USA > Louisiana > Louisiana; comprising sketches of counties, towns, events, institutions, and persons, Volume I > Part 36
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Art. 202. The following persons shall not be permitted to regis- ter, vote or hold any office or appointment of honor, trust or profit in this State, to-wit: Those who have been convicted of any crime punishable by imprisonment in the penitentiary, and not after- wards pardoned with express restoration of franchise; those who are inmates of any charitable institution, except the Soldiers' Home : those actually confined in any public prison ; all indicted persons, and all persons notoriously insane or idiotic, whether interdicted or not.
Art. 203. In all elections by the people the electors shall vote by ballot, and the ballots cast shall be publicly counted. In all elections by persons in a representative capacity, the vote shall be viva-voce.
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Art. 204. Electors shall, in all cases except treason, felony or breach of the peace, be privileged from arrest during their attend- ance on elections, and in going to and returning from the same.
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Art. 205. The General Assembly shall by law forbid the giving or selling of intoxicating drinks, on the day of any election, or primary election, within one mile of any polling place.
Art. 206. Until otherwise provided by law, the general State election shall be held once every four years on the Tuesday next following the third Monday in April. Presidential electors and members of Congress shall be chosen or elected in the manner and at the time prescribed by law.
Art. 207. Parochial elections, except in the City of New Orleans, shall be held on the same day as the general State election, and not oftener than once in four years. In the City of New Orleans parochial and municipal elections shall be held on the Tuesday following the first Monday of November, 1899, and of every fourth year thereafter. but the General Assembly may change the date of said election after the year 1899; provided, that the parochial and municipal elections shall be held together, and shall always be on a day separate and apart from the General State Election and not oftener than once in four years. The municipal and parochial of- ficers in the City of New Orleans shall take their offices on the first Monday in the month of May following their election, until otherwise provided by law.
Art. 208. For the purpose of voting, no person shall be deemed to have gained a residence, by reason of his presence, or lost it by reason of his absence, while employed in the service, either civil or military, of this State or of the United States; or while engaged in the navigation of the waters of the State or of the United States; or of the high seas ; or while a student of any institution of learning.
Art. 209. The General Assembly shall provide by law for the trial and determination of contested elections of all public officers, whether State, judicial, parochial, or municipal (except Governor and Lieutenant Governor), which trials shall be by the courts of law and at the domicile of the party defendant.
Art. 210. No person shall be eligible to any office, State, judicial, parochial, municipal, or ward, who is not a citizen of this State and a duly qualified elector of the State, judicial district, parish, municipality or ward, wherein the functions of said office are to be performed. And whenever any officer. State, judicial, parochial, municipal or ward may change his residence from this State, or from the district, parish, municipality or ward in which he holds such office, the same shall thereby be vacated, any declaration of retention of domicile to the contrary notwithstanding.
Art. 211. Returns of elections for all civil officers who are to be commissioned by the Governor shall be made to the Secretary of State, unless otherwise provided in this Constitution.
Art. 212. All elections by the people, except primary elections and municipal elections in towns having a population of less than twenty-five hundred, when such elections are not held at the same time as general State elections, shall be by official ballot, printed and distributed at the expense of the State; and, until otherwise provided by law, such ballots shall have printed thereon, and at
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the head and immediately preceding the list of names of the candi- dates of each political party or nominating paper, a specific and separate device by which the political party and the candidates of such political party or nominating paper may be indicated. By stamping such device at the head of the list of candidates of each political party, or nominating paper, the voter may indicate that his vote is for the entire or straight ticket of the particular party or nominating paper employing the particular device allotted to such political party, or nominating paper. When the voter does not desire to vote an entire or straight party ticket, he may vote for candidates of any political party or nominating paper, by stamping a blank space to be left opposite the name of each candi- date on said official ballot.
