State rep points to Legislature's success on tax reform, infrastructure

Conservatives in the Legislature met most of their goals in the 2021 regular and special sessions, state Rep. Beryl Amedee told the Morgan City Council on Tuesday.
Amedee, R-Gray and Morgan City’s representative in the state House, said the conservative majority entered 2021 with goals: tax reform, infrastructure improvements, helping students recover from hurricanes and COVID, and ensuring election integrity.
The Legislature succeeded in putting a pair of constitutional amendments changing the tax structure before voters this fall, Amedee said.
One lowers the tax rate for the highest state income tax bracket from 6% to 4.75%, an effort that state Sen. Bret Allain, R-Franklin, has described as making taxes flatter and fairer.
And, Amedee said, the Legislature submitted an amendment centralizing sales tax collections, taking collections out of the hands of parish-by-parish sales tax offices.
On infrastructure, the Legislature passed a phased shift of vehicle sales and lease tax revenue to roads and bridges, resulting in what some estimates say will put $300 million a year against a backlog of $14 billion worth of highway projects alone.
Amedee said legislators were unpleasantly surprised to learn that only about 45% of Louisiana’s third-graders are reading at a third-grade level.
“I don’t know about you,” she said, “but when I was in school and you got a 45 on a test, you failed.”
The Legislature found money for a phonics-based program that met with success in Mississippi, Amedee said.
The MJ Foster Opportunity Program, enacted this year and named for the late governor from Franklin, offers grants for adults who seek job training at community and technical colleges.
Louisiana’s election system has been spared much of the scrutiny directed at other states since the 2020 election, Amedee said. That’s partly because Louisiana isn’t a swing state, and partly because the system here is old-fashioned enough to offer some protection against hacking, she said.
But the Legislature did find some money that will go toward election system upgrades, she said.