ADVOCATE EDITORIAL: Steps Backward in Legislature
Advocate (excerpt)

Is Louisiana going forward or backward? That’s the question people ought to ask of Gov. Bobby Jindal and the Legislature that has now gone home. If you measure the 2009 session’s contributions to the big issues in the state, there’s not that much positive we can point to, and a lot that has gone wrong. For the first time in 15 years, Louisiana is cutting its spending on higher education. That’s a step back, and a big one for those of us who believe Louisiana needs a nationally competitive system of universities. It was a populist session, in which politics ran over policy, and Jindal too often sat on the sidelines waiting for the politics to sort out instead of driving decisions unpopular with lawmakers or interest groups. The rush to subsidize a failed chicken plant in north Louisiana was pure politics that undermined the long-term credibility of the state’s economic development efforts.

Jindal and lawmakers changed the rules for economic development grants; that money originally was given on the assumption it would be used for exceptional projects to give the state an exceptional economic boost, not for basic chicken-plucking.

There was little good news on the ethics front, with the governor quashing proposals for more transparency in his own office. The “gold standard” of ethics stops at the governor’s door, apparently.