THE PIYUSH JINDAL ADMINISTRATION: where transparency and accountability go to die.
The Monroe News-Star did an excellent job of demonstrating just how far this administration will go to keep legislators and the public in the dark about the governor’s political agenda.
But there are other examples—some of which we have written about here and another that we are writing about today—that reveal an ominous trend of this administration to rule by intimidation and secrecy—a dangerous combination at any level of government. The latest issue might well be the actual status of Jindal’s former Chief of Staff Timmy Teepell, now ostensibly a partner and head of OnMessage Inc.’s Southern office in Baton Rouge. We will get to all of those momentarily, but first that News-Star article of Monday, July 2.
This publication, located in northeast Louisiana nearly 200 miles from the State Capitol, blew the lid off secrecy and misdirection in the Jindal administration with its story on Monday and in so doing, literally embarrassed the stodgy Baton Rouge Advocate with its fully-staffed Capitol News Bureau ensconced comfortably in the basement of the State Capitol.
All reporter Barbara Leader did was obtain email exchanges between State Education Superintendent John White, Jindal mouthpiece Kyle Plotkin and the governor’s policy adviser Stafford Palmieri which revealed White’s plan to “muddy up a narrative” and to “take some air out of the room” with a “due diligence” cockamamie response to news stories about questionable approvals of school voucher requests, most notably the 315 vouchers for Ruston’s New Living Word School.
In the wake of Leader’s latest revelations, one must be left to ponder the wisdom of keeping a policy adviser like Palmieri who apparently did nothing to keep White from making an idiot of himself with his ill-advised scheme or, for that matter, Jindal’s lobbying to hire a state superintendent like John White in the first place.
White’s email to Plotkin and Palmieri take on the appearance of a Shakespearean tragicomedy after he had been put on notice that he should be expected to answer questions about the department’s approval of New Living Word to participate in the expanded voucher program during his confirmation hearings before a legislative committee in the session’s final days.
In fact, White, through spokesperson Sarah Mulhearn, even went so far as to deny to LouisianaVoice that such vouchers had even been approved. In a June 26 email to LouisianaVoice, Mulhearn wrote, “The specific information you requested is not available because final seat numbers have not yet been decided. No school, including New Living Word, has been approved for any definite number of vouchers/scholarships. The 315 is only the number requested by the school.”
Now it appears that explanation may well have been subterfuge on the part of the department and White. Indeed, who knows what to believe from Education now? Any pronouncements from that agency–from the Jindal administration in general, for that matter–must now be taken with all due skepticism with a view toward an ulterior motive.
But as Sen. Ed Murray (D-New Orleans) pointed out during White’s confirmation hearing, there was no mention of “preliminary” acceptances in letters to accepted schools, including New Living Word, nor was there any mention of any “next phase” to include follow-up visits to schools prior to White springing the two terms on the committee.
White, in his email to Plotkin and Palmieri, said on the eve of his confirmation hearing, “I’d like to create (emphasis ours) a news story about the ‘the next phase’ of determining seats in schools before Murray creates an additional story for us tomorrow. I’d also like to take some air out of the room on the floor tomorrow and to give Steve (Rep. Steve Carter, R-Baton Rouge, chairman of the House Education Committee) some cover.”
Let’s see that again: “I’d like to CREATE a news story (as in make one up, concoct, fabricate, etc.) about ‘the next phase’ (this was White’s first-ever reference to any “next phase” in the approval process for school vouchers) of determining seats in schools before Murray creates an additional story for us tomorrow.” In other words, White puts it all in writing where it can be retrieved under a public records request as to how he plans to lie to the committee during his all-import confirmation hearing.
Again, and understand this in no uncertain terms: he is revealing to the governor’s office his plans to lie to the committee and no one in the governor’s office did a damned thing to try and stop him.
At the risk of sounding like a broken record, this is Nixonian at its most basic level and must not be tolerated.
Remember, White was under oath when he testified at his confirmation hearing.
Where is the outrage?
White also wrote that his plan “would chill out some of our friends (presumably recalcitrant legislators), who aren’t being very helpful on the MFP (Minimum Foundation Program, the state formula for funding K-12 public education) by letting them know we’re thinking of the ‘criteria for participation.’”
Wow. What?
And at the end of the day, White, instead of attempting to explain his deliberate, pre-meditated duplicity, chose to question Leader about how she obtained a copy of his email.
Perhaps Mr. White should refer to R.S. 44:1 et seq., otherwise fondly known as the Louisiana Public Records Act.
Not that this administration has any true regard for R.S. 44:1 et seq.
