Three people, including a married couple, who previous worked for Gov. Bobby Jindal have been implicated in purported campaign irregularities and demands that state police provide transportation for campaign workers in Florida in last year’s gubernatorial campaign that resulted in Florida Gov. Rick Scott’s firing the state’s top law enforcement officer following his re-election.
The two, Melissa Sellers and Frank Collins, worked for a time in Jindal’s office and Sellers worked briefly for both Jindal and in his 2011 re-election campaign.
Sellers was Scott’s campaign manager and since the election has been serving as his chief of staff.
The Florida incidents appear to have been the result of a clash between a feeling of entitlement carried over from their stints working for Jindal and Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE) Commissioner Gerald Bailey who refused to allow his department, which is supposed to be independent, from becoming involved in partisan politics.
Bailey’s office denied requests by Scott’s campaign that it transport Meghan Collins, a campaign staffer who was assigned to first lady Ann Scott. FDLE said while it was responsible for providing transportation for the governor and the first lady, campaign workers were not allowed to avail themselves of state transportation vehicles.
Since Scott’s re-election, Collins was moved onto the state payroll as chief spokesperson for the Department of Education.
Her husband, Frank Collins, worked for Jindal from Jan. 14, 2008, immediately after Jindal first took office, until his resignation Oct. 6, 2012. He was first employed as assistant press secretary at a salary of $35,000 but was promoted to press secretary and received a salary increase to $65,000 on Dec. 2, 2011. He was named a policy assistant on April 17, 2012 at the same salary and remained at this post until he resigned to join the Scott campaign with his wife.
Sellers began in Jindal’s office one day later than Collins, on Jan. 15, 2008, as press secretary at a salary of $85,000 (no complaints of lower pay for the same job there) and on Oct. 2 that same year, she was promoted to Director of Communication and raised in pay to $90,000.
Inexplicably, she resigned on Oct. 24, 2011, only to return the next day at the same position and same salary, civil service records show, until she resigned again on Dec. 2, 2011, to join the Scott campaign in Florida.
Meghan and Frank Collins and Sellers quickly became known in Florida as the “Louisiana Mafia” as tensions mounted over demands made on Bailey, whose office was in charge of investigating wrongdoing by Florida public officials. http://www.tampabay.com/news/politics/legislature/gov-rick-scotts-ouster-of-fdle-commissioner-followed-months-of-tension/2213534
Bailey was asked Scott or his staff to take part in a June 2014 conference to discuss “the governor’s platform for the next four years. Bailey refused, saying he felt it inappropriate for him, as a law enforcement officer, to participate in partisan politics.
Bailey also complained to Scott’s chief legal counsel Pete Antonacci that he had received solicitations to contribute to Scott’s re-election on his state computer. Antonacci, he said, simply told Bailey to “just delete it.” In Florida, like Louisiana, it is illegal to destroy public records.
Scott said no state employees received email solicitations unless they gave an email address to the campaign but Bailey said he never provided his email address to the campaign.
Perhaps the incident that might cause some in Louisiana, particularly in Shreveport, to recall the George D’Artois-Jim Leslie saga of 1976 occurred in March of 2014.
The Florida Republic Party, acting on Scott’s behalf, sent a $90,000 check to FDLE to cover the costs of transporting Scott campaign workers (supposedly that included members of the “Louisiana Mafia”) in state vehicles to ensure that no state cars were used for campaign purposes.
D’Artois, Shreveport’s Public Safety Commissioner at the time, had, on the other hand, attempted to pay Shreveport advertising executive Jim Leslie for his work on D’Artois’ re-election campaign with a city check, which Leslie refused. D’Artois re-sent the check, telling Leslie to take it and keep quiet but Leslie threatened to go public if the commissioner persisted. In July of 1976, Leslie, who had worked on behalf of proponents of Louisiana’s Right to Work bill, was gunned down in a Baton Rouge motel parking lot after attending a party to celebrate passage of the bill. D’Artois was later implicated in the murder but died before he could be tried.
Like Leslie, Bailey refused the money from the Florida GOP, saying it had no legal authority to accept it and that moreover, it was inappropriate to accept money from a political party. A second check was written to the state general revenue fund in April of 2014. “We properly reimbursed the state,” said Scott spokesperson Jackie Schultz. “Everything was paid for properly,” she said.
