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Archive for July, 2013

No funds for deteriorating classrooms or for disadvantaged, but $1.2 million found for Mannings’ football camp at NSU

Posted in Budget, Governor's Office, Higher Education, House, Senate, Legislature, Legislators, Politicians on July 26, 2013| 16 Comments »

The Louisiana Board of Regents in May estimated there was a $1.7 billion backlog in repairing and renovating campus facilities in colleges and universities across the state.

But even with sewer systems that backed up into classrooms, leaky roofs, outdated laboratories and even mold among the deficiencies cited by the Regents, it’s certainly good to know that Gov. Jindal and the Louisiana Legislature could scrape together $1.2 million to make improvements to athletic facilities at Nicholls State University in Thibodaux in order to make life easier for the Manning family.

Don’t get us wrong. We have nothing against the Mannings. We were not among those who got up in arms when Peyton and Eli opted to ply their trade for the University of Tennessee and Ole Miss, respectively. In fact, Eli’s gravitation to Oxford was just natural, given that Dad Archie played there. But didn’t our Bert Jones embarrass Archie and the Rebels 61-17 back in 1970? And two years later, Jones somehow managed to get off two passes in the final four seconds, the second one to Brad Davis for a 10-yard touchdown and a 17-16 win (We know, set your watches back two seconds…).

No, this is not about Archie, Eli, Peyton and Cooper and their football camp at Nicholls.

This is about priorities.

Jindal somehow can’t find money to help the developmentally disabled in this state but he can find $1.2 million (with the assistance of State Sen. Norby Chabert, R-Houma, and State Rep. Lenar Whitney, R-Houma), to make improvements to the 25 football fields on which the Manning Passing Academy teaches some 1200 football campers—campers who, we are reasonably certain, pay a hefty fee for the privilege of receiving tutelage from the quarterbacking legends.

Pardon us for not fawning all over the Mannings and praising Jindal’s efforts to keep the passing camp at Nicholls (even though Archie Manning said he had no intentions of moving the camp). So what if they were to move the camp? Where would they take it? In all likelihood, they’d simply go to another Louisiana city.

“The improvements are good for the academy (no kidding?) but it is good for Nicholls (which classroom or professor benefits from this?) and I want to thank the folks here and the people at the South Louisiana Economic Council for working to get this done,” Jindal said, apparently forgetting for the moment the pressing need for better classroom facilities at institutions of higher education all over the state.

And did it slip his mind that he has slashed the higher education budget by 80 percent since he became governor?

“This academy has a $1.8 million impact to our state,” the governor said.

Wait. What? Did anyone at that staged announcement in the John L. Guidry Stadium’s Century Club Room on July 12 have the presence of mind to challenge that statement? Did anyone asked the governor to quantify those numbers?

If not, we will. Right here. Right now.

How does Jindal and/or the South Louisiana Economic Council calculate the economic impact of this event? Campers who stay overnight pay the Mannings, not local hotels or eateries. We love the way in which political leaders, for the sake of political expedience, pluck such numbers out of thin air.

The biggest economic impact, we would guess, would be the fees charged by the Mannings for their “academy.” And that money goes into their bank accounts, not the Lafourche Parish economy. Does anyone seriously believe the Mannings stage their annual academy for free?

Based on the academy’s fee schedule (see comments by GJD), the Mannings take in something between $500,000 and $700,000 for the four-day camp.

We let our civic proud show through when Peyton won his one Super Bowl and Eli his two. Okay, we were also thrilled when Peyton lost that one special Super Bowl to the Saints. And we were a little smug when he had that great comeback season for Denver last year. But to take funding away from needed projects and lavish it on these millionaires who are promoting…football? A game?

“They don’t have to spend their summers here,” Jindal said of Daddy Archie and sons. “They don’t have to rearrange their schedules to be here. They choose to do that.”

Wow. Talk about gooneybabble. Talk about mindless spin. Talk about convoluted logic.

Spend their summers here? Try four days. Rearrange their schedules? What the hell is Jindal talking about? They specifically arrange their schedules around this annual event to rake in a small fortune—far more than the average state employee earns in a year—even more than some of Jindal’s non-classified appointive positions (readers’ collective gasps would go here). You’re damn right they choose to do that, Governor. Anyone in his right mind would choose to do that for the money they get.

