Oil's Well, Sort Of- A Gambit Feature

The latest plan to put a processing fee on oil and gas comes from Public Service Commissioner Foster Campbell, a populist Democrat from Bossier Parish. He has made the proposed tax his central campaign issue in his current bid for governor. As a trade-off, Campbell also proposes to eliminate state individual and corporate income taxes, which he says would save individuals and businesses $3.7 billion a year while still producing a net increase in state revenues of nearly $2 billion a year.

The trade-off is the latest sweetener in a plan that Campbell has been trying to get approved for more than 15 years. At every step of the way, oil and gas lobbyists have been there to warn legislators and the public of impending doom if Campbell's plan were to be adopted, kind of like Chicken Little with charts and graphs. Lawmakers' challenge has always been to weigh the merits of the proposal against its negatives, which is no easy task.

...a tax decrease for Louisiana producers, but an increase for out-of-state resources.