

Bill Decker: Sales taxes, and a little lagniappe for businesses

Mar. 10, 2013  |  Comments
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Should the Lafayette Consolidated Government, which is looking for money behind sofa cushions, stop letting businesses keep 1 or 2 percent of the sales taxes they collect to cover expenses?

Vendor compensation has been the practice in Lafayette for decades. The City-Parish Council is considering whether to end "vendor comp" for Lafayette Parish and the City of Lafayette. By doing that, the LCG would raise about $1.5 million a year without asking voters for it. The most impassioned speaker against vendor compensation at a hearing Tuesday was council member Kevin Naquin.

"This is taxpayer dollars to be used for services," Naquin said. "So why are we charging 2 percent if we're not even going to use it for government services?"

In other words, why should people pay taxes thinking the money will go for actual services, when some ends up going to pay the overhead?

That's a good argument, but a little strange considering that Naquin is, after all, overhead.

So are his council colleagues. So is Chief Financial Officer Lorrie Toups, and attorney Michael Hebert, who said it's not clear that vendor compensation is legal under the state constitution. (The LCG seems likely to seek an attorney general's opinion.)

And that's OK. Reasonable people understand that someone has to decide how to spend tax money and someone has to do paperwork. But council members don't fill potholes, do they?

The business people who spoke at the same City-Parish Council meeting Tuesday have overhead, too. And for auto dealerships, the overhead gets really complicated. Sales taxes on vehicles are paid not where the dealership is located, but in the buyer's jurisdiction.

"The vendor compensation helps to defray the cost of both the expensive software and the manpower needed to do this," said Brady Bowen of the Lafayette Auto Dealers Association.

Without vendor compensation, the LCG would expect businesses to absorb the overhead without compensation - to do what the LCG itself is unable to do.

That's a good definition of bad leadership.

Reach Bill Decker at (337) 289-6327 or

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