But the damage was done and Scott, like Jindal, apparently is not the forgiving sort.
Bailey, 67, a veteran of more than 35 years in law enforcement, 30 of those with FDLE and the last eight as the state’s top cop, said Antonacci arrived at his office on the morning of Dec. 16 with a three-word ultimatum: “Retire or resign.”
He said he was told by Antonacci to write a brief letter of resignation, pack his things and leave his office by 5 p.m. His two-paragraph made no mention of the word “resignation,” even though Scott continues to insist Bailey resigned. “He resigned. I’ll say it again, Commissioner Bailey did a great job.”
But Bailey said Scott is lying. “I did not voluntarily do anything,” he said. “If he said I resigned voluntarily, that is a lie.”
Sellers, 32, who has been Scott’s chief of staff for five weeks now and who is considered his most influential adviser, has declined to comment. “I have nothing further to say on the record,” she said.
FDLE, which has about 1,700 full-time employees and a $300 million budget, has been investigating a series of suspicious inmate deaths in state prisons and also has been assisting in the search for human remains at the former Dozier School for Boys in Marianna.
The agency also has investigated the destruction of emails during Scott’s transition to the governor’s office in 2010.
Public records obtained by LouisianaVoice have revealed that Sellers and others who worked in Jindal’s 2011 re-election campaign, took numerous trips on state police helicopters. We will examine those flights in subsequent posts.
I am absolutely convinced that the modern-day Rebublican Party is comprised of egomaniacs concerned with nothing but being all powerful, worshipped, adored, pampered, and revered. There was an blog in the Wall Street Journal that said Hillary Clinton’s senior campaign advisor will begin work on 3/1 and that she will likely announce her candidacy in April. At the rate they’re going, Republicans may have already imploded by then in going after each other such that she becomes the pre-ordained winner by default nearly 18 months before the election even transpires.
Maybe we should have asked Florida a long time ago how much they would charge us to take the rest of Jindal’s Louisiana Mafia off our hands.
As usual, great work,Tom,
Ah yes, Melissa Sellers. Aged 25, she loved to scream at senior staff and give outrageous orders when working for Jindal. She left to attend divinity school in 2012 to become a women’s minister. Guess those lessons didn’t take.
http://www.tampabay.com/news/politics/legislature/gov-rick-scotts-ouster-of-fdle-commissioner-followed-months-of-tension/2213534
Here’s an article with further details on the Bailey “resignation” and making the “Louisiana Mafia” reference. It is very revealing. It also includes a video of the press interviewing the governor.
Three things:
– Rick Scott comes across like Nosferatu in this video in more ways than one.
– What must people in Florida think of Louisiana and its governor, given the mafia reference made in the same paragraph stating the 3 worked for Governor Jindal before coming to Florida?
– The FDLE is similar to the entity headed by Mike Edmonson, but with a broader scope and legal authority. It is supposed to be independent with the commissioner accountable to the governor and 3 elected cabinet members – so he will not be under the control of any one person – yet the governor acted alone in firing him, apparently.
Question: Do the citizens of Florida expect things like this from their state government as Louisiana citizens do? In other words, is this a new way of governing to them or are they inured to it, like us.
*
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florida_Department_of_Law_Enforcement
Stephen, as a fraud investigator with the Federal government for six years in the early to mid 90s, I can tell you that I was in no way prepared for the political animal that is the present-day Louisiana Inspector General’s Office. They called me around 12/28/12 and asked if I’d come into their office to provide information for a payroll fraud investigation. I did so and provided, over the next 8 months, an avalanche of documentation and evidence (including ALTERED payroll records four years after-the-fact to “manufacture” comp time so that vacations taken during that period for which no leave was claimed could retroactively be changed to reflect comp time). That totaled 72 hours sprinkled in over 9 pay periods. While she was smart to go back 4 years to make the alterations (figuring nobody would catch it), it was DUMB to leave ANY paper trail of a blatant injuring of public records.
