BATON ROUGE, LA – Baton Rouge residents spent Friday morning in a state of profound betrayal after opening their property tax bills and realizing something legally routine yet emotionally unacceptable had happened. Their taxes went up right here in Baton Rouge, despite years of warnings that St. George would be the one swallowed by financial ruin.
Call centers at the Assessor’s Office were immediately overwhelmed as residents demanded to know why their bills had increased when every Facebook debate from 2015 to 2019 explicitly promised this would only happen in St. George not Baton Rouge. Staff attempted to explain that assessments rose, property values increased, millages still exist, and that they voted for higher taxes. These explanations were widely rejected.
“I didn’t sign up for this,” said one homeowner who did, in fact, sign up for it by owning property in East Baton Rouge Parish. “St. George was supposed to have a spike in taxes while we watched from a distance, laughing. Why is this happening to us?”
Several residents claimed the city should “refund the difference out of principle,” while others expressed confusion about whom to blame now that St. George refuses to cooperate by being the financial disaster they predicted. Some even called St. George officials directly, demanding answers.
As one confused Baton Rouge resident put it, “If our taxes are going up then what was the point of the ‘your taxes are going up’ talking point?”
A question no one seems eager to answer.
