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Archive for September, 2013

False prophets, false profits—and false reasons to privatize LSU Hospital System (or trolling for more Medicaid dollars)

Posted in ALEC, American Legislative Exchange Council, Boards, Contract, Contracts, Governor's Office, Health Care, Higher Education, House, Senate, Legislature, Legislators, Privatization, Public Records, Transparency on September 29, 2013| 12 Comments »

Editor’s note: This essay is more than twice the length of our usual posts but with the takeover of LSU Medical Center in Shreveport and E.A. Conway Medical Center in Monroe set to take effect on Tuesday (Oct. 1), we felt it vital to provide more detailed information about the administration’s smokescreen that it likes to call a $125 million taxpayer savings. Please take the time to read it in its entirety.

False reasons for privatizing

The governor’s stated purpose of privatization was to improve quality, improve medical education, and save the taxpayers about $125 million (The Advocate 9/4/13).  His actions, however, support none of these stated purposes.

  • Improve quality?  There are many measures of quality, safety, and patient satisfaction that Medicare and others publish (see the discussion on NOLA.com September 14, 2013 story on East Jefferson and West Jefferson Hospitals).  Through a public records request I asked DHH what measures of quality they used in concluding that quality would be improved with these privatizations.  To no surprise, they did not attempt to review any data on quality despite this being one of the governor’s primary reasons for privatizing.  If you look at Medicare’s website http://www.medicare.gov/hospitalcompare/search.html  the LSU facilities compare very favorably to the new private partners.  Furthermore, the Cooperative Endeavor Agreements (CEAs) do not have requirements of the partner hospitals to measure, report, and be held accountable for any quality measures.
  • Improve medical education?  This is vintage Jindal.  He creates a crisis to force change then regardless of the outcome, declares victory for staving off the crisis he created.  Compared to not having hospitals to train in, the partnerships are better, but the public hospital system under LSU prior to Jindal’s meddling was very supportive of medical education and programs were performing well there.  Since the governor slashed funding for the hospitals, however, the programs ran into difficulty because of the governor’s actions.
  • Save taxpayers about $125 million?  Go back to the Medicare website (http://www.medicare.gov/hospitalcompare/search.html ) and compare the cost to Medicare for care delivered around a hospital stay at the LSU hospital and at the private partner.  In every case the care associated with the LSU hospital was much cheaper than the private partner.  The truth is the governor’s team never asked the private partners what their costs were.  In response to a public records request in which I asked DHH for their analysis comparing costs, DHH was unable to provide any documents demonstrating they compared the actual cost of care at the public and private hospitals prior to entering into the CEAs.  Even though the CEAs commit the state to paying the cost of care at the private hospitals, no one from the administration bothered to ask them what their costs were.  The LSU Board signed off on these agreements without knowing this basic information – an action they were willing to take with the public’s money but that none of them would be so irresponsible to do with his own business.

Here is the breakdown for all cost to Medicare for a patient from 3 days prior to hospitalization to 30 days after the hospital stay (from the Medicare website):

LSU     Hospital Private     Partner(s)
Medical Center of Louisiana     (Charity): $16,698 Touro: $20,022
University Medical Center     (Lafayette): $11,781 Lafayette General: $18,578
Leonard Chabert (Houma): $13,356 Terrebonne General: $18,961
Ochsner: $19,571
W.O.Moss (Lake Charles): $9,299 Lake Charles Memorial: $18,262
Earl K. Long (Baton Rouge): $12,017 Our Lady of the Lake: $21,133

 

So despite the governor’s claim, DHH has no evidence that these deals will save taxpayers $125 million and in fact the public data available indicate just the opposite.  The governor’s real plan is to quietly shift this added cost from state funds to federal funds.  It may save state funds but this approach does not match his public stance on rejecting additional spending, even federal funds since those are taxpayer dollars too.

 Examining the money

Why would the state agree to pay these private partners their costs without knowing how much that is?  Why would the state move its patient care from the lower cost state providers to higher cost private providers?  One explanation is that the higher cost will be borne by the federal government, not the state.  Last year, the public hospitals were appropriated $955 million.  Commissioner of Administration, Kristy Nichols, testified that in 2014 that number will exceed $1 billion.  As reported in The Advocate (May 28, 2013), “The total operating expense associated with the privatization of the LSU hospitals will hit $1 billion during the next fiscal year, Commissioner of Administration Kristy Nichols said Thursday. That’s more than there is in the current year’s budget – $955 million for the state to operate the charity hospitals…”

The private partners will participate with the state in a financing scheme that will allow the state to withdraw its support of the LSU hospitals while increasing the flow of federal funds.  The scheme involves at least 3 different components.  In isolation, each component may be (MAY BE) deemed allowable by the federal government but viewed together they demonstrate an effort to skirt federal requirements that the state put up its fair share of funding for the Medicaid program.

