Political Horizons for Nov. 30, 2008

• By MARK BALLARD
• Advocate Capitol News Bureau
• Published: Nov 30, 2008 - Page: 7B - UPDATED: 12:05 a.m.

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When I was younger and single, many — well, most — of my dates included long conversations about the effect of free milk on the future purchase of cows.

In retrospect, this unwanted talk about consequences, mood killer that it was, inserted some caution into the excitement of the moment.

State taxpayers are about to be rushed into another mating ritual in which hundreds of millions of their dollars are going to be offered to some slick-haired company from somewhere else spouting all sorts of promises in return for Louisiana’s very real dowry.

Sometime in December, the environmental permits should win approval. In January the board of directors at Nucor Corp., a Charlotte, N.C.-based steelmaker, would decide whether to begin building a $2.1 billion facility near the Sunshine Bridge. Then, probably by February, the Louisiana Legislature would convene a special session to approve spending tens, if not hundreds of millions, of taxpayer dollars on the project.

Just how much money will Louisiana taxpayers spend on the private company? The head of economic development for Gov. Bobby Jindal, Stephen Moret, won’t say.

The incentive package likely would include promises that the company won’t have to pay taxes for a while, low-cost loans, money to build a port facility, other infrastructure and preparation of the 4,000 acres plus outright cash grants. But precisely what, Moret won’t say.

“I’m not trying to be cagey. It’s just we’re still competing,” Moret said last week.

How many jobs? Moret won’t say, though he allows that the project is much bigger than first reported in the press when the number hovered around 500 jobs.

Nucor probably is the handsomest gentleman caller to Louisiana’s “Glass Menagerie” since Dow Chemical and Exxon moved here decades ago.

But there’s reason for caution. Union Tank Car, the last best thing, is trying to back out of its vow to employ 850 workers. Earlier this month the company asked to hire only 650 employees without being penalized for breaking its contract.

If state legislators convene in a special session and vote to spend part of the Mega-Project Development Fund, the cash balance of which was $413,618,662 last Tuesday, they then will reconvene on April 27 to trim $1.3 billion from the state budget. They likely will slash more than a half billion dollars from health care and from the budgets of LSU, Southern University and the other state colleges and universities.

A cogent argument can be made that investing the megafund into building up the state would go much further toward making Louisiana an attractive place to live and work than giving the money to private companies.

For instance, that money could be spent on construction and maintenance projects at the universities. Southern, we’re told, has problems with its basic heating and cooling systems. And the state is about $400 million shy of the necessary funds to rebuild the LSU public and teaching hospital in New Orleans that once was called “Big Charity.”