St. Tammany Parish President Mike Cooper hopes to convince voters in November to let the parish take currently-restricted roads and drainage tax money and use it to cover criminal justice costs. Now, he plans to spend $225,000 in parish money on a PR campaign to help push the proposal.
It’s the latest bid from the Cooper administration to solve the parish’s long-running budget crunch, prompted by voters rejecting tax proposals to fund the parish’s criminal justice five times since 2016.
The Parish Council voted in May to put Cooper’s proposal on the November ballot. And on Thursday the council unanimously approved the money that Cooper will now have at his disposal to inform voters about the proposal, which involves freeing up about a fifth of the parish’s dedicated roads and drainage sales tax revenue.
If voters approve the measure, the roads and drainage tax dollars estimated to be around $15 million a year could then be used for St. Tammany’s public safety agencies, including the parish’s jail and district attorney’s office. Because voters approved the 2% sales tax specifically for roads and drainage, it takes a public vote to spend the money for other purposes.
About $25,000 of the fund will cover the costs of actually running the election, per an estimate the parish received from the Secretary of State’s office. The rest will be used to inform voters, through advertising, mailers and other outreach efforts, about what the rededication of tax dollars means and how it will affect the parish.
How voters will view the proposal remains a question. Tax issues have increasingly become more difficult to pass in recent years.
“Our citizens pay enough taxes and have spoken verbally and at the polls that they want their government to live within its means,” Cooper said in May. “This plan … will utilize an existing funding source to meet all of our needs.”
Cooper has also noted that the tax proposition would extend the sales tax by 25 years, which would give the parish the ability to bond out large large road and drainage projects since the parish could take on municipal bond debt that it could pay off over a longer period of time.
Nov. 5 is also the presidential election, so a high voter turnout is almost a certainty.
Parish government spokesperson Michael Vinsanau noted that the parish legally can’t use public funds to advocate for any tax, but can fund efforts to educate voters about the proposition. Nonetheless, such voter education efforts sometimes prompt complaints from people who question their use of taxpayer money.
State law requires the parish to fund criminal justice programs, including the DA’s office and the parish jail, which is operated by the sheriff’s office. But St. Tammany voters have refused on multiple occasions to approve renewals or new taxes to cover those expenses.
That has left the parish in a bind. It is required by law to fund state-mandated expenses, but doesn’t have the tax revenue to do so. The budget crunch prompted lawsuits from the DA, the sheriff, the St. Tammany clerk of court, and even the judges in the 22nd Judicial District, with each agency arguing that they’re not funded to state-mandated standards.
Cooper's request for the $225,000, which will come out of the parish’s roads and drainage funds, drew little discussion from the council, the latest sign that the current council is more deferential to Cooper than the previous council.
The October elections saw nine new members elected to the 14-member legislative body. The previous council had grown openly hostile to many of Cooper’s moves. Indeed, some of those former members remain skeptical of Cooper’s proposal to shuffle around roads and drainage funds.
“My concern is that the roads and drainage needs always exceed the amount of money that the parish has available,” said Jake Airey, the former council chairman. “There are going to be a lot of issues with this proposal.”
