Louisiana Voice

State Sen. Jack Donahue’s expressions of shock and surprise notwithstanding, the handwriting was on the wall more than a year ago as to the fate of the 60-year-old Southeast Louisiana State Hospital in Mandeville—thanks in part to a bill he authored four years ago.

It was in May of 2011 that then-parish president Kevin Davis revealed that he was working with the state to have St. Tammany Parish purchase 1,442 acres adjacent to the hospital in an effort to prevent the low-lying land from being developed in the future.

That sale was consummated last month at a price of $6.45 million. The land was appraised for $14.7 million in February 2011, according to records of the Office of State Lands. Davis, however, said in 2011 he felt the correct value of the land was nearer $10 million. He added that the Division of Administration had verbally agreed to the $10 million figure.

There was no explanation as to why the ultimate selling price was more than 35 percent lower than the reported agreed upon price and less than half the original appraised value.

Six months after the negotiations for the land were announced, Davis, who was term-limited and not eligible to seek re-election as parish president, was appointed by Jindal as director of the Governor’s Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness (GOHSEP) at a salary of $165,000 per year.

He contributed $3,000 to Jindal election campaigns in 2003 and 2008 and Donahue gave $1,500 to the governor’s campaign in 2007 and 2011.

Jindal in turn, contributed $2,500 to Donahue’s campaign last year.

Both Donahue (R-Covington) and Rep. Scott Simon (R-Abita Springs) claimed that the announcement of the closure caught them off guard. Simon is chairman of the House Committee on Health and Welfare, making the decision not to inform him even more curious.

It was revealed during last year’s negotiations between the state and St. Tammany that the parish had been given first refusal on purchase of the 1,442 acres in a 2008 bill authored by Donahue.

Donahue’s bill also stipulated that proceeds from the sale of the land adjacent to the hospital must go toward the restoration, renovation, construction or maintenance of the hospital.

Davis said he had initially persuaded the state to construct a new hospital on parish-owned land north of I012 but those negotiations cratered when Bruce Greenstein was appointed secretary of the Department of Health and Hospitals (DHH).

He also said at that time that the state had decided not to close the hospital.

DHH issued an announcement late Friday, however, that the 348-bed hospital would be phased out of operation beginning in October despite those assurances of more than a year ago that it would remain open.

Patients at the facility will be transferred to East Louisiana State Hospital in Jackson with some possibly going to Central State Hospital in Pineville, placing a strain in terms of finances and logistics on families of patients who help care for the patients.

The move will also eliminate 300 positions at the hospital, one of the largest employers in St. Tammany Parish.

In addition to keeping the land free from development, Davis said he hoped to turn the property into a mitigation bank which would help pay the cost of acquiring the land.

St. Tammany is required to contribute matching funds for various state and federal road projects, Davis said. Some of the land used for those projects consists of wetlands and he said he wanted the parish’s financial contributions to go into the mitigation bank in exchange for credits that would allow wetlands construction.

The parish, he said, did not have available funds to purchase the land outright, so he had initiated negotiations with officials from the Trust for Public Land in and effort to get the trust to purchase the land on the parish’s behalf with the parish paying back the trust in a minimum of five years.

Now that the 1,442 acres adjacent to the hospital has been sold for less than half its appraised value and now that the official announcement of the hospital’s closure has been made, the question that remains is what now becomes of the remaining 500 acres and the hospital buildings?

Southeast Louisiana State Hospital, a psychiatric treatment facility, was established 60 years ago, in 1952, on 2,235 acres of land (later reduced to 1,900 acres). In 1959, it received international, if unwanted, attention as a brief stopping-off point for Gov. Earl K. Long in his odyssey across the southwestern U.S. during his celebrated mental breakdown.

Earl, still very much the state’s governor, fired state Hospital Board head Jesse H. Bankston and replaced him with Charles Rosenblum. Rosenblum subsequently persuaded the board to fire hospital head Dr. Charles Belcher and replace him with Dr. Jess McClendon. McClendon, a personal friend of Long, promptly ordered his release.