Way back on March 28, LouisianaVoice made a public records request in which we requested information as to Jindal’s whereabouts on specific dates in 2008, 2009, 2010 and 2011, as well as a couple of dates in 2007 when he was still a member of Congress.
What we received in return was a dressing down by Plotkin in two separate emails on March 29. The first, at 8:52 a.m., said, “…it’s clear that you are simply making up travel dates in 2010 when the Governor was actually in state. You obviously have a bad source of information.”
He followed that with a second email at 9:05 a.m. that again said, “You are now trying to make up information.”
The only problem with his theory was that the dates we requested were dates of airline ticket purchases listed in Jindal’s own campaign records for 19 trips to Atlanta, nine to Fort Worth, seven to Houston and two each to Chicago and Dallas. We were quite naturally curious as to who made the trips and why.
It’s not that LouisianaVoice suspected anything illegal or underhanded about the trips; we just wanted to know where Jindal was on those dates. That was more than three months ago and there still has been no response to that request other than executive counsel Elizabeth Murrill’s offering of some travel receipts that did not correspond to the dates requested. Nor did her office allow LouisianaVoice to scan the information into a hand-held scanner, instead requiring that LouisianaVoice pay for the information.
But for the biggest mystery in town, one might contemplate creating a game called “Where’s Timmy” were it not for copyright laws involving “Where’s Waldo.”
Back in October, right after his re-election, Piyush announced that his Chief of Staff Timmy Teepell was leaving his $165,000-a-year position with the administration, “effective immediately,” to head up the Baton Rouge office of OnMessage, Inc., a political consulting firm out of Virginia.
OnMessage was used extensively by Jindal in his 2007 campaign which shelled out something around $1.3 million for consulting work by the firm.
Moreover, an OnMessage partner, Curt Anderson, ghost-wrote Jindal’s yawn-inducing book Leadership and Crisis.
So it was only natural that Teepell would gravitate to the firm and even set up shop in Baton Rouge after leaving the campaign.
Or did he? Did he actually join OnMessage? For that matter, has he ever really left Jindal’s employ? The answers to both questions remain hazy eight months after his announced departure.
While it’s true that the last official date of employment with the governor’s office was July 1, 2011, it’s also true that Jindal’s campaign picked him up about that same time, making a $6,324 payment to Teepell on July 15, 2011 and continuing those payments through Dec. 30, 2011. In fact, he received pretty healthy bumps in pay during his last four months when his pay was $11,872 and $17,856 on Oct. 14 and Oct 24, respectively. He then received a payment of $18,140 on Oct. 31 and payments of $18,562 each on Nov. 30 and Dec. 30.
Jindal’s campaign was continuing to shell out big bucks to OnMessage at the same time. The campaign paid OnMessage nearly $46,000 during November of 2011 and another $55,000 in December, well after his October re-election.
The November and December payments to Teepell might raise a few eyebrows given the fact that OnMessage released an announcement on Oct. 24 to the effect that Teepell had joined the firm “as a partner and head of our new Southern office.”
“Teepell will open and manage our new OnMessage Southern office in Baton Rouge and will work on campaigns throughout the country,” the press release said.
The only problem with that is that announcement was last October and eight months later there still is no listing in the metropolitan Baton Rouge area for a phone number or for a physical address for OnMessage. It’s rather difficult to drum up business when you don’t have an office or a phone.
A check of the Secretary of State’s corporate records was equally fruitless; there was no listing for OnMessage, Inc., meaning the company is not registered in Louisiana even though it ostensibly has an office in the capital city. Somewhere.
In February, it was announced that Teepell’s OnMessage office in Baton Rouge had signed on to work for Republican Congressman Bill Cassidy’s 2012 re-election campaign.
Again, the only problem is that when Congressman Cassidy’s campaign expenditures were searched, there were no payments to OnMessage or to Teepell through May 31. None. Zilch. Nada.
Teepell, while not physically occupying an office or having a phone listing, however, has maintained a regular and highly visible presence in and around the governor’s office and governor’s mansion. And during the recently-completed legislative session, he could routinely be found in the section on the floor of each chamber set aside for the governor’s staff as he monitored the progress of administration-favored legislation.
That then begs the question that if Teepell is indeed working for OnMessage, when and where is he conducting his consulting business? Where is the “OnMessage southern office in Baton Rouge?”
Given the time Teepell spends at the Capitol and the governor’s mansion and given that there is no listing for an address or phone number for OnMessage and given the fact that Jindal’s campaign has not made a payment to OnMessage since Dec. 30, 2011 and given the fact that Cassidy has paid neither OnMessage nor Teepell, a lot of loose ends are left hanging and a lot of questions are left unanswered.
To borrow a phrase from Plotkin, is someone trying to make up information?
Where’s Timmy?
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