  1. Supplemental or extra payments from Medicaid to private hospitals using federal Medicaid dollars
  2. Lease payments including “up front” payments, in effect, the state “borrowing” funds from a private Medicaid provider (that it just prepaid a supplement using federal funds) in order to cover a state budget shortfall
  3. The state using the private hospital lease payments as match to draw more federal funds and then paying a portion of that back the private provider.

The entire process is designed to cut out the state support and increase the federal support.

Reducing state support

In September 2011 a consulting group named Verite hired by DHH submitted a business plan review that was considered by the Joint Legislative Committee on the Budget at its September 2011 meeting when it voted to approve contracting for construction of the new hospital www.newhospital.org.  The report points out the average state funds in the Interim LSU Hospital (ILH or “Charity”) from 2006 – 2011 was $42.8 million.  It projected an average annual amount of state funds in years 2015-2020 of $52.5 million necessary to pay for the cost of caring for uninsured people.  The JLCB approved construction based on these expectations.

However, the 2014 state budget includes zero state funds for ILH.  How can this be?

Here is the scheme:  The private hospital pays LSU money to lease the LSU hospital.  That money does not stay with LSU; it ends up (directly or indirectly) being used as match in the Medicaid program.  After matching those lease payments with federal funds, the total, larger amount is paid back to the private partner in the form of a Medicaid payment.   The lease payments supplant the state funds.  However, the legislative fiscal office has already raised concerns about the leases being $39 million short which is  why the Division of Administration has already begun planning on “double” lease payments this year.  http://www.nola.com/politics/index.ssf/2013/09/new_orleans_shreveport_hospita.html

For years states have devised schemes to receive additional federal funds while reducing the state contribution for Medicaid.  There is a problem with these schemes, however.  Consider this from a 2009 report by the Congressional Research Office:

“In 1991, Congress passed the Medicaid Voluntary Contribution and Provider-Specific Tax Amendments (P.L. 102-234). This bill grappled with several Medicaid funding mechanisms that were sometimes used to circumvent the state/federal shared responsibility for funding the cost of the Medicaid program. Under these funding methods, states collect funds (through taxes or other means) from providers and pay the money back to those providers as Medicaid payments, while claiming the federal matching share of those payments. States were essentially “borrowing” their required state matching amounts from the providers. Once the state share was netted out, the federal matching funds claimed could be used to raise provider payment rates, to fund other portions of the Medicaid program, or for other non-Medicaid purposes.”

https://opencrs.com/document/RS22843/

DHH’s current scheme includes a “borrowing” component that looks similar to the practices this legislation was aimed at preventing.  Medicaid rules do not allow a Medicaid provider (read “hospital” here) to voluntarily donate money to the state when they know they will get this money back plus more (the federal share) as part of an increase in their Medicaid payments.  The federal oversight agency, CMS, has already expressed concerns to state officials that these lease payments could qualify as non bona fide provider donations https://louisianavoice.com/2013/06/26/cart-ahead-of-the-horse-cms-letter-to-sen-ben-nevers-continues-to-leave-jindal-hospital-plan-approval-up-in-air/ and they will be examining the hospital leases to determine this.    If CMS determines these are conventional fair market value leases, they will allow the payments.  Beyond the basic annual lease payments, the deals include “double lease payments” and other large up front lease payments designed to fix the state’s budget problem raising the specter of non bona fide provider donations.  If these payments are deemed to be non-allowable, the federal government will recoup any federal funds that were paid as match for these state funds https://louisianavoice.com/2013/06/26/cart-ahead-of-the-horse-cms-letter-to-sen-ben-nevers-continues-to-leave-jindal-hospital-plan-approval-up-in-air/.  This will likely be resolved after Jindal leaves office and can just be added to the huge mess the state will need to clean up when he departs.  The legislature is derelict in counting on these up front lease payments for at least two reasons: First, if they are legitimate, they are still borrowing from future years, and second, there is a good chance that they are not legitimate and will not be allowed by CMS.

A key question is, “Are these fair market value leases?”  The state and the complicit private hospital want the lease amounts to be as high as possible – this is how they will maximize the fund shift from private hospital to the state; then the funds will be used to generate the maximum amount of federal match which will be paid back to the hospital.  The state did not engage in a competitive bid process to determine the value of the leased facilities.  Instead, the state identified existing in-state private hospitals that it could pay additional funds through the Medicaid program to make the funding scheme work.  After receiving large up-front extra Medicaid payments, these hospitals would agree to lease the LSU hospitals and the lease payments would be used (recycled?) as match to replace the state funds the governor cut out.  The annual lease amounts are presumably based on an appraised value of the property being leased, but the actual payments which include large up-front amounts and multiples of the annual lease amounts – have nothing to do with the value of the property and everything to do with the state’s budget holes.  Furthermore, it is all but certain that none of the hospitals would garner the large lease amounts without the corresponding agreement by DHH to pay them higher Medicaid payments once they agree to lease the facilities.

Let’s take a closer look at the New Orleans deal.

