(Bobby Jindal) From In The Spotlight To On The Spot
by JOHN MAGINNIS - LAPolitics (excerpt)

From chatting up Jay Leno on the Tonight Show to addressing the National Press Club, Gov. Bobby Jindal served Louisiana well from a distance last week. For a state accustomed to cringing at past chief executives' national exposure, Jindal's star turn puts an exclamation point on the statement that politics is changing down the bayou.

Good for him and us. Now, for his next appearance, he might consider taking the elevator down to the first floor of the State Capitol, where the Legislature is verging on making hash of his carefully scripted session agenda.

Even his faithful supporters are nervous that somewhere between Hollywood and Washington their leader began to lose his grip on this legislative session and the conservative movement he brought with him to the Capitol. Not that he can't regain control, but a delicate situation is turning very dicey.

While the governor's attention was elsewhere, a large tax-cut bill that was not supposed to see the light of day slipped its chains, grew monstrously larger and now threatens to devour his first budget.

The Jindal administration opposed but apparently took lightly a bill by Sen. Buddy Shaw, R-Shreveport, to reverse the income tax increase of the Stelly plan of 2002. Shaw's one-page bill would reduce from six percent to four percent the tax rate on incomes between $25,000 and $50,000, amounting to a $500 break for individuals and a $302 million hit to the state treasury.