An unhealthy spirit of curiosity has gripped certain members of the Louisiana Legislature.
They want to know what a bill says before they vote on it.
State Sen. Heather Cloud, R.-Turkey Creek, for one, has a good idea why some of her colleagues might suddenly be feeling inquisitive. She has seen too many bills move through the system before legislators have been able to weigh their merits.
She has suggested it might be a good idea to require that complex bills be held over a day or two so that due diligence, if not legally mandated, is at least strongly encouraged. As things stand, a harried legislator may have no choice but to skimp when a great wodge of statutory gobbledygook suddenly surfaces, demanding urgent attention.
Just the other day legislators peppered House Speaker Clay Schexnayder, R-Gonzales, with questions about the package of bills that constitutes the state government's budget for the next fiscal year.
Legislators managed their time with customary efficiency, leaving themselves about an hour to consider how to spend $45 billion of our money. That was not enough for some of them, and the rafters rang with howls of anguish from legislators frustrated by Schexnayder's refusal to allow debate or explain what was in the bills.
You might wonder why legislators need to be told what a bill says, when it is sitting in front of them, and it is true that the uproar here was to some extent manufactured. There are times when legislators are genuinely overwhelmed, but more than a thirst for knowledge was involved here.
With no time to debate the merits of the mess of bills that had landed on their laps at the last minute, legislators waved them all through, but not before a closed-door conference committee made some loony changes. Not many governments have cut their health department budgets with a pandemic still going on, for instance, but legislators voted a $100 million hit on ours. That would lose us federal matching funds too, so the total loss to the state could be as much as $700 million, according to the department.
Such foolishness can't be allowed to stand. Maybe Gov. John Bel Edwards can knock some sense into legislative heads.
Schexnayder's tormentors may not really have been motivated by a desire for more information about the content of bills; their real intent may have been purely disruptive, for they constitute the Legislature's right-wing rump. To them, Schexnayder, although he is a Republican, is no better than a Marxist infiltrator. He is indeed guilty of fraternizing with Democrats and could not have been elected speaker without them in the first place four years ago.
That inter-party alliance is still in place. With the mysterious exception of Amite's Robby Carter, every Democratic state legislator picked up $1 million in state money.
The ability to reward friends with other people's money is one of the most valued perks of public office, and there is no point in fretting about the morality of the system. Jobs for my friends and good government for my enemies is a time-tested political principle.
But money that Cloud was expecting to fix a dangerous highway in her district was cut at the last minute for purposes, she says, of “political retribution.” If someone does get seriously hurt or killed on that road, the morality of the system might warrant reconsideration.
Email James Gill at gill504nola@gmail.com.