The LSU Interim Hospital will be leased by Louisiana Children’s Medical Center (LCMC), a health system that includes Children’s Hospital and Touro Infirmary.  In addition to the annual lease LCMC agreed to pay $110 million in an “up front” lease payment to be repaid by the state over the next 20 years.  LCMC is in essence loaning the state $110 million for its use in the Medicaid program.  In addition, LCMC agreed to pay an additional $143 million to the state in order to build the parking garage and clinic office building at the new hospital in New Orleans.

  • $110 million payment.  This amount is notably similar to the state fund shortfall that the governor imposed on LSU shortly after the 2013 legislative session.  Remember the meeting of LSU leadership, board members, and Alan Levine that Fred Cerise documented in the recently circulated memo https://louisianavoice.com/2013/08/21/cerise-townsend-firing-came-soon-after-fateful-2012-levine-meeting-with-lsu-officials-to-discuss-lsumc-privatization/)? The supposed purpose was to identify a way to deal with the massive budget cut that the governor was laying at LSU’s feet.  Cerise outlined the magnitude of the cut which was equivalent to $122 million in state funds and a total – including federal funds -of $329 million and the impact would result in the closure of over half of the LSU hospitals.  Those cuts were never made, yet the governor never explained how the funds were restored to LSU’s budget.  In the New Orleans CEA, LCMC agreed to make an upfront lease payment of $110 million to LSU on or before June 24, 2013.  So with one week left in the fiscal year, LCMC paid LSU $110 million to avoid the massive budget cuts that were assigned to LSU by the governor to prompt the wholesale privatization.  But the cuts were never made, savings never achieved.  Instead, the administration borrowed the money from a private partner.  These funds will be repaid to LCMC over the next 20 years.  The state “borrowed” from LCMC, a private entity, funds to be used as match in the Medicaid program  – a practice that is at the very least against the intent of the federal Medicaid regulations and which the state will be repaying for many years after Jindal is gone from office.  If CMS does not approve of this trick, the state will be repaying the federal funds too (which is a much larger amount).
  • $143 million payment for parking and clinic buildings.  When LSU finally gained legislative approval of its business plan for the new hospital in New Orleans at the JLCB on September 16, 2011, there was a gap of $130 million in funding needed to complete the project (it appears that has grown to $143 million).  LSU explained at the time that it intended to use an LSU- affiliated foundation to provide that funding.  The approval to enter into a contract for construction was based on that assumption which was included in the business plan the JLCB considered.

The motion by Senator Murray (stated at 1:08 on the video archive of September 16, 2011 by Rep. Leger) was to “authorize the Office of Facility Planning and Control to enter into contracts up to the amount of funding in place for construction and completion of UMC in New Orleans.”

LSU received a commitment from the LSU Health Sciences Center – New Orleans Foundation as stated in this excerpt from a letter from LSU President John Lombardi to Thomas Rish, the senior manager for the Division of Administration.

“The mechanism for accomplishing such financing involves the UMCMC  [University Medical Center Management Corporation] Board entering into an agreement with LSU for LSU to provide services to the UMCMC Board, as represented by that board to the Joint Legislative Committee on the Budget on September 16, 2011, and in accordance with the business plan presented in open committee hearing at that time.  In carrying out that business plan and the above-described construction, it is expected and necessary for the UMCMC Board at the appropriate time to enter into one or more agreements with one or more other affiliated entities of LSU so that the affiliated entity will have a sufficient revenue stream to support the financing of the Ambulatory Care Building and the Parking Structure.  LSU has engaged in such financing methods in the past with great success, without affecting the state tax supported debt limit or relying upon the full faith and credit of the state.”

However, the UMCMC Board subsequently refused to commit to an agreement that acknowledged its support for LSU because a plan was already underway to reconfigure the governance structure into a private entity unencumbered with the commitments to LSU, commitments that LSU and UMCMC used in gaining approval for acquisition of private property and construction.  As a result, the LSU Foundation could not obtain this funding.

The Division of Administration proceeded to enter into a contract for construction of the entire project anyway (without the funding in place) in violation of the JLCB motion that authorized contracting for up to an amount of funding in place.  As construction proceeded and desperate for a funder so it could meet its obligations to the contractor, the Administration turned to LCMC for the funds which they agreed to provide on or before June 24, 2013.

Why would LCMC, in addition to an annual rent payment for the hospital agree to pay an additional $253 million up front to the state?  Likely because the state gave them the money first.  On June 18, 2013, DHH made a series of supplemental Medicaid payments to Children’s Hospital and Touro Infirmary in the amount of $250 million.  DHH made Medicaid payments (which include federal money) to LCMC affiliates so that LCMC could return those funds to the state to use as match for more federal funds.  You have to appreciate this scheme from a governor who doesn’t like federal money.

Annual lease payments.