Now, the lead investigator,Rob Chadwick, I think genuinely sought criminal prosecution and poured his heart and mind into efforts for a thorough report and likely bill of information. The initial report (which nobody is allowed to see until God himself, i.e. Jindal, signs off) was ready for Jindal’s review late October of 2013, Chadwick said to expect its release the next week. Then he told me he was going to essentially rewrite the whole report and relayed (and I’m quoting), “I’ll just be glad when this whole investigation is over.” That told me right there he was under intense pressure from Jindal to water the report down, and when I saw the final report, I said, “Well, hell, why don’t you guys throw a Mardi Gras Parade in her honor?” The report was mainly “suggestions” of how much better it would be if the employee would actually establish office hours and work. Not one word about the altered payroll records. NOTHING!! I’m sure the final report Chadwick had to issue was both an embarrassment to him personally and that it was demoralizing to him to do all that work, know what all was involved, and be forced to issue an almost-trivial report.
So, my advice to anyone considering assisting the IG’s Office is to not waste your time if the subject of the investigation entails a board or commission for which the governor makes the appointments.
Finally, the next governor needs to do one of two things. Either take the IG’s Office and separate it from directly reporting to the governor or abolish it. Right now, it’s nothing more than a political animal to carry out the governor’s directives, and that was proven beyond any shadow of a doubt with the Murphy Painter “investigation.”
So, Stephen, I’ve experienced a very rough transition going from submitting FBI criminal referrals 20 years ago for banker misdeeds (and could I provide readers with some doozies in that regard) to the three-ring-circus I encountered with Jindal and his IG Office. So, not all Louisiana folk were inured to this atmosphere of corruption. I have to raise my hand as being the one fool who thought he could work with the alleged prosecutors for outcomes like when I worked with the FBI investigators 20 years ago. I won’t ever make that mistake again unless the next governor separates out the IG Office and makes it a truly independent entity.
Great stuff guys. I once asked the La. IG, Stephen Street, Jr (Nov 22, 2011) to investigate using state equipment, state players, and state taxpayer dollars on the Governors’ Honor Medal political ad. Street replies “I encourage you to contact the the Office of the Governor directly with your concerns” and wished me the best of luck! Teepell/Jindal were using the State office to run his reelection campaign. Tom pointed it all out. I wrote the Governor, nada, I filed a complaint and requested an investigation. nada. see docket No. 2012-147,and received a stupid note that I could be charged with a criminal misdeamor., I pursed, still no response. I will not give up. they are corrupt. ron thompson
Thank you SO MUCH for posting this, TSC!!!!! When the IG’s Office was looking into travel voucher fraud at the LALB, the complaint was filed by the outgoing executive director. Well, the IG’s Office inadvertently left a copy of a workpaper with notes which made it CRYSTAL CLEAR who the complainant was (because the LALB has only one employee!!). It was inadvertently left on the table by an inspector at the IG’s Office when he or she went to lunch. The new incoming executive director (who had stabbed the outgoing executive director in the back to get the job, but that’s a whole other sidebar) noticed it and made a copy!!! Then she read it to me over the phone because the then-LALB-Chairman was openly accusing me in meetings of being the one who filed the complaint with the IG’s Office (at the time I was a board member). She also said she’d read it to him (the then-Chairman) and that he was FURIOUS and just about “exploded over the phone,” but that I could “rest easy” that he now KNEW who had filed the complaint.
Well, I drafted an email to Sarah Olcott-Allen (then heads of boards and commissions) relaying that the IG’s Office had compromised the identity of a complainant by inadvertently leaving a workpaper behind. Next thing I know, Inspector Street HIMSELF wants to speak with me. I figured it was about my knowledge of the travel voucher fraud, but when I showed up to see him, he had 3-4 of his staff and Robert Collins (the IG’s then-legal counsel and who used to be a top-notch investigative journalist with WBRZ in the late 70s), Street said: “Look there’s no question that we screwed up here, but you can’t go around referencing a workpaper of an ongoing investigation to an administration official of the level of Ms. Olcott-Allen. I could have you charged with a misdemeanor for even referencing it. The other problem with you doing something like that is that, if a perception gets out there that this office can’t be relied upon to keep a complainant’s identify confidential, we’re out of business the next day!”
Obviously, he was furious with me, and he was even more so furious with the new executive director for copying the workpaper. They had it laminated and asked me to identify it. Collins held it up from across the table, and I said, “That sure looks like it.” One of the attorneys in the room said the workpaper didn’t clearly identify who the complainant was since it referenced only a “former employee.” I said, “Well, anyone who knows anything about the LALB knows there’s only one employee.” She countered, “Well, some people would define board members as employees.” I responded, “I darn sure don’t consider myself an ’employee’ merely by virtue of my board membership.”
