There was a piece at the ultra-left Louisiana Illuminator last week about the Louisiana governor’s race, noting that three of the seven main candidates in the contest – Stephen Waguespack, John Schroder and Richard Nelson – have come out for weaking the power of the Louisiana governor’s office.

“I think the power of the governor is too strong,” said former business lobbyist and Republican candidate Stephen Waguespack at the annual conference of the Louisiana Municipal Association in Alexandria Thursday.

“The office of the governor will be weaker,” under a Waguespack administration, he said.

Louisiana’s political chattering class has, for decades, said the position comes with more control than it does in other states.

Republicans, in particular, have groused about the authority of the governor ever since Edwards took office in 2016. Edwards is a Democrat in an increasingly conservative state, but still manages to wield significant influence over public policy. He expanded Louisiana’s Medicaid program, for example, when leaders in other, more liberal states struggled to do so, because Louisiana’s constitution didn’t require him to get permission from state lawmakers first.

It remains to be seen whether that outrage will continue into the next administration, especially if a conservative wins the governor’s race. Few GOP officials were willing to publicly criticize Edwards’ predecessor, Republican Bobby Jindal, despite his reputation for bullying state officials.

Notably the two gubernatorial candidates leading in recent polls, Republican Attorney General Jeff Landry and Democrat Shawn Wilson, also haven’t made any commitments to relinquish power if elected.

But the remarks from Waguespack, who worked as Jindal’s chief of staff, about weakening the governor’s influence echo talking points of other Republican gubernatorial candidates, including state Rep. Richard Nelson and Treasurer John Schroder.

The context of this was a forum the gubernatorial candidates participated in put on by the Louisiana Municipal Association, the big issue for which is the continuation of the Industrial Tax Exemption Program. Under outgoing governor John Bel Edwards, ITEP has morphed from a state economic development tool to a political sop to local governments who can now veto ITEP deals meant to incentivize industrial projects being sited in Louisiana.

Edwards just made that change through an executive order. You could say that he was downloading power from the governor’s office to the locals, but what he was really doing was taking it away from the Republican-majority legislature, who you would think should have the power to structure ITEP. And maybe it ought to go away entirely – something you can only really do if you create an overall business-friendly tax climate we definitely do not have now.

That isn’t really a core question about gubernatorial power, though. What’s really going on here is all the boards and commissions the governor can staff with his people, the hold he has on the legislature through the line item veto, his control over the Louisiana State Police and some other things which are more about custom than hard legal authority.

And most importantly, this is about the fact that state government is so disproportionately powerful compared to local government in Louisiana. Compared to our peer states we’re practically a dictatorship. It doesn’t work.

So yes, Waguespack, Schroder and Nelson are correct that a restructuring is needed. Here’s where there are problems, though.

First of all, while most of the local governments in the state are somewhat functional, the most important ones, specifically the governments of Orleans and East Baton Rouge Parishes, are most definitely not. And with respect to law enforcement, they’re absolutely dysfunctional, which is why New Orleans and Baton Rouge – and you can throw Shreveport into this mix as well – are shooting galleries.

It turns out that to get a handle on the crime problem, at least for a time you’re probably going to need more control from the governor rather than less. And crime isn’t the only issue where this will manifest itself.

State power is the only thing that can keep New Orleans, Baton Rouge and Shreveport from devolving into post-apocalyptic hellscapes over time. Those cities simply don’t have the candlepower in their leadership, and unfortunately it’s questionable whether they have electorates capable of electing quality leaders, to reverse the hard decline they’re in.

That said, Shreveport managed to elect Tom Arceneaux, a Republican, last year as its mayor. So perhaps there’s hope there.

State government certainly needs to collect less in taxes, and particularly we need to eliminate personal and corporate income taxes in order to make Louisiana economically competitive with Texas, Florida and Tennessee. Nelson has talked about shifting the tax burden downward to local governments; essentially trading income taxes for property taxes. That’s what Texas and Florida do. In Tennessee there’s no income tax but sales taxes are high. In Louisiana we have a state income tax, sky-high sales taxes and low property taxes due to the nation’s largest homestead exemption. What the homestead exemption does is make for very low property tax burdens for small properties – and then business ends up picking up 80 percent of the property tax burden.

Then you have a corporate income tax, plus some of the highest sales taxes in the country. Plus things like business utility taxes, taxes on MM&E, and inventory taxes.

If all of these things were primarily local taxes – in other words, if New Orleans was hammering its business community with them but St. Bernard and Jefferson Parishes were foregoing them – then you’d have some intrastate competition where certain localities could benefit at the expense of the bad actors. Problem is, this is mostly coming from the state level – so the losses are interstate.

This is all reform the legislature will have to undertake, and obviously the governor will play a role. But taxing and spending power will need to devolve to local governments if Louisiana is to be restructured, and ultimately that’s going to mean a smaller gubernatorial role in the state’s future.

Over the long term, that is. But in the short term, to fix anything given the state of our more problematic cities and the performance of the state legislature as an “independent” institution over Edwards’ two terms, we might need to get more out of the next governor rather than less.