In addition to the $253 million up-front payments, Children’s will make its first annual lease payment this year.   But that won’t be enough money to fill the budget hole for the 2014 budget year.  Remember, any lease payment Children’s makes is to be multiplied with federal match dollars and repaid to Children’s so they have every incentive to pay as much “lease” as possible.  Given federal prohibition on “provider donations” these lease payments must be restricted to fair market value amounts.  In order to address the state budget shortfall, the state will borrow from future year lease payments and have Children’s make a “double” lease payment this year (in addition to the $110 million “up front” lease payment to be repaid over the next 20 years).  The Times Picayune reported this plan by Commissioner Nichols’s to have Children’s make a “double lease payment” of $68 million to plug the current year’s budget hole by encumbering future administrations and legislatures with a payback of state funds and potentially the federal match as well.  http://www.nola.com/politics/index.ssf/2013/09/new_orleans_shreveport_hospita.html

The state will use this $68 million to draw down additional federal funds ($107 million in federal funds based on most recent match rate for Louisiana) and pay the entire amount back to Children’s or an affiliate of Children’s for Medicaid services.  Who wouldn’t put up a double payment?  Why not triple payment?  Quadruple?  Only CMS can put the brakes on this scheme.  They have been through this type of thing before in Louisiana and so will be closely scrutinizing the entire arrangement.  Jindal is calculating that any recoupment of funds will come well after he has destroyed the public hospital system and celebrated his success.  He seems to believe he can violate the CMS provider donation provisions by simply calling the donations “lease payments.”  We’ll see if CMS agrees.

Let’s review:

  1. The state is building a replacement hospital for Charity Hospital in New Orleans using $474 million in federal funds from FEMA and $300 million in other hurricane recovery funds.
  2. The state agreed to lease this facility built with federal funds to a private entity that is a Medicaid provider.
  3. Those lease dollars will be used annually as match in the Medicaid program to draw additional federal dollars.  “Monetizing” an asset built with federal funds, the state will generate additional federal funds as match dollars to support the operation. This will allow the Division of Administration to renege in its commitment of state funds to LSU (which the legislature accepted in the business plan submitted to JLCB as a condition for approval of construction).
  4. In addition, the state made a $250 million Medicaid payment to the private provider on June 18, 2013.  This Medicaid payment included roughly 2/3 federal funds.
  5. The private provider then made a $253 million payment back to the state on June 24, 2013.
    1. $110 million of that payment was directly or indirectly used as match in the Medicaid program to draw more federal money by which LSU was able to meet its budget for 2013.
    2. $143 million of that payment is targeted to complete construction of the new hospital in New Orleans (and qualify as all future rent payments for LCMC) that will be operated as a private facility.

That’s a lot of recycling federal dollars and private handouts, even for Louisiana.  Surely the governor must be proud of this innovation in financing.  Why is he not clearly explaining it to the public?

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State approved Christian schools have much in common with Mack Ford, Lester Roloff fundamentalist children’s homes

Posted in BESE, Charters, Education, Governor's Office, Vouchers on September 27, 2013| 27 Comments »

If you like the way Mack Ford treated and taught the children at New Bethany Home for Boys and Girls in Arcadia, you’ll love the education reforms being put in place for Louisiana by Gov. Bobby Jindal, Superintendent of Education John White and Board of Elementary and Secondary Education (BESE) President Chas Roemer.

Though many of the students at New Bethany never received their high school diplomas as promised, Ford employed the Accelerated Christian Education (ACE) curriculum for whatever teaching that occurred at the facility.

And though the home closed more than a decade ago, students’ claims of beatings and rapes at New Bethany recently resurfaced when it was learned that two former board members—Ford’s son-in-law and grandson, Timothy Johnson and Jonathan Johnson, respectively— were working in the campaign of 5th District congressional candidate State Sen. Neil Riser, the candidate who is Jindal’s personal choice.

On Tuesday, Jonathan Johnson, Ford’s grandson who has worked for retiring 5th District Congressman Rodney Alexander since 2003 and who now works for Riser as an unpaid volunteer, was asked about the propriety of Riser’s allowing two men tainted by the reports of beatings and rapes at New Bethany. “This doesn’t involve him (Riser),” he said.

Jonathan Johnson never denied the beatings and rapes occurred. Instead, he said, “I was twelve when that happened.” He also denied that he ever served on the New Bethany board. But minutes of a board meeting on June 30, 2001, obtained by LouisianaVoice indicate otherwise.

Called for the purpose of “disposing of properties owned and operated by New Bethany Home for Girls, Inc.,” the minutes identify board members “acting on behalf of New Bethany Home for Girls, Inc.” They include Timothy Johnson (Jonathan Johnson’s father and Mack Ford’s son-in-law), Jonathan Johnson, Maxine Ford, Douglas Gilmore and Thelma Ford (Mack Ford’s wife and the board’s vice president and secretary).

As for the manner in which the property of New Bethany Home for Girls, Inc., was disposed of, records on file in the Bienville Parish Courthouse indicate little, if anything was actually liquidated. Instead, records show the home’s property was simply transferred to New Bethany Baptist Church—a paper transaction that kept control of the property in Ford’s name.

