GOP lawmakers criticize governor

• By MARSHA SHULER
• Advocate Capitol News Bureau
• Published: Apr 29, 2009 - Page: 1A

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On a day when two tax proposals failed, Republican leaders criticized Gov. Bobby Jindal for a strict anti-tax stand, using harsh words during debate over legislation that would have raised fuel taxes.

State Rep. Hollis Downs, R-Ruston, a Jindal floor leader, said Tuesday the governor opposed his legislation to tie fuel taxes to a consumer price tax but offered no solution for erasing a $14 billion backlog in transportation project needs.

“I call on leadership to step forward and be leaders, not just philosophers,” Downs said as he withdrew his House Bill 456 before a committee voted.

House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Hunter Greene, R-Baton Rouge, responded: “You could not put it any better for me than what you said.”

Jindal has repeatedly argued that government should cut spending rather than increase taxes.

HB456 would have allowed the 20-cent per gallon state gasoline and diesel fuel tax to increase annually by the Consumer Price Index.

Over the next five years, the CPI increases would have brought in $95.7 million for road projects.

Downs said he hoped that the administration would work with lawmakers to come up with solutions to a growing transportation under-funding problem.

“Don’t let us leave here this year with no hope whatsoever,” said Downs, vice chairman of the House Transportation Committee.

Downs scuttled his bill at the end of a nearly two-hour hearing in which Jindal’s transportation chief and one of his policy advisers testified against the legislation.

A short time later, the Ways and Means Committee killed a cigarette tax increase.

Road contractors and an aligned highway advocacy group stressed how the gasoline tax has lost much of its buying power because of inflation over the years.

They warned that by 2011, the state will not have the dollars to draw down all the federal funds available to it for highway construction needs if something is not done to increase state dollars going to transportation.