Our position on public safety is simple: We want more of it.
That means paying more for first responders, including police and deputies at the city and parish levels.
But there’s a right way to raise that money — and then there's the way Louisiana does it.
Since the top-down populist theories of government in Huey P. Long’s day, the State Capitol was where the power is. And so long as oil and gas taxes paid most of the costs, government was in a giveaway mode.
One example, unique in the United States, is supplemental pay for local police and deputies.
The checks are in large part political payola for sheriffs, mayors and police juries. They kowtow in the direction of the politicos in Baton Rouge, and in return don't have to persuade voters to pay more in taxes for local public safety payrolls. The officers get a supplement from the state taxpayers in their paychecks.
Good government this is not. Local police, like so many other protections and services, ought to be paid from local revenue sources.
A son and grandson of sheriffs, Gov. John Bel Edwards doesn’t balk at all at this populist tradition. He proposed a $100 supplemental pay raise for locals, from $500 a month to $600, but the House Appropriations Committee wisely removed it.
Not only does it make the imbalances in governing worse, it’s also a recurring cost that has to be paid by the state in future. As GOP lawmakers noted, the state has money today, but much of it is one-time federal money; in a few years, major taxes will have to be renewed at the State Capitol to balance the budget.
The caution about boosting this recurring expense, that after all should be borne by local taxpayers, showed the GOP legislators acting more in the interests of the state’s future than Edwards.
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May 02, 2022 at 04:00PM
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Our Views: Let’s pay police more, but do it the right way - The Advocate
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