November elections may be long passed, but Louisiana residents are getting ready to head back to the polls.
Taking place on the ballot will be four proposed constitutional amendments, they will include amendment one, two, three and four.
These amendments will be talking about court ethics, crime age, judicial vacancy, but amendment two, which focuses on the state’s finances, has been a major talking point.
“The most important one and the biggest one is constitutional amendment number two,” Senator Franklin Foil from district 16 said, “which rewrites article seven of the state constitution and gets us a lot more flexibility with our spending and takes a lot of things out of the constitution and puts them in statute.”
The main goal of the amendment is to change property and consumption taxes to help lower resident’s tax bills, balance the budget, and also give teachers a pay raise.
Republicans in Louisiana are pushing hard for the amendment to pass highlighting the tax breaks offered to all.
“It gives us more flexibility as a legislative body in the state to make the needed changes,” Senator Foil said, “people have been calling for a constitutional convention for years because our constitution is so bloated, we have not been able to do that that but this is the first step to get that done and it would really make us more prosperous in our state financially.”
But others are skeptical of the amendment.
“It’s a little bit misleading on what’s on there,” president of the Young Democrats of Louisiana Jay Braxton said, “but essentially it would be about rewriting our tax code, you know charging some higher sales taxes and really just changing the way we do in Louisiana, and it wouldn’t be for the benefit of the working class.”
And with voting yes on amendment two, the public education system could possibly see an impact.
“What this will lead to, because this also takes away the education excellence fund, the quality education fund, and these are all state funds that are constitutionally protected that go to our public education system,” Braxton said, “our public education system is funded by majority of those and now they will be taking that away and putting them it into a consolidated fund and saying that they can use it for whatever.”
Voting will take place Saturday March 29th and you can find voting information on the Louisiana Secretary of State website. Everyone is encouraged to vote.