The General Assembly shall provide some plan by which the voters may prepare their ballots in secrecy at the polls. This arti- cle shall not be construed so as to prevent the names of inde- pendent candidates from being printed on the ballots with a de- vice ; and names of candidates may be written on the ballot. These provisions shall not apply to elections for the imposition of special taxes, for which the General Assembly shall provide special laws.
Art. 213. Electors shall not be registered within thirty days next preceding any election at which they may offer to vote, but applications to the courts, and appeals may be heard and deter- mined, and revision take place at any time prior to the election, and no person who, in respect to age and residence, would become en- titled to vote within the said thirty days, shall be excluded from registration on account of his want of qualifications at the time of his application for registration.
Art. 214. The Legislature shall provide for the registration of voters throughout the State.
Art. 215. The Legislature shall enact laws to secure fairness in party primary elections, conventions, or other methods of naming party candidates.
Art. 216. In the trial of contested elections and in proceedings for the investigation of elections, and in all criminal trials under the election laws, no person shall be permitted to withhold his testimony on the grounds that he may criminate himself or sub- ject himself to public infamy, but such testimony shall not be used against him in any judicial proceedings except for perjury in giv- ing such testimony.
Impeachment and Removal from Office.
Art. 217. The Governor. Lieutenant Governor, Secretary of State, Auditor, Treasurer. Attorney General. Superintendent of Public Education, Railroad Commissioners, and the Judges of all the Courts of Record in this State, shall be liable to impeachment for high crimes and misdemeanors, for nonfeasance or malfeasance in office, for incompetency, for corruption, favoritism, extortion or
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oppression in office, or for gross misconduct, or habitual drunken- ness.
Articles 218 to 223 inclusive relate to the manner of impeach- ment, trial and removal of officers throughout the State.
Revenue and Taxation.
Art. 224. The taxing power may be exercised by the General Assembly for State purposes, and by parishes and municipal cor- porations and public boards, under authority granted to them by the General Assembly, for parish, municipal, and local purposes, strictly public in their nature.
Art. 225. Taxation shall be equal and uniform throughout the territorial limits of the authority levying the tax. and all property shall be taxed in proportion to its value, to be ascertained as di- rected by law ; provided, the assessment of all property shall never exceed the actual cash value thereof; and provided, further, that the taxpayers shall have the right of testing the correctness of their assessments before the courts of justice. In order to arrive at this equality and uniformity, the General Assembly shall, at its first session after the adoption of this Constitution, provide a system of equality and uniformity in assessments based upon the relative value of property in the different portions of the State. The valu- ations put upon property for the purposes of State taxation shall be taken as the proper valuation for purposes of local taxation, in every subdivision of the State.
Art. 226. There shall be a State Board of Appraisers, composed of the Auditor, and six other members, to be elected for four years by the Governor, Lieutenant Governor, Treasurer, Attorney Gen- eral, and Secretary of State, one from each Congressional Dis- trict, whose duty it shall be to assess the property belonging to corporations, associations and individuals employed in railway, tele- graph, telephone. sleeping car and express business. The General Assembly shall fix the compensation of said board.
Art. 227. The taxing power shall be exercised only to carry on and maintain the government of the State and the public institu- tions thereof, to educate the children of the State, to preserve the public health, to pay the principal and interest of the public debt, to suppress insurrection, to repel invasion or defend the State in time of war, to provide pensions for indigent Confederate soldiers and sailors, and their widows, to establish markers or monuments upon the battlefields of the country commemorative of the services of Louisiana soldiers on such fields, to maintain a memorial hall in New Orleans for the collection and preservation of relics and memorials of the late civil war, and for levee purposes, as herein- after provided.
Art. 228. The power to tax corporations and corporate prop- erty shall never be surrendered nor suspended by act of the Gen- eral Assembly.