New Bethany Baptist Church is in the New Bethany Home for Girls compound, situated inside a chain link fence topped with barbed wire. Former residents of New Bethany said only residents and staff members—no outsiders—ever attended New Bethany Baptist Church.

And while the home officially closed its doors in 1998 (though some claim that a few girls remained there until 2004), LouisianaVoice found several Independent Fundamental Baptist churches across the country (including at least one in Louisiana) that continued providing financial support for Ford’s “ministries” long after the home closed and services at New Bethany Baptist Church were no more.

Among those churches which continued sending financial assistance to Ford:

  • Calvary Baptist Church, Sulphur, Louisiana, W.T. Darnell, pastor;
  • New Testament Baptist Church, Centralia, Illinois, Don Smith, pastor;
  • Faith Baptist Church, Spokane, Missouri, James Mohler, pastor;
  • Berean Baptist Church, Winston-Salem, North Carolina, Ronnie Baity, pastor;
  • Gloryland Baptist Church, Lincolnton, North Carolina, Macon Ballard, pastor.

Baity, asked why his church continues to send money to a “mission” that no longer exists, said, “How this church spends its money is none of your business since you don’t help pay the bills.”

And though this is by no means an indictment of all church-affiliated schools, three traits prominent among many—far too many—fundamental Christian schools, including New Bethany, are child abuse, sexual abuse and fundamental Christian textbooks like the ACE curriculum, A Beka Book, and Bob Jones University (BJU) Press that teach such interesting things as:

  • Solar fusion is a myth;
  • A Japanese whaling boat found a live dinosaur;
  • Humans and dinosaurs co-existed;
  • The earth is only 10,000 years old;
  • The Ku Klux Klan tried to be a means of reform in some areas of the country;
  • God used the “Trail of Tears” as a means to bring many American Indians to Christ;
  • It cannot be shown scientifically that man-made pollutants will one day reduce the depth of the atmosphere’s ozone layer;
  • God has provided certain checks and balances in creation to prevent many of the global upsets predicted by environmentalists;
  • The Great Depression was exaggerated by propagandists, including John Steinbeck, to promote a socialist agenda;
  • Only 10 percent of Africans can read or write because Christian mission schools have been shut down by communists;
  • Unions have always been plagued by socialists and anarchists who use laborers to destroy the free-enterprise system that hardworking Americans have created.

The list of schools participating in the 2013-2014 Louisiana Scholarship Programs is peppered with church-affiliated schools, some two dozen of which employ one or more of the three curriculums cited earlier. Each was state approved by BESE, White and by virtue of his support of White and Roemer, Jindal.

  • Delhi Charter School: Until public opinion (and a threat of a lawsuit by the ACLU), Delhi Charter instituted a policy of forcing a female student to take pregnancy tests if the school suspected she might be pregnant. The policy was adopted after a 17-year-old student became pregnant by a school football player and was asked to leave the school. The boy was subjected to no disciplinary action.
  • Claiborne Christian School, West Monroe: Scientists are “sinful men” who exclude God in explaining the world. “Any stories that go against a biblical view of live in this series of books are skipped and are not read in the class.”
  • Faith Academy, Gonzales: Employs ACE textbooks. Students “defend creationism through evidence presented by the Bible verses (sic) traditional scientific theory.”
  • Northeast Baptist School, West Monroe: Uses A Beka and BJU science textbooks.
  • Union Christian Academy, Farmerville: Relies “heavily” on the BJU curriculum, as well as “selected materials that have been approved by the administration.”
  • Victory Christian Academy, Metairie: Uses A Beka and BJU curricula.
  • Northlake Christian Elementary School, Covington: Teaches from A Beka materials.
  • Northlake Christian High School, Covington: Student handbook includes policy against admitting prospective students and staff who do not meet “Biblical standards.”
  • Gethsemane Christian Academy, Lafayette: Uses ACE, A Beka and BJU curriculum.
  • Jehovah-Jireh Christian Academy, Baton Rouge: Uses A Beka curriculum.
  • Greater Mt. Olive Christian Academy, Baton Rouge: Uses A Beka curriculum.
  • Faith Christian Academy, Marrero: Uses A Beka curriculum.
  • Lafayette Christian Academy, Lafayette: Uses BJU and A Beka curricula.
  • Cenla Christian Academy, Pineville: Uses BJU and A Beka curricula.
  • Family Worship Christian Academy, Opelousas: employs A Beka curriculum.
  • Trinity Christian Academy, Zachary: uses A Beka for high school science.
  • Old Bethel Christian Academy, Clark: Uses A Beka curriculum.
  • Eternity Christian Academy, Westlake: uses ACE curriculum.

So while Jindal bemoans “government control” of Louisiana’s education system, he apparently has no problem with fundamental church schools gaining control of students’ minds through curricula that conflict with scientific knowledge—and doing it with state funding.

