Whoooooossshhhh!!!!!
State Contracts
Bringing Profits to Michot
According to the Baton Rouge Morning Advocate, the state's Medicaid
program has reported that four state legislators with health care
businesses are making money from the government program.
The report for the year 2007 revealed that Premiere Medical Equipment
Inc., a firm owned by Sen. Mike Michot, Republican- Lafayette got
$162,000 from Medicaid business that year. Previous years are still
under investigation.
The others named in the report were
• Sen. David Heitmeier, Democrat-New Orleans, an eye doctor who made
more than $150,000 through his practice.
• Sen. Joe McPherson, Democrat-Woodworth, owner of Maison De Lafayette
nursing home in Lafayette who took home nearly $4 million for care
of about 100 patients.
• Rep. Bernard LeBas, a Democrat and Ville Platte pharmacist who
received more than $2.5 million in Medicaid business.
Sen. Michot was the only Republican among the four named and the only
one who voted for the massive pay raises recently passed by the
legislature and finally vetoed by the governor. Michot has
consistently maintained that the legislative pay scale is too low
and detracts from public servants making a decent living in their
private businesses.
Acadiana
Gazette Editorial
That giant sucking
sound you may have heard emanating from Baton Rouge just before
noon this past Monday was a
combination of giant egos being punctured and a collective sigh of
relief as the biggest legislative controversy in recent history was
deflated by Governor Bobby Jindal’s sharp veto pen.
Jindal proclaimed
for weeks he was against the bill but would not interfere with
the legislators' determined efforts to give themselves a giant pay
increase. It is impossible to judge the enormity ofthe public
reaction. Tens of thousands of letters, e-mails, phone calls and
other means of communications poured into the capitol, the
governor’s office, legislative offices in Baton Rouge and in their
home districts.
Newspapers, TV and
radio stations were inundated by the angry taxpayers who rightly
viewed the move on the part of
the majority of the legislature as self-serving and arrogant.
Statewide radio talk show host Moon Griffon reported over 5,000
e-mails had clogged his PC.
Governor Jindal,
after being touted as a possible contender for the vice president
slot on Republican John McCain’s
ticket, was suddenly under new scrutiny by the national and even
international media.
A newspaper in
India had a front-page story on the dilemma facing this country’s
first Indian-American governor. National talk show icons Rush
Limbaugh and Sean Hannity commented on the tough spot Jindal found
himself in due to his indecision.
Many believe it was
this hot spotlight of national coverage that turned the trick. Some
believe a behind the scenes deal
was struck with those who had initiated recall petitions against
Jindal and four legislators, most notably Speaker of the House Jim
Tucker. According to these unsubstantiated rumors the recallers
would drop their efforts if Jindal would veto the measure.
Lafayette
Senator Mike Michot was the only Acadiana legislator who voted in
favor of each and every incarnation
of the bill. It first cleared, unanimously, the Senate Finance
Committee that he chairs. He then was one of the twenty voting for
passage on the 300% increase bill on the Senate floor. Michot again
was one of the slim majority of twenty to vote for the final
concurrence in the House version.
The
term-limited Michot told reporters he was, “Happy this is behind us
and we can move forward to address
the needs of this state.” His committee chairmanship would have
guaranteed that his personal legislative salary would have zoomed to
nearly $80,000 a year with automatic annual increases.
“We don’t
want the reforms of this administration to be clouded by this
issue,” he said.
Why did this
happen? Analysts have many theories: The state’s overflowing
treasury was a tempting target
for greedy lawmakers who had already given almost everybody else in
government big raises; the governor’s distraction with a potential
national political plum left legislators, like unattended children,
to get into mischief; legislative leaders thought they could prove
their power and ingratiate themselves to their respective members by
jamming the administration and guaranteeing a veto proof pay raise.
All are good
guesses. The simple answer is that the legislature showed their
disdain for their constituents because
they could. The dirty little secret in the state capitol for years
has been, “With twenty votes in the Senate and fifty three in the
House, you can do any damn thing you want!”
Those beginning the
last term of their term-limited tenure had nothing to lose. Some
first timers believed the
whispers from the old heads that have been used for years, “The
voters have short memories. Vote for this in your first year and
it’ll be forgotten in four years.”
This time Louisiana
citizens emulated the TV anchor portrayed by the great British
actor, Peter Finch, in the the
movie Network. The veteran newscaster had been driven to
near insanity by his network's pursuit of ratings
and he encouraged his viewers to let
people know if they were fed up too: That they were mad as hell and
not going to take it anymore.
Louisiana did.
Editorial in The Acadiana Gazette, July
2, 2008
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