Jindal's vetoes nix $250,000 for parish

With a stroke of his pen, Gov. Bobby Jindal delayed Jacki Schneider’s dream for more than a year.

Jindal this week nixed a $15,000 earmark approved by lawmakers for Schneider’s Kids of Our Lacombe, a non-profit organization aimed at keeping at-risk students off streets with painting, woodworking and other arts.

The earmark, she said, was to put a down payment on an historical house built in 1885, a home to become the headquarters of the agency with a waiting list dozens of kids deep. Now the purchase will be delayed a year, she said, keeping those kids on the streets and out of her class.

“So many kids lost everything (after Hurricane Katrina.) Their homes went underwater. They were having a problem focusing on anything. Their lives were turned upside down. They never went to back school, but this (agency helps) puts them back on track,” she said.

Schneider’s earmark was just one of several Jindal scrapped in St. Tammany Parish worth more than $250,000 including money for Habitat for Humanity and a new public gym in Covington.

The line item vetoes, 258 of them, cut more than $16 million in state spending and more than doubled the combined number of line item vetoes made during the past 12 years.

Stewing at the news, lawmakers this week wrestled with a decision to call an unprecedented override session to restore the vetoed bills, including the hotly debated legislative pay raise. Those ballots, sent out to lawmakers Wednesday, must be returned July 28 at midnight with a favorable vote to call the session scheduled Aug. 2-6.

If approved, the override session would be the first such session called in recent memory. But some local lawmakers such as Sen. Jack Donahue, R-Covington, believe the session is just talk from angry legislators.

“A lot of us are irritated by the governor for how he handled things, but I don’t think the legislature will get outraged enough to storm Baton Rouge,” Donahue said.

On Thursday the leadership of the Louisiana Republican Legislative Delegation sent out a press release asking its members to vote against a veto override session, because they did not think it was “in the best interests of the citizens of this state.”

Donahue authored an earmark worth $120,000 to help build a state-of-the-art gymnasium for the city of Covington. Jindal rejected it, saying the project, a $2 million to $3 million venture slated for construction in late 2009 or early 2010, “should be funded with other sources.”

Covington City Councilman Lee Alexius, who’s been a lead advocate for the gym, agreed with Jindal and embraced the veto Wednesday. While he would like extra money to offset construction costs, Alexius said the gym is a local matter and should be funded as such. If possible, state coffers should be spent on state projects while local coffers fund local projects, leaving Big Brother government out of local affairs, he said.

“It needed be vetoed,” Alexius said. “That’s the kind of stuff that’s nice to get but doesn’t need to be there. I can see if the gym would be used for a statewide evacuation center, but its not.”

Jindal agrees. Before the session he vowed to veto legislation that didn’t include state priorities.

“For too long, state government has spent and spent, with little regard for taxpayer’s money,” Jindal said in a press release. “On inauguration day, I said that we must strive for real reform and not mere cosmetic changes to create a New Louisiana. Today, we are taking another step toward that New Louisiana by vetoing unnecessary non-governmental and governmental spending to reduce our state budget and send a signal that we will not settle for business as usual.”

In Slidell, Jindal’s veto pen also erased a $100,000 financial burst to the Northshore Harbor Center, a publicly funded multi-use events center off Oak Harbor Boulevard near Slidell. The center, touted as a regional attraction for plays, conferences, car shows and other events, is dubbed as an economic spoke in St. Tammany’s financial wheel, attracting out-of-towners to spend money locally.

But for years the center has competed against better-equipped facilities that have superior audio-visual hardware, enhanced theater set designs and top-notch seating. The earmark would have allow Harbor Center officials to buy some of those “A” list needs, said Kathy Lowery, interim general manager for the Harbor Center.

“This makes us less attractive as a facility,” she said. “It’s tough because we worked very hard with our senators to get this done.”

It’s that type of isolation that angers Donahue.

“I’ve worked hard to know my district and understand its needs,” he said. “Then somebody comes behind me and says those needs aren’t real … to me that doesn’t seem like a decent process.”

But for Schneider, the vetoed earmark is simply a hiccup in her quest.

“We still haven’t given up,” she said of buying the home. “It’s just a little detour.”