Come to think of it, though, they probably spend more days at their passing academy each year than you do in Louisiana, Governor.

It’s one thing to turn your back on those in need in order to help your wealthy friends, Guv, but don’t blow smoke up our togas while you’re doing it.

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Jindal negotiates to leave $350M in judgment funds on table in exchange for $50M in quick money to fill in budget holes

Posted in Attorney General, Campaign Contributions, Ethics, Governor's Office, Public Records, Transparency on July 25, 2013| 31 Comments »

Gov. Bobby Jindal has inserted income from the privatization of public agencies that weren’t yet privatized in order to make the numbers in his Executive Budget more palatable to legislators.

He has included revenue from the sale of state buildings that were not yet sold—indeed, some of which came back with appraisals far below his projected sale price—in order to make that budget more realistic.

To be sure, he caught considerable flak from those fiscal hawks in the legislature for his repeated use of one-time money for recurring expenses—something by the way, he was openly critical of and which he vowed never to do during his 2007 gubernatorial campaign.

Now LouisianaVoice has learned that Jindal has apparently attempted to execute an end run around state contract attorneys and the attorney general’s office in an attempt to negotiate a settlement of an outstanding judgment in favor of the state against a major pharmaceutical company.

It should be noted here that any negotiations between parties in any litigation without involving attorneys would be considered a breach in legal ethics.

The object of Jindal’s efforts is to generate a quick up front settlement of $50 million in order that he might plug holes in the upcoming annual ritual of mid-year adjustments to the state budget, one observer said.

Fifty million? Pretty good windfall for the state, wouldn’t you say?

Not necessarily—not when you consider that the amount of the original judgment was $257 million.

That’s correct. Two hundred fifty million dollars. Plus $3 million in costs, plus another $70 million in attorney fees.

Attorney fees? Didn’t we say the attorney general’s office was involved in the litigation?

Well, yes, then-Attorney General Charles Foti initiated the lawsuit way back in 2004 in 27th Judicial District Court in St. Landry Parish but heavy hitters were needed in this matter so several outside firms were contracted to steer the litigation through the courts. Those included the firms of Kenneth DeJean of Lafayette, Robert Salim of Natchitoches and Bailey, Perrin & Bailey and Fibich, Hampton, both of Houston.

On the other side of the ball were lawyers from the firms of Irwin, Fritchie, Urquhart & Moore of New Orleans, Guglielmo, Lopez & Tuttle of Opelousas, Drinker, Biddle & Reath of Florham Park, N.J., and O’Melveny & Myers of Washington, D.C.

After six years of legal back and forth sparring, discovery, depositions and various other means of keeping attorneys’ meters running the matter finally went to trial Sept 28-30 and Oct. 12 and 14, 2010. When the dust had settled, the jury made a determination that the “aggressive marketing campaigns” of Janssen Pharmaceutical, a Johnson & Johnson company, had violated the Louisiana Medical Assistance Programs Integrity Law (MAPIL) no fewer than a whopping 35,542 times with each violation subject to a civil penalty of $7,250, bringing the total damages to $257,679,500.

(Don’t ask us what “aggressive marketing campaigns” were employed by Janssen or how they violated the state’s MAPIL; we’re not privy to that information. All we know is what we read in the Third Circuit Court of Appeal’s affirmation.)

Janssen, of course, appealed the award as anyone might expect, but the Third Circuit upheld the lower court judgment and Janssen has applied for writs to the Louisiana Supreme Court where the matter is now pending.

Nine years of judicial interest (6 percent per year in simple interest) brings the current total judgment to just a shade under $400 million.

So now we have Jindal who, in typical fashion, is attempting to patch anticipated budget holes with $50 million in one-time money—all the while throwing the state under the bus to the tune of nearly $350 million.

Several legal experts knowledgeable about the case say the State Supreme Court could conceivably reduce the attorney fees but that there is little chance that the $257 million award ($400 million with interest, remember) will be overturned—a fact that would make Jindal’s tactics even more underhanded.

