Our views: Villere stunt demeans law

• Advocate Opinion page staff
• Published: May 26, 2009

• Print
• Email
• Save
• Reprints
• Twitter
• Share

• Del.icio.us
• Digg
• Facebook
• Reddit
• 

‘Everything!” Well, that’s what state Rep. Karen Peterson said in a debate with Gov. Bobby Jindal’s aides about public records. She was, of course, guilty of some rhetorical overreach, what with saying somebody could request “everything” in the way of legislators’ public records.

What Peterson intended to emphasize was that almost everything a legislator does is a public record, but the governor has a wide-ranging exemption that lawmakers don’t get. Despite his repeated preaching about transparency in government, Jindal has fought to kill any reforms that would improve public access to Governor’s Office records.

Given that the Republican Party of Louisiana almost specializes in boneheaded moves, it probably should not be a surprise that the state party chairman heard Peterson and promptly and foolishly decided to request “everything” in the way of Peterson’s records.

As is so often the case with thoughtless partisanship, the move against Peterson, D-New Orleans, backfired on state GOP chief Roger Villere. He was castigated by several Republicans on the House floor for what seemed to them a personal attack on Peterson, who is speaker pro tem in the House.

The House clerk, Butch Speer, received the formal request. Speer said that the work on retrieving Peterson’s and her staff’s e-mails from 2000 on could not start until after the session’s end June 27. He said it would be a costly project consuming nearly $200,000 of employee work time.

Villere’s idea of requesting “everything” was a stunt, an abuse of the public records law. We don’t like use of it for this kind of grandstanding.

Public records laws — whatever Villere, or for that matter, Jindal, thinks — are fundamental to the public’s ability to know what the government is doing with the taxpayers’ money. Filing a sweeping request on the basis of Peterson’s speech was the kind of juvenile political move one might expect of a college party club, not a serious leader of a major political party.

We’re glad that Villere apparently has reconsidered and said he’ll consider tailoring his request to some specific subject. We await the subject, because it seemed he didn’t have one in mind when he popped off.