Blanco also faced pay raise issues during her first few months in office. The chairmen of the House and Senate financial committees approved a pay increase proposal for themselves without a debate on the issue, but Blanco persuaded them to abandon the idea.
Several other statewide elected officials pressed for a large pay raise for themselves and the governor, but Blanco stamped out the initiative and said they should not get a raise until public teacher pay was brought up to the Southern regional average. After teachers got that raise last year, Blanco allowed a pay raise for the next governor, who turned out to be Jindal.
"She drew the line in the sand very early on," (former Blanco staffer Bob)Mann said. "It looks like Jindal let the train get away from him. Either he got pushed around or wasn't paying attention."
Actually Mann is being far too charitable to Jindal here. It isn't a matter of being "pushed around" or "not paying attention" so much as it is being in on the very boondoggle he continually describes as "clearly excessive"
The issue for Jindal was complicated by his request to the Legislature to approve a $320,000 salary for his economic development secretary and $237,000 for the secretary's deputy, among other substantial raises for some Cabinet positions.
The combined salaries of these two Jindal aides could pay about 15 legislators under the new salary schedules. Maybe this is a reflection of their relative values.. but somehow I doubt that.
But that's not the funny part. The funny part is that Governor PBJ and his staff are just plain crappy at governing. It's harder to play the empty promise game from the Governor's office than it is from the campaign trail. That's what PBJ's Dragonslayers are finding out.
Specifically, they're learning it's not a good idea to antagonize both sides of the same issue at the same time. In this case, they're busy lying to voters in order to curry favor with the Legislature. But at the same time that they're dealing in the back room over this mutual pay raise bill, they're also letting their panic over the public criticism drive them into posturing intimidation of their partners anyway.
Early last week, Jindal's chief of staff, Timmy Teepell, confronted the bill's supporters and according to some lawmakers threatened a governor's veto unless the size of the raise was reduced. At the time, the bill would have tripled legislative salaries.
Key members of the House and Senate, who were operating under the assumption that Jindal was neutral about their plans, were angered by Teepell's approach. House Speaker Jim Tucker, R-Algiers, said he told Teepell the "wheels would come off the train" of the governor's current and future legislative agenda if Jindal kept up the veto pressure.
Congratulations, PBJ. Now you've managed to piss off everybody. Except your own Economic Development administrators, I suppose. Buddy Roemer would be proud. Let us know if you need more rubber bands.
Note: All these blockquotes are from the same T-P front page article linked above. But all the fun stuff happens at the end of the piece so the narrative here presents quotes in reverse of the order they occur in the article. I think this is what they call "burrying the lede"
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