Our Views: Political feud, Senate veto

• Published: Jul 6, 2009 - Page: 4B

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

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

State Sen. Dan Claitor, R-Baton Rouge, is vague about why a prominent pastor in his district was not confirmed by the Senate for an appointment on an advisory committee in state government.

“People will get whatever they take from it,” Claitor said when the Rev. Dino Rizzo failed — as did 19 more of the governor’s appointees to various posts — to get confirmation to serve.

What one can take from this is that the good reverend got political payback for supporting Claitor’s opponent in a bitter election for the south Baton Rouge seat in the Senate.

Governors make appointments, but by law, many of them are subject to sign-off by the Senate.
Appointments don’t get through for a variety of reasons — from failure by the appointee to provide information needed for background checks to blackballing by senators who have a problem with the person.

Claitor is hardly the first senator, if he did object, to block appointment of somebody for local political reasons. But the phrase “if he did object” is what troubles us about the process.

The anonymous blackball for appointment is not a good way to do business in the Senate. If a senator objects to an appointment, he should be required to say so, publicly, and state his reasons.

Further, why should a single senator have a veto over an appointment simply because the appointee resides in his district? That’s the tradition in the Senate, and it’s another practice that cries out for reform.

The irony: Rizzo was not being appointed to a board running LSU or Southern or some other important institution. He was named to the advisory Commission on Marriage and the Family. Not that the commission’s issues aren’t important, but the pettiness of blocking an appointment to an advisory panel makes the process even more plainly obnoxious, and unworthy of Claitor.