Statement of TBR Executive Committee on Proposed Southeast Incorporation February 2014

Together Baton Rouge shares many of the premises of the group seeking to form a separate city in the southeast unincorporated area of East Baton Rouge Parish. Like them, we believe that many issues in our community require urgent action, in particular the need to improve public education. Like them, we believe that citizens must take the lead in bringing about change and that we can't afford to wait for government to act. But while we agree on these premises, we come to nearly opposite conclusions about what course of action will accomplish these goals. Instead of separating our communities further apart from one another, we believe that we must bind our fates and interests more deeply together to continue to see progress in our community. We have three specific concerns about the proposed St. George incorporation. First, we are concerned about the consequences for public education. By the admission of its proponents, the incorporation campaign is predominantly a political strategy to win legislative votes for a breakaway school district, after that effort failed in two consecutive legislative sessions. This political strategy may or may not succeed, but even if it does, we have serious doubts that creating a breakaway district will improve public education for our citizens. The immediate consequences of a breakaway school district would be two-fold. First, it would reduce per pupil funding for children in EBR Parish schools from $9,635 to $8,870, an 8% cut in per pupil funding.1 That would appear to be the largest cut to school funding in the history of East Baton Rouge Parish schools. Second, it would displace some 7,000 students from their current schools of choice, including 6,209 children who live in the southeast unincorporated area and attend schools in the City of Baton Rouge, plus 787 children who live in the City of Baton Rouge and attend schools in the unincorporated area. It appears to us that these two consequences -- an unprecedented cut to school funding and the displacement of nearly 7,000 children from their current schools -- would do significant harm to public education in our community, not improve it. Our second concern is over the economic and fiscal consequences of incorporation. A study of the proposed incorporation by Drs. Jim Richardson, Jared Llorens and Roy Heidelberg finds that the southeast incorporation would create a $53 million annual budget deficit for the cityparish, which amounts to 20% of the entire city-parish budget.

Dr. Jim Richardson, et al., "On the Possibility of a New City in East Baton Rouge Parish," December 2013, p 26.

As an indicator of the magnitude of a 20% annual budget deficit, the City of Detroit faced an annual deficit of 12.5% in 2012 -- the year before it went bankrupt. Closing a $53 million deficit through service cuts likely would have a serious negative effect on public services, especially on fire and police services, which make up the largest share of the cityparish budget. Closing a $53 million deficit with new taxes would require a property tax increase of more than 15 mils on every household in the city-parish, including residents in the southeast. St. George proponents assert that the deficit created by incorporation would be $14 million, not $53 million. That assertion, however, is based not upon some different method of calculating the cost to the city-parish, but upon the promise of a goodwill gesture voluntarily to return $39 million back to the city-parish. We have no reason to doubt the sincerity of the people making that promise. But they are doing so as private citizens with no official capacity in a not-yet-existent municipality, speaking on behalf of future elected officials who, if the incorporation succeeds, would decide the matter for themselves. We know of no precedent in the history of our nation for that kind of voluntary transfer between government entities. We think it unwise to believe that such a precedent would be set in this case. Our third concern is over greater division in our community. One premise of the incorporation proponents seems to us to be unsubstantiated and troubling. Over the last thirty or so years, the city-parish as a whole has made significant investments into the infrastructure of the southeast unincorporated area, which helped develop the area from a relatively sparsely populated community into an area rich with residential and commercial activity. This public investment played a significant role in the development of commercial centers such as the Mall of Louisiana, Perkins Rowe, Siegen Lane Marketplace and L'Auberge Casino, which are the largest generators of tax revenue in the southeast unincorporated area. The notion that the cityparish as a whole is benefiting unfairly from the southeast area's tax revenue ignores the fact that it was city-parish resources as a whole that helped develop the commercial areas that are producing that tax revenue in the first place. In addition, the largest commercial centers in the southeast area draw their customers not merely, or even predominantly, from residents within the southeast unincorporated area. Retail outlets such as the Mall of Louisiana are regional in nature, and draw their sales, and their sales tax revenue, from residents who live throughout our entire city-parish. For these reasons, we believe it is inappropriate to think of the tax revenue these regional retail centers produce as "belonging to" the area in the immediate vicinity of their location, just as it would be inappropriate to view the property taxes generated by the ExxonMobil plant on Scenic Highway as "belonging to" North Baton Rouge. Such a narrow view of a community and its resources has the potential to pit neighborhoods against one another in a way that we think is potentially divisive and unhealthy for our community.

These three concerns -- the effect on public education, the destabilizing impact on the city-parish economy and the prospect of greater division across our community -- leave us with grave concerns about the proposed St. George incorporation and breakaway school district. We are convinced that the proponents of the southeast incorporation are people of goodwill, pursuing a course of action out of their genuinely held convictions about what is right and wrong. We disagree with their conclusions and with the course of action they propose.