Legislators respresent lobbyists

Last week it was revealed that Mr. Stephen Waguespack the president of the Louisiana Association of Business and Industry (LABI) had pressured our House representatives into considering raising the state sales tax an additional one cent higher than the already approved one cent increase to avoid businesses and corporations operating in this state from having to relinquishing some of their tax exemptions.This piqued my interest regarding the degree of influence lobbyist groups such as the LABI have in our state government.

According to the Louisiana Board of Ethics there are over 800 registered lobbyists operating within the executive and legislative branches.  The entities they represent are listed in a document totaling 221 pages in length.  They include everything from oil companies to food cart vendors.

Fortunately, most exist in name only and don’t really impact legislative decisions to the degree that the LABI, petroleum, chemical, and gas lobbyists do with their generous perks and contributions to our legislators’ election campaign funds.

However, as I delved deeper into the lobbyist system presently operating within our state, it occurred to me that our state could find additional sources of revenues to plug the disastrous budget hole by simply eliminating the middle men, namely our legislators.  The root cause of this devastating budget mess was past governors’ and most of the legislators’ catering to the wishes of these strong lobby groups.  Since our present legislators have apparently decided to continue following this practice, as evidenced by their inaction in reducing some tax breaks for businesses to help balance the budget,  let’s just have the paid lobbyists directly propose legislation to solve the fiscal problems.  It would seem we no longer need our legislators in a full time capacity.  They could just voluntarily show up for an hour and frame the proposals into bills for the governor’s signature.  What a cost savings!

All joking aside, perhaps it’s time for our legislators to review the definition of democracy.  The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines it as, “a government in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised by them directly or indirectly through a system of representation usually involving periodically held free elections.”  I don’t see the word ‘lobbyist’ mentioned anywhere.

It’s time for our state representatives to forget about the campaign contributions, free trips, lunches, dinners, tickets for sports events, etc. and vote for revenue measures that will involve all economic entities operating in this state equally.  They need to curtail proposing legislation that attempts to force the electorate to bail out the most recent eight years of fiscal allegiance to, and coddling of the lobbyists in this state which created the present fiscal disaster.