Lafourche sales tax surpass 2010 pace

Through the first four months of the year, and one year after the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill, Lafourche Parish Government sales tax collection is ahead of the 2010 pre-spill pace.

Parish government collected $4.5 million through the first four months of 2011, 18.6 percent more than the same period in 2010. Lafourche Finance Director Ryan Friedlander said he is “pleasantly surprised” by the total collections thus far.

“We knew the [oil spill recovery] infusion was there in our sales tax revenue for 2010 for the last seven months,” Friedlander said. “We were concerned that as those efforts were scaled back, we may not pick up the revenue from our normal sales tax collections as far as if the permits weren’t going to be issued and businesses were still struggling. We thought we would see a little bit of a drop off.”

The LPG sales tax revenue analyzed is the combination of taxes collected through its solid waste fund and road sales tax districts 2 and A.

An anticipated reduction in revenue stemming from spill response programs, such as the Vessels of Opportunity, led the parish to budget sales tax collection between 5 and 6 percent less than 2010 collections.

While it is difficult to ascertain whether or not recovery workers are still spending money accumulated through clean-up work, Friedlander said he doesn’t believe that to be the case. “I don’t think the infusion from the response and recovery of the oil spill, it’s not as big of a number in the monthly sales tax collections as it was, say nine months ago,” he said.

Through April, the parish is $543,000, or 13.8 percent, ahead of budgeted collections.

Lafourche collected $12.6 million from its three biggest tax sources in 2010. Even when the months that included revenue attributable to the spill response are difficult to analyze a year later, Friedlander said.

“We had dollars coming in that we normally wouldn’t have, but on the other hand, if the 33 wells still would have been working, you would have had traffic,” he said. “It’s hard to quantify what we lost and what we picked up.”

The uncertainty over what’s to blame or credit for the amount of collections has made it difficult to forecast the next few months. Friedlander expects through-July collections to offer a glimpse of normalized tax collections.

“I think the May, June and July collections will paint a very accurate picture of what to expect for the remainder of 2011,” he said.

Continuing a trend, the monthly totals in 2011 have thus far been more than $1 million each month. The last time monthly revenue dipped below the seven-figure mark was June of 2010, the month immediately after the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill, when LPG collected $955,000.

Friedlander said there isn’t a specific number that he hopes to top in collections each month, but the 2011 budgeted monthly total is about $985,000.