Montgomery offers new plan after voters hammer proposal
By KEVIN CHIRI
Slidell news bureau
SLIDELL – As St. Tammany Parish President Mike Cooper was recovering from the shock of voters forcefully and emphatically saying “no” on Saturday to adding more sales tax for law enforcement and court funding, District Attorney Warren Montgomery said on Tuesday he is not waiting to address the potentially dangerous situation that looms in the near future if his office loses 20 percent of its funding.
That is the situation currently facing the District Attorney’s Office and the Sheriff’s Office after 66 percent of voters sent a powerful message to Cooper and the parish administration, voting down the sales tax on the ballot this past Saturday.
The four-tenths of a cent sales tax proposal Cooper had put before voters was essentially the fourth try by parish administration to bring back a 10-year, half-cent sales tax that had funded the Justice Center and parish jail construction, as well as maintenance and operation of those facilities.
Since the tax renewal was defeated by voters it took approximately $22 million a year out of the parish budget. While that money had been paying for the Justice Center operation, and the parish jail, it still had to be found somewhere in the budget since it is mandated by the state to pay for those aspects of law enforcement and the criminal justice system.
Even though the parish must still offer some level of funding for those two operations, they had already cut both offices by millions of dollars after the third defeat of the tax renewal. Now the probability of those departments getting even less money is the only alternative for Cooper as he operates with approximately $22 million less in the budget each year.
Cooper took office almost a year ago and put together a revenue review committee that came back to him with the same suggestion to replace the money—a sales tax. While the parish president tweaked the language of the ballot a bit, it was still asking voters—for a fourth time—to chip in more sales tax money.
The Saturday election results couldn’t have been clearer and Cooper commented on them without any plan yet in place to find the money—something the parish will still have to try with its normal budget.
“Naturally, I am disappointed to see the results of our efforts to properly fund our state-mandated responsibilities of the criminal justice system,” Cooper said in a prepared statement. “However, the need for funding is still real and imminent. We will continue to meet with all stakeholders to assess the situation and determine our next steps. We still have challenges ahead, but we will continue to work to provide vital services offered by St. Tammany Parish Government.”
But on Monday, Montgomery stepped forward and said he is prepared to ask the public for his own one-seventh of a cent sales tax in a vote that will likely be held in April 2022.
The D.A. said that without the funding his department is facing a critical possibility of losing the top prosecutors he has hired in recent years “which has created a D.A.’s Office that I believe is the best prosecuting staff in the state of Louisiana.”
Cooper stated before the vote that the parish has been paying for the justice system and jail expenses by slowly using up their fund balances. He said the parish would “run out of money for that by March 2022.”
Montgomery said that even though he does not want to ask for more tax money from the public, the alternative is not something he is willing to accept.
“Now is not the time to defund the D.A.’s Office,” he stated. “Crime is deterred by arrests and prosecution, but it doesn’t matter how many arrests our police make, those arrests are only as good as the D.A.’s prosecution of them.”
Montgomery, who has been the D.A. in office since winning his first term in 2014, then winning in a landslide in 2020 for re-election, said he is “trying to save the D.A.’s Office staff that we now have, which is the reason crime is kept to a minimum in St. Tammany.”
He said that if his office cannot maintain the competitive pay, they currently offer for top lawyers and prosecutors on staff, “you can’t blame them for leaving so they are paid the way they should be. And if we lose many of these outstanding men and women, it is very hard to get them back. Just look at what has happened in Orleans Parish.”
Montgomery said he will make it very clear to the public that the one-seventh of a cent tax will be dedicated only to criminal prosecution.
“This isn’t going to pay for a parking garage or any new building,” he said. “This will be purely to maintain the staff we have and for prosecution of criminals.
“We have spent years assembling a high-ethics, high-performance organization of staff members,” he added. “It’s not easy to find this kind of talent, but I believe we now have the best staff in the state of Louisiana and we can’t afford to lose them or the public is not going to be happy with what happens.”
Sheriff Randy Smith also issued a statement after the tax defeat.
“The people have spoken and I respect the decision of the voters, who overwhelmingly voted against the proposed tax that has been presented to the voters four times,” he said. “The Sheriff’s Office will continue to protect and serve our great citizens. My administration will continue to ensure that the parish government fulfills their state mandated obligations.”