Anyone who has the ability to see through Jindal’s “reform” package has to be asking whatever happened to the doctrine of separation of church and state.

And that doctrine appears to be the only real difference between the Mack Fords and Lester Roloffs of the world, who steadfastly refused state funding to avoid the necessity of state licensing (and state supervision) and those Christian schools who crowd their way to the public trough for a share of state funding to support their curricula that border on mind control.

Can anyone say “Stepford students?”

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Questions abound as more horror stories emerge from New Bethany Home for Girls and Boys in Arcadia and Longstreet

Posted in Education, House, Senate, Legislature, Legislators, Politicians on September 18, 2013| 128 Comments »

Do it in the name of heaven,

You can justify it in the end.

 —One Tin Soldier by Dennis Lambert and Brian Potter

As more and more revelations come to light about the treatment of residents of the New Bethany Home for Girls and Boys in Arcadia and similar homes run by Rev. Mack Ford and wife Thelma in other localities, many serious questions remain unanswered.

  • Why, for example, have the Fords and employees of the home never been charged with felony child abuse?
  • How can a man (and dozens more like him scattered across the U.S.) mete out such barbaric treatment of children in the name of a Savior who’s every utterance of love, peace and forgiveness is in direct contradiction to the policies of these institutions?
  • How can the doctrine of separation of church and state trump state laws enacted to protect children who are unable to protect themselves from inhuman, sadistic and yes, anti-social treatment?
  • And most puzzling of all, how is it that Rodney Alexander and Neil Riser would each hire the grandson of New Bethany’s founder and who, along with his father, Ford’s son-in-law, sat on New Bethany’s board of directors?

http://clarkword.com/nb_docs/docs/NB%20Board%20of%20Directors.jpg

Besides the Arcadia home, the Fords also ran homes for boys in Longstreet in De Soto Parish and in Walterboro, S.C. One by one, the homes were eventually shut down by authorities, the Arcadia home in 1998 (some reports indicate that New Bethany boarded girls there as recently as 2004), but only after inestimable mental, spiritual and physical damage had been inflicted on hundreds of children, many of them in their early teens.

New Bethany is situated in a secluded spot deep in the piney woods south of Arcadia where the children’s screams could not be heard. Its remote location kept the facility out of the public eye and allowed Ford to give outsiders a look on his own terms—at church services, in a controlled environment, where the neatly scrubbed girls would sing and give emotional testimonials about past drug abuse and promiscuity (many of those “testimonials” contrived by Ford) and how New Bethany had turned their lives around—all orchestrated for the maximum emotional impact so as to extract “love offerings” from those in attendance.

http://clarkword.com/nb_docs/arcadia.jpg

Ford resisted state inspections, claiming that he accepted no state funding and that he was not licensed by the state and was therefore not subject to state regulations under the doctrine of separation of church and state.

On one occasion a state inspector did manage to breach the normally chained front gates of New Bethany but that inspector died suddenly a short time later.

Ford used his death as evidence of God’s intention to protect New Bethany from state regulations, saying that the inspector had been struck down by God and a similar fate would likely await other state inspectors.

Still, the clock was ticking and eventually it was the State Fire Marshal’s Office that would prove Ford’s undoing. Not that he didn’t try to thwart state efforts. Ford, following the lead of those like him at other homes, would learn when inspectors were due and would force the girls to move items away from exits and windows and to clean up the facility. He also would go to the extreme of physically transferring girls and boys to a like facility in another state.

And now, 15 years after New Bethany in Arcadia was finally shut down—hopefully for good—we learn that Timothy Johnson, Ford’s son-in-law and a former vice president at Louisiana College in Pineville, is a volunteer in State Sen. Neil Riser’s campaign to succeed retiring 5th District Congressman Rodney Alexander.

Even more baffling is the fact that Ford’s grandson and Timothy Johnson’s son, Jonathan Johnson, is on the payroll of Riser’s campaign after having worked for Alexander for about a decade.

Alexander’s office said Wednesday that Jonathan Johnson, who made $75,000 a year as Alexander’s State Director, was on “unpaid leave,” and would not return until November. Apparently Jonathan Johnson is confident that he will continue working after next month’s primary and the November general election for Congressman-elect Riser.

But the fact remains that if these two men sat on the New Bethany board, they would have had to have known what was going on at New Bethany—the beatings, the mind control, the harsh punishments, and the rapes by Ford that so many of the former residents have come forward to claim.

If, in fact, Timothy Johnson did remove a former student-turned-staff member after she tape recorded a Ford sexual attack on her as claimed, then he not only had knowledge of the incident, but is complicit in concealing a violent crime.

And yet, despite all that we now know about New Bethany’s facilities in Arcadia, Longstreet and Walterboro, S.C., the only prosecutions occurred in South Carolina and even then the perpetrators were allowed to plea bargain their punishment down to probation.

So, why didn’t Louisiana authorities act?

