Jindal helps kill public records bill; supports alternative
Bill Barrow, writing for The Times-Picayune:
BATON ROUGE — With the backing of Gov. Bobby Jindal, a House committee killed a bill that would have opened nearly all records of the governor’s executive office to public inspection, a move that the legislative sponsor said would bring real transparency to a state that touts the concept. …
The vote came a few hours after the Jindal administration effectively delayed action on another bill that would have expanded disclosure about the correlation between the governor’s campaign contributors and his appointees to public posts. As with the records bill, the administration says the disagreement is not in the concept but in the details.
Much of the debate today centered on what is an appropriate level of access for the public to have. There also were political barbs back-and-forth with Jindal critics suggesting the administration is hypocritical and Jindal backers casting him as a good example of open government.
Waddell, supported by the Louisiana Press Association and the Council for a Better Louisiana, among others, said he wasn’t directing the bill at Jindal. He assumed the philosophical position that taxpayers — those who finance the governor’s activities and are affected by his decisions — have the basic right to inspect all operations of the office, with only rare exceptions such as security matters.
Faircloth said opening all records would stifle candor in the process that leads to decisions. “If I throw out 10 ideas, nine of them might be bad,” he said. “If I have to defend those nine bad ideas, I might not offer them at all.”
