Our views for April 19, 2009

• Advocate Opinion page staff
• Published: Apr 19, 2009

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Smoking, drinking, gambling — they are what many call sins and many call fun. But the “sin” taxes are a popular way that government raises revenue, because taxing sin usually is politically easier than raising other taxes.

If ever a year calls for raising sin taxes, it is this year.

The major call for a sin tax increase has come from the second-ranking member of the state House of Representatives, Rep. Karen Peterson, D-New Orleans. She has proposed raising the tobacco tax, including a $1-a-pack increase for cigarettes.

A similar increase was recommended by Gov. Kathleen Blanco in 2005 but not enacted by the Legislature. Blanco pushed that tax to support a teacher pay raise, and we endorsed that plan. But in the context of state revenue falling off a cliff, we more enthusiastically endorse it this year than we did four years ago.

Louisiana desperately needs more recurring revenue to avoid long-term damage to state institutions, particularly colleges and universities.

It is not that there is no room to cut state spending. There is, probably a lot.

But bad planning — akin to blindness, given the obviously looming end of an oil-fueled and storm-recovery-driven boom — is also a contributor to the economic situation facing the state. Govs. Blanco and Bobby Jindal contributed to the fiscal shortfall by pushing ill-advised tax cuts that rolled back the so-called Stelly tax reforms earlier in the decade.

Louisiana would face a fiscal problem this year even if the Blanco and Jindal years had not seen roughly $1 billion in tax cuts.
Jindal should be willing, now that he has milked credit for income tax cuts, to repay the state fisc just a bit by backing a cigarette tax.

At roughly $200 million a year in new revenue, the Peterson increase wouldn’t solve Louisiana’s problem, but it could avert potential disaster for colleges that Jindal says are the long-term solution to Louisiana’s economic problems.

There are sound public health reasons for increasing the tax, particularly on cigarettes. “Louisiana continues to be the least healthy state in the nation,” Peterson said.

Making smoking less attractive for people of all ages, but particularly the young, would save literally billions in future medical-care costs in Louisiana — costs borne by nonsmoking taxpayers via health-care programs for the poor.

Alas, no. The governor says he would veto a cigarette tax.

Legislators ought to call this bluff. After all, it requires a two-thirds vote of House and Senate to pass any tax bill. That’s the same number required to override a Jindal veto.

We don’t know if lawmakers will follow the lead of many other states that are raising sin taxes to help close budget gaps. Even Gov. Haley Barbour of Mississippi, who was a prominent lobbyist for the tobacco industry, signed a cigarette tax increase this year.

Are presidential ambitions coloring Jindal’s opinion? Is he seeking to avoid being called a tax-raiser, even in this perfectly justifiable and reasonable case? He also wants to head off an override, should this issue come to that, as primary voters at some future date might consider that a reflection on his leadership qualities.

If the bill is passed, Jindal could always allow it to become law without his signature — signaling his displeasure but doing the right thing for public health and the treasury.

Smoking and drinking might be sins in the eyes of many people, but there are also political sins. One of them is recklessly cutting funding of public colleges and universities when a reasonable alternative is available.