Being governor of Louisiana is a hard job not to love. Gov. Bobby Jindal appears under no pressure, following his landslide re-election, to share details of what he plans to tell the Legislature to do in his second term. Legislators he has tapped to be Senate president and speaker of the House are checking with him before naming committee chairmen. The abrogation of the separation of powers, traditional in Louisiana, is unheard of in other states. What is heard here is the hum of Jindal’s PR machine, polishing up the record of his first term. Along with real accomplishments were included some specious claims that admiring opinion writers in other states have swallowed as fact. The most glaring was Jindal’s campaign claim of slashing $9 billion in spending from the budget he inherited in 2008 to the one he signed this year. In truth, the vast majority of the decrease came from the federal government’s ending its hurricane recovery payments. The $34 billion Jindal claims as the 2008 starting point was a revenue projection, $6 billion of which the feds ended up not sending. No matter, a Philadelphia Inquirer columnist held up the fictitious 25% budget reduction as proof of what other governors could do if they were as resolute as Jindal. Or if they hired his communications team. In the real world, however, his first term is ending with complaints about the administration’s basic performance. Read the full column here.
(John Maginnis publishes LaPolitics Weekly, a newsletter on Louisiana politics, at LaPolitics.com.)
