Landrieu has come down against Jindal's proposal for ditching Louisiana's income and corporate taxes
Mayor Mitch Landrieu, in a wide-ranging interview with Bloomberg TV on Friday, waded into the debate over Gov. Bobby Jindal's bid to eliminate Louisiana's income and corporate taxes, arguing that the sales tax increase necessary to compensate for the lost revenue would hurt New Orleans. "There are going to be winners and there are going to be losers," Landrieu said, pointing out that New Orleans already has one of the highest sales tax rates in the country, and that if the governor ends up raising the state's sales tax as much as needed, it could bring the city's overall rate as high as 15 percent.
Gov. Bobby Jindal
Landrieu also expanded on his view of the gun-control debate, staking out a centrist position by emphasizing the need for more police rather than simply banning certain weapons, and he reflected on former Mayor Ray Nagin's indictment on corruption charges as a "sad day" for New Orleans.
But it was the first time Landrieu has commented on Jindal's tax proposals, and his remarks threw into even greater relief the tax and spending differences between New Orleans' Democratic mayor and the state's conservative Republican governor. It's a rift that came to light last fall when Landrieu unveiled his latest budget proposal and slammed the Jindal administration for state cutbacks in law enforcement and mental health.
Louisiana's sales tax stands at only 4 percent, but local bodies like the Regional Transit Authority and the Orleans Parish School Board also levy a sales tax, bringing the total in the city to more than 9 percent. Sales and other across-the-board taxes are regressive, imposing a greater burden on the poor than on the rich because of an inverse relationship between the tax rate and the taxpayer's ability to pay.
Bloomberg's Al Hunt asked Landrieu if he thought Jindal's tax proposal has to do with the governor's national political ambitions, but the mayor demurred. "One of the things we learn as legislators and mayors is, you don't question other people's intentions, but you look at the consequences of what they do," Landrieu said.
He did not make any specific predictions about how eliminating income and corporate taxes might affect programs in New Orleans, but added, "One thing that we cannot do is provide a service to the people that they demand without the resources to do it."
Although Jindal hasn't fleshed out all of the details of his tax proposal, he has argued that "eliminating personal income taxes will put more money back into the pockets of Louisiana families" and "make Louisiana more attractive to companies who want to invest here and create jobs."
Landrieu did not seem convinced. Asked if he thought Jindal's proposals might benefit the state at all, he replied, "I don't think that it's going to help a lot."
On gun control, the mayor warned against allowing extreme opinion on either the left or right to dominate the discussion in Congress. He called on political leaders to instead rally around proposals that stand a chance of drawing bipartisan support, including the $4 billion that President Obama has proposed allocating to keep more police officers on the street.
"This is not a Second Amendment issue," Landrieu said. "I believe in the Second Amendment. I own guns. I'm from Louisiana. But it's much broader than that. It's about the culture of violence in America. We have to stay focused on that."
Of course, most residents of New Orleans were focused squarely on the fate of Landrieu's predecessor on Friday. A federal grand jury unveiled 21 counts of corruption against Nagin on Friday morning, and Landrieu, who lost a mayoral bid to Nagin in 2006, told Bloomberg, "This is a very sad day for the people of the city."
He added, "New Orleans turned a corner two-and-a-half years ago. All of us are on the same page that we have to do things a new way, and I think this reminds people of a day that most people in New Orleans would like to forget."