For the third consecutive year, state Sen. Robert Adley is trying to make Gov. Bobby Jindal’s office more transparent by requiring the administration to open up more records that currently are shielded from the state’s public record laws.
The Times-Picayune reports that the Benton Republican’s bill has thus far made it through a Senate committee and is heading to the Senate floor, the same place that killed the bill last year thanks to an outcry from the administration.
Current law allows Jindal, who spent his first months in office creating what he calls a “gold standard” of ethics reform, to keep some things, like budget information, a secret until it’s complete. State lawmakers have opined about the law since Jindal took office, but have yet to gain enough support to strip that provision.
Other records, like the governor’s schedule and anything pertaining to his children and wife, are not included in Adley’s push to make the state’s top office more public. But Jindal and his executive counsel argue that a term called “deliberative process,” which Adley points out was first used centuries ago by British royalty, protects the administration from revealing its decision-making documents:
Lawmakers complained this year that Jindal’s office has not been forthcoming with details of the budget, the possible sale of state prisons or the privatization of the state’s Group Benefits insurance program.
“We have had three years of waiting to see how it works,” Adley said of existing law ... “It has not worked very well.”
Despite Jindal’s special 2008 legislative session to enact laws to improve ethics laws and improve transparency in government, “the governor’s office enjoys more secrecy now than before ... and it is spreading through all of government” under Jindal’s administration, said Carl Redman, executive editor of The Advocate, Baton Rouge’s daily newspaper.
“It is time to open the governor’s office, too,” said Jean Armstrong, representing the League of Women Voters and Common Cause. The bill was also backed by the Council for a Better Louisiana, an issues-oriented public policy organization, and the Louisiana Press Association.
Read more on Adley’s bill here.
MAY 24 Blogger Robert Mann posts this entry about the Baton Rouge Chamber's recent report on Louisiana's higher education system. It's critical to economic development, and yet our system is facing a "funding crisis" with no way to resolve it, the report says. The Chamber says control of tuition and fees must be returned to the higher ed governing boards.
MAY 24 Here's a NBC33 story about Tyrann Mathieu. He has signed with the Arizona Cardinals, inking a $3 million, four-year deal. He gets a signing bonus of $265K, but gets another, larger bonus if he doesn't get cut from the team for doing drugs. The deal reportedly includes mandatory tests and meetings for the player.
MAY 24 Jarvis DeBerry posts here about the redonkulus rhetoric that would have us believe NOLA is a safe city with a murder problem. Maybe the city's crime stats don't compare with its murder stats because you can't manipulate a murder, he says: a dead body's a dead body. It just doesn't make sense, he says, and his readers agree: a poll asks if they believe the city is safe, and more than 90 percent say no.
MAY 24 Jindal administration officials announced Thursday that the privatization of public health care is going to cost a lot more than they budgeted for, the Advocate reports here. "I'm so surprised," said no one. Anywhere. The cost they're projecting now is more than $1 billion - a lot more than the $626 million budgeted for it. And, it's more than it cost the state to operate those hospitals. So why are we doing this again?
MAY 24 Blogger CB Forgotston ridicules the recent PR campaign by the state GOP in the wake of a legislative auditor's request to both major parties. The GOP (apparently unaware that the Dems got the same request) started yammering about being targeted because it had "killed" a tax increase. CB finds that laughable, but it's also pretty funny that the GOP was comparing this episode to the IRS scandal (Because the President has so much to do with our state auditor. Right?).
MAY 24 Politico details some recent fund-raising efforts by Sen. David Vitter, which have raised the question of his future political plans. This time, it is a $5,000 per head "bayou weekend" that includes "Cajun cooking" and an all-caps "alligator hunt," the story reports. Funds raised go to a super PAC that can spend money to support Vitter in federal or state races, the story points out.
MAY 24 The pink building on Royal in the quarter was sold at a sheriff's sale Thursday, this Picayune story reports. An injunction that would have halted the sale wasn't enforced because the family failed to post a $150,000 bond, the story reports. So the owner of the mortgages on the building bought it, for nearly $7 million. Now the feuding family will have to negotiate with that company to get a lease on the building that has housed their business for close to 60 years.
MAY 23 This post in Louisiana Voice tells us about a bill by a Winnsboro lege that would require all public high school students to take at least one Course Choice online class in order to graduate. (What?) Blogger Tom Aswell says it's a monument to "waste and corruption," especially in light of the problems he's exposed with the program in recent weeks. Idaho had a similar program, but voters removed it by a 2-1 margin, Aswell says.
Most Read
in case you missed it
Subscribe to this comment's feed