Art. 229. The General Assembly may levy a license tax, and
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in such case graduate the amount of such tax to be collected from the persons pursuing the several trades, professions, vocations, and callings. All persons, associations of persons and corporations pursuing any trade, profession, business or calling, may be rendered liable to such tax, except clerks, laborers, clergymen, school teach- ers, those engaged in mechanical, agricultural, horticultural, and mining pursuits, and manufacturers other than those of distilled, alcoholic or malt liquors, tobacco, cigars, and cotton seed oil. No political corporation shall impose a greater license tax than is im- posed by the General Assembly for State purposes. This restric- tion shall not apply to dealers in distilled, alcoholic or malt liquors.
The General Assembly shall have authority to provide that nit- nicipalities levying license taxes equal in amount to those levied by police juries for parochial purposes shall be exempted from the payment of such parochial licenses.
Art. 230. The following shall be exempt from taxation, and no other, viz .: All public property, places of religious worship, or burial, all charitable institutions, all buildings and property used exclusively for public monuments or historical collections, colleges and other school purposes, the real and personal estate of any pub- lic library, and that of any other library association used by or con- nected with such library, all books and philosophical apparatus, and all paintings and statuary of any company or association kept in a public hall ; provided, the property so exempted be not leased for purposes of private or corporate profit and income. There shall also be exempt from taxation household property to the value of five hundred dollars. There shall be exempt from parochial and municipal taxation for a period of ten years from the 1st day of January, 1900, the capital, machinery and other property employed in mining operations, and in the manufacture of textile fabrics, yarns, rope, cordage, leather, shoes, harness, saddlery, hats, cloth- ings, flour, machinery, articles of tin, copper and sheet iron, agri- cultural implements, and furniture and other articles of wood, mar- ble or stone; soap, stationery, ink and paper, boat building and fertilizers and chemicals; provided, that not less than five hands are employed in any one factory: provided, that nothing herein contained shall affect the exemptions provided for by existing con- stitutional provisions.
There shall also be exempt from taxation for a period of ten years from the date of its completion any railroad or part of such railroad that may hereafter be constructed and completed prior to January 1st, 1904; provided, that when aid has heretofore been voted by any parish, ward or municipality to any railroad not yet constructed, such railroad shall not be entitled to the exemption from taxation hierein established, unless it waives and relinquishes such aid or consents to a resubmission of the question of granting such aid to a vote of the property taxpayers of the parish, ward or ,municipality, which has voted the same. if one-third of such prop- erty taxpayers petition for the same within six months after the adoption of this Constitution.
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And provided, further. that this exemption shall not apply to double tracks, sidings, switches, depots or other improvements or betterments, which may be constructed by railroads now in opera- tion within the State, other than extensions or new lines con- structed by such railroads: nor shall the exemption hereinabove granted apply to any railroad or part of such railroad, the construc- tion of which was begun and the roadbed of which was substan- tially completed at the date of the adoption of this Constitution.
The property or real estate belonging to any military organiza- tion of the State of Louisiana which is used by the State National Gnard or militia for military purposes, such as arsenals or armories, while so used, shall be exempt from taxation.
Art. 231. The General Assembly shall levy an annual poll tax of one dollar upon every male inhabitant in the State between the ages of twenty-one and sixty years, for the maintenance of the pub- lic schools in the parishes where collected.
Art. 232. The State tax on property for all purposes whatever, including expense of government, schools, levees and interest, shall not exceed, in any one year, six mills on the dollar of its assessed valuation, and, except as otherwise provided in this Constitution, no parish, municipal or public board tax for all purposes whatso- ever, shall exceed in any one year ten mills on the dollar of valu- ation ; provided, that for giving additional support to public schools, and for the purpose of erecting and constructing public buildings, public school houses, bridges, wharves, levees, sewerage work and other works of permanent public improvement, the title to which shall be in the public, any parish, municipal corporation, ward or school district may levy a special tax in excess of said limitation, whenever the rate of such increase and the number of years it is to be levied and the purposes for which the tax is intended shall have been submitted to a vote of the property taxpayers of such parish, municipality, ward or school district entitled to vote under the election laws of the State, and a majority of the same in num- bers, and in value voting at such election shall have voted there- for.
