Is Closing Mental Health Facility Immediately Necessary?

St. Tammany Parish residents, and the parish president , in particular, must feel like they’ve been played like fools when learning that the Jindal administration just circumvented legislative procedures to hire the new state revenue secretary, Tim Barfield, at more than double the salary of the previous person in that position.

Apparently Jindal's emergency proclamation of a job freeze by not filling vacancies to balance the budget doesn’t apply to his staff.   He would instead rather close hospitals.

Southeast Louisiana Hospital, in Mandeville, needs $555,000 to remain open until the end of the year, and team Jindal just came up with $250,000 to hire a new revenue secretary for the Revenue Department, which is running just fine with its present interim director.  To circumvent legislative approval of the higher salary, Jindal's boys added the title of executive council to the original job and floated it as a new position.  Again in violation of the administration's own departmental job freeze policy, no new positions.  At least that's what they released as policy through the media to the public.

To make matters worse, Rainwater, Commissioner of Administration, and the  governor’s chief budget advisor,  responding to questions about where the funds would come from to pay the salary said the state EASILY (my caps) can find the EXTRA (my caps) dollars to pay Barfield. He further brushed off the criticism of the inflated salary by stating, “That’s one tenth of one percent of the (revenue) department’s budget.”

Gee, if he would just add another one tenth of one percent of that budget, the folks in St Tammany could have their hospital remain open until the year's end which would give them more time for a possible alternative solution and allow for a smoother transition for the current patients.  Jindal plans to close it October 1st.

Apparently Jindal’s folks will resort to legislative trickery to find the money for themselves and not one dime for the mentally ill in the state.

Does everyone see something wrong with this picture?