Whenever the leges are unable to accomplish something, they complain about the governor having too much power. They say the answer to reducing the governor’s power is to have a constitutional convention.
Interestingly, the leges never introduce a simple constitutional amendment to eliminate any of the governor’s so-called power. One reason may be that there’s nothing in our state constitution that gives the governor of Louisiana any power not enjoyed by the governors of other states.The leges use the excuse of the all-powerful governor not to accomplish something their constituents want because either the leges are ignorant or they don’t want to take responsibility.
A current example is the Capital Outlay Budget situation.During the 2013 Regular Session, the leges, knowingly, overloaded the budget with projects for which there was no funding. Thus the leges handed the governor the club with which to bludgeon them.
Had they not overloaded the budget, the governor could not have rearranged the funding (which is statutory, not constitutional authority) to reward his friends and punish his enemies.
I’m informed that, privately, many leges have complained about not getting the quid pro quo for which they sold their votes.
Any lege who voted for HB 2 and got screwed has no standing to complain. This happens year-in-and-year-out. Either the leges are extremely slow-learners or they enjoy being screwed.
The next time a lege tells you that they couldn’t get something done because the governor of Louisiana is too powerful, ask them who gave him the power.
If they don’t know, tell them to look in the mirror. The person they see staring back at them is to blame.
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