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.