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The speaker of the Louisiana House filed legislation Wednesday to streamline state sales tax collection.
The change would require amending the state constitution, meaning at least two-thirds of the members of the state House and Senate and a majority of voters would have to approve the change.
Louisiana is one of only three states without a single state sales tax collector. Business advocates say the decentralized system is difficult to navigate.
Local government officials, however, long have guarded their ability to collect their own sales taxes, saying it was the best way to ensure the money is spent the way local voters and taxpayers want it spent.
House Speaker Clay Schexnayder filed legislation last year that created a task force to study centralizing sales tax collection. That group proposed creating a statewide entity that would oversee state and local sales tax collections and take over the duties of two existing boards focused on internet sales taxes and resolving disputes between taxing entities.
One of the biggest sticking points for the group, which included representatives of state and local government as well as business, was deciding how the new entity would be governed. Schexnayder’s bill proposes an eight-member board evenly divided between state and local government.
State associations representing school boards, municipalities, police juries and sheriffs each would appoint a member. So would the governor, the state revenue department (which answers to the governor), the House speaker and the Senate president.
Local leaders also have been concerned about losing their right to audit taxpayers in their jurisdictions. While local leaders say they know best whether a business in their backyard needs to be audited, business owners don’t want to be subjected to multiple audits by different jurisdictions.
The proposed commission would serve as the “central audit entity” for taxpayers without a physical presence in the state and would be charged with developing rules to “streamline the audit process” for other taxpayers.
The Louisiana Sales and Use Tax Commission for Remote Sellers, which handles internet sales taxes and sales for other taxpayers outside the state, and the Uniform Local Sales Tax Board, which helps to resolve disputes, would be abolished.
The change will ensure Louisiana is compliant with the U.S. Supreme Court’s South Dakota v. Wayfair Inc. decision, proponents said.
“For the better part of the last year we have been working closely with local and state partners to come up with a solution to our outdated sales tax collection system,” Schexnayder said in a prepared statement. “That hard work has paid off with the introduction of this constitutional amendment.”

The decision by Cargill to stop mining salt at Avery Island interrupts, maybe forever, an activity that has gone on there for a thousand or more years.  
The salt itself is millions of years old. Avery Island is one of five Louisiana domes that long, long ago were covered by a salty ocean.
Seawater evaporating over eons created a huge sheet of salt that was later covered by tons of sediment. The sediment’s weight forced the salt into huge columns that pushed through the soggy silt.
Some scientists think humans may have tasted Avery Island salt as early as 12,000 years ago, although there has been much debate about that.
Harvard archaeologist Ian Brown did extensive studies beginning in the 1960s and is more conservative. He said Indians were probably trading the island’s salt throughout eastern North America about 1,000 years ago.
Brown noted that the local Indian tribes were hunters and fishermen who did not need much salt added to their diets, but people who relied on agriculture did.
The early traders evaporated water from salty springs. Pottery bowls were propped over a low fire to evaporate the water, leaving a residue of salt in each bowl. This trading went on for centuries, until something happened somewhere in the dim past to cause the Indians to leave the island and never return.
Elizabeth Hayes and her children settled on the island about 1790, long after the Indians were gone, and newspaperman Daniel Dennett visited Elizabeth’s son John Hayes, who was in his 80s and still living on the island in 1866. “There were no Indians on the island [when the family first settled],” Dennett wrote, “and no sign that they had been there for ages. [Hayes] could never get an Indian to go on the Island. … They said a great calamity once happened to the Indians there, and they had never dared visit since.”
Jonathan Craig Marsh bought the island about 1820 and his daughter married Judge Daniel Avery, who bought the island from his father-in-law. They did some salt evaporation, but it was only a small enterprise until a shortage during the Civil War prompted Marsh’s grandson, John Marsh Avery, to improve the salt works. Workmen deepening the brine springs in 1862 hit solid salt about 16 feet down. That was a big deal; rock salt had never been found before in North America.
According to an old account, “The news of the wonderful discovery … spread throughout the entire South, and … hundreds of wagons came from the adjoining states to carry back the precious article.”
That lasted until April 1863, when Union troops destroyed the mine. An 1895 news account claimed that when the war closed the Avery family had banked $3 million in (practically worthless) Confederate money.
When Dennett visited in 1866 a mining company was just investigating the bed of salt. Drillers bored 65 feet down and found no sign of the bottom of the salt bed. 
Little did they know they had barely scratched the surface. A later geological report speculated that the salt column is as deep as Mount Everest is tall.
Dennett visited again in 1870 and “went down into … the very bowels of Petite Anse Island,” as Avery Island was sometimes called. “A platform about six feet square … was suspended by a two-inch manila rope … worked by a steam engine.” He said it took half a minute to drop 80 feet down the shaft.
“From the platform, the chamber extends two hundred feet west, and a hundred and fifty feet east, making a continuous chamber three hundred and fifty feet long, twenty-five to thirty feet wide, and seven feet high.” He said the mine was producing six tons of salt each day.
American Salt Co. leased the mine in 1880, but that didn’t turn out well.
In an 1895 lawsuit, the Avery family complained American sub-leased the mine to the New Iberia Salt Co., which “totally disregarded the terms of the lease and … worked the mine so that it was practically ruined and destroyed.”
They said they had to start over with a new shaft and new mine.
A succession of companies has leased and operated the mine since then, with Cargill taking over in 1997.
The company planned to leave Avery Island when its lease ended later this year, but the decision was hastened after two miners were killed when a roof collapsed.
A collection of Jim Bradshaw’s columns, “Cajuns and Other Characters,” is now available from Pelican Publishing. You can contact him at jimbradshaw4321@gmail.com or P.O. Box 1121, Washington LA 70589.

