BATON ROUGE — Mayor-President Sharon Weston Broome suggested Tuesday that the temporary government operating St. George might not have the authority to impose sales taxes benefiting the new city.

In a five-page letter setting out a transition plan for various city services, Broome said it appears that St. George voters as well as state lawmakers would need to authorize a sales tax. A tax proposal goes before voters in December.

"Our attorneys are looking at this issue, and suggest that yours should do the same, as both the City-Parish and St. George would be implicated in the event that we collect an unconstitutional sales tax on behalf of the district," she wrote to St. George Mayor Dustin Yates.

Yates was in a St. George council meeting and not immediately available for comment.

According to Broome, who initially was a plaintiff in a lawsuit challenging St. George's creation, the state constitution requires either a home rule charter — which the transitional government doesn't have — or authority from voters and lawmakers before imposing a sales tax.

Broome also suggested that St. George set July 1 as its incorporation date, suggesting it would save the newborn community money, ensure operations of its transitional government and make it easier to transfer various municipal services.

St. George's supporters have suggested that the incorporation date could range from October 2019, when voters opted to create the new city, to April 2024, when the state Supreme Court rejected a court challenge to the new city. 

"Unfortunately, when the Louisiana Supreme Court reversed the decisions of the trial court and the First Circuit Court of Appeal, it did not ... fix an effective date, set the boundaries of the city or remand the case to a trial court for a determination of these key issues," Broome wrote to Yates.

Broome said setting St. George's incorporation date to July 1 — a date six weeks ago — would give the new city more time to pass a budget and delay the time at which St. George would be on the hook for retirement system costs.

Broome said she was concerned that funding under previous tax authorizations could expire before St. George has a permanent funding stream set up. 

"Effective dates that are in the past present several legal and practical challenges," she wrote. "Absent the authority to collect any taxes by either the City-Parish or the St. George Transition District, there will be no funding to pay for any services provided by either entity."

The mayor also said St. George and Baton Rouge must settle the status of disputed parcels. Several property owners sought to be annexed into Baton Rouge after the St. George vote but before the Supreme Court upheld its creation. She said it would be troublesome for St. George to hold a city sales tax election without knowing who is within its boundary.