Anyway, Street said there was plenty of blame to go around in the whole incident and that he relayed to ALL of his investigators not to let something like this happen again. He then asked if I would be willing to draft a follow-up email to Ms. Olcott-Allen just relaying that the workpaper didn’t definitively identify the complainant, and I reluctantly agreed to do so (I should still have it on my hard drive, and I’ll search for it and post a subsequent post with the link for it). To be honest, once he threatened me with the misdemeanor charge as he obviously did with you, I just wanted out of the place because the core issue was travel voucher fraud, then followed up by a covert copying of a workpaper, and yet I am the ONLY one that I’m hearing them reference who may endure criminal prosecution!!!!!
I am fairly close friends with Sen. Dan Claitor, whom most know was a former prosecutor with the DA’s Office in New Orleans. He was in disbelief that Street had threatened me with criminal charge of ANY type. He said, “Good luck getting a conviction on that.”
Needless to say, I think all of us as citizens have DARN good reason to be leery of the Inspector General’s Office.
Thanks again, TSC!!!!! I’m sorry for the way you were treated, but at least I now know the IG’s Office did this with someone else and is apparently just part of their SOP to protect both their own funding and to serve as the Governor’s henchmen!!!! You’ve made my weekend!!! Tom, by way of this past, has created a story within a story!!
Thanks again so much, TSC!!!
Just to clarify how I could potentially recognize the IG workpaper referenced above, the new executive director, during an office visit entailing her, myself, and Rev. Freddie Phillips (then an LALB member as well) wherein we were revamping the examination for licensure, she briefly pulled out a drawer of her desk and handed me a paper. She said, “That’s the paper I read to you over the phone.” I thought it was my copy, but she quickly said, “I need that back!” Her utterance caused Freddie to be curious what it was, but I was going on the assumption that he knew about the travel voucher fraud (in fact, I thought EVERY board member knew). What I learned later is that the outgoing executive director had confided only in me in relaying the fraud she’d detected. It entailed the then-chairman (whom Gov. Jindal’s Office “demoted” to a mere board member as a consequence of his alleged fraud pointed out by the executive director). Anyway, I’d only been able to see if for maybe 20 seconds or so, but I could tell, even with Collins holding it up from a distance, that it sure looked to resemble the paper she briefly handed me to observe.
Good posts. They shed light on the corruption we all strongly suspect but have no way of proving. I wish your experiences could be on the front pages of the Louisiana MSM.
Here’s hoping that the feds get something on them and they sing until they can’t about jindal. I know it’s fantasy tho.
O. K. I found the email referenced above. As anyone who wishes to read it can tell, Ms. Olcott-Allen was merely copied on the original email to Greg Lindsey at the IG’s Office. Furthermore, out of everything in the email, I just casually referenced the compromising of the identity in a single sentence. It certainly wasn’t my intent to point fingers at the IG’s Office, yet that is ALL they were concerned with. I want to relay one other thing. When Jonathan Ringo, Special Assistant to Gov. Jindal, called me on September 10, 2010 to inform me that it “would be appropriate for you to submit your resignation at this time,” he relayed that they’d “conferred with the Inspector General’s Office, and they concur with seeking your resignation.” When I documented that fact to Ringo in a subsequent email, he said I was misquoting him. Now, I don’t know if the Inspector General’s Office was consulted on seeking my resignation or not, but WHAT I DO KNOW BEYOND ANY SHADOW OF A DOUBT is that Jonathan Ringo SAID that they “concurred in seeking my resignation.” I’ll hook my arm up to a polygraph any day of the week and I PROMISE you I will pass with flying colors because that is EXACTLY what he said.
Anyway, here’s the email wherein I sent Olcott an apology for an “overly aggressive” assessment of blaming the IG’s Office for compromising the identity of a complainant. I’m not removing any names because all of the material in the email has been entered into the public record via sworn affidavit in 19th JDC as part of lawsuits later. Here’s the link for the email: http://www.auctioneer-la.org/Street_Seeks_Retraction_to_Olcott.pdf.
