Where was the LABI for seven years? With Jindal.

I found the recently penned opinion in the Hammond Star by Stephen Waguspeck, president of the Louisiana Association of Business and Industry, criticizing the just ended legislative session as being detrimental to Louisiana‘s economy, quite interesting.

He attempts to make a case about how legislators’ recent votes to reduce some of the business tax breaks will devastate the Louisiana economy.  What Mr. Waguspeck fails to point out is that he, along with his organization, sat by for SEVEN years and let Jindal devastate the educational system in this state.  A far more serious blow to the state’s economy than the miniscule business tax changes recently voted in by our legislators.   However, unlike the permanent educational funding cuts, the increases in business taxes are FOR ONE YEAR ONLY and expire in 2016.

Since LABI claims to be focused on improving the economic climate of Louisiana through the support of sound economic-boosting legislation, where was the LABI’s opposition to the years of deep budget cuts imposed on higher education? Where was LABI’s overall plan to prevent Jindal and lawmakers from starving our colleges and universities?  Where was LABI’s program to strengthen Louisiana’s economy by increasing the number of college graduates?

One would have assumed that the state’s largest business organization would have wretched at the methodological destruction of the educational system in our state since college graduates help drive the Louisiana economy.  Instead, in the most recent legislative session, LABI was more concerned about ending automatic payroll deductions of union dues and increasing school voucher opportunities.

However, perhaps the real reason for turning a blind eye to the educational funding problem lies with fact that  LABI president, Stephen Waguespeck, was one of Jindal’s former chiefs of staff and for the past seven years both Jindal and the LABI were, for the most part, strongly  aligned.  Only during this most recent legislative session did the alliance suffer resulting in the penned commentary.