Louisiana Voice

A routine opinion of the Louisiana Ethics Board has raised red flags over the involvement of former Commissioner of Administration Angelé Davis and an international public relations firm with a checkered past that wants a lucrative contract with the Louisiana Seafood Promotion and Marketing Board.

Fleishman-Hillard, headquartered in St. Louis but which has more than 80 offices on six continents, apparently has partnered with Davis to take advantage of Davis’s state experience in efforts to secure a consulting contract with the board that could ultimately be worth millions of dollars.

Davis, who was appointed Commissioner of Administration by Gov. Bobby Jindal, resigned last August to accept a position with infrastructure and construction services company Arkel International of Baton Rouge. She served as deputy commissioner under former Gov. Mike Foster and headed up the Department of Culture, Recreation and Tourism under former Lt. Gov. Mitch Landrieu during the administration of former Gov. Kathleen Blanco.

She is still employed by Arkel, but attempts to contact her on Monday reached only her office voice mail.

Now, it seems, she has formed a company called the Davis Kelley Group to freelance efforts to negotiate with a consulting company seeking a government contract. Kelley is her husband, 19th District Judge Tim Kelley.

The Davis Kelley Group’s corporate papers were registered and filed on March 3, less than a month ago, according to the Louisiana Secretary of State’s Office.

The business address of The Davis Kelley Group is the same as her and Judge Kelley’s residence, records show.

In Baton Rouge, any business run from a residence requires an occupational license. A check with the City Revenue and Taxation Office revealed no such occupational license has ever been granted to that or any other business at that address.

Davis is barred by state law from entering into contracts with state agencies for herself for a period of two years but the Ethics Board said she is not prohibited from contracting with a consulting firm that in turn is seeking such a contract.

At stake is a share of up to $15 million of the BP Oil Spill Rebranding/Market and Perception Recovery Fund established to assist the state’s seafood market in its recovery from last year’s catastrophic oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Oil spewed freely from the BP Deepwater Horizon well from April 20 to Sept. 19 before the flow was finally shut off.

The Seafood Promotion and Marketing Board has issued a 95-page request for proposals (RFP) for a consulting contract to assist the board in promoting Louisiana seafood.

The submission deadline for proposals is April 3 and the deadline for reviewing the proposals is April 19.

The top three firms will make their presentations on April 25 with the final selection of a consulting firm to be made later that week, according to the RFP.

In a letter dated March 21, the Ethics Board responded to Davis’s inquiry as to the propriety of her firm providing consulting services pursuant to a proposal anticipated to be submitted by Fleishman-Hillard.

“As part of your agreement with Fleishman-Hillard, if the contract is awarded to the company, you will provide consulting services and assist the company in its contract with the….board,” the letter said.

“You also stated that you would not enter into a contract with the Louisiana Seafood Promotion and Marketing Board and would not assist Fleishman-Hillard in any transactions with the Division of Administration, an agency with whom you terminated your employment relationship as Commissioner in August 2010.”

The letter informed Davis that she was not prohibited from providing the consulting services “in the manner described” if the firm is awarded the contract.

“Since you will not be entering into a contract with a state agency or assisting Fleishman-Hillard in transactions involving the Division of Administration, the Ethics Code does not prohibit you from assisting the company if it is awarded the contract…”

Fleishman-Hillard, founded in St. Louis in 1946, has enjoyed many lucrative federal contracts, beginning with a minor $39,000 contract in 1998. From there, the firm’s federal contracts ballooned to $33.6 million the next year.

Among the federal agencies that have awarded Fleishman-Hillard contracts are the Social Security Administration, the Library of Congress, the EPA, and the Department of Defense.

But all has not been rosy with the firm’s history.

In 2005, the City of Los Angeles sued Fleishman-Hillard for flagrant overcharges to the city’s Department of Water and Power between 1998 and 2004. In 2005, the public relations firm paid the city $5.7 million to settle the litigation after one former employee testified that she routinely billed about 10 fraudulent hours per week at a rate of $180 per hour. “You had to fake your hours or you weren’t billing enough time to be profitable,” she said.

The publisher of one trade publication blamed the pressure to overbill on Omnicon, the advertising parent of Fleishman-Hillard. He described Omnicon as being “manic about max hours being billed out to clients.”

Before that, in 1990, G.P.U., the New Jersey utility that owns the Three Mile Island nuclear plant, paid Fleishman-Hillard, its only outside PR firm, about $600,000 to supplement the company’s lobbying efforts. Fleishman-Hillard was retained by Standley Hoch, who left General Dynamics Corp. to become the G.P.U. CEO. In 1991, Hoch hired Susan Schepman away from Fleishman-Hillard. Only later was it learned that the two had an intimate relationship and Schepman had influenced Hoch to hire Fleishman-Hillard while she was a Fleishman-Hillard executive responsible for the General Dynamics account during Hoch’s tenure there.

In 2008, the firm secured a contract with the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy to “debunk the misconception that marijuana was harmless.” That was a full one-eighty from its position seven years earlier, in 2001.

It was a 2001 promotion that led to the real damage to Fleishman-Hillard’s credibility last year when the State of Ohio awarded the PR firm a $400,000 contract to run its campaign to reduce fatal drug overdoses despite the firm’s having once been a paid consultant for Purdue Pharma, manufacturer of one of the highly addictive painkiller Oxycontin. It was in 2001 that Fleishman-Hillard spearheaded a PR campaign to convince the public and regulators of the benefits of the drug while downplaying its dangers.

In 2007, Purdue Pharma and its three CEOs, Michael Friedman, Howard Udell, and Paul Goldenheim, pleaded guilty in federal court to misleading physicians and patients about the addictive and abusive qualities of Oxycontin.

So now it all comes down to this:

A former high official in the Jindal administration and wife of a state district judge is moonlighting to take advantage of her knowledge of state government in an effort to help secure a potential multi-million-dollar contract for a firm with a past record of overbilling, conflicts of interest, back-door deals, and questionable PR campaigns to promote a dangerous drug.

But, hey! It’s just another day at the office in Louisiana state government.

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