The bottom line is that this administration (and that’s being kind to say there is a formal “administration”) has been about nothing but cover-ups and hiding corrupt activities so as not to shed an unfavorable light upon the aspiring presidential candidate. Too bad the sheer number of those cover-ups now has expanded even beyond the biggest rug they could purchase to try and hide it all. Consequently, Jindal is correctly viewed as a laughing-stock-joke!!
Ok guys… since many of these posts directly relate to me, because I was the former LALB employee who reported the travel voucher fraud which led to the IG investigation and ultimately both my resignation and Robert Burns being threatened with prosecution by the IG… I’m going to weigh in for a bit. Here is what happened. I saw the board members traveling together and both claiming separate mileage. I reported it first to the board attorney who told me she would handle it… but later called to tell me they were going to repay that days mileage and I was to drop it. The then chairman (one of two who rode together and who claimed mileage) began calling me repeatedly about “getting past this episode” and when I would not “play nice”(ie we would only talk when there was office business to discuss and I would not “forgive him” for what he did or for putting me in a position of having to report my own boss) he began to make veiled threats, saying things like…” you wouldn’t want any of this to jeopardize your retirement”. This made me very uncomfortable and as an unclassified employee, who served at the pleasure of this man, I began to fear for my job. Not to mention it was impossible to work with his constant calls. So I reported his calls to the board attorney making sure she understood he was creating a “hostile work environment”. She said she would “handle it” and actually was upset with me for getting her in the middle of all this, but his calls did stop.
I also called Jindal’s office and reported my boss. They stripped him of his chairmanship but left him on the board. I questioned this and was told “maybe it won’t be too bad”. It WAS! Having been stripped of his chairmanship, he then went on a vendetta to discredit me to other board members. He had been my boss for 9 years so of course they believed him… and stupidly I had not told any other board members but Robert. I did tell the new chairman when he took over… but he said little to nothing about it. It took me a while to get up the nerve because I was so afraid of being fired… but I did file a complaint with the IG’s office, and I did call the Board of Ethics to see about getting “whistle blower” protection. Ethics told me I would have to wait until they fired me or took definitive punitive action before I could be protected. How the hell does that make any sense? The IG’s office ultimately decided that because I could only prove the one time (even though I was pretty sure they must have been doing it for years without my catching them) and because they paid back the $, and because the perpetrators had become aware of being caught by me before I filed a complaint there was nothing they (the IG) could do. I was told I should have called them first and not said anything to my boss and his buddy which would have allowed the IG to investigate them while they were doing it and catch them “in the act” with GPS data and pictures.
I ultimately resigned because the former chair managed to convince the board members I was “power hungry” (because I dared to fine a board member for a violation), and “rude” (because I gave someone an answer that was correct… but not what they “wanted” to hear, and that I was “overstepping my bounds” because I dared to do my job, reporting violations and fining violators. The former chair, and members from days past had grown tired of me bringing every single minor ad violation to their attention and had long ago decided that first and second offenses would be a routine set fine and did not have to be brought before them. I was just to send out the fine letter, with a copy of the ad and collect and deposit the fine. They only wanted to deal with 3rd offenses or verifiable written complaints. But suddenly I was a power hungry, rude, B*%#@ who was overstepping her bounds. Never mind that this very same man had given me very good (superior) ratings each year on my written reviews. Because the board members had changed over the years… the former chair being one of the longest seated members was able to convince the current board I was a lousy employee he had been wanting to fire but didn’t know how.
I did call Jindal’s office several more times during all of this, which transpired over a year, but between the changes in his administrative staff, and phone calls not being returned I finally realized that Jindal’s office simply didn’t want to be bothered with something as small as travel fraud, and harassment.
I also did speak to a well known attorney who handles a lot of cases regarding civil servants. But he told me It would be a very long, very expensive, very uncomfortable ordeal for me to sue for harassment, and no guarantee that I would prevail. I simply didn’t have the money… or the stamina to go through it.
I caved and I resigned. I loved my job, but could no longer do it without fear. I loved most of the people I dealt with on a daily basis. (except my board which I grew to hate). I wanted to be able to sleep at night and not worry what my former chair was saying about me or planning to do to discredit me next.
I can say without hesitation that Jindal and his office only care about themselves. And I feel corruption in state government is such a cancer it cannot be “cut out” It’s gone to deep. Nothing surprises me anymore. My rose colored glasses were removed several years ago.
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