......Congressman Bobby Jindal Says 1st Special Session Will Be On "Ethics"...Frontrunning candidate for Governor reacts to legislative session......

By Miki Teer, 995 FM.COM (THE NEW VOICE OF NEW ORLEANS), June 29, 2007

If Bobby Jindal is elected Governor of Louisiana this fall, he says the first special session he will call will focus on ethics.

In an interview with 99.5FM, Jindal says he would ask lawmakers to enact legislation forcing them to publicly disclose how they make their money. He also says the state needs to put some "real teeth" into the ethics board. Jindal called the legislature's failure to enact an income disclosure law, "very frustrating."

As for his overall impression of the just concluded session, Jindal called it "an incredible missed opportunity."

Jindal said "we had a chance, perhaps a once-in-a-lifetime chance to make some fundamental changes but instead we saw political spending at its worst.".... "We had a $3 billion surplus, a chance to really revamp healthcare and educational systems, a real chance to address ethics and instead we saw the same old government spending," Jindal said.

"The legislators couldn't find room to cut taxes on businesses, they couldn't find more money to put into roads, but they did find more to add over a thousand new employees."

Jindal says the expenditure of surplus dollars on recurring expenses will "put the state in a very tough position." "It will create huge challenges," the Congressman says.

Jindal says it was "a very disappointing session" but he says he believes there is still time for the state to seize opportunities that were missed. The Congressman says that starts this fall with what he termed "one of the most important elections in our lifetime."