re: ExxonMobil withdraws ITEP requests, future Baton Rouge expansion in question

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But, are we really comparing School Boards to US Congress/President?

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I'm trying to show that the state has no business making this decision for local school boards, just like the federal government has no business making tax decisions for local states.

EBR made a terrible decision, but it was theirs to make.

If the feds told LA that they had to exempt XYZ group from state taxes, this board would (correctly) lose their everloving minds. I mean, just look how this board feels about having the feds force common core on the state.

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I mean I know they suck but local School Boards are well below them on economics and finance

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The freshman representative from New York?

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If you’ve going to leave it local, then fine. Leave it to the local council and parish presidents, not some glorified teachers and principals. They have no business IMO.

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The problem is that the local school board is tasked with, among over things, overseeing their budget and setting tax rates that go to the school system.

If you believe some other entity should be tasked with overseeing and approving the budget and tax rates for local school boards, and take that power away from the school board, I'd be willing to listen to that.

And actually, many school boards have a majority of their school board members are NOT former teachers or principals or administrators.

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Due to the uncertainty, we will have to assume there is no ITEP incentive as we make cost projections on future investment opportunities in Louisiana

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The words uncertainty, future and Louisiana seemingly go together too much lately.

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The words uncertainty, future and Louisiana seemingly go together too much lately.

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The reason we have uncertainty is because we have a tax system that requires constant exceptions - which must be approved by humans - to function.

The only true "correct" answer is to reform our tax system to make programs like ITEP unnecessary.

If we had a fair, equitable, and predictable tax system, we wouldn't have these issues.

Get rid of the corporate income tax. Get rid of the inventory tax. And then, the property tax isn't such a big deal anymore.

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Don't worry everyone, Broome will reinforce her "support" for ExxonMobil in a press conference today at 10:00 am.

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Sure, and whether its Broome or someone else, we will soon hear about an effort to steer some of that Exxon community involvement into preferred non-profits run by the right people.

Except the damage has already been done. If she had held this event 18 months ago, it might have swayed some of the ignorant masses and equally ignorant EBR elected officials that sat by and bought into the vilification of one company by hired guns from out of state.

And LSUFan you seem to want to put yourself in charge of ITEP, let me ask again, why do you feel compelled to chime in when you’ve admitted you are not a homeowner (or taxpayer) in EBR Parish? Maybe your parish stands to benefit from EBR ineptitude? Would it matter to you that Exxon was advised to wait to submit the application that was rejected while EBR sorted out how they wanted to implement it? Would you blindly apply for a personal loan without knowing what information the lender needs, what amount to apply for, what the rate will be, and what collateral you’d have to provide? Or should the company have deferred that work indefinitely, not knowing when, or if, rules would be put in place?

What exactly does the refinery do at this facility? Do they run Light Crude by chance?

As a general rule of thumb (so far it’s 100% accurate but you never know, I may agree one day with them), whatever Together Louisiana/Together Baton Rouge support, the opposite is the best scenario.

I’m not saying they are all incompetent morons, but they make 1-tooth Bubba from any trailer park in Livingston Parish look like Einstein