The Money Argument: $94 Million and Counting

Amendment 2's proponents have made a single fiscal claim with remarkable consistency over the last decade: that creating a new city and a new school district will "cost nothing" — that it will in fact save money, return tax dollars to the community, and even allow a tax cut. None of those claims have survived contact with the factual record. This paper walks through the fiscal effect of Amendment 2 on East Baton Rouge Parish, on the remaining East Baton Rouge Parish School System, and on Baton Rouge's general fund — using the numbers published by the entities that have already paid the bills once.

I. The $94 million figure: where it comes from.

The East Baton Rouge Parish School System published a public FAQ document in March 2026 addressing the financial impact of Amendment 2. In that document, the district's own finance staff estimated that creation of a St. George Community School System would remove, at minimum, $94 million in local sales and property taxes from East Baton Rouge Parish School System revenues. The district further estimated that it would lose as much as $20 million in state education funding — because Louisiana's Minimum Foundation Program distributes state dollars in part based on total enrollment, and a smaller enrollment qualifies for less state money.

The total first-order fiscal impact on the remaining East Baton Rouge Parish School System, per the district's own analysis, is therefore on the order of $114 million per year. That figure does not include transition costs, lost federal pass-through funds, or the costs of unwinding programs that previously operated parish-wide.

II. The $48 million figure: what the trial court found in 2022.

Before the Louisiana Supreme Court reversed in 2024, retired state district judge Martin Coady presided over a 1.5-week trial on the legality of the 2019 St. George incorporation vote. Among the findings of fact in Judge Coady's May 2022 ruling:

• St. George's creation would remove approximately $48 million per year from the City of Baton Rouge's general fund — a general fund of roughly $320 million, of which only about $106 million was discretionary.
• St. George itself, using its own operating-cost estimates, would run a $3 million deficit on day one, before any realistic accounting for law enforcement, infrastructure, or legal obligations.
• The $48 million loss to Baton Rouge represented an approximate 45% reduction in the discretionary portion of the general fund — a cut that would affect roads, traffic, parks, the riverfront, the River Center, the State Capitol complex, and the general quality of municipal services across the parish.

The Louisiana Supreme Court, in a 4–3 decision in April 2024, reversed Judge Coady's ruling — not by finding the $48 million figure wrong, but by concluding that the challengers had not proved an unreasonable adverse effect on Baton Rouge as a matter of law. The majority explicitly acknowledged that the loss was real; it held only that the magnitude did not reach the threshold that would require nullifying the 2019 incorporation vote. The three dissenting justices disagreed. The facts of the fiscal impact were not in meaningful dispute.

III. What "cost nothing" has meant in practice since the 2024 ruling.

The City of St. George has now been a functioning municipality for roughly two years. Governor Jeff Landry appointed Dustin Yates as interim mayor and Todd Morrison as interim police chief on May 14, 2024. Since then, the city has begun assembling the full infrastructure of a municipal government: mayor's salary, city council, police department, legal counsel, bonding capacity, contracting, and administrative overhead. Annexation disputes with Baton Rouge over properties in the United Plaza complex remain in active litigation, generating ongoing legal fees for both sides.

None of these costs were itemized in the "it will cost you nothing" materials distributed during the 2019 incorporation campaign. All of them are now real recurring expenses, paid by taxpayers. A candid accounting would add them to the ledger before Amendment 2 is voted on. No such accounting has been published.

IV. The duplication problem.

Creating a new school district is not a matter of drawing a line on a map. It is the establishment of an entire parallel organization. The East Baton Rouge Parish School System currently operates the following functions at parish scale:

• A superintendent's office
• A school board and its staff
• Curriculum and instruction staff
• Human resources, payroll, and benefits administration
• General counsel
• Transportation (fleet, routing, mechanics, drivers)
• Food services (a parish-wide contract)
• Maintenance and facilities
• Information technology
• Special education coordination
• English-language-learner services
• Federal-grant compliance
• Bond administration and debt service
• Athletic and extracurricular programs
• Arts and music coordination

Each of these functions would need to be duplicated — or contracted back to EBR at a cost — in any new St. George Community School District. The economies of scale that allow a single parish-wide system to operate efficiently do not survive division. The Baker, Zachary, and Central breakaways each demonstrate this phenomenon at smaller scale. Per-pupil administrative costs in each of the smaller districts exceed the per-pupil administrative costs in the parent EBR system at the time of breakaway. That is not an opinion; it is a line on the Louisiana Department of Education's public financial reports.

V. The magnet-schools question.

Among the most quietly expensive provisions of any breakaway is what happens to parish-wide magnet programs. East Baton Rouge currently operates magnet schools — including Baton Rouge Magnet High — that draw students from across the parish. Many St. George residents currently send their children to EBR magnets. The Advocate reported in 2025 that some provision for continued magnet access may be negotiated, but the terms are not fixed by the amendment. If St. George residents continue to use EBR magnets, EBR educates the students without receiving the full state or local funding. If St. George withdraws its students, some of the parish's most successful educational programs lose critical mass. Either way, the fiscal effect lands on the remaining EBR system.

VI. The Mayor's tax-cut promise.

At a press conference at the City Club of Baton Rouge on April 20, 2026, St. George Mayor Dustin Yates stated that the new school district, if approved, would be financially robust enough to allow an immediate tax cut — citing the precedent of Central Community Schools, which has lowered property-tax rates in recent years. He did not specify the mechanism or the amount, but promised to release the financial estimates before the election.

Two observations on this promise.

1. The comparable evidence does not support a net-positive fiscal outcome for the taxpayers on the other side of the line. Central's ability to lower its local property-tax rate is not a gift from thin air; it is a consequence of Central's favorable cost profile given its demographics. The same demographics that allow the breakaway district to run lean are the demographics that leave the parent district more expensive to operate per pupil.
2. The non-release of supporting financial estimates, for a promise of tax cuts made less than thirty days before the election, is itself a fact Louisiana voters should weigh. If the numbers existed, they would be public.

VII. The long-run cost: borrowing, bonding, and the credit-rating question.

The East Baton Rouge Parish School System, like nearly every large U.S. school district, issues bonds to finance capital projects. Those bonds are rated based on the district's tax base, enrollment, and revenue stability. Each of the preceding breakaways has contributed to downward pressure on EBR's credit profile. A $94 million annual revenue loss will push it further. Lower credit ratings mean higher interest costs on future borrowing — which are paid, ultimately, by the same taxpayers the amendment's proponents claim to be helping.

These are second-order effects. They do not show up in the day-one projections. They show up over a decade, in school boards deferring roof repairs and HVAC replacements and laptop purchases because debt service is eating the maintenance budget. They are real.

Vote NO on Amendment 2.