Once upon a time, there was the deduct box.
Richard White, LSU Professor and author of the Huey P. Long biography 'Kingfish', explained in an interview on C-SPAN that "each government worker had to submit about ten percent of their salary" to Governor Long's campaign fund in return for job security.
Louisiana Civil Service was established following the death of Long. Adopted by constitutional amendment in 1952, state civil service employees were, and continue to be, banned from participating in political activities. Under this system, employment was to be based on merit, not political patronage.
But, says Bossier City Senator Ryan Gatti, "social media wasn’t a component of what we were thinking about when we were writing these laws decades ago."
Gatti, speaking to the Senate and Governmental Affairs Committee, introduced a constitutional amendment to lift the prohibition on political activities by all civil service workers. On Tuesday, he amended it.
"If you’re a state worker, not fire or police, there’s a due process situation that you go through. If you happen to accidentally give a campaign contribution, you’re not automatically fired. We’d like that same consideration to be given to firemen and policemen," he explained.
Gatti calls the current consequences police and firefighters face draconian, in that "if a fireman or policeman accidentally posts something on Facebook about anything that is political speech, the only punishment that can be doled out is termination."
He voluntarily deferred the measure to re-work it. So rather than lifting the ban against political activity for all civil service workers, it establishes due process for police and firefighters.
"This has evolved into an agreement that when a fireman or policeman happens, for their first offense, act on any political speech, whether it’s Facebook or Instagram, they won’t be terminated, but," says Gatti, a Republican, "they will suffer some consequence."
Even when the bill comes back, there’s no guarantee it will live happily ever after, since it requires approval by two thirds vote of each chamber of the Legislature, and ultimately, majority approval by voters.