Are Our Legislators Really Masochistic?

With all the misinformation and missing support data regarding the justification for the Office of Group Benefits’ radical changes to the medical health insurance plans for state employees, teachers, and retirees, one has to wonder about the self preservation skills of most of our state representatives.

Upon my inquiry to OGB, I learned that our legislators fall under the same plans as the rest of us folk.

Let’s forget about the fact that our representatives don’t always look out for the best interests of us citizens, and instead focus on the reality that they didn’t even have enough common sense to look out for their own well-beings.

Some might speculate that they assumed the martyr’s role because they believed all the budgetary distortions espoused by Jindal and his cohorts, and felt the changes were necessary for the overall budgetary health of our fine state, the bigger picture.

However, after recent enlightenment from representative John Bel Edwards and state treasurer, John Kennedy, we learn that several legislative and fiscal management procedures were violated by Jindal’s folks.   Not only did Jindal possibly violate the Administrative Procedures Act, a ruling by the state attorney general also concluded that the Jindal administration had not allowed the Legislature enough oversight or provided proper notification before making the drastic changes to the health care plans.  In fact, some claim that Jindal’s minions didn’t even have the authority to unilaterally implement ANY of these changes.

One would hope that ALL our legislators know about these procedures and when they are violated.  Also, I would think that since these changes were going to directly impact their own financial well-being, that our representatives would have shown great concern when these changes were proposed.   It took state workers, retirees and teachers to sound the alarm.

Maybe the real reason for their recent willingness to impose self-inflicted damage is because they spend too much time playing with their cell phones, notebooks, and iPads during legislative sessions and pay little attention to what’s being done to the citizens of this state, and in this situation, to themselves.