Louisiana Voice

A series of dust-ups between three appointees of Gov. Bobby Jindal and legislators may have left the permanent status of those appointees up in the air.

First, there was the standoff between Commissioner of Administration Paul Rainwater and Sen. D.A. “Butch” Gautreaux (D-Morgan City), chairman of the Senate Retirement Committee over the proposed privatization of the Office of Group Benefits. Besides chairing the retirement committee, Gautreaux also is a member of the OGB board of directors.

In fact, Rainwater attended only one of those Retirement Committee meetings, choosing to send Division of Administration underlings in his stead to subsequent meetings. That did not go unnoticed by committee members, particularly by Gautreaux.

Then there were the confrontational confirmation hearings by the Senate and Governmental Affairs (S&GA) Committee, chaired by Sen. Bob Kostelka (R-Monroe) but starring Sens. Ed Murray and Karen Peterson, both New Orleans Democrats.

Peterson and Murray are each members of the S&GA Committee that has been holding hearings on the confirmation of Rainwater, his top assistant, Deputy Commissioner of Administration Mark Brady, and Bruce Greenstein, secretary of the Department of Health and Hospitals (DHH).

Confirmation hearings have turned into successive turns by senators at dressing down the three men—Rainwater and Brady for their refusal to turn over the Chaffe report on the financial status of the Office of Group Benefits and Greenstein for refusing to divulge the name of the winner of a 10-year, $34 million per year contract with DHH. When Greenstein finally relented and named the contractor, it turned out to be CNSI of Gaithersburg, Maryland, a company for whom Greenstein once worked.

The S&GA is scheduled to resume hearings Wednesday (June 15) at 9 a.m. but posted on the state’s legislative web page is a notice in red italic letters: “REMOVED—Division of Administration from Confirmation Hearings.”

The significance of the removal of confirmation hearings on DOA personnel is not immediately clear but the action could conceivably place the jobs of all three men in jeopardy.

One school of thought was that the release of the Chaffe report prompted the decision to cancel further confirmation hearings. That report indicates that senators were misled by Rainwater’s insistence that the privatization of OGB would have “no negative effect” on premiums paid by the state and by state employees. The report said any privatization would force an increase in premiums.

The state presently pays 75 percent of the premiums for active employees and 50 percent for eligible dependents. The state pays 75 percent of premiums for retirees and all eligible dependents. Any premium increase would have a significant impact on premiums paid by the state and, to a lesser extent, employees and retirees.

Another theory, however, is considerably more serious: members of the committee may be planning to recommend to the full Senate that neither of the three men be confirmed.

Under the State Constitution, appointees by the governor must be confirmed by the end of the next legislative session or they are out. Each of the three was appointed by Jindal after the close of last year’s regular session.

Final adjournment for the current legislative session must be no later than 6 p.m. on Thursday, June 23.

That gives the committee scant time to make recommendations to the full Senate and even less time for the Senate to vote up or down on confirmation.

One senator hinted that the latter theory may be the correct one.

“We’re pissed off,” he said. “We’re tired of all the lying and the arrogance.”

Failure of either one of the three men to be confirmed would be considered an embarrassing defeat for Jindal.

Rejection of all three would be devastating.