Perhaps more than illuminating his mean-spiritedness, Democrat Gov. John Bel Edwards’ swipe at the Bossier Four demonstrates again the sanctimony that has undergirded his time in elective office — although they yet may prevail.

The Bossier Four — Republican state Reps. Raymond Crews, Dodie Horton, Danny McCormick, and Alan Seabaugh — along with 15 others in the Louisiana Legislature’s lower chamber voted against busting the state’s spending cap. They reasoned that excess dollars should go towards unfunded accrued liabilities and topping off state savings accounts, which not only would free up state and local dollars towards education that could be used for pay raises but also would trigger individual income tax reductions, all the while avoiding new commitments that would threaten fiscal stability when the 2016/2018 sales tax increases expire at the end of fiscal year 2025 and the tapering of Washington Democrats’ debt-fueled spending binge that boosted state coffers, changes which are pegged to bring in $1.5 billion fewer annually after three years.

Instead, egged on by Edwards, legislators opted to blow a significant portion of the excess collected from the people on new ongoing commitments of questionable affordability and much of the rest on capital items. These four saw their districts hardly share in that, first because Edwards-backed GOP Speaker Clay Schexnayder and his leadership team headed by Republican state Rep. Tanner Magee made sure several items initially placed in the capital outlay bill concerning the Four’s districts were removed after they voted against the breach.

Then Edwards joined the gore fest by slicing out the surviving projects with his line item veto from the supplemental outlay bill HB 560. In all, no parish was hit harder than Bossier Parish, although the single most spiteful act was intended to count coup on Seabaugh, the only of the quartet not representing at least part of Bossier but who wants to with his bid for the Senate District 31 seat this year. Edwards struck $100,000 from the American Rose Center — actually in a Caddo Parish Democrat’s district, but so vindictive is Edwards that he crossed that off merely because at one time Seabaugh’s wife had been its executive director.

 All in all, Edwards attempted to erase just over a million bucks — four projects lost for McCormick (two in Caddo and two in Bossier) and three for Crews and Horton. These were much fewer dollars than Schexnayder excised, but it’s the venomous thought that counts.

 Edwards’ stated rationale was that if they didn’t want to bust the cap, they shouldn’t share in the booty. But, as has typified Edwards’ rhetoric and actions while in office, this disingenuously ignores that the Four (Horton and Seabaugh publicly) supported a plan that would have added $285 million extra in capital outlay on top of already-planned project funding. It just wasn’t the extra billion-plus that Edwards and Schexnayder wanted to spend that the state now won’t have to keep up with new commitments in a few years. And, of course, it’s not really the legislators who suffer from the mean-spiritedness, but the people in the affected districts.

 However, the Four might rebuff this rebuke. If Edwards dares veto popular bills such as those that protect children from permanent physiological damage, parents and teachers from political fashion, and families from unsupervised consumption by minors of sexualized adult topics in libraries — as he has hinted he will — with bipartisan supermajorities backing these and some others he threatens it’s a certainty that legislators will call themselves into a veto session to attempt overrides.

 Once there, legislators may not want to stray from their herd instinct, where they know if they hang out together they won’t get hung separately — meaning they’ll vote to override each other’s project vetoes. Even Democrats will want to join in with support because if they don’t once Republicans have control of all parts of majoritarian government — as seems very likely after this fall’s elections — it will be open season on their future line items.

This episode demonstrates again one of the most ugly aspects of Edwards’ terms: his hypocritical prattling about how Baton Rouge shouldn’t become another hyper-partisan Washington rent with ideology while he has governed in the most divisive and partisan way possible against the best interests of Louisianans as a whole. It will be so refreshing in a few months to be rid of this pest that spent eight years trying to promote an unpopular and harmful agenda to all but select special interests over the best interests of the people.