Louisiana Voters Slap Down Education Tax Measure.

Louisiana Voters Slap Down Education Tax Measure. BATON ROUGE Baton Rouge(băt`ən rzh)[Fr.,=red stick], city (1990 pop. 219,531), state capital and seat of East Baton Rouge parish, SE La. , La. -- By a two-to-one margin, Louisiana voters onNov. 7 dealt a major setback to the state's education community byrejecting a proposal to raise taxes to help fund public education. Roughly half of Louisiana's households would have seen a taxreduction from the proposal, which sought to eliminate the state salestax sales tax,levy on the sale of goods or services, generally calculated as a percentage of the selling price, and sometimes called a purchase tax. It is usually collected in the form of an extra charge by the retailer, who remits the tax to the government. on food and utilities while rinsing personal income taxes for moreaffluent taxpayers. The net gain would have been an estimated $206 million in the firstyear, with 80 percent of that money earmarked for teacher, faculty andother education-related pay hikes. The defeat came despite the support of Gov. Mike Foster, wholaunched a television campaign encouraging voters to invest ineducation. One of Foster's spots noted that Louisiana ranked lastamong the Southern states Southern StatesU.S.Confederacygovernment of 11 Southern states that left the Union in 1860. [Am. Hist.: EB, III: 73]Dixiepopular name for Southern states in U.S. and for song. [Am. Hist. in terms of faculty pay, and funded highereducation higher educationStudy beyond the level of secondary education. Institutions of higher education include not only colleges and universities but also professional schools in such fields as law, theology, medicine, business, music, and art. at the lowest rate of any Southern state. Another ad notedthat the Bayou State Bay´ou State`1. Mississippi; - a nickname, from its numerous bayous. is 44th in teacher pay, and half the students whostart out in kindergarten don't graduate from high school. The margin of defeat made it difficult for the governor to hide hisdisappointment on election night. "The people of the state basically just said they reallydidn't care about the educational community," Foster said. Bernie Pinsonat, a Baton Rouge pollster poll��ster?n.One that takes public-opinion surveys. Also called polltaker.Word History: The suffix -ster is nowadays most familiar in words like pollster, jokester, huckster, who conducted a round ofstatewide exit polls on Nov. 7, said most of the opposition to the taxwas directed at taxes, not teachers. "It wasn't about education," Pinsonat said. Mike Stone, a New Orleans New Orleans(ôr`lēənz –lənz, ôrlēnz`), city (2006 pop. 187,525), coextensive with Orleans parish, SE La., between the Mississippi River and Lake Pontchartrain, 107 mi (172 km) by water from the river mouth; founded public teacher who sits on the LouisianaBoard of Community and Technical Colleges, said the state won'tsolve the problem until it comes up with additional funding foreducation. "We need to throw money at the problem," said Stone, whodescribed himself as a "tax-and-spend-Democrat." Stone noted that the United States United States,officially United States of America, republic (2005 est. pop. 295,734,000), 3,539,227 sq mi (9,166,598 sq km), North America. The United States is the world's third largest country in population and the fourth largest country in area. made significant educationalprogress in the 1960s under the Lyndon Johnson administration There have been two Presidents of the United States with the surname "Johnson": Andrew Johnson Administration, 17th President of the United States, 1865–1869. and Lyndon B. Johnson Administration, 36th President of the United States, 1963–1969. primarilydue to increased funding. Similar progress was made in Louisiana duringthe oil boom of the late 1970s and early 1980s, he said. "Some of the money that we threw at the problem might havebeen wasted, and some might have been stolen, but a lot of it hit whatwe were throwing it at," Stone said. According to according toprep.1. As stated or indicated by; on the authority of: according to historians.2. In keeping with: according to instructions.3. a recent study, the average salary for the 1,303faculty members in the Community and Technical College System is$33,718, or about 14 percent below the Southern regional average. Two days after the election, Stone and his fellow board memberstook steps to throw what money they had available at the problem of lowsalaries. Using money from a tuition hike that was authorized by theLouisiana Legislature last spring, the board approved a modest 2 percentpay hike to most faculty members in the system. But state Sen. Jay Dardenne, who chairs the powerful Senate FinanceCommittee, said money is tight in the Louisiana state government and itis unlikely that the state will come up with money for additional payraises this year or next. He also said the vote on the education tax wasso decisive that it will be difficult to get legislative support foranother income tax hike in the near future. Dardenne said many legislators will interpret the lopsided vote asa mandate for state government to live within its present means -- andthat could mean cuts in all services, including education. Carol Coltharp, the system's director of government and legalrelations, said virtually every major newspaper in the state endorsedthe education tax plan. "But that meant nothing to a lot of voters, because theycan't read," she said. Meanwhile, the governor said he is still looking for Looking forIn the context of general equities, this describing a buy interest in which a dealer is asked to offer stock, often involving a capital commitment. Antithesis of in touch with. possible newrevenues. One possible source could be the state's riverboatcasinos, which have offered to pay a higher state tax if the Legislaturewill repeal a law that currently requires most of them to cruise every90 minutes under safe conditions. "We will probably put some more taxes on the gaming industryhere in the next year," Foster said. "And let me simply tellyou, if we do, it ain't going to pass unless it's dedicated toeducation, if old Uncle Mike has anything to say about it."