The Landry administration has touted a slew of industrial projects coming to Ascension Parish, including the construction of a $6 billion Hyundai steel mill. But there’s a high cost to this economic development, which is leaving some locals wishing the state would use taxpayer dollars to make nonindustrial investments in their communities. The Times-Picayune | Baton Rouge Advocate’s Christopher Cartwright reports:
(…) officials plan to spend $600 million on land purchases, roads, rail upgrades and a new state-owned worker training facility. The companies will also likely see significant industrial tax exemptions, which allow up to an 80% property tax reduction for companies. The Ascension Parish Council also passed an ordinance creating an economic development district for the area, which allows taxes to be specifically reinvested in economic development projects there.
Louisiana taxpayers will be on the hook for $445 million of the $600 million price tag, while Ascension Parish taxpayers will be responsible for $160 million.
Many residents of southwest Louisiana, which has become an international hub for exporting liquefied natural gas, are also concerned with using taxpayer dollars to subsidize industrial projects. Pam Radtke, Evan Simon, and Jeffrey Basinger of Floodlight report:
Louisiana’s Cameron Parish alone would forfeit nearly $15 billion between 2012 and 2040 if all proposed terminals were built. … Pointing to houses abandoned in Lake Charles after Hurricane Laura five years ago, Hiatt said, “If they have so much money, why don’t they actually pour that money into the communities where they operate? They give little peanuts. (It’s) nothing to the amount of money that they have been given by the government and the people here.”
Residents point out that they are forced to give up tax revenue, which could be used to fund schools, parks, libraries and much more, and are left with pollution and health problems:
While families struggle to pay for their own energy, Ozane said all the local community gets from the methane buildout is “more health problems.” The production and transportation of LNG also generates significant greenhouse gas emissions, including methane and carbon dioxide.
Public broadcasting cuts hinder emergency alerts
Federal cuts to public broadcasting will hinder the ability of local stations to send out emergency alerts in Louisiana. Congress voted last month to defund the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and the grants the organization sent to local television and radio stations. States Newsrooms’ Jennifer Shutt reports:
“CPB has been fully invested in the NGWS program and its mission to protect the American public,” CPB President and CEO Patricia Harrison wrote in a statement. “This is one more example of rescission consequences impacting local public media stations and the communities they serve—in this case, weakening the capacity of local public media stations to support the safety and preparedness of their communities.”… “As a result, critical emergency alerting equipment will not be purchased, leaving communities, especially those in rural and disaster-prone areas, without the upgrades Congress intended.”
The many benefits of unions
Unions have a proven track record of increasing wages and protecting workers. A new report from the Economic Policy Institute explains how benefits of unionization extend beyond the workplace:
High union density is consistently associated with a much broader set of positive spillover effects across multiple dimensions: from higher wages and better benefits; to more equitable tax systems; safer workplaces; stronger public services; and healthier, more inclusive democracies. Unions don’t just improve workers’ paychecks—they shape the social and political fabric of the communities they operate in, lifting standards for union and nonunion workers alike, while their political advocacy helps to drive an array of strongly positive outcomes, especially in states where unions represent a sizeable share of the workforce.
The resiliency of New Orleans higher education
Hurricane Katrina wreaked havoc on New Orleans, and higher education institutions were not immune to the impact. A new report from the Brookings Institution examines how local colleges and universities played a key role in the Crescent City’s recovery, and the challenges they still face:
Institutions of higher education are critical components of metropolitan New Orleans’ community resilience. The higher education community is an indispensable source of resilience that has improved its internal resilience capacities as well as the resilience capacities of its larger regional environment over the past 20 years. More attention is needed on this remarkable source of resilience capacities and its impacts on regional resilience.
Number of the Day
26,000 – Number of jobs that could be lost in Louisiana in 2035 because of federal cuts to clean energy tax credits. (Source: Center on Budget and Policy Priorities)