And were it not for Attorney General James “Buddy” Caldwell, Jindal’s efforts may have succeeded, according to sources who told LouisianaVoice that Caldwell stepped in and shut down the negotiations.

Neither Caldwell nor this top assistant, Trey Phillips, returned telephone calls seeking comments on the matter.

Attempts were likewise made to contact several of the plaintiff attorneys who argued the case on the state’s behalf but all such attempts failed.

Any such settlement would necessarily negatively impact attorneys’ fees. Accordingly, it would be reasonable to expect a maelstrom of protests from the attorneys under contract to the state if they were aware of Jindal’s efforts.

LouisianaVoice also emailed Gov. Jindal’s office for a comment but received no response.

One person who did comment was Public Service Commissioner Foster Campbell of Elm Grove in Bossier Parish.

“I was not aware of this,” he said, “but I certainly am not surprised. This is typical of this governor. He has complete and total contempt for the people of this state. It’s all about what he can do for little Bobby. He’s trying to settle this for about 13 cents on the dollar just so he can patch his budget deficit, the state be damned.”

Neither Johnson & Johnson nor Janssen has made any campaign contributions to Jindal since 2003 but six pharmaceutical companies contributed $34,500 to his campaigns in 2007 and 2008. One of those, Pfizer, Inc., of New York City, gave $15,000 in three separate contributions of $5,000 each while Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America in Washington, D.C., made two contributions of $5,000 each in 2007 and 2008.

State campaign finance records also show that pharmaceutical companies contributed more than $400,000 to candidates for state offices, mostly legislators, since 2003. Those contributions were for both Republican and Democratic candidates. Again, it was Pfizer ($170,000) and Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers ($150,000) that reported the bulk of those contributions.

Other contributors included Takeda Pharmaceuticals of Deerfield, IL, and Novartis Pharmaceuticals of East Hanover, N.J.

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Faircloth says his state income is a ‘pittance,’ but his $1.1 million is 11th highest among state’s top 50 legal contracts

Posted in Attorney General, Contract, Contracts, Governor's Office, Public Records, State Agencies, Transparency on July 24, 2013| 4 Comments »

The Faircloth Law Firm doesn’t even show as a blip on the Louisiana Office of Contractual Review’s (OCR) Top 50 list of legal contractors with the State of Louisiana for the Fiscal Year July 1, 2010 through June 30, 2011.

Altogether, the top 50 contracts represent a combined total of $81.4 million, according to OCR’s list.

The list ranks state contracts from the largest—the Department of Justice (Louisiana Attorney General) at $18 million to number 50—the $276,000 contract of the New Orleans law firm of Vezina & Gattuso, but does not include Faircloth.

That’s because the Faircloth Law Firm received its payments in fiscal years 2012 and 2013 and did not show up on the FY-2011 list.

Most attorney contracts, with the exception of the Attorney General and public defender contracts, are awarded over a three-year period.

It should be noted that simply because a firm is awarded a contract of, say, $1.5 million, it does not necessarily reflect the actual amount paid the firm. Often, cases conclude long before the contracts are exhausted and in other cases, they extend beyond the financial terms of the dates of the contracts and must be amended or renewed.

The Associated Press reported Wednesday that Faircloth has received more than $1.1 million in contract work from various state agencies, which would put the firm about midway on the list of top 50 firms. Records provided by the Office of Risk Management (ORM) through the Division of Administration (DOA) show that the Faircloth firm was actually paid $931,000 in 2012 and 2013.

Most contracts awarded through ORM are done so at set hourly rates which are generally uniform from firm to firm, though there are exceptions where a firm will receive a contract with a higher per hour representation fee. And while LouisianaVoice was not provided with Faircloth’s hourly fee, it is assumed that it is higher than customary simply because he represented the governor’s office in several court cases, many of which he lost in the lower courts and in the appeals process.

More recently, the attorney general’s office has contracted Faircloth’s firm to represent the state in litigation against BP for the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill and is also represented the state in litigation by CNSI which was fired from its $200 million Medicaid contract with the Department of Health and Hospitals.

