'Bobby One Term'

You've got to hand it to Governor Bobby Jindal. The man has exceeded all expectations in office.

Deep in the throes of a credibility crisis brought on, first, by his refusal to lead (the Legislature) and then his decision to follow (the right-wing blowhards who paid for his election), Jindal this week turned to pandering to what he must think is his base by issuing a round of budget vetoes that targeted the only Louisiana citizens in deeper trouble than he is — the poor, the elderly, young people in need of mentoring, YMCAs, Boys & Girls Clubs, rural communities, African Americans, museums, community centers. Here's the full list (PDF).

As Kathleen Blanco pointed out in 2003, the man was then all about numbers but not recognizing that there were people behind those numbers when it came to state budgets.

This week Jindal seemed intent on proving his predecessor prescient.

Even Republicans were outraged. Public talk by legislators of "distrust" of Jindal hardly gets to the depth of the animosity he has generated.

Let's summarize what Bobby One Term has accomplished in half a year in office:

Claiming the mantel of 'The Ethics Governor', Jindal has managed to completely shut down the ethics enforcement process in this state by neutering the State Board of Ethics for Elected Officials, then hiding the process from the public in the name of transparency.

Then, his financial disclosure reform forced hundreds of his public-scrutiny shy Republican supporters to flee public boards and commissions less their conflicts — er, uh, — financial interests be disclosed to the whole wide world.

With those two steps alone, Jindal had accomplished more than Edwin Edwards would never have even dreamt of trying.

But, in the Regular Session, Jindal hit his stride right about the time he started getting mentioned as a possible running mate for John McCain. The Legislature moved to give itself a pay raise and it passed a budget.

Channeling Earl Long (apologies up front to Uncle Earl, his family and friends) with his "tell 'em I lied" positions on the legislative pay raise, Jindal got caught talking out of both sides of his mouth. He promised legislators he would not veto a pay raise they wanted. Only problem was that he had promised voters he'd veto a raise just like the Legislature gave itself.

Right up until the day before he vetoed the pay raise, Jindal insisted that he would not veto it. When his
legislative liaison, veteran lobbyist Tommy Williams, quit, it was clear just how much trouble Jindal was getting into with legislators. Williams had been around the Capitol for decades. Williams experience must have convinced him that, with trust being the oil of cooperation, that Jindal had torched his own well.

But, it's the line item vetoes of elements of the General Fund Budget that may well have sealed Jindal's fate with the Legislature. Regardless of what else is happening in a Regular Session of the Legislature, the budget (HB 1) is really the main item of business and concern for the governor, his administration and legislators.

With good reason: that's where the money is. This year, there were almost $30 billion in that budget.

Regular Sessions, then, are a three-month long haggling session over the content of the budget. It gets talked about every day, regardless of the formal agenda of the day.

What has angered so many legislators about not just this latest round of vetoes, but others as well, is that the administration never mentioned its opposition to some of the bills that were vetoed. The line item vetoes in the budget bill were insult to injury, coming as they did on the heels of the pay raise veto.

So, Jindal may have sucked up to his supposed base with these vetoes. But, the damage to the intended recipients of the dollars in those vetoed segments is real. So, too, is the damage to Jindal's credibility.

If saving money was the real reason for this performance, Jindal could have started way back in the special sessions when he and his economic development head finagled a way to get GOP heavy hitter Gary Chouest (part owner of the New Orleans Hornets, $100,000 in a day man for the LCRM) $10 million in state money to build a facility so he could build boats that he could sell to another of his companies.

In Jindal Land, welfare is for big contributors. Maybe he did learn something in Washington, after all!

If the Senior Center folks should have cut Jindal a big check in 2007, things would be just fine now.

Ask Gary Chouest.

Buddy Jindal

The Jindal administration could be about to come to a screeching halt due to an astounding bit of incompetence on behalf of the Governor and his staff. You see, it seems the Governor has failed to submit to the Senate for approval several hundred appointments he's made since becoming taking office in January. As a result, those appointments are considered temporary and will expire unless confirmations are rushed through!

Here's how The Baton Rouge Advocate reports it:

Every appointment that Gov. Bobby Jindal has made since he took office in January is in jeopardy because he has not forwarded their names for Senate confirmation.

The appointments by Jindal for 437 jobs — including his top aides — will no longer be valid and they will have to stop working as of June 23, when the legislative session adjourns, according to the state law governing the confirmation process.

Senate and Governmental Affairs Committee Chairman state Sen. Bob Kostelka, R-Monroe, asked Jimmy Faircloth, the governor’s executive counsel, Wednesday to send the official list.

As of 5 p.m. Friday, the list still had not arrived.

The Senate cannot confirm Jindal’s appointees until the list arrives, Kostelka said.

Senator Kostelka has been busy trying to keep and extend a wall of secrecy around the governor and his staff and ensuring that the new ethics regime remains unworkable, but somehow this bit of essential government work just came to his attention.

Who's positions are at stake? Oh, no one important:

Jindal’s top staff, his Cabinet secretaries and other top state agency officials, as well as members of state boards and commissions are among those needing to be confirmed by the state Senate.

This is how the procedure has worked for years, or, at least, until Team Jindal landed on the Fourth Floor of the Capitol:

The Senate gets copies of commissions issued when appointments are made that are filed with the Secretary of State’s Office. But the law requires governors and other statewide officials, who make appointments, to submit lists of their picks to the Senate.

Other statewide officials have complied, according to Senate records.

Kostelka’s committee is charged with conducting confirmation hearings on the governor’s appointees as well as those of other statewide elected officials.

The panel is the screening committee for the full Senate.

The panel conducts background checks on the appointees to make sure there are no criminal, tax or other problems in their personal histories. In addition, the names are circulated among senators to see if the senators have a problem with any of the appointees. Senators can blackball an appointee.

Jindal did not respond to four requests for an interview placed through his press secretary, Melissa Sellers.

Denial is, apparently, a major river now flooding the Fourth Floor and threatening to drown all of Jindal's executive appointments.

The Jindal bubble is so tightly sealed that Kostelka felt compelled to have to go public with the information in the hope that someone on the Governor's staff might (accidentally) read the story in the paper and see the need for action.

Jindal's imperial style of governing — learned at the knee of Mike Foster but honed to a fine sheen serving in the Bush administration and the Congress — has little use for law, rules or limitations. Those are for suckers!

Jindal operates on a rarefied plane where he is always the smartest person in the room and others are always deferential. It appears that the Governor could benefit from having his bubble pierced and recognizing that, from time-to-time, he'll have to comply with the mundane rules that governed his merely human predecessors.

The Jindal administration's 'we're special, so we need special rules' attitude hasn't been seen in such stark display in Baton Rouge since the days of Buddy Roemer's administration. That kinship borne of arrogance might explain why the two (Jindal and Roemer) work so well together on behalf of John McCain. They are kindred spirits.

With time and luck, if Jindal keeps on his present path, he could well meet Roemer's fate of being a one-term governor.