By DAN JUNEAU

Ancient Greek drama was based in the pantheistic backdrop of Greek religion, and its plots dealt with the unearthly phenomenon of gods directly involving themselves in the lives of humans.

To make a storyline work, the Greek dramatists often had to actually crank an actor down by rope from above the stage to create the “godly” response needed.

This device became known as a “deus ex machina” or “god from machine,” which later became identified with anything that strains the bounds of credibility just to make a plot work.

Enter the Foster administration, stage right!

The administration has a problem with its storyline in the Regular Session. Some of the tax renewals – particularly the renewal of the personal income tax increase enacted two years ago – do not have the votes to pass at this point.

Gov. Mike Foster and Company are desperately looking for a way to make those tax renewals look more palatable.

Another plot disturbance for the administration is the fact that support for removing or reducing two major disincentives for economic development – debt in the base of the corporate franchise tax and the imposition of sales taxes on business machinery and equipment – is gaining ground among legislators.

Faced with a growing revolt against some of the tax renewals and increasing support for a genuine economic development plan, the administration was in dire need of a deus ex machina.

By developing a “10-year” plan to make all the tax renewals permanent and then s-l-o-w-l-y phasing them out over an indefinite period of time, the administration hopes to turn some of the votes of legislators who got burned by voting for the income tax increase in 2000 and now do not want to renew it.

The “logic” on the part of the administration seems to be: Vote to make this unpopular tax permanent, and then tell your constituents not to worry because perhaps in 10 or 15 years it will go away.

Talk about straining the bounds of credibility! Only the most unquestioning of legislators would think their angry constituents would fall for this artifice.

There are problems with the Foster plan beyond the political fallout. There is nothing in it for the struggling small businesses in Louisiana.

The plan provides sales tax “relief” on utilities for residential consumers but not for the businesses that pay more than 70 percent of the state’s utility taxes.

Only manufacturers get the sales tax “reduction” on machinery and equipment, but this feature will have limited appeal at best from an economic development standpoint due to the indefinite time period of the “phase out.”

By tying the tax relief to a trigger mechanism that says only when there is 3 percent growth in the state general fund will one of the ten reduction increments in the “phase out” occur, the plan creates too much uncertainty for businesses to plan around it.

What the 3 percent trigger (compounded annually) will do is constantly keep up the pressure for new taxes in order to keep revenues higher so the “tax cuts” can materialize. (How is that for a Catch 22!) Models illustrating how this plan would have worked during the last 10 years clearly show that tax increases and the influx of gambling revenues would have been the key to triggering the tax cuts.

It is hard to believe gambling revenues will grow more than current levels, so in the future, new taxes – and lots of them – will be the engine necessary to make the tax cuts work.

Ironically, our state government loves sales taxes and business taxes, the two central elements of the new Foster plan.

Is the public going to buy a plan that will, in all likelihood, force future legislators to increase sales and business taxes in order to grant sales and business tax relief?

The Greek dramatists would have been proud of this canard by the Foster administration.

DAN JUNEAU is the president of the Louisiana Association of Business and Industry.