Art. 233. There shall be no forfeiture of property for the non- payment of taxes, State, levee district, parochial or municipal, but at the expiration of the year in which said taxes are due the col- lector shall, without suit, and after giving notice to the delinquent in the manner to be provided by law, advertise for sale in the offi- cial journal of the parish, city or municipality, provided there be an official journal in such parish, city or municipality, the property on which the taxes are due in the manner provided for judicial sales, and on the day of sale he shall sell such portion of the prop- erty as the debtor shall point out ; and in case the debtor shall not point out sufficient property, the collector shall, at once and with- out further delay, sell the least quantity of property which any bidder will buy for the amount of the taxes, interest and costs. The sale shall be without appraisement, and the property sold shall be redeemable at any time for the space of one year, by paying the
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price given, including costs, and twenty per cent thereon. No judgment annulling a tax sale shall have effect until the price and all taxes and costs paid, with ten per cent per annum interest on the amount of the price and taxes paid from date of respective pay- ments, be previously paid to the purchaser ; provided, this shall not apply to sales annulled on account of taxes having been paid prior to the date of sale, or dual assessments. All deeds of sale made. or that may be made, by the collectors of taxes, shall be received by courts as prima facie valid sales.
No sale of property for taxes shall be set aside for any cause, except on proof of dual assessment, or of payment of the taxes for which the property was sold prior to the date of the sale, unless the proceeding to annul is instituted within six months from serv- ice of notice of sale, which notice shall not be served until the time of redemption has expired, or within three years from the adoption of this Constitution, as to sales already made, and within three years from the recordation of the tax deed, as to sales made hereafter, if no notice is given. The manner of notice and manner of pro- seeding to quiet tax titles shall be provided by law. Taxes on mov- ables shall be collected by seizure and sale by the tax collector of the movable property of the delinquent, whether it be the property assessed or not, sufficient to pay the tax. Sale of such property shall be made at public auction, without appraisement, after ten days' advertisement, made within ten days from date of seizure, and shall be absolute and without redemption.
If the tax collector can find no corporeal movables of the delin- quent to seize, he may levy on incorporeal rights, by notifying the debtor thereof, or he may proceed by summary rule in the courts to compel the delinquent to deliver up for sale property in his pos- session or under his control.
Art. 234. The tax shall be designated by the year in which it is collectable, and the tax on movable property shall be collected in the year in which the assessment is made.
Art. 235. The Legislature shall have power to levy, solely for the support of the public schools, a tax upon all inheritances, lega- cies, and donations : provided, no direct inheritance, or donation, to an ascendant or descendant, below ten thousand dollars in amount or value shall be so taxed ; provided. further, that no such tax shall exceed three per cent for direct inheritances and donations to as- cendants or descendants, and ten per cent for collateral inheritances. and donations to collaterals or strangers ; provided, bequests to edu- cational, religious, or charitable institutions shall be exempt from this tax.
Art. 236. The tax provided for in the preceding article shall not be enforced when the property donated or inherited shall have borne its just proportion of taxes prior to the time of such donation or inheritance.
Art. 237. The Legislature shall pass no law postponing the pay- 'ment of taxes, except in case of overflow, general conflagration, general destruction of crops, or other publie calamity.
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Art. 238. A levee system shall be maintained in the State, and a tax not to exceed one mill may be levied annually on all property subject to taxation, and shall be applied exclusively to the mainte- nance and repairs of levees.