Acadiana Center for the Arts is offering a grant to area high school/college students and non-profit organizations in Acadia, Evangeline, Iberia, Lafayette, St. Landry, St. Martin, St. Mary and Vermilion Parishes!
Anyone interested in advancing your arts-related education through financial support should visit acadianacenterforthearts.org to learn more about applying for the Jean Breaux Award.
Applications may be submitted though April 2.
The Jean Breaux Award 2021-22 is a grant program of the AcA for high school and college students as well as non-profit organizations. The program provides financial support to practicing young artists, who are interested in enhancing their skills through participation in advanced study beyond what is available in their present school curriculum. Recognized arts disciplines for this program are performing arts, visual arts, dance, folklife, literary arts, media arts, music, and theater and arts administration.
Funding is available May 1 through April 30, 2022. Up to $1,000 is available.
This is not a scholarship program to pay for high school or college classes/courses, tuition or school supplies/books.
High school and college students planning to pursue a career or professional training opportunity in any of the eligible arts disciplines, or arts administration are eligible is they are a citizen of the United States and a resident of Louisiana living in the aforementioned parishes with an overall GPA of a “B” or higher on their high school or college transcripts.
The student/artist must be enrolled in a public or private high school, community college or university and is a practicing artist, defined as one who is dedicated to producing artwork on a regular basis.
Non-profit organizations within those parishes providing services in artistic professional development or creating new works of art involving high school and college students living in Acadiana are also eligible.
All applications must be completed and submitted online to the Acadiana Center for the Arts, Community Development Department, using the online form.
The Jean Breaux Awards is administered by the Community Development Department of the Acadiana Center for the Arts and is financially supported by the AcA, individual donors and AcA board fund-raising efforts.
Contact Gwen Richard, community development director, via email at Gwen@AcadianaCenterfortheArts.org or call 337-233-7060 extension 227.
The purpose of the program is to increase participation in the arts by providing support for short-term arts educational opportunities or arts administration, which encourage the creation of art by are high school and college students/artists, as well as, non-profit organizations or groups proposing arts productions/activities, which involve and benefit high school and/or college students/artists.
Visit acadianacenterforthearts.org for grant information and an application.

DEAR ABBY: I used to be a successful working woman until I lost my husband of 30 years. After I became homeless, I met “Tom.” We’ve been good friends for the last five years, hanging out in the woods, sometimes getting hotel rooms. It’s a platonic relationship, but we rely on each other.
I receive Social Security survivor benefits now, and I want to move on and get my own place. He says he’s fine with it, but I feel terribly guilty. He gets a small disability check but is not wise with money. How can I comfort him?
GUILTY IN FLORIDA

DEAR GUILTY: Tom has told you he is fine with you upgrading your living situation. I presume that you don’t intend to desert him. Believe him and stop flogging yourself for your good fortune.
Help him when you can and encourage him to contact an agency that helps the homeless so he can get his life back on track, too.

DEAR ABBY: I’m in a same-sex relationship with a woman I love and admire. But five months in, sex is becoming impossible because I think I’m heterosexual. Leaving this relationship scares me because I can’t imagine a life without her.
I told her I didn’t know if, for several reasons, sex would be a part of our relationship, but that I do love her. She doesn’t seem to mind at all. I’m not sure what to do.
Please help.
LOVING IN LOUISIANA

DEAR LOVING: What you need to do is be honest with your partner. It is possible that you are bisexual and need to explore relationships with men before making up your mind about any permanent relationship.
If sex is important to you, then the person you wind up with may not be this woman you love and admire, but someone else entirely.

DEAR ABBY: My grandson died by suicide in 2019. My daughter, who lives in another state, hasn’t spoken to me since. Why? Because we did not call her on the phone. We were texting her, and she was texting us back. When I did try to call, she wouldn’t answer the phone.
It has been more than a year now. She won’t respond to other family members, either. Please advise me what to do in this sad situation.
WOUNDED GRANDMA IN TEXAS

DEAR GRANDMA: Not knowing your daughter, I am hesitant to guess why she has isolated herself from everyone. She may have felt she was entitled to more support from you all and didn’t receive it.
As many people have pointed out in my column, while texts may be efficient, they are a poor substitute for a human voice. Because she refuses your calls, write her a letter telling her you love her and apologize for letting her down after the tragedy of losing her son. Whether it will help, I can’t guess — but at least the olive branch will have been offered.
***
Good advice for everyone — teens to seniors — is in “The Anger in All of Us and How to Deal With It.” To order, send your name and mailing address, plus check or money order for $8 to: Dear Abby, Anger Booklet, P.O. Box 447, Mount Morris, IL 61054-0447.