A bill that would have raised some funds to pay for passenger rail service between Baton Rouge and New Orleans is dead.
On Monday, the House Ways and Means Committee involuntarily deferred House Bill 621. The committee voted 10-4 to shelve the bill. Reps. Marcus Bryant (D-St. Martinville), Matthew Willard (D-New Orleans), Mandie Landry (D-New Orleans), and Joseph Orgeron (R-Larose) voted in favor of the bill.
That bill, authored by Rep. Mack Cormier (R-Belle Chasse) would have implemented a one-dollar tax on "each sale of a ticket for admission to a football game" played on the campuses of LSU and Southern University. Under the proposal, revenues from those taxes would have been remitted to the Department of Revenue, who would have been charged with creating a new fund to deposit that money. The cash in the fund would then be used to pay for the proposed commuter train between Louisiana's capital city and its largest city.
According to a legislative fiscal note attached to the bill, the tax would have raised approximately $917,000 annually.
Opponents of the bill objected to the fact that ticket sales for football games only in Baton Rouge were being taxed. One lawmaker, Rep. Tanner Magee (R-Houma), asked Cormier why the bill did not tax sporting events taking place in New Orleans.
