Louisiana Voice

The Louisiana Board of Ethics gave the green light to Jay Guillot Friday to serve on the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education (BESE) from District Five while simultaneously holding nearly $17 million in state contracts.

But the route it took to arrive at its decision would lead just about any observer to conclude the fix was in well in advance of Friday’s decision.

That route also conveniently permitted the board to avoid addressing an even stickier situation—that of the practice by BESE member Chas Roemer of routinely voting on matters pertaining to charter schools even though his sister, Caroline Roemer Shirley, is executive director of the Louisiana Association of Louisiana Public Charter Schools.

Additionally, a closer examination of the state ethics laws may answer the question as to why Guillot waited until after the election to seek a ruling on his qualifications to serve on the board.

The ethics board underwent a general housecleaning in June of 2008 when nine members resigned six months after Gov. Bobby Jindal took office. That occurred after Jindal pushed through a law that stripped the board of its authority and gave it to administrative law judges, all while imposing a tougher burden of proof for board members to meet when making determinations of ethics violations.

The board is comprised of 11 members, seven of whom are appointed by the governor, giving him a solid majority. Two are elected by the State Senate and two by the House.

The original inquiry was initiated by LouisianaVoice in a letter to the board. That letter was received by the board on Nov. 2, one day before the Nov. 3 deadline for items to make it onto the December agenda. Deborah S. Grier, executive secretary to the board, in a letter dated Dec. 7, said, “This is to acknowledge receipt of your correspondence or complaint as referenced above. It will be placed on the board’s agenda for consideration at its December 15, 2011 meeting.”

The reference given the LouisianaVoice inquiry was Docket No. 2011-1688 and the two questions—Guillot’s eligibility to serve while holding multi-million contracts with the state and Roemer’s voting on matters that posed an economic benefit to his sister—were to have been considered in executive session last Thursday and a recommendation made to the full board on Friday.

That never happened.

Instead, the staff recommended, and the board chose to consider, a request received Nov. 28 by Jimmy Faircloth on behalf of Guillot—well after the Nov. 3 cutoff date.

Faircloth was himself fined $1,000 last April for an ethics violation stemming from his accepting $7,000 in legal fees from the Louisiana Tax Commission six months after he resigned as Jindal’s executive counsel. State law requires a waiting period of one year before entering into a contract to represent a state agency. He also returned the $7,000 in fees and his $1,000 fine was suspended so long as he remained in compliance with ethics laws.

The board chose to consider Faircloth’s request even though his letter to the board was not received until 3:26 p.m. on Nov. 28, nearly four weeks after the Nov. 3 deadline for making the December agenda.

Moreover, the board ruled that LouisianaVoice owner Tom Aswell, who made the request, “had no legal standing” to request a ruling from the board.

It was not immediately clear as to what standard is used by the board to determine “legal standing.”

Whatever that standard may be, it also served the convenient purpose of allowing the board to continue to look the other way as Chas Roemer continues to vote on matters concerning charter schools that come before BESE.

Guillot’s decision to retain Faircloth as his attorney was a solid one. Both Guillot and Roemer were endorsed and backed financially by Jindal in their campaigns, so why not bring Jindal’s former legal counsel into the action?

In an undated draft letter to the board, staff attorney Tracy Barker recommended that Guillot be cleared to hold the contracts on behalf of his company, Hunt-Guillot & Associates (HGA) of Ruston while serving on the board because he does not have 25 percent ownership in HGA and because the contracts were not with BESE itself. His financial statement as well as Faircloth’s letter to the board indicated Guillot owned only 14 percent of HGA.

The staff’s recommendations were adopted by a 10-0 vote. Dr. Cedric Lowrey of Alexandria, one of the four members not appointed by Jindal, recused himself. Faircloth also is from Alexandria as is board member Grove Stafford, a 2008 Jindal appointee.

The ruling did, however, say that while HGA may complete its contracts, including one for $16 million that calls on HGA to monitor the administration of grants to parishes and municipalities as part of the recovery process from Hurricanes Katrina, Rita, Ike and Gustav, it may not renew its contracts.

That is because the state ethics law, promoted and passed by Jindal barely more than a month after taking office during a 2008 special legislative session, stipulated that no state office holders, including BESE members, who held ownership of five percent or greater could participate in any contract or subcontract that is funded or reimbursed in whole or in part with federal funds or for any disaster recovery contract.

The $16 million contract with the Office of Community Development (OCD) through the Division of Administration (DOA) is specifically for disaster recovery and is 100 percent funded by federal Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) funds.

The really interesting thing about Guillot’s request to the board is the timing. Normally, a candidate with a potential conflict of interest would request and obtain a determination from the board prior to paying qualifying fees and incurring campaign expenses.

Not Guillot.

His strategy was to win and then get the ruling after the fact—kind of like the theory that it’s easier to get forgiveness than permission.

There may well have been a method to the madness, however.

That $16 million contract? It is actually the second of two such contracts of comparable amounts with OCD for the oversight of the grant administration.

The first contract expired on June 30 of this year.

The current contract kicked in the next day, on July 1—right in the middle of the campaign for the BESE seat.

What if he had requested the opinion, say last April or May?

It is entirely possible that the board might have ruled his company ineligible to submit a proposal for renewing its contract in light of his ongoing campaign for state office.

In order to circumvent the possibility of an adverse ruling that would cost his company millions, simply wait until after the election—and even more important, after the new contract goes into effect—and get a ruling then.

But what happens when the current three-year contract expires on June 30, 2014? By that time, nine years post-Katrina, logic would dictate that virtually all disaster recovery would be complete and that there would be no need to renew the contract for another three years.

If, however, the disaster recovery is not over, or should another hurricane necessitate a new round of disaster recovery funding, look for Guillot to resign from BESE in order to prevent his firm’s losing out on a new multi-million dollar contract. Of course, he would have to resign on or before June 30, 2013–or a full year before expiration of the contract. That would still give Jindal 18 months of a super majority on BESE to push through his educational programs.

Brilliant strategy.

Could that familiar adage about the “Golden Rule”—“Those who’ve got the gold make the rules”—apply to Jindal’s “gold standard” of ethics as well?