BATON ROUGE — After voters overwhelmingly rejected Amendment 2, state lawmakers are considering repurposing portions of the failed measure, including potential changes to tax and spending policies. However, one of its most anticipated provisions, a permanent pay raise for public school teachers and support staff, now appears unlikely, leaving educators and unions scrambling to secure funding before the next academic year.
The wide-reaching constitutional amendment, which had ballooned to 115 pages as a piece of legislation, sought to alter state tax and spending policies. It included provisions to cap the maximum potential state income tax rate and limit legislators’ ability to increase state spending.
Redo on Amendment 2?
Republican Rep. Julie Emerson of Carencro, who co-authored the bill, said she is already drafting new constitutional amendments that would attempt to implement similar changes despite the amendment’s failure.
MORE: Gov. Landry orders state-wide hiring freeze following failure of Amendment 2
“I think you will definitely see some of this reborn in the session,” Emerson said in an interview, later adding, “I think it is just how we package it, and how many instruments we have with it.”
Richard Nelson, Secretary of the Louisiana Department of Revenue, said that while Amendment 2 failed, he does not believe its complexity was necessarily to blame. He noted that all four proposed amendments were rejected, including some far less complex than Amendment 2, suggesting that voter sentiment may have played a larger role.
MORE: Voters reject all four statewide amendments | Here’s what it means
“You had really high turnout in areas where they overwhelmingly voted against the amendments. When you look at the breakdown of all the votes, it was basically ‘no’ on everything—they all basically failed by the same margin, even though they’re completely unrelated and don’t really have an ideological link between any of the amendments,” Nelson said. “Maybe it’s a zeitgeist of the kind of mood the country or the state is in right now.”
The Louisiana legislative session begins on April 14, but the deadline for lawmakers to request legislative staff to draft new amendments expired on Tuesday. This means Emerson’s staff would have already needed to complete a draft of the revised constitutional amendment if lawmakers hope to put a similar proposal back on the ballot.
As of now, there are no major statewide elections scheduled for the rest of the year. To bring the amendment before voters by year’s end, lawmakers would need to schedule a special election, which could cost millions of dollars.
Nelson: Long-term teacher pay raise unlikely
One of the most widely discussed aspects of the failed amendment was its potential impact on state educators. The legislation aimed to make permanent the $2,000 and $1,000 stipends that public school teachers and school support staff have received over the past two years.
Those stipends cost approximately $200 million annually, and educators and unions are concerned about their future.
Despite the setback, both the East Baton Rouge and state teachers’ unions plan to regroup and petition legislators to include pay raises in the state budget.
Nelson said ensuring teachers receive that stipend by July, when the academic calendar resets, may be difficult.
“We wanted to give the teachers a raise. We knew that the budget was going to be tight. We knew it was going to be tighter going forward, and so that money wouldn’t necessarily be there. With that being said, that long-term pay raise, I don’t really see it happening given the fiscal picture right now,” Nelson said.
While a permanent pay raise seems unlikely, Nelson said lawmakers could still approve another one-time stipend, as they have for the past two years. However, securing funding for it could be challenging.
“If you have a two-thirds vote to take it out of the revenue stabilization fund—basically raid the savings account—you could maybe do that. But again, I don’t know if that’s a long-term answer, and that is also a politically fraught method of finding the money,” Nelson explained.
In an article published by the Louisiana Illuminator, Emerson said she would like to repurpose aspects of the amendment, including expanding income tax deductions for seniors 65 and older and redirecting revenue from state savings accounts into the general fund.
Nelson also said the amendment’s proposed financial incentives for parish officials to phase out inventory taxes would have benefited both parish governments and local businesses.
“The inventory tax is very uncompetitive. Louisiana is one of the only states that levies it, and we do it in one of the worst ways possible. It’s basically like a property tax on business inventory. I think that is an element that we would like to revisit. I think it’s really critical,” Nelson said.
Had the amendment passed, parish governments that currently rely on revenue from the inventory tax would have received a one-time payment in exchange for eliminating the tax.
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