Louisiana Voice

The Senate Labor and Industrial Relations Committee hearing last Thursday, May 3, gave us some interesting audio while the committee was in recess.

The committee spent more than an hour on SB 560 by Sen. Jack Donahue (R-Mandeville) that would make sweeping changes to the state’s workers’ compensation statutes.

Basically, the bill, a product of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), would limit which doctors could treat workers who are injured on the job by setting up a medical provider network that injured workers must utilize.

The bill also would limit legal fees for attorneys representing injured workers.

But it was when the committee recessed 53 minutes into hearings that things got really interesting.

That’s because a few pro-business lobbyists were still sitting at or near the witness table and someone left the camera and microphones on.

Be patient. It takes a few minutes for this video to load.

http://senate.la.gov/Labor&Industrial/archives/2012/video.htm

At 53:07, Jim Patterson, lobbyist for the Louisiana Association of Business and Industry (LABI), sitting at the witness table to the viewer’s left, begins discussions with Clark Cosse, seated in the first row behind and to Patterson’s left:

• Cosse: “Kostelka’s (Sen. Bob Kostelka, R-Monroe) a wild card.”

• Patterson: “You never know what’s gonna set him off.”

At 55:09, Alton Ashy, lobbyist for Worley Claims, a score of gaming interests and several medical providers–and a political ally of Gov. Bobby Jindal–approaches Patterson to briefly discuss one witness’s opposition to the bill and cracks a joke before moving on.

Patterson then turns to Dennis Juge, a Metairie attorney who, along with Patterson and Cosse, was re-appointed by Gov. Jindal last November to the Workers’ Compensation Advisory Board, to repeat the joke told him by Ashy.

• Patterson: “He said maybe they should rope off a corner and give each of you knives and tie your wrists together and (inaudible).”

• Juge: “It would be easier….and cleaner.”

It was at this point, at 56:45, that Cosse re-entered the conversation and things got a little more graphic.

• Cosse: “In lobbyist school they have a desk and they put a little butt on it and you…” (He bobs back and forth, making kissing motions.) “It doesn’t matter who they are, when they (presumably legislators) get elected, you gotta get along with ‘em. If you lose ‘em one day, you gotta go back and get ‘em the next day.”

• Patterson: “And they put a little hair on that hiney to make it all the more challenging.”

(Laughter.)

• Cosse: “That’s right, like hair on soap, man.”

• Patterson: “That’s too funny.”

And that, folks, is today’s civics lesson. You must (or should) be 18 years of age to attend a legislative session or committee meeting unless accompanied by an adult.