SHREVEPORT TIMES EDITORIAL: Governor's Records Need More Sunshine
Shreveport Times (excerpt)

Nowhere in the brief, ballyhooed reformist governorship of Bobby Jindal does rhetoric rub more against reality than on the issue of open government.

This page enthusiastically supported Jindal in his very first special session in 2008 when he successfully pushed through a raft of ethics reform measures to remake Louisiana's image from slippery banana republic to a business-friendly place where government operates in the open.

But lost in the rhetoric was that Jindal's administration largely kept itself exempt from public inspection.

With the complicity of lawmakers who ought to know better, the administration this session has killed in committee similar bills by two local legislators, state Sen. Robert Adley, R-Benton, and state Rep. Wayne Waddell, R-Shreveport, who sought to bring the governor's office more in line with disclosure laws that govern most other officials and agencies.

Instead, the administration is pushing a measure presented as a move toward transparency but which could have "devastating effects on public records," as the Public Affairs Research Council put it.

A PAR survey of states found only four governors with considerable discretion in determining what records are open to the public. "However, none statutorily grants a public records exception as broad as the one for Louisiana's governor."

As the governor's Commissioner of Administration, Angele Davis, noted in the April newsletter of the Louisiana Municipal Association, "An informed citizenry is both the driving force behind and the intended beneficiary of more accountable government." But it's hard to hold government accountable when we can't see what government is doing.