The Associated Press

BATON ROUGE - In a friendly forum for the message, five of the six gubernatorial candidates who talked with small business owners and corporate leaders Wednesday night agreed the next leader of Louisiana should work to remove some of the taxes on business.

Only Democrat Claude "Buddy" Leach refused to make that promise, instead saying he would support a constitutional convention to review all the taxes on the state's books and determine if some of them were unfair.

The other candidates who attended the forum held by the Louisiana Association of Business and Industry all touted the removal of the corporate franchise tax on debt and the sales tax on machinery and equipment, some in a plan that would phase out the taxes over several years and others immediately.

Republican Public Service Commission Chairman Jay Blossman went the farthest, reiterating his pledge to create a corporate "tax-free zone" - a proposition that could cost the state nearly $1 billion. "We tax you guys too much. We tax business every time we need money."

Blossman said the state had 90,000 small businesses. If each business took the money from the tax repeals to hire one new person, "that's 90,000 new jobs around the state."

Former state Senate President Randy Ewing, D-Quitman, a timber farmer and businessman, said he's paid the taxes on debt and machinery and would get rid of them, calling it a "disincentive" for business. But he said a constitutional convention to review the state's entire tax structure went too far. "We need to go at this with a rifle, not a shotgun."

State Rep. Hunt Downer, R-Houma, supported a plan to temporarily suspend the payments of royalties and severance taxes on ultradeep oil and gas exploration to attract new drilling off the Louisiana coast.

None of the candidates put a figure on the millions of dollars that would be lost to the state budget with the tax repeals, instead focusing on what they said would be the creation of economic activity by the tax incentives.

Leach, D-Leesville, who is proposing a processing tax on foreign oil and gas, said he's the only candidate talking about how he will pay for improvements to education and highways. He said such improvements were needed before economic development could really flourish in Louisiana, touting plans for universal preschool classes across the state and certified teachers in every classroom.

"Then I think we can go to the captains of industry and tell them Louisiana has invested in its people."

Republican Bobby Jindal, a former state and federal health official, took a slight shot at Leach's tax hike plan, saying it would hurt job growth. "Do we try to raise taxes, or do we try to create jobs? You can't do both."

Lt. Gov. Kathleen Blanco, D-Lafayette, said she would streamline the regulatory and permitting process in Louisiana to make it more business-friendly. She said the state needed a well-trained work force, fair tax base, reasonable insurance rates, good infrastructure and to be free from frivolous lawsuits. Then she offered few specifics about how she would make those changes.

Blossman, Blanco, Downer and Leach all pledged to veto any mandated health increases passed by the Legislature. Jindal pointed out a moratorium temporarily outlawing any new mandates already is on the books, and he said he wanted to review all the current health-care mandates already in place.

Ewing said increasing health-care costs are a burden for business, but he said some mandates - like required prostate exams and mammograms - ultimately save businesses health-care money by catching problems early. "We need to be careful and need to be practical and not just say all mandates" should be eliminated, he said.

Attorney General Richard Ieyoub, the other major candidate in the race, did not attend Wednesday's forum. Democratic former state Sen. J.E. Jumonville was not allowed to participate in the panel discussion but was given a few minutes to offer his plans, which included paying economic development officials on a commission basis dependent on the number of jobs they brought to Louisiana.