BusinessReport.com

Cable vision

To the editor:

It’s no coincidence that Louisiana’s largest cable provider is promoting its services to Ascension residents for half the cost of what they are offering consumers in Baton Rouge and Lafayette [“Cable Wars,” April 22].

As the recent article illustrates, Ascension residents have a choice; therefore, cable providers are forced to compete for customers by offering better services and lower prices. In Baton Rouge and Lafayette, where we only have one major cable provider, we’ve seen just the opposite. Rates have increased by as much as 67% in the last eight years, while the only choice we’ve had is to keep paying the bill.

The bottom line is that a competitive market means lower prices, better services and more choices for you and me—and that’s why we need the Legislature to pass the Consumer Choice for Television Act [Senate Bill 807].

This legislation, which recently passed with overwhelming support in the Senate, will provide for a statewide video franchising process and lighten the burden for new providers to enter the cable TV market. These reforms are long overdue.

On behalf of all Louisiana cable consumers, I applaud the members of the Senate who stood up for us and took action to increase competition. As the bill moves to the House for consideration, we can only hope that our Representatives will have the same courage and conviction to quickly follow suit.

Randy Hayden, TV4US Louisiana, Baton Rouge

Don’t tax you, don’t tax me

To the editor:

Watching with a bit of horror and dismay as the Louisiana legislature wrestles with the implications of Senate Bill 87 and with proposals to reverse a big part of the Stelly Plan income tax bracket changes [“Random Thoughts,” May 6], I’d like to weigh in.

Was the bracket change now targeted for reversal [under which taxable income of $25,000-$50,000 became subject to a higher 6% rate] the best feature of the Stelly Plan? Certainly not. Effected as an offset to the very sound sales tax reduction [on groceries and utilities] portion of the plan, it enabled a positive, progressive reform, but it did so by flattening the state’s income tax and by increasing the income tax liabilities of some not-so-very-wealthy state residents. The Stelly elimination of the state deduction for excess federal itemized deductions was a much sounder and more progressive change, and a similar elimination of the state deduction for federal taxes paid [not part of Stelly] would have been equally wise.

Recognition of the Stelly Plan’s imperfections, however, along with the emergence of the current S.B. 87 circus, should not blind the state to the chief and still undiminished virtue of the Stelly Plan: that it made the state’s tax code a little less regressive. In the end, Louisiana would be wise to do more and not less of this, for it would simultaneously allow for greater revenue growth with lower rates; make the “ability-to-pay” principle a more influential feature of the state’s tax code; increase economic activity by virtue of its positive effect on bottom-bracket consumer demand; increase the stability of revenue growth; and—not to be forgotten—make possible what is essentially a larger federal contribution to Louisiana revenue [in the form of larger federal income tax deductions for state income taxes paid].

Dave Shreve, Charlottesville, Va.