On April 15 there was a front-page article in The Advocate regarding the West Baton Rouge Parish Fire Department lacking the funds to upgrade their facilities and thereby increase their fire rating from the current level of 3 ideally to level 1. One big problem is that they can’t afford to install enough fire hydrants. That is because the total annual tax revenues they receive is only about $7.3 million. These funds come from a combination of sales taxes (55%) and property taxes (45%). So, the WBRPFD receives about $3.3 M from property taxes. How much property valuation generates $3.3 million at 25 mills? About $135 million per ChatGPT. There are about 28K people living in WBR, plus lots of retail, office, landowners etc. who all pay property taxes. But let’s assume that the industrial plants there pay 100% of the property taxes meaning the combined value of all the industrial plants would be $135 M. You would think there must not be much industry in WBR Parish, right? You’d be very wrong.
WBRP is home to dozens of multinational industrial plants. They include Dow Chemical, Shintech, Placid Refinery, Exxon and Shell. Shintech, for example, has invested $10 billion in its plant since 1999. Dow is much larger. I think it would be conservative to say that there is at least $50 billion worth of industrial plants in WBRP. Those plants are polluting the environment for the citizens who live there while their big trucks grind up the highways and cause major traffic problems. The entire amount of property tax revenues received by WBRP in 2024 was $12 million. Now, if these industrial plants were paying property taxes equal to just 1% of the value of the plants, they would be paying $500 million annually to WBR Parish or over 40 times the total property tax revenues collected.
How is this possible? Because these multinational companies invest maybe $50 million statewide through the Louisiana Chemical Association (LCA) and the LA Oil & Gas Association (LOGA) and own the State Capitol. The State government prohibits the local governments from taxing industries anywhere near what their value is. Keep in mind, those industries must locate where they are. WBRP has one of the largest ports on the largest River in the USA. And Louisiana is the most lenient state in the nation on pollution control.
If the WBRPFD just had $2 million more a year in revenues, they could reach a #1 level fire rating which would greatly benefit the citizens of the Parish. But this does not help the bottom line of these huge businesses so unless made to, they won’t do it. They will only do and pay what government makes them do and pay. And that is after these multinationals pay a pittance to legally buy the state legislature and governor.
We need good government to regulate businesses and make them contribute a reasonable amount to the overall wellbeing of society. There is no entity other than government to do this.