Get ready, Louisiana taxpayers. If you encounter a need for a one-on-one meeting with a Louisiana Department of Revenue spokesperson to discuss your state taxes in the near future, you soon will be out of luck. You’ll need to juke on down to Baton Rouge or New Orleans to get face time.
Though no announcement has yet been made of a target date, LouisianaVoice has learned that all other state revenue satellite offices are being shuttered.
The closures, of course, will not affect New Orleans where the state is locked into that overpriced lease agreement with Tom Benson as part of the notorious state giveaway to keep the Saints in Louisiana. That’s the deal whereby Benson purchased the old Dominion Tower across from the Superdome with the understanding that the state would move all its New Orleans offices there and pay about twice was it was paying for its former office space.
It was not immediately known how many state employees would be affected, but suffice it to say the timing of the decision, coming as it does a week before Christmas, couldn’t be worse for Revenue staffers in Shreveport, Monroe, Alexandria, Lake Charles and Lafayette.
Having already gone for more than three years without a raise, they now face the prospects of unemployment.
Of course, certain employees have nothing to worry about. The cutbacks will only apply to the grunts, the ones who actually do the day-to-day work, the ones who have to suffer indignities from supervisors and flak from unhappy taxpayers.
This is the same agency, by the way, that hired former State Rep. Jane Smith first as Assistant Secretary at $124,446 despite her professed lack of knowledge about revenue. Upon the firing of Secretary Cynthia Bridges over that alternative fuel tax (a bill authored by smith, no less, and signed into law by Jindal), Smith was briefly promoted to secretary by Piyush.
Jindal later hired former executive counsel Tim Barfield as secretary but circumvented the state law which limited the secretary’s salary to $124,000 by also giving him the title of Executive Counsel of Revenue and bumping his salary up to a cool $250,000.
Of course, it didn’t hurt that Barfield and his wife contributed $15,000 to Jindal’s campaigns in 2006 and 2010 and that one of his former employers, Amedisys, chipped in another $11,000 to the Piyush cause.
And apparently oblivious to the current state hiring freeze, the new secretary promptly went out and bought himself a chief staff in the person of Jarrod Coniglio, who “will take the lead for all of our day-to-day work and be a great help to us as we work to coordinate and execute with the highest efficiency, accuracy and customer service,” according to Barfield.
The price for his new aide that Bridges apparently never saw the need for? $115,003.
While on his shopping spree, Barfield also picked up a new press secretary: Douglas Baker at an annual salary of $105,997.
True to form in the Piyush administration, efforts to contact the newly-appointed Revenue press secretary for more detailed information about the office shut-downs and accompanying layoffs were unsuccessful.
Louisiana Voice 
I wonder if anyone knows what is happening to benefits of state employees who are being laid off? Any state employe who is laid of or fired, even the ones that are no longer going to be a state employee because of privatizing Health care. Most sick time, comp time or vacation time a worker has built up over the years will be stolen. There is one employee I know who stands to lose or have stolen by Jindal close to $40,000.00. Talk about a thief! I wonder how this man can sleep at night!
Who is next to fall under the little banana republic dictator? Office of Motor Vehicles, State Police or the next one on his list. When he leaves office the only state employees left will be him, his Commissioner of Administration and the extremely highly paid unqualified people he hired.
Since everything Jindal does is for the financial benefit of the wealthy and they are the ones that contribute to his various fundraisers, how does this latest act play into that scheme? Oh, I get it. The satellite Revenue offices served those people that didn’t make enough money to warrant hiring a CPA to assist them in taking advantage of the many exemptions and loopholes targeted to benefit the wealthy. Now those taxpayers will presumably have to travel to Baton rouge or “Benson” when they have either a problem or are summonsed to appear before a revenue officer investigating their returns. Mr. Aswell, if and when you ever do get an opportunity to talk to the Revenue Department Press Secretary, please ask him WHERE tax dispute resolutions hearings will be heard.
Noone can tread on you unless you allow them .
Jindal ain’t treading; he’s driving an overloaded 18 wheeler and he ain’t slowin down. ” Tire tracks all across my back; I can see you’ve had your fun.” This runaway train must be derailed soon or there will be nothing left to our state in 3 years that isn’t owned by Swindal Jindal and his corporate financiers.
I would like some one to please explain to me how in the hell can one man pull the kind of under handed things he is and no one not one person is tacking him to task ? Does he really have the right to lay if thousands if State workers and steal there hard earned money . Where are all of the news stations , investigators of these stations are they afraid of the little Hitler acting as our Govener !!
How much more will it take?