Officials: Public has no government trust
By KEVIN CHIRI
Slidell news bureau
SLIDELL – Answers. Answers. Answers.
St. Tammany Parish public officials were surprised after Saturday night when a sales tax rededication effort that would have ensured solid long-term funding for public safety agencies was defeated by voters, leaving those officials trying to figure out how they can regain the trust of the electorate that “clearly doesn’t trust us,” many were saying.
Over-and-over by this week the same commentary was coming from officials, who for one time all came together in a massive campaign of public speaking to try and gain voter support for the measure that would not have raised taxes a penny.
Still, the sales tax rededication failed in a 52 to 48 percent vote.
“We have to do a better job earning the trust of the public, which we clearly don’t have right now,” said Parish Council Chairman Joe Impastato.
“It’s apparent the public doesn’t trust us,” said former Parish Council Chairman Mike Lorino.
“We have built a lack of trust in government,” said Concerned Citizens of St. Tammany President Rick Franzo.
The sales tax rededication was a proposal from Parish President Mike Cooper to address a problem the administration had been looking at for years. After a previous sales tax renewal was defeated five consecutive times in an effort to provide funding for public safety agencies like the District Attorney’s Office and the Justice Center operation for judges, Cooper took five years to finally propose this rededication effort.
“Why did it take so long to address this?” said one high-ranking public official who asked to remain anonymous. “In the meantime, all the reserve funds were spent, so now what do we do?”
The rededication asked voters to allow parish government to use up to 17 percent of the 2-cent sales tax for public safety, after the tax money was originally dedicated in 1985 just for infrastructure like roads and drainage.
Additionally, voters were asked to stretch the soon-to-expire tax for 25 more years.
Criticism of the proposal, while it was light, didn’t like the fact there might be 17 percent less infrastructure money, especially in rural areas that needed it more. Also, with the ongoing lack of trust in St. Tammany government, others criticized 25 more years for the tax.
By Monday, Cooper had little to say about the defeat, only telling one media source that his office will listen to the public and come up with a new solution. Cooper has refused to answer questions on controversial issues for over a year from The Slidell Independent.
However, District Attorney Collin Sims, who is quickly emerging as a parish leader for government in general, said the parish needs to do much more.
Sims already made one step before the vote to try and earn the public trust when he promised the use of his newly-hired forensic accountant to begin reviewing all areas of parish government spending. The endeavor is called TRAC, standing for Transparency and Resource Accountability Committee.
“We need to immediately begin with town hall meetings where we listen to the public—not tell them what we are going to do but ask what they think we should do to address this situation,” Sims said. “Then we need to let TRAC get to work and find ways to save money, which will begin earning credibility with the public.”
Impastato said that he and others spoke at close to 80 different gatherings to try and gain support, but he admitted, “we still didn’t do a good enough job educating the public about this.”
Impastato and Sims both said they believe the parish’s efforts on drainage have been inadequate, which is one reason a lot of people didn’t want to support the vote.
Sims noted that the vote for this election only came from unincorporated areas—not the cities—and the rural areas where drainage issues are worse.
“My job is not running parish government, but we have to get some wins for the public to see since Cooper’s intentions for public safety were made clear last year when he cut our budget 55 percent before the Parish Council came in and fixed it,” Sims added.
The D.A., again addressing a topic that is far from his real job, noted that the sales tax district was started in 1985 and yet the people in those rural areas aren’t happy with the drainage work by the parish.
“The district needs to be redrawn, so the rural areas get more help with drainage,” he noted.
Backing that up, Sims said a well-respected friend who lives in a rural area and is not happy with the drainage work from the parish, sent him a text suggesting that public safety was hurt by being connected to the drainage issue.
“He said that ‘drainage was a bad seed riding the coattails of public safety,’ and we shouldn’t have tied them together,” Sims said.
Parish Councilman Arthur Laughlin said the decision by Cooper to move the rededication vote to a time that tied it to the controversial library millage vote, and state constitutional amendments that were voted down, was a mistake.
“It was wrong to move the election,” Laughlin said, pointing to the fact the vote was originally expected to take place last year. “If we voted on it last November it wouldn’t have been tied to the library and state amendments.”
Laughlin also made an interesting point in stating the 2025 vote hurt since it came within months of residents fuming from property tax bills that soared by 20 percent and more in some cases.
“The higher property taxes made people just say no to anything involving taxes,” he added. “The timing for all of this was bad.”