BREAKING: House agrees to 18-month state sales tax hike

Published 1:52 pm Thursday, February 25, 2016

BATON ROUGE — House lawmakers on Thursday took some big steps forward in dealing with the state’s budget crisis by approving legislation that would impose an additional 1-cent sales tax hike over 18 months, along with more than $100 million in cuts.

Lawmakers voted 76-27 to approve House Bill 62 by Rep. Katrina Jackson, D-Monroe. The bill, which heads to the Senate, would increase sales taxes by 1 percent until Oct. 1, 2017.

The bill was amended to include the sunset provision and to exclude manufacturing equipment from the tax hike.

Voting for the bill were Reps. Mark Abraham, R-Lake Charles, James Armes, D-Leesville, Mike Danahay, D-Sulphur, Stephen Dwight, R-Lake Charles, A.B. Franklin, D-Lake Charles, Bob Hensgens, R-Abbeville, and Dorothy Sue Hill, D-Dry Creek.

Reps. John Guinn, R-Jennings, and Frank Howard, R-Many, opposed the measure.

House lawmakers voted 98-0 to adopt House Bill 122 by Rep. Cameron Henry, R-Metairie, and move it to the Senate for consideration.The bill originally called for $117 million in cuts, but that was reduced to $107 million in cuts after several amendments were approved removing some funds from the list.

One amendment takes out the $44 million in reductions to the Minimum Foundation Program that funds K-12 education. Instead, Henry said, it instructs the state Department of Education to find those cuts "somewhere outside of the MFP.”

Lawmakers also approved a bill that uses $128 million from the "rainy day" fund to fix this year’s budget, along with another bill that takes $200 million in non-coastal money from the BP oil spill settlement to repair the budget deficit.<p>(American Press Archives)</p>