Political Horizons for Aug. 2, 2009

• By MARK BALLARD
• Advocate Capitol News Bureau
• Published: Aug 2, 2009

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During the legislative session, on June 22, House Speaker Jim Tucker, R-Terrytown, challenged Gov. Bobby Jindal.

But 50 members of the House voted against Tucker’s amendment that Jindal opposed and defeated an effort to require public access to records of the Governor’s Office. The loss caused the theoretical leader of the 105-member House of Representatives to mutter to himself something along the lines of, “so much for an independent Legislature.”

That scene of gubernatorial dominance should be front and center at an unprecedented meeting scheduled to take place later this month.

The leaders of the Louisiana Legislature’s most-powerful caucuses want to discuss ways to make future sessions more dignified, less spiked with personal attacks and invective.

“We want a more-controlled design and not get so personal,” said state Rep. Jane Smith, R-Bossier City and head of the House Republican Caucus.

“What I’m hoping comes out of this are simple ground rules of how we deal with each other,” said state Rep. Regina Barrow, D-Baton Rouge. “You never had people taking things so personal and attacking people who disagreed with them on a personal level. They were quite brutal interactions.”

With respect to their efforts, any civility solution has got to start with House members asserting their personal independence from the governor.

Fifty of 105 representatives supported the governor 75 percent of the time on issues personally important to him, according to a tally of votes. The root of much disharmony was the votes to shut down debate, a number of House members have said.

State Rep. Karen St. Germain, Democratic caucus leader, is still angry about what she called Jindal and his majority’s heavy-handed approach to squelch ideas that differed from the governor’s.

“They were saying, ‘We got this solved, so we don’t need you,’ ” said St. Germain, D-Pierre Part. “That was so wrong that it still flabbergasts me.”

GOP leader Smith said curtailing debate on the House floor is not necessarily bad.

“Once the point is made and you have 15 people coming to the mike saying the same thing over and over again, that’s why we sometimes say, ‘Call the question,’ ” Smith said, adding that often, the time spent on issues already decided takes time away from other, equally worthy issues.

“We’ll debate something for an hour and everybody already knows how they’re going to vote. That gets a little irritating too,” Smith said.