Those two cases alone are expected to reap an additional $675,000 in addition to the $1.1 million already paid but Faircloth downplays that amount as insignificant in the overall scheme of things.

“I know what we do is a pittance compared to how much gets contracted,” he said.

Oh, really?

Let’s compare.

With the $675,000 from CNSI and BP cases added to the $1.1 million already received, that’s almost $1.8 million total.

Of the 50 biggest legal contracts listed by OCR, only 10 were for more than $1.8 million and half of those were for either the attorney general’s office or four contracts of $5.1 million for the legal services for the defense of persons pursuing post-conviction relief of a capital conviction; $4 million for legal services for the Louisiana Public Defender Board and contracts for $2.1 million and $2 million for legal representation for capital cases where an ethical conflict in the representation of indigents is needed.

Faircloth denies that he is getting the lucrative contracts because of his ties to the governor as first his executive counsel and most recently as a member of the University of Louisiana Board of Supervisors.

Sean Lansing, a spokesman for Jindal first said the governor’s office doesn’t direct agencies to hire specific attorneys but later revised his statement when told that agency directors indicated that Jindal’s office had suggested hiring Faircloth in the past. “We have recommended Jimmy in certain circumstances because he is a great lawyer but at the end of the day, it is up to agency heads to decide on whom to hire.

“I don’t deny that I have the benefit of knowing all those folks,” Faircloth said of his connections to the governor’s office. “I would like to think that in my working with (state agencies), they would say, ‘Jimmy’s a very good lawyer. Let’s hire him.’

“I like to think I get the call because we give pretty good service,” he said.

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Former Jindal Executive Counsel Faircloth has history of losing state legal cases but gets big fees: $930K in 2 years

Posted in Boards, Contract, Contracts, Governor's Office, Judges, Politicians, Public Records, Transparency on July 23, 2013| 14 Comments »

BATON ROUGE (CNS)—It would seem that Jimmy Faircloth isn’t doing very well when representing the gret stet of Looziana in the various courtrooms around the state—either as an advocate of an unwinnable case on behalf of the state or as a candidate for the Louisiana Supreme Court.

Faircloth’s name has surfaced more often than bubbles in little Flatulent Filmore’s bath water, but always, it seems, on the losing end of the score.

The first time we heard the Louisiana Tech graduate’s name was when he was named in January of 2008 as Gov. Elect Bobby Jindal’s choice as his executive counsel.

Jindal’s pick was controversial from the get-go. Faircloth was still sticky from his three-year hitch as legal counsel for the Coushatta Indians, whom he advised to sink $30 million in a formerly bankrupt Israeli technology firm called MainNet for whom his brother Brandon was subsequently employed as vice president of sales.

It was not the first bad decision by the Coushatta Tribe. Three years earlier, they attracted undesired national attention when it was revealed that they had paid lobbyist Jack Abramoff $32 million to help promote and protect their gambling interests and got little in return.

Those same Coushattas also paid another $400,000 to Aubrey Temple of DeRidder, whom Jindal would later name to the Coastal Protection and Restoration Financing Corp. Temple was never able to account for the $400,000. Temple also was a key player in an attempt by another Jindal ally, Donald T. “Boysie” Bollinger of Lockport, to purchase Toledo Bend water from the Sabine River Authority for possible resale in Texas.

Okay, this is getting way too convoluted. Let’s get back to Alexandria attorney Faircloth.

Faircloth resigned as executive counsel in 2009 to run for the Louisiana Supreme Court. It was a race he lost by 53-47 percent.

Two years later he was fined $1,000 by the Louisiana Board of Ethics for violating state ethics laws when he entered into a contract to represent the Louisiana Tax Commission only six months after he resigned as Jindal’s executive counsel. State law required him to wait a full year before representing any state agency. He returned the $7,000 he had received in legal fees from the Tax Commission.

In December of 2010, Jindal appointed Faircloth to the University of Louisiana Board of Supervisors. In January of this year, Faircloth resigned and was replaced by his wife, Kelly.

The latest episode with Faircloth is yet another legal setback—this time at the hands of the First Circuit Court of Appeal which upheld a lower court decision that the LSU Board of Stupevisors must make public the names of the candidates for LSU president.

