What transparency? Thursday, Jan 24 2008
Uncategorized 8:00 am
According to a story in today’s Baton Rouge newspaper, Governor Bobby Jindal is meeting with small groups of leges to discuss his plans for his upcoming special session for ethics. No specific legislation is being presented, but discussions of various details of impending legislation are being discussed.
The matters being discussed are not “internal” lege matters, but the passage of state laws which all in LA must live and abide.
The purpose of a lege session is to discuss and have public input into the law-making process. Or at least that is what the constitution says.
Which brings me to this point about these private meetings.
WHERE’S THE TRANSPARENCY????
Circumventing the law
Jindal is obviously meeting with less than a majority of each house of the lege in order to circumvent the Public Meetings Law.
Such meetings and circumvention of the law is nothing new. Previous governors have done so. They are the ones who Jindal alludes to as being in charge while the state suffered from an image, if not the reality, of corruption.
What is being said in those meetings that cannot be said in an open forum?
Transparent or invisible?
If things are going to be different under a “transparent” Jindal Administration, why do things appear to be the same old opaque method of operation used by all the previous administrations?
Seems like another case “transparency” being the same as “invisible.”
C.B.
