but I can say this, it's much less likely that we would have (invested in Louisiana)," Thomas said

But you are applying for a new ITEP now.  Not gonna "run the numbers" on that yet? 

Update:  In a somewhat related matter, Governor Edwards, whose administration has overseen the expansion of heavily subsidized chemical facilities and oil and gas infrastructure held a campaign kickoff event today in New Orleans. According to Uptown Messenger there were at least three protesters on hand.

Backtracking on ITEP

Why do Republican legislators hate democracy?

Privacy is important to Google

The company monetizing every bit of personal data about everybody on earth is very careful about what information it shares about itself.

Last May, officials in Midlothian, Tex., a city near Dallas, approved more than $10 million in tax breaks for a huge, mysterious new development across from a shuttered Toys R Us warehouse.

That day was the first time officials had spoken publicly about an enigmatic developer’s plans to build a sprawling data center. The developer, which incorporated with the state four months earlier, went by the name Sharka LLC. City officials declined at the time to say who was behind Sharka.

The mystery company was Google — a fact the city revealed two months later, after the project was formally approved. Larry Barnett, president of Midlothian Economic Development, one of the agencies that negotiated the data center deal, said he knew at the time the tech giant was the one seeking a decade of tax giveaways for the project, but he was prohibited from disclosing it because the company had demanded secrecy.

A very long time ago Google was more or less just a website you used to search for information.  Like if you wanted to know about who your elected representatives were about to shower favors and tax breaks upon, you might use Google to do some of that research.  You can still do that. But Google is hoping you won't find what they're up to until it's too late.

Why are they so worried? Well, it turns out that showering favors and tax breaks onto mega-corporations and international oligarchs isn't the no-brainer political winner it used to be.

The inevitability of Amazon’s arrival, however, had formed a strong common sense. Many acknowledged that it was a crummy deal – including, at times, the plan’s own architects – but urged New Yorkers to resign themselves to its eventuality. Just two days ago, the New York Times published an editorial by historian Kenneth Jackson that granted the subsidies’ absurdity, but suggested still that the city capitulate, stating: “this is how the game is played.” A few weeks earlier, Governor Cuomo, in an interview with Brian Lehrer, said that in a perfect world a company should not have states bidding against one another, but that: “We pray for the perfect, we live in the real.”

In other words, the deal may stink but our hands are tied. Mayor de Blasio acknowledged the obscenity of tax breaks for Bezos, but insisted that the deal was democratic because its key negotiators — the mayor and governor — were democratically elected. The message to New Yorkers was clear: sit down, there is no alternative.

And then, on Valentine’s Day, New Yorkers proved them all wrong. They burst the ideological bubble the establishment was floating, and showed that they will not accept the trickle-down, supply-side urban economics under the vague and misleading banner of “progressive” policy. This demonstrates that we can — and we must — do more than “play the game,” “pray for the perfect,” and follow the leaders.

God bless the kids who write this stuff for Jacobin.  They really do try like hell to convey a sense that great things are happening and victory is right around the corner and man is that ever annoying.  But that doesn't mean they're wrong about what happened. People in New York got together and said they'd had just about enough of this shit in so loudly that it ran the world's richest man right out of town.  So good job, those guys.  How's the rest of the world making out, though?  Not so good.

Making out especially not so good are we here in Louisiana where we're still very much invested in a model of governance that requires us to shower favors on the wealthy first and then hope for good things to come from that.

Maybe they can run Bezos off in New York but we can barely reserve the right to review the occasional industrial tax exemption. Not a single person in New Orleans questioned the cash payroll subsidies handed out to DXC Technology in 2017.  The Sonder STR hotel project is going to have full city council backing. 

In New York they told the world's richest man to fuck off. We can't even stand up to Torres and Motwani and Joe Jaeger. Jaeger just bought himself a dang plantation.  But all indications are we're going to subsidize his downtown hotel with money that could be better spent on shoring up our infrastructure.

What's worse is all of this stuff happens right out in the open where we can read about it in the local papers and whatnot.  What would happen if the local oligarchs started getting all huffy about their privacy when anybody tried to hold them accountable.