The Stupevisors withheld the names of all the candidates except the ultimate selection, F. King Alexander of California State University Long Beach and the Baton Rouge Advocate and the New Orleans Times-Picayune each filed suit to force the board to reveal the names of the three dozen candidates who were considered.

Faircloth, true to form and like his mentor Jindal, refused to admit defeat graciously. He described the matter before the appeals court as “not an appeal” but merely a question of what LSU owed in damages and legal fees. He added that LSU would “get its chance to appeal.”

Normally, only the losing party of a civil court matter would be required to pay damages and legal fees, so it’s somewhat confusing to understand where, exactly, Faircloth is drawing the line between winning and losing or what is and what is not an appeal.

No matter.

Faircloth, if nothing else is a trooper and the matter lives on in the courts—and Faircloth’s meter keeps running.

Other cases in which Faircloth has gone down in flames include a federal case in Tangipahoa in which a U.S. District Court Judge in November of 2012 ordered a halt to implementation of Jindal’s new voucher and teacher hiring laws in Tangipahoa because the state laws conflict with court orders in decades-old desegregation cases in Tangipahoa and at least 30 other parishes.

“They (the plaintiffs) can’t even describe the standard or what programs are affected” by the desegregation order, Faircloth sniffed.

In March of this year, a Baton Rouge district court judge negated the teacher tenure and evaluations section of Gov. Jindal’s education reform.

Faircloth had no comments about that ruling but Jindal had plenty to say. “We expect to prevail in the state Supreme Court,” he said.

Two months later, in May, the Louisiana Supreme Court shot down the Jindal administration’s method of funding the statewide school voucher program, ruling that it diverted money from each student’s per-pupil allocation to cover the cost of private or parochial school tuition.

The very next month, the Supremes struck down a change to the state retirement system that had been pushed through the legislature by Jindal—because the measure had not been approved by the constitutionally-required two-thirds vote.

Ironically, State Rep. Kevin Pearson (R-Slidell), who sponsored the retirement changes in the 2012 legislature, was the same legislator who pushed for the constitutional amendment the previous year that required that any retirement plan which results in an actuarial cost to the state to be passed by a two-thirds vote.

So Faircloth must really feel bad about all those losses, right? After all, those TV lawyer ads say you pay nothing unless you win, right?

Nope and nope. Taking the second question first, those lawyer ads are for plaintiff attorneys who work on contingency. Defense attorneys like Faircloth get paid, win or lose.

That should take care of the first question; Faircloth gets paid, win or lose. And he certainly gets paid well.

LouisianaVoice made our customary public records request. On July 9, we asked the governor’s office, the Office of Risk Management (ORM) and the Division of Administration (DOA) for an accounting. The answer finally came on July 19, eight days late under the state’s public records laws.

There was a caveat with which we take issue: The response from DOA attorney Joshua Melder said, “Some information has been redacted pursuant to the Office of Risk Management’s pending claims privilege.”

The public records law, as we understand it, does protect matters of attorney-client privilege or details of ongoing litigation such as settlement negotiations. Attorney fees would not, as we interpret the law, be protected but we let it pass for now. After all, we don’t possess the knowledge of the great legal minds who protect the state’s interests so proficiently.

The figures for fiscal years 2012 and 2013, exclusive of the figures redacted pursuant to ORM’s pending claim privilege, show that the Faircloth Law Firm pulled down an eye-popping $931,000 in those losing causes–$843,300 of that in FY-2013.

Not a bad return on Faircloth’s $23,000 in campaign contributions to Jindal campaigns in 2003, 2006 and 2010.

Now if he would just win an occasional case, Jindal might be a little happier with his favorite attorney.

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Notable Quotables (in their own words)

Posted in Uncategorized on July 22, 2013| 1 Comment »

“I got the tower and the transmitter set up and then I was told not to flip the switch.”

—Former Department of Public Safety (DPS) radio maintenance technician Rusty Whittington, in his accusation that DPS Director of Information and Technology Jeya Selvaratnam ordered him not to place an emergency radio transmitter into operation in the hours following landfall of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans in August of 2005 even though normal State Police radio communications had been knocked out by the storm.

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