Latest news with #JulieEmerson
Yahoo
4 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Tax cuts stall in Senate over concern they're ‘too much, too fast' for fiscal conservatives
The Louisiana State Capitol building. (Wes Muller/Louisiana Illuminator) A package of legislation that would have included tax cuts and an overhaul of state budget laws has stalled in the Louisiana Senate and is unlikely to regain momentum before lawmakers end their 2025 legislative session next week. The package includes a proposed constitutional amendment that would have let lawmakers take $3 billion from an emergency savings account and use some of it to pay for income and sales tax cuts, among other things. That proposal, House Bill 678, sponsored by Rep. Julie Emerson, R-Carencro, received overwhelming bipartisan support from House lawmakers last month but has been sidelined until next year, according to Sen. Franklin Foil, R-Baton Rouge. Foil, who chairs the Senate Committee on Revenue and Fiscal Affairs, said in an interview Sunday he and other senior lawmakers met with Emerson and Gov. Jeff Landry last week to discuss HB 678 and other fiscal bills being proposed this session. '[After] our last meeting that we had with the governor, I don't believe that we'll be bringing that amendment through this session,' Foil said, adding that Emerson's package of fiscal bills had him worried that it was all 'too much, too fast.' Senate leaders are reluctant to green light more of a fiscal policy overhaul before they even see the results of the one they completed in a November special session. In the fall, lawmakers lowered and flattened both individual and corporate income taxes and increased the sales tax. Emerson, who chairs the House Ways & Means Committee, and other House Republicans have been on an aggressive path to lower the state income tax until they can eliminate it entirely. In a previous interview, Emerson said her goal is to 'get to zero,' referring to a 0% tax rate. Emerson's constitutional amendment would have allowed lawmakers to shift about $2 billion from the state Revenue Stabilization Fund into a separate savings account. The remaining $1 billion would be used to pay down debt, freeing up some money currently being spent on interest payments. But the current version of the amendment also formed the backbone of a plan that included using that extra cash to fund two separate tax cuts and make a pay stipend for teachers part of their permanent salary. Lawmakers have found a new way to pay for teacher stipends for another year and are continuing to work on it through a proposed amendment, but the tax cuts have stalled. House Bill 667 would have cut Louisiana's new 3% flat income tax to 2.75% and authorized a higher deduction for taxpayers age 65 and older. The bill was contingent on the amendment's approval, and senators were concerned with an analysis from the Legislative Fiscal Office that estimated the measure could deprive the state of more than a billion dollars in revenue over a five-year period beginning in 2027. The Fiscal Office also stressed the difficulty in coming up with any estimate due to the lack of data reflecting the tax changes that took place in November. 'We didn't even hear the income tax bill because that's primarily what it did,' Foil said. 'It was going to reduce income taxes even more than what we did during the special session in the fall. Many of us up here would like to see income taxes reduced, but we need to do it in a responsible way, and…we didn't want to accelerate deficits for us either until we see how the finances level out.' Another cut was in House Bill 578, which would have lowered the state sales tax from 5% to 4.75%. The rest of the bill restores some minor sales tax exemptions removed from state law during the special tax session last fall. The Senate Revenue & Fiscal Affairs Committee advanced an amended version of the bill Sunday that no longer contains the sales tax rate cut. It is now pending a vote on the Senate floor. Outside of the committee room Sunday, Emerson, who is typically responsive to reporters, offered only short answers as to how she felt about the setback to her legislation. 'I mean, it is what it is. They took it out,' she said. The legislative session ends June 12. SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX
American Press
07-05-2025
- Business
- American Press
Teacher stipends survive committee, could be headed to House floor for a vote
By Nolan McKendry | The Center Square Louisiana lawmakers are moving forward this week with a more targeted version of the defeated Amendment 2, which voters rejected in March for being overly complex and far-reaching. On Monday, the House Civil Law and Procedure Committee advanced House Bill 678, a pared-down constitutional amendment that focuses solely on consolidating the state's two primary savings accounts and a companion bill that would fund $2,000 stipends for the state's teachers. HB678, which passed without objection, is a substitute for the original HB472 and is a central piece of lawmakers' effort to revive key elements of the failed 130-page rewrite of Article VII. The new version is significantly shorter — just five pages of actual bill language and three pages of digest — and is framed as a 'single-issue' measure. 'This particular amendment—of course when I first drafted it—it was still part of the Article VII rewrite, which was very, very lengthy,' Rep. Julie Emerson, R-Carencro, told the committee. 'But we always intended on making it smaller. I was just trying to meet the bill filing deadlines. In Ways and Means, we amended it down to just the fund combination.' The proposed amendment would merge the Budget Stabilization Fund (commonly known as the Rainy Day Fund) with the Revenue Stabilization Trust Fund, and repeal the latter. It would also eliminate current caps on mineral revenues flowing into the general fund, thereby potentially increasing recurring revenue for the state. 'If you remember in Amendment 2, we were combining our two savings accounts,' Emerson said. 'This is the statutory companion. This allows us to grow that fund to about $3 billion. It's a single issue. I would say pretty simple, but obviously, it's a little bit legal — talking about Revenue Stabilization and Budget Stabilization — but that is exactly what the language says we're doing.' The amendment proposes changes to several sections of Article VII of the state constitution and would go before voters on Nov. 3, 2026, a date chosen to coincide with a high-turnout election cycle. The measure is part of a broader effort to revive fiscal reforms contained in the failed March amendment, but this time through standalone bills to avoid overwhelming voters. A companion bill, HB473, which also passed committee without objection, would reallocate savings generated by HB678 to pay down the state's unfunded liabilities in the Teachers Retirement System of Louisiana. That move is intended to eventually fund $2,000 stipends for teachers —though those payments would not arrive until November 2026 at the earliest.
