It seems simple enough to me. The legislature is elected by the people. As much as it is possible, executives tend to let the legislature set their own rules for their own “governance”, meaning salaries, ethics, rules of voting, time and place of meeting, types of committees, and staff levels.
If the people don’t like that the legislature voted themselves a raise, the people can vote the legislature out in the next election. It’s simple enough to do.
That’s a good point and hopefully we will do that. I think one of the main things that have people upset is that the raise takes effect immediately for the current members. Most of the time when this is done it takes effect with the next elected legislature. I would have liked for Jindal to take a more active roll in trying to include that in the bill but he has been pretty hands off on this thing from the beginning.