nwlanews.com - Your home for news in Bossier and Webster Parishes

Main Menu

Home

Bossier News

Sponsored By

nwlanews Blogs

David Specht Jr.'s Blog

Home

Opinion

When talking candidate records, don’t be one-sided

Written by Marty Carlson

Tuesday, 13 November 2007

Since the Oct. 20 primary election established a run-off between Billy Montgomery and B.L. “Buddy” Shaw for the Senate District 37 seat, we’ve been treated to a fairly consistent stream of anti-Montgomery letters to the editor in a daily paper across the river.

Also fairly consistent is that those letters center on the theme of Montgomery’s “record” during his House tenure.

Absolutely missing, however, has been any mention of Shaw’s “record” during his eight years in the House.

So for any curious voter who may just entertain the idea that a comparative analysis between the candidates is in order, a short tour of the Louisiana State Legislature’s website is exceedingly helpful. It’s there that one can review the bills filed by both of these candidates, along with their votes on other lawmaker’s bills.

Say we stop right here—and interested readers scan that website, starting with the 1998 regular session of the legislature, and continuing through the 2003 session—special sessions included.

Finished? Well, then you might have discovered that, with the exception of Stelly, Montgomery and Shaw have similar voting records on fee hikes, and they both voted to repeal the nursing home bed tax. But there are some differences.

In three successive legislative sessions, Shaw proposed legislation that would have dramatically increased annual permit and/or license fees for big trucks hauling such things as agronomic and horticulture crops and garbage. Herein, dramatic is defined as hiking a fee from $10 to $2,000, or $50 to $2,000, or $100 to $2,000, depending on the type of vehicle being permitted or licensed — each year.

Of particular interest, however, should be Shaw’s House Bill 206 (2000 legislative session), which would have imposed in income tax surcharge on a majority of state residents.

On the Montgomery side, a proposed bill would have hiked the fees collected for the Waste Tire Management Fund from $2 to $2.05 for tires weighing more than 100 pounds. And there was one to levy a “twenty-five thousandths of one percent” statewide property tax to operate the tax commission and assist assessors with reappraisal. That one didn’t go anywhere—and he withdrew a proposed one-cent gas tax hike that would have gone to building I-49.
On the other side of the coin, Montgomery’s bill to require all public bodies to post a copy of open meetings laws became law. Unfortunately, his bill that would have provided the depreciated value of a vehicle be used to determine motor vehicle license tax, instead of the initial purchase price, did not manifest to law.

Then there’s Stelly—and again there’s a record. Shaw denounced the proposed tax reform plan on the floor of the House, two years after having proposed his own income tax surcharge, and voted against sending it to an election of the people.

Montgomery voted to allow voters of the state to decide if they favored this route as a step toward the tax reform these very voters had been demanding for years. Revisionist history aside, Stelly was decided by the voters —just as those voters have decided a slew of constitutional amendments virtually every year. Incidentally, there’s a good bit more to Montgomery’s legislative record regarding efforts to repeal Stelly, as reflected in on the legislature’s website.

But there’s one final difference between Montgomery and Shaw, and that’s in the form of state funded capital improvements for our area. If voter’s have a problem with Montgomery’s record of work to securing funding for things like Bossier Parish Community College, infrastructure support for the Cyberspace Innovation Center, an access ramp from the Jimmy Davis Bridge, the War Veteran’s Home, roads and drainage improvements—or funding for cancer research and education—perhaps there’s a list out there of what we could send back to the state.

This area sends millions of dollars in personal, business, severance—and let’s not forget - casino—taxes to Baton Rouge. State revenues derived from casinos in Bossier and Caddo Parishes total nearly a billion dollars since the arrival of those facilities in the river cities. A large portion of that funding should, by all rights, be returned to the same area that welcomed and supports those facilities. Regardless of the source of the state funded improvements our, area has enjoyed as a result of Montgomery’s work, to discount his diligence in seeing that at least a portion of what our area pays is returned to our area is the equal of saying “leave it in south Louisiana.”

As it concerns the Senate District 37 race, the “record” ought to be fully explored. Unfortunately, revisionist history seems to deliberately omit Shaw’s half of the record in favor of criticizing Montgomery’s; maybe it’s time to take off the blinders and check the records of both candidates.

Marty Carlson is a columnist for the Bossier Press-Tribune. She also writes for The Forum and Fax-Net Update.She may be reached via email at This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it
Views: 1272

Be first to comment this article