Art. 239. The General Assembly may divide the State into Levee Districts, and provide for the appointment or election of Levee Commissioners in said districts, who shall, in the method and man- ner to be provided by law, have supervision of the erection, repair, and maintenance of the levees in said districts; to that effect the Levee Commissioners may levy a tax not to exceed ten mills on the taxable property situated within the alluvial portions of said dis- tricts subject to overflow; provided, that in case of necessity to raise additional funds for the purpose of constructing, preserving, or repairing any levees protecting the lands of a district, the rate of taxation herein limited. may be increased, when the rate of such increase and the necessity and purpose for which it is intended shall have been submitted to a vote of the property taxpayers of such district, paying taxes for themselves, or in any representative capacity, whether resident or non-resident, on property situated within the alluvial portion of said district subject to overflow, and a majority of those in number and value, voting at such election, shall have voted therefor. The Boards of Commissioners of the several levee districts, when authorized so to do by the State Board of Engineers, shall have full power and authority to contract with and permit any steam railroad corporation to construct, maintain, freely use and operate on the public levees, a railroad track or tracks; the supervision, control and general police power over such levees, however, to remain in and with the several levee boards. Provided, that nothing herein contained shall be construed as di- vesting either the General Assembly or the municipal government of any incorporated town or city in this State of the jurisdiction, control, or police power now vested in them, or either of them; and provided further, that no right or privilege shall be granted to any one or more railroad companies which shall preclude like grants to other companies willing to contribute pro rata to the common expense, incurred or to be incurred.
The several levee districts of the State, for the purpose of refund- ing the bonds heretofore issued by them under authority granted by the Legislature, and in order that they may negotiate to better advantage that portion of their authorized issue of bonds not yet disposed of, may issue bond in lieu of said bonds outstanding or not yet disposed of. The Legislature shall pass an act to carry this provision into effect, but bonds issued under this provision shall not bear a rate of interest greater than five per cent, or be dis- posed of at less than par, and it shall not be obligatory on the hold- ers of said outstanding bonds to give up the same in exchange be- fore the maturity thereof.
All the provisions of this article are held to apply to the levee district of which the City of New Orleans forms, or may hereafter
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form, a part; provided, that nothing herein shall be construed as affecting any existing legislation upon the subject of the taxing power of the commissioners of said district, or as affecting the power of the Legislature, under the Constitution of 1879, and the amendments thereto, with respect to such power.
Art. 240. The provisions of the above two articles shall cease to have effect whenever the Federal government shall assume permanent control and provide the ways and means for the main- tenance of levees in this State. The Federal government is author- ized to make such geological, topographical, hydrographical and hydrometrical surveys and investigations within the State as may be necessary to carry into effect the act of Congress to provide for the appointment of a Mississippi River Commission for the im- provement of said river, from the head of Passes near its mouth to the headwaters, and to construct and protect such public works and improvements as may be ordered by Congress under the pro- visions of said act.
Art. 241. The General Assembly shall have power, with the con- currence of an adjacent State or States, to create levee districts composed of territory partly in this State and partly in an ad- jacent State or States, and the Levee Commissioners for such dis- trict or districts shall possess all the powers provided by Article 239 of the Constitution.
Art. 242. Corporations, companies or associations organized or domiciled out of the State, but doing business therein, may be licensed and taxed by a mode different from that provided for home corporations or companies ; provided, said different modes of license shall be uniform, upon a graduated system, and said different mode of taxation shall be equal and uniform as to all such corpo- rations, companies or associations that transact the same kind of business.
Art. 243. All the articles and provisions of this Constitution regulating and relating to the collection of State taxes and tax sales shall also apply to and regulate the collection of parish, dis- triet, municipal, board and ward taxes.
Homestead Exemptions.
Articles 244 to 247 inclusive relate to homestead exemptions, and provide in general terms that the same shall be exempt from seizure and sale by any process whatever, except, Ist. For the purchase price of property, or any part thereof. 2d. For labor, money, and material. furnished for building, repairing or improving home- steads. 3d. For liabilities incurred by any public officer, or fiduciary, or any attorney at law, for money received or collected on deposit. 4th. For taxes or assessments. 5th. For rent which bears a privilege upon said property.
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