The Greater Lafayette
Chamber of Commerce has joined forces with 14 other business organizations from
around the state to support the elimination and accelerated phase-outs of
several business taxes. The Legislature will being debating the bills Sunday in
Gov. Bobby Jindal’s second special session.
The coalition
believes the elimination of these taxes would remove a major obstacle in
economic development efforts and improve the competitiveness of all Louisiana
businesses. “The removal of these unorthodox taxes would at least level
Louisiana’s playing field when compared to the rest of the country,” says Mike
Odom, the group’s spokesperson. “Businesses of all sizes would now be given the
opportunity to make positive investments in their future.”
Specifically, the
special session will address:
-- Eliminating the 1
percent state sales tax on business utilities that brings in about $68 million a
year, starting July 1.
-- Accelerating the
removal of the corporate franchise tax on debt, an elimination started under
Blanco's administration. The tax was scheduled to be gone by July 1, 2011.
Jindal is proposing eliminating it one year early, by July 1,
2010.
-- Speeding up the
removal of the state sales tax on manufacturing machinery and equipment, another
elimination started by Blanco's administration. The tax was scheduled to expire
by July 1, 2010, but Jindal wants it of the books one year
earlier.
The coalition is also
made up of the Ascension Chamber of Commerce, Baton Rouge Area Chamber,
Feliciana Chamber of Commerce, Greater Shreveport Chamber of Commerce, Iberville
Chamber of Commerce, Jefferson Chamber of Commerce, Louisiana Industrial
Development Executive Association, Monroe Chamber of Commerce, Natchitoches Area
Chamber of Commerce, River Region Chamber of Commerce, Ruston-Lincoln Chamber of
Commerce, West Feliciana Community Development Foundation, and West Monroe-West
Ouachita Chamber of Commerce.
Is it a crime for citizens to photograph, video, or take notes of a police officer in the line of duty, or a right protected by the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution? Locally, such activity, as witnessed recently, will at the very least result in a night spent behind bars.
David Calhoun and Elizabeth “EB” Brooks are the first two employees of Lafayette Central Park Inc., the nonprofit charged with turning Lafayette Consolidated Government’s 100-acre Johnston Street Horse Farm property into a passive public park. Calhoun was named executive director, and Brooks is director of planning and design.
At Thursday's State of the Economy luncheon, LEDA President and CEO Gregg Gothreaux said PXP has already quietly hired 180 people for its Broussard expansion.
Episcopal School of Acadiana’s Dr. Joshua Caffery, chair of the school’s English Department, is headed to Washington, D.C., and the Library of Congress as the latest winner of the Alan Lomax Fellowship in Folklife Studies.
This year’s Cool Town issue is all about people who are not native to South Louisiana but made a conscious decision to be here, to be among us, to participate in our culture and contribute to it.
A shelved ordinance transferring $200,000 from a northside drainage project to a south Lafayette development may not break any laws, but it stinks to high heaven.
An effort to restore a shuttered dancehall and document other vacant or razed honky-tonks could serve as a model for saving an endangered species of entertainment.
Lafayette’s gene pool has been host to a long line of eccentric characters who have blurred the lines between crazy, genius, disturbed and curiously entertaining.
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