That’s an excellent question for which there are no ready answers. Perhaps authorities were intimidated at the prospect of grappling with God. Authorities in Bienville Parish have claimed they were unaware of the rape allegations but several victims say that is simply not true, that they knew and did nothing.

One administrative employee at New Bethany said he, along with then-State Rep. Woody Jenkins of Baton Rouge, wrote legislation that exempted church-affiliated facilities such as New Bethany from state regulations.

If that indeed is the case, then the entire Louisiana Legislature that passed the bill is also complicit in any crimes that took place—as is the governor who signed it into law.

The responsibility for the agony and suffering of hundreds of girls and boys who were forced to endure the sadistic—and that’s the only word for it—treatment at the hands of Ford and his staff can be laid at the feet of Ford, his family and staff members, Bienville Parish law enforcement, the legislature and the governor’s office.

Next: If you support the education reform programs of Gov. Bobby Jindal and Superintendent of Education John White in their push for more church-affiliated charters and their fundamentalist curriculum, you may want to first examine how some of these schools operated in Arcadia and continue to operate in other parts of the country.

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Neil Riser campaign worker linked to defunct church girls’ home, accusations of sexual abuse by father-in-law minister

Posted in Governor's Office, House, Senate, Legislature, Legislators, Transparency on September 16, 2013| 55 Comments »

© 2013

Two men with ties to a defunct church-operated home for girls and boys in Bienville Parish—and to the Baptist minister and accused sexual predator who ran the facility—currently are actively involved in the congressional campaign of State Sen. Neil Riser (R-Columbia), LouisianaVoice has learned.

Timothy Johnson of Choudrant in Lincoln Parish, who was fired earlier this year as a vice president at Louisiana College after leading an unsuccessful coup against President Joe Aguillard, is married to the daughter of Rev. Mack Ford who ran New Bethany Home for Girls and Boys south of Arcadia in Bienville Parish for several decades.

Timothy Johnson performs work on behalf of the Riser campaign, Riser’s campaign headquarters confirmed on Monday. His son, Jonathan Johnson, Ford’s grandson, worked for about a decade as State Director for retiring 5th District Congressman Rodney Alexander at $75,000 per year and is currently a paid employee of the Riser campaign.

LouisianaVoice has obtained more than a dozen affidavits from women who lived at New Bethany as teenagers and each one accuses Ford of sexual abuse, including rape and in at least one case, of having forced a 17-year-old girl at the school to perform oral sex on him.

The girl, now a woman with children of her own, said Ford had her follow him into a building on the New Bethany grounds only to encounter a woman who was cleaning the office. He told the woman to leave so he could “counsel” the girl. Once the woman was gone, he directed the girl to get on her knees. “I thought it was to pray,” she said, but then she said Ford unzipped his pants.

Another girl who claimed to have been subjected to sexual abuse at the hands of Ford, attempted to have Ford prosecuted after she left the home, married and had children of her own but law enforcement officials and the district attorney’s office in Bienville Parish ignored her claims until, despondent over her failed efforts, she committed suicide. Before she killed herself, however, she fired off a scathing letter to Ford.

In her letter, she reminded Ford that she was recruited for a singing quartet which would visit area churches to give testimony in order to attract monetary donations to the home and he would then later force her to have sex with him.

Once, while on a testimonial trip to Rhode Island, she said in her letter, she walked in on Ford having sex with another girl and instead of being contrite and ashamed, Ford blamed women in general, telling her that a man could “smell a woman” and that smell was what caused men to yield to temptation.

“You used your power to gratify your selfish, sick needs with no regard to the harm and pain and years of shame you were inflicting on innocent children,” she wrote. “And sickest of all (were) your attempts to find sexual fulfillment from children you had an obligation to protect. You lied to everyone—our families (and) multitudes of churches across the nation. You lied and said we were safe with you when in fact, you were a predator of the worst kind.”

When the children at the facility were not being sexually abused, each of the affidavits claim, they were being physically and mentally abused. The abuse including beatings, scrubbing children’s bodies with steel wool pads, handcuffing them to their beds with no opportunity to go to the bathroom, being forced to clean commodes and dog pens while wearing no rubber gloves, and forcing other residents to gang up on rebellious residents.

Female residents were forced to turn their backs and look down when male residents walked by. They were told if the boys lusted after them, it was their (the girls’) fault.

Children constantly ran away but were returned by sheriffs’ deputies and Ford steadfastly refused access to the grounds by state inspectors, claiming that he took no state money, was not licensed by the state and was not obligated to comply with state child care laws because as a church-affiliated facility, he was protected by the separation of church and state doctrine.

One of the things the state wanted to inspect was a four-story girls’ dorm that had no windows and no sprinkler system in the building.

It took decades before the state was finally able to shut the facility down and when it was finally closed in 1996, at the organization’s final board meeting, the board member who made the motion to sell off all the facility’s assets was Timothy Johnson, Ford’s son-in-law, married to one of the Fords’ eight daughters.

