Dustin Granger, a small business owner who has been a financial advisor and investment manager in Southwest Louisiana for nearly 20 years, said he’s ready to put that experience to good use for the entire state.

The lone Democrat in the state treasurer’s race spoke with the American Press editorial board about what the state could become under his leadership.

“There’s no doubt our economy is one of the worst in the nation and it doesn’t seem to be getting any better,” Granger said. “The treasurer runs the balance sheet of the state — the assets and the liabilities, in some cases — and there is a lot of things that we could use as leverage points to help fix the economy.”

Granger said “he’s sick and tired” of seeing Louisiana battling the same problems, year after year.

“I’ve lived here my whole life. I remember growing up and visiting the small cities and towns around the state that my great-aunts and great-uncles lived in and I remember them being thriving communities,” he said. “Now when I go to those same places, they’re boarded up downtowns with a lot of brain drain.”

Granger said he feels an obligation to fix what he says is broken in Baton Rouge.

“The 2008 financial crisis had a big effect on me,” he said. “That was early in my career and everything I knew about economics was flipped upside down. I went on a kind of obsessive deep dive studying why downturns happen, why depressions happen, how do we come out of it and what I discovered made things pretty clear to me. I can clearly see a lot of the things that we do wrong and since I have the skills and the knowledge to tackle it, I feel obligated to get in there now.”

Louisiana’s poverty numbers and poor education levels are both symptoms of the state’s economic structure, Granger said.

“Our state is a classic trickle-down economics state,” he said. “The trend has been going that way for 50-60 years and it accelerated with (former Gov. Bobby) Jindal. You can’t come out of poverty and improve education until we start investing in people more and stop the giveaways at the very top. It’s a constant ratchet down; it starts with the giveaways at the top — including ITEP (the Industrial Tax Exemption Program), cutting the income tax, getting rid of the estate tax — and it’s designed, in my opinion, to create budget crunches. In a budget crunch, they cut public investment in health, education access and infrastructure. When they can’t cut anymore, they end up raising taxes on working people through sales taxes because they never even consider raising taxes at the personal income tax rate at the top. It happens over and over again.”

Granger said it’s a never-ending downward spiral that leads to poverty and cuts in education.

“You can’t really come out of it until you reverse it,” he said. “We basically rob the poor.”

In the 27 years since the federal government overhauled America’s welfare system, Louisiana has steadily diverted its share of Temporary Assistance for Needy Families received through the Welfare Reform Act of 1996 to plug holes in the state budget.

“Welfare was designed for three things — cash assistance to needy families, worker preparation and assistance, and child care,” he said. “As of a year or two ago, only 4 percent of needy families in Louisiana get cash assistance from welfare. Only 11 percent of needy families get those three things. We’ve raided the TANF funds to fund TOPS (Taylor Opportunity Program for Students) and to fill budget holes. The money is there, but our Legislature pilfers it from the needy.”

Granger said the state recently cut the higher end of the personal income tax to offset the federal income tax deduction. That was a mistake, he said.

“They said it was equal, but it wasn’t really,” he said. “We also have language in our state constitution that says if we have a budget surplus beyond a certain amount, then it lowers again. The personal income tax is the only tax we have really that reaches the upper echelon of wealthy people in our state. Now all the talk is about getting rid of it and that would be an enormous mistake.”

Getting rid of the income tax would blow a $5 billion hole in the budget, cause tax increases on the poor, the homestead exemption would have to be eliminated and sales taxes would have be raised even higher, he said.

“I haven’t seen a budget that would help fill that change,” Granger said. “They say that would migrate more people to the state, but there’s absolutely no evidence of that.”

Granger said Louisiana has a regressive tax structure with the majority of people paying more taxes compared to their income and “it’s off the charts compared to their wealth.”

If elected, Granger said the first thing he would end is the Louisiana State Bond Commission’s ban on doing state business with large banks who deal with gun manufacturers and energy companies.

“It’s costing us money,” he said. “The bond commission’s bank ban is estimated to cost between $50 million-$150 million to Louisiana because municipalities around the state fit the bill for it.”

He also wants to create a small town revitalization program to help rural communities get better access to financing.

“A lot of them have had so much brain drain that they’ve lost a lot of their staff,” he said. “They have just a few people doing a lot of jobs and they don’t know what grants to get and they don’t know the process of applying for them. I want to have a program that makes that easier for small towns to be able to get access to financing. Several towns across the state have huge problems with water and wastewater, simple things. How are they supposed to stop the brain drain if they can’t even be a functioning town?”

Granger said the responsibility of the treasurer is to be honest about the state’s situation — including with the Louisiana Energy Revolution.

“We’re already in trouble because of our over-reliance and our reluctance to explore other energy sources,” he said. “That’s left us vulnerable and we’ve just seen the beginning of it. There’s going to be huge changes in the coming years as far as increases on costs of carbon emissions, not just oil and gas but industry, too. The changes are happening whether we like it or not. We’re going to see more costs and regulations on carbon and we saw in the Inflation Reduction Act a $600 billion investment in clean energy. That, to me, is the tip of the iceberg. We’re likely going to see trillions of dollars in new federal investments in clean energy in a big way and Louisiana has the leverage now and we need to use it to make sure these new investments come here. We’ve provided the United States with energy for the last 100 years, we need preference in a lot of the new energy sources.”

He said Louisiana’s economy is not diversified and is vulnerable.

“If we don’t get those investments, the economy in Louisiana is going to be even worse off than it is now,” he said.

Granger, the father of two young daughters, said when they’re older he’s hoping they’ll choose to keep their roots in Louisiana.

“Running for treasurer is my responsibility and I’m willing to fight for it,” he said. “Even if I lose, I want to tell my grandkids I fought to make this state better. Changes are coming and I’d rather fight the fight and leave an impression and have the conversation.”