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Their pay is $16,000/year. Anybody that thinks legislators should be paid $16,000/yr or anywhere near it is an idiot.

No wonder there's been so much corruption in Louisiana,....the only way for a legislator to feed his family is to dive into graft.

"No wonder there's been so much corruption in Louisiana,....the only way for a legislator to feed his family is to dive into graft."

Fair enough. But these folks work for the citizens of the state. Jindal should say: "I promised to veto this, you voted for me because of my promise, and so I have vetoed it. But there is this root-cause problem: graft in this state is as bad as it is in part because our legislators are paid very little. Granted, their duties are part-time, but sessions can be a quarter of a year, and their salary is inadequate for that length of time unless the legislator is wealthy or on the take. Therefore I'm putting before the electorate a proposal which simultaneously establishes a market salary for our part-time legislators while stiffening rules and hiking penalties for impropriety. My ultimate goal is to bring fresh blood into our legislature, and that won't happen with today's pay scale."

Would that be so hard? It's called leadership mixed with honoring your word.

Some of us don't want them making a living off the tax payers. It's supposed to be a part time prn job, requiring them to keep their day job. Unfortunately most of them consider it a full time with benefits position.

Count me as an idiot then. 16k for 60-90 days worth of work is more then I have even earned That works out to 8k a month (or 5k during a long session). I suspect 5k a month is pretty easy to feed a family on in LA.

No wonder there's been so much corruption in Louisiana,....the only way for a legislator to feed his family is to dive into graft.

Or have a real job like legislators in other states. Arkansas legislators get paid a bit over $14K per year, even though they only actually meet in session every-other year (unless a special session is called). Of course, this doesn't count their expenses and such that also get paid. Some AR legislators are quite well off, while other are semi-average "Joes" who actually work for a living.