Maggie's Farm

Yesterday, a friend who follows Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal's career closely mentioned the fallout in LA government from his dramatic and rigorous financial disclosure reforms.

LA, famous for its long history of corruption and ineffectiveness as exemplified by the Katrina fiasco, has elected Mr. Clean and people are fleeing government service - and coming up with any excuses they can for doing so. He is applying a heavy-duty disinfectant.

I Googled jindal financial disclosure and found page after page after page of stories about commission members' resignations. How many of these resignations are for simple privacy reasons and how many are to avoid revealing compromising information is anybody's guess, but my friend suspected mostly the latter.

Forbes noted, however,

Those standards require disclosure of details about virtually all sources of income, including amounts earned, and details about property ownership. That led to complaints that some people were turning down invitations to serve on public boards, and some were planning to resign, rather than disclose the information.

The law approved will still require board members and their spouses to disclose information about income, including their employers and businesses in which they own an interest.

and in the same article notes that the LA legislature decided to ease up on some of the disclosure requirements.

Still, I think this marks the end of business as usual in LA.