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Gov. Bobby Jindal met with business leaders Monday to assure them he won’t approve tax increases and to get input on his proposals to increase revenue without raising taxes.

“In this tough economy, it just doesn’t make sense to raise taxes,” Jindal said.

“It would make it harder for families to pay their grocery bills and force businesses to decide who they would lay off.”

Jindal described the meeting with representatives of various businesses and industries as “a great, open, free-ranging conversation.”

The discussion also included the need for a stable tax, regulatory and litigation climate and a strong work force to meet business and industry needs, said Dan Borne, president of the Louisiana Chemical Association.

“We know the state is going through difficult times,” Borne said. “Companies had to manage through a difficult recession. We had to cut the cloth to fit the pattern,” so a tax increase would be devastating.

Dan Juneau, head of the Louisiana Association of Business and Industry, said, “I think the message the governor sent about no taxes is important to business, large and small. That’s money we can invest.”

“We didn’t have the luxury of raising prices” because their customers were going through the same difficulties, Borne said, so the Legislature shouldn’t be looking at taxes to prop up the state budget.

Borne said the elimination of a 3.3 percent tax on electricity and natural gas was an “enormous” help getting through the recession.

Chris John, president of the Louisiana Mid-Continent Oil and Gas Association, discussed the problems his industry is having with the Obama administration’s moratorium on oil and gas drilling in the Gulf of Mexico.

The uncertainty could complicate the state’s financial problems.

Borne said he also discussed his industry’s concern about pending Environmental Protection Agency rules on greenhouse gases and ozone attainment.

The tougher standards would be difficult to meet.

During the meeting, Jindal floated his five-point plan for increasing revenues, including selling off unused property, selling two prisons, privatizing state employees’ health insurance, securitizing future lottery sales increases and selling state buildings and leasing back office space.

“We talked about them in theory,” Borne said.

Jindal said he wasn’t “asking for consensus or unanimity” of support for the plans and just wanted to discuss them.

Also in the meeting were Sharon Cole, site director for Dow Chemical; Bobby Yarborough, CEO of Manda Fine Meats; Clay Allen, managing partner Allen & Gooch law firm of Lafayette; state tourism head James Hutchinson; Don Briggs, president of Louisiana Oil and Gas Association; Steve Jordan, CEO of Louisiana Geothermal LLC; and Renee Baker, Louisiana state director for the National Federation of Independent Business.

The governor will meet with two groups of legislators today in his ongoing discussion of budget issues preparing a plan for addressing an anticipated $1.6 billion drop in revenues in the next fiscal year that begins July 1, 2011.

Original Article