Senate Votes To Curtail State Police Presence On Jindal Campaign Trail

Whether or not Bobby Jindal decides to run for President of the United States or not, his political activities have already cost the citizens of Louisiana a fair amount of money. Speaking in governmental terms a fair amount of money is about two million dollars. That's the figure that is being bounced around by supporters of a Senate measure that would prohibit Louisiana State Police from funding security details to accompany the Governor during campaign travels.

New Orleans Senator Karen Peterson suggests that in a state strapped with a budget deficit this is really not where we need to be spending out money.

Between now and January of 2016, there will be some costs that the state taxpayers will have to incur, we don't have that money.

Peterson head of the state Democratic party made those comments in a story reported by the Louisiana Radio Network.

There is a great big but that goes along with this legislation. That great big but is this. The Governor can always claim the travels are state business. We all know that is a very gray area. If he conducts even a small bit of business on behalf of the state on these trips he will have satisfied the letter of the law and that will make enforcing this particular legislation very difficult.

Governor Jindal's office responded to the legislation with this statement.

Even in this age of highly partisan politics, it's shocking that the chair of the Democratic Party wants to leave a Republican governor unprotected.

Clearly the Governor's office disagrees with this attempt to curtail his use of state resources for his personal political gain.