A support group comprised of former residents of New Bethany who say they each were physically, mentally and sexually assaulted claim that one girl who was assaulted by Ford managed to record the attack and was subsequently whisked away from the school by Timothy Johnson in an effort to protect his father-in-law.

Despite this incident and despite his serving on the board and making the motion to sell the home’s assets, Timothy Johnson is said to have insisted in a conversation with an employee at Louisiana College that he had never heard of New Bethany.

Another interesting twist emerging from documents received by LouisianaVoice involved a 1981 visit to another of Ford’s homes, the New Bethany School for Boys in Longstreet in De Soto Parish. The chairman and spokesman for the school, Rev. Bill Burrows, met with state officials and told them New Bethany was not required to be licensed by the state because of a new state law he had written with the help of then-State Rep. Woody Jenkins of Baton Rouge.

Jenkins would later make three unsuccessful runs for the U.S. Senate against incumbents J. Bennett Johnston, Russell B. Long and Mary Landrieu.

Ford even branched out in his operations, following the pattern set by his mentor, Lester Roloff, who ran several such schools in Texas before dying in a 1982 plane crash. Ford opened a school in Walterboro, S.C., where one of his daughters resided. South Carolina officials later raided that facility, however, and arrested two men who ran the home for cruelty to juveniles after authorities found boys locked in concrete cells wearing only their underwear and with just a coffee can for a toilet.

Ford taught the girls that it was a sin to wear pants and makeup or to listen to popular music or watch television and that if they were friends with anyone of a different faith, they would go to hell.

One girl said she was forced by one of the women at New Bethany to pull up her dress and to pull down her panties at which time she was beaten on her buttocks with a paddle.

On another occasion, a girl said she arrived at New Bethany and was sitting in a room when Ford walked in and asked her name. When she did not respond, he grabbed her by the hair and slapped her repeatedly with both the palm and back of his hand until she screamed out her name. He then told her she would continue to be “spanked” until she could answer in a civil tone.

One girl said she saw a girl who refused to eat grabbed by “several resident females” and held down while a staff member pried open her mouth and shoved peas down into her mouth. When she tried to spit them out, the food was shoved back into her mouth until she gagged whereupon she was told by the staff member that if she threw up, she would be paddled.

One man who removed his daughter from New Bethany was especially critical of the methods employed by Ford. “He would take those kids around to area churches to give testimonials about what a wonderful place it was,” he said. “And those kids weren’t about to rebel because they knew what would be waiting for them later if they did. When they would give their tear-jerking testimonials, the church members would hit the floor with their knees while reaching for their wallets to held Mack Ford with a love offering,” he said.

Ford now lives in retirement at the back of the New Bethany property and his son-in-law moved first into academia and now both he and his son have are involved in the Riser campaign that has itself been the subject of considerable criticism.

First, Alexander announced he would retire in a matter of weeks and then Gov. Bobby Jindal immediately announced Alexander’s hiring as head of the State Office of Veterans Affairs at $150,000 per year, a job that will give a substantial boost (from about $7,500 per year to $82,000 per year) to Alexander’s state retirement over and above his federal retirement and social security benefits.

Then Riser announced his candidacy…but before Alexander had gotten around to announcing that he was stepping down, according to the Federal Elections Commission (FEC), leading to well-founded speculation that the Alexander retirement and subsequent state job offer was orchestrated by Jindal to open the door for Riser. Riser, for his part, said the FEC incorrectly dated his candidacy documents.

The state congressional delegation, with the exception of the state’s two U.S. Senators, Democrat Mary Landrieu and Republican David Vitter, immediately endorsed Riser for the 5th District seat.

So now we have a candidate for an office that was created for him by the governor to replace a sitting congressman who will move into a cushy appointive position to feather his state retirement while two campaign workers—a son-in-law and a grandson—tied to a fundamentalist Baptist preacher who is said to have preyed on teenage girls for several decades now work in the candidate’s campaign.

And Jindal tried to tell us on inauguration day back in 2008 that it was a new day in Louisiana.

You can’t sell this as fiction; the plot would be considered far too improbable.

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Hey! We haven’t gone away; we’re just busy cobbling together a pretty good story that’s sure to raise a stink

Posted in Uncategorized on September 16, 2013| 15 Comments »

Dear readers:

I hope you haven’t given up on me because I’ve not posted anything for a few days. There is plenty to write about but I am presently working on a story that will be very explosive and which will generate a lot of controversy in both political and religious circles. Because this will likely be, by far, the most emotionally-charged story I’ve yet written on LouisianaVoice, I am required to move slowly and cautiously to verify all facts and to separate facts from unproven allegations.

I know this sounds like some local TV station hyping its 10 p.m. Thursday news stories a week in advance (a practice I abhor), but I wanted to explain why we’ve been relatively silent these past few days.

Your humble newsboy (with apologies to John Hays for stealing his online nom de plume).

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