Skeptical lawmakers get a direct pitch Monday from Gov. Bobby Jindal for his proposal to revamp Louisiana's tax system, as the annual regular legislative session begins.
BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) - Skeptical lawmakers get a direct pitch Monday from Gov. Bobby Jindal for his proposal to revamp Louisiana's tax system, as the annual regular legislative session begins.
The two-month session opens at noon, with Jindal scheduled to speak to a joint meeting of the House and Senate an hour later.
Jindal wants to do away with state income taxes, in exchange for increased sales taxes charged on more items, boosted tobacco taxes and removal of some tax breaks. The Republican governor has said the rewrite is fairer to households and better for business.
But the tax package has run into strong opposition from across the political spectrum and from the state's leading business lobbying group.
Lawmakers have said they don't see how the governor could win legislative passage of the proposal in its current form.
The House Ways and Means Committee has delayed committee discussion of the Jindal tax swap plan until lawmakers receive a nonpartisan financial analysis of the bills from the Legislative Fiscal Office.
Among the questions are whether the tax package would be "revenue neutral" as Jindal suggests or whether it would deepen ongoing state budget problems by stripping more tax income than would be generated with the new taxes charged.
Meanwhile, individual lawmakers are floating other tax proposals for the fiscal session that must end by June 6.
More than 900 bills have been pre-filed, dealing with health care, education, gun rights and a slew of other topics.
Besides taxes, the top legislative priority is devising the annual state budget, for the new fiscal year that begins July 1, after five years of cuts and with the state short of the money that would be needed to continue all programs and services.