“Today, we take the first step towards building a better Louisiana where our ethics laws are the gold standard.”
With those 19 words, Gov. Bobby Jindal on Feb. 10, 2008, signed into law SB-1 of the 2008 special legislative session which, among other things, banned legislators and other state officials from contracting with the state.
SB-1, which became Act 2 with Jindal’s signature, was the centerpiece of the new governor’s agenda (he had been in office little over a month at the time). It also prohibited businesses owned by state and local public officials from receiving recovery-related contracts whether competitively bid or not.
So where does that leave Jay Guillot, a principal of Hunt Guillot & Associates (HGA) of Ruston? The Louisiana Board of Ethics will take up that question this week, thanks to an inquiry submitted by LouisianaVoice after Guillot appeared to be dragging his heels in seeking a clarification.
At the same time, LouisianaVoice inquired as to the legality of Baton Rouge BESE member Chas Roemer’s voting on matters involving charter schools that come before the board. Roemer’s sister, Caroline Roemer Shirley, is executive director of the Louisiana Association of Public Charter Schools and has already been directed by the Ethics Board not to speak at BESE meetings on behalf of matters concerning charter schools or to talk to BESE members about charter school matters because of her brother’s membership on the board.
Chas Roemer, however, has consistently voted on matters concerning charter schools and in some cases, even made motions to approve or not approve certain agenda items concerning charter schools.
It would seem that Guillot would have sought a ruling from the Ethics Board prior to qualifying to run for the District 5 seat on the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education (BESE). Instead, after winning the election, he retained Tech graduate attorney Jimmy Faircloth, who once worked as executive counsel for Jindal, to submit the matter to the board. But Faircloth not only did not get the request to the board in time for its December meeting but has now missed the deadline for January as well.
At issue is Guillot’s qualification to serve on BESE in light of nearly $17 million in state contracts held by his company. One of those contracts is for $16 million and involves HGA’s monitoring of the administration of grants to parishes and municipalities as part of the recovery process from Hurricanes Katrina, Rita, Ike and Gustav.
Act 2 would appear to give Guillot a technical out when it said that no officer holder (including BESE members), spouse or “legal entity” (including any corporation or partnership) may enter into a contract with the state unless competitively bid or competitively negotiated through a request for proposals (RFP) (emphasis ours).
The $16 million contract for HGA was negotiated through an RFP.
But the law then goes on to disqualify office holders, including BESE members, from participating in a contract or subcontract that is funded or reimbursed in whole or in part with federal funds or for any disaster recovery contract (emphasis ours). HGA’s own model file system submitted to the Division of Administration (DOA) defines its contract as a “Disaster Recovery Program.”
Moreover, the state’s contract data page, which lists all state contracts, the amount and the purpose, describes that $16 million contract as “Awarded by RFP, ….100 percent federal CDBG (Community Development Block Grant), HUD funds (emphasis ours)….grant management activities for infrastructure and other projects undertaken as a result of damages incurred as a result of hurricanes Katrina/Rita and to a lesser extent as a result of hurricanes Gustav/Ike.”
The passage and subsequent signing of SB-1 into law by Jindal prompted the Lafayette Advertiser to gush, “Louisiana has adopted a comprehensive plan for ethics reform, something many of us didn’t expect to see in our lifetimes.”
Even the New Orleans Times-Picayune said the new law would increase “government transparency and accountability.”
It’s just that kind of non-reporting, the reluctance to peel back the layers to find the real story that allows Jindal to continue to attend fundraisers all over the U.S. while touting the new era of “accountability and transparency,” thanks to his “gold standard” of ethics reform.
Even that beacon of ethical behavior, New Gingrich, got in on the act, saying that Jindal all but single-handedly fixed “the culture of corruption and cronyism that has long dominated Louisiana politics…” We’ll give Gingrich this much: he should know corruption and cronyism when he sees it.
That all sounds well and good, but what exactly does it all mean? Is it really the “gold standard” of transparency and accountability?
To learn the answer to that, one need look no further than the Supriya Jindal Foundation for Louisiana’s Children. The foundation, which installs high-tech multimedia whiteboards in Louisiana schools, provides a convenient conduit into which corporations have poured upwards of a million dollars as a means of circumventing campaign contribution limitations. It is also a handy way for the corporations to either avoid fines and penalties from state regulators or, better yet, to land lucrative state contracts.
So again, what does all this mean for the inquiry about Guillot’s conflict of interest now pending before the State Ethics Board? For that matter, what about Roemer?
Well, first of all, the Thursday hearing on the matter will be held in executive session, so who knows what goes on behind closed doors? Ethics Board attorney Tracy Barker, who is handling the inquiry, said the complaint would be received and reviewed in executive session. “The board will make a decision to either order an investigation to consider the matter further, or it will decide no investigation is merited and the matter will be closed,” she said.
Secondly, if scores of previous rulings are an indication, historically there has been a lot of latitude given public officials in their dealings with the state and its boards and agencies.
For whatever reason, Jindal holds undue sway over many legislators and over a lot of agencies that should be autonomous, the Ethics Board among them. Guillot and Roemer are his hand-picked candidates (the governor contributed thousands of dollars to the recent campaigns of both men) and it would be no surprise if the word had already come down from the fourth floor of the State Capitol earlier in the week.
It remains to be seen if the Ethics Board has the backbone to enforce the spirit of the law or if it will instead crater and look for sufficient wiggle room to appease Jindal.
Vegas oddsmakers would likely put little stock in any “gold standard.”
Jindal is simply too transparent.
[…] is vocal about his support of charter schools, and despite an astounding and glaring conflict of interest because of his sister, Caroline Roemer […]