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Archive for February, 2014

Jindal and Angelle’s words may speak to governmental ethics and accountability; unabashed power grabs tell us otherwise

Posted in Ethics, Governor's Office, Higher Education, LSU on February 17, 2014| 7 Comments »

“It is essential to the maintenance of a democratic society that public officials and employees perform the public business in a manner which serves to promote and maintain in the general citizenry a high level of confidence and trust in public officials, public employees, and governmental decisions. The attainment of this end is impaired when a public official or employee holds two or more public offices or public jobs which by their particular nature conflict with the duties and interests of each other. The attainment of a high level of confidence and trust by the general citizenry in public officials, employees, and governmental decisions is further impaired by the excessive accumulation of governmental power which may result from public officials or employees holding two or more public offices or public jobs.”* (Emphasis added.)

*[Louisiana R.S. 42:61 Part III. Dual Officeholding and Dual Employment]

“Except as otherwise provided by the Louisiana constitution, no person holding office or employment in one branch of the state government shall at the same time hold another office or employment in any other branch of the state government.”**

**[Louisiana R.S. 42:63(B) Prohibitions]

“The governor or his designee, when serving as a member of a state agency, commission, or other state entity in accordance with a provision of the constitution, laws, resolutions, or executive order of this state.”***

***[Louisiana R.S. 42:63(F. Exemptions)]

So there you have it. Scott Angelle, former Secretary of Natural Resources under Gov. Bobby Jindal who resigned when the heat got a little too intense over the issue of the ever-expanding Bayou Corne sinkhole in Assumption Parish to run for the Public Service Commission in hopes of becoming the fifth PSC member to use that office as a springboard to the governor’s office is able to serve concurrently as a member of the LSU Board of Stuporvisors by virtue of a generous loophole in the state law which allows Jindal to consolidate his power even more.

Why else would he leave a $129,000-a-year post for one that pays about a third of that—$45,000—other than the mounting pressure of the Bayou Corne sinkhole on his office?

Angelle was elected on Nov. 7, 2012 to succeed Jimmy Fields in representing the 3rd Congressional District. Exactly three months earlier, on Aug. 7, 2012, Jindal appointed Angelle to the LSU Board. If voters expected him to relinquish his LSU Board seat after joining the PSC, they were sadly mistaken.

Legally, he is fully within his rights; state law clearly makes exceptions for the simultaneous holding of part-time elective and appointive positions, a full-time elective and a part-time appointive or vice-versa in different agencies so long as they do not conflict.

In this case, both the LSU Board of Stuporvisors and the Public Service Commission offices are considered part time.

But apparently, that one obscure disclaimer about “the excessive accumulation of governmental power which may result from public officials or employees holding two or more public offices or public jobs” means little to this administration.

Jindal and Angelle can always claim (correctly) that the two part time positions he holds in state government do not conflict with each other. Even by employing the greatest scenario stretch imaginable, it is impossible to see an occasion where the two positions could conflict.

And Jindal and Angelle can always claim (again, correctly) that they are in full compliance with the dual officeholding/dual employment law. No one is arguing that point. The law, like the state’s ethics laws, is full of loopholes and exemptions.

But does that make it right? Not, in our opinion, when Jindal’s actions are compared to his self-serving utterances.

In the spirit of Jindal’s oft-expressed ad nauseam claim (in speeches in other states but never in Louisiana) of presiding over the most ethical administration in Louisiana history and of having the most transparent and accountable administration ever, one might think he would be loath to skirt the spirit of the law just for the sake of building onto his power base. One might even think he would go to great lengths to make sure there could be no questions as to his motives or his political ambitions. One might think he would insist that his administration be above reproach.

One would be wrong on all three counts.

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Let your voice be heard this legislative session: LouisianaVoice’s handy dandy legislative guide

Posted in Governor's Office, House, Senate, Legislature, Legislators on February 16, 2014| 14 Comments »

The 2014 legislative session is less than a month away (March 10) and as always, we can expect the unexpected, the unusual, the downright bizarre and of course, controversy.

Under the law, sessions during even-number years—this year, for instance—consists of 85 calendar days during which the legislature may meet on no more than 60 days, though lawmakers receive per diem payments for all 85 days.

During odd-number years, the session is 60 calendar days and legislators are restricted to no more than 45 legislative days—again with full pay for all 60 days.

Gov. Bobby Jindal has two more regular sessions in which to push through his full ALEC-sponsored agenda so it is quite likely that we will see more controversial bills from the administration as well as the re-introduction of past bills that failed the first time around.

In the past we’ve been treated to a senator (Mike Walsworth, R-West Monroe) asking a high school science teacher during a committee hearing if cultures her students were growing in her classeroom could produce a human being.

We’ve had a House member (Nancy Landry) attempt to change a rule to force teachers in Baton Rouge to testify about controversial education bills to declare if they were on sick leave or otherwise authorized to miss a day of school (her precedent-setting rule failed).

There was even a strange question from then Rep. Mert Smiley (R-Port Vincent) who asked if there was some rule or regulation that could be invoked to prevent employees of the Office of Risk Management from leaving the agency for employment elsewhere (no such rule has existed since Jan. 1, 1863, when President Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation).

And then there was Rep. Valerie Hodges (R-Denham Springs) who voted in favor of state funding for church-affiliated charter schools—until an Islamic school in New Orleans applied for a charter. That’s when the fecal matter hit the Westinghouse oscillating air circulation device. Apparently her vote was restricted to her interpretation of what constitutes a non-secular school.

Despite the far too frequent lapses into idiocy such as exhibited by these three, there are important issues which come before the House and Senate and many times the forgotten citizens back home would like to make their voices heard but don’t always know the best way to get through to their legislators.

Well, we didn’t name this blog LouisianaVoice for nothing.

A regular reader in Lafayette inspired us with the solution.

We have decided to post the names of all 144 legislators (105 representatives and 39 senators) along the corresponding telephone numbers and email addresses.

By doing this, we are not necessarily soliciting a telephone or email campaign because we don’t even know what legislation will be introduced this year. This is simply an informational guide so that readers will have the information if and when it becomes necessary.

We also do this with full knowledge that some legislators simply do not return calls. We’re still waiting for a return call from Sen. Neil Riser (R-Columbia) from more than a year ago—well before his crash-and-burn congressional campaign.

We suggest you print this post and post it somewhere—or save it to a shortcut on your computer. If you do not know the name of your senator and representative, shame on you but here are the links that will help you find them:

House of Representatives

Senate

And here are the alphabetical lists of both the House and Senate:

Members of the House (to reach your representative during the session dial the House clerk at 225-342-7259):

Members of the Senate (to call senators in Baton Rouge, the main switchboard number is 225-342-2040):

You now have the contact information to make your opinion(s) known to your elected officials.

Oh, wait. We almost forgot:

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Notable Quotables (in their own words)

Posted in Governor's Office, Notable Quotables on February 14, 2014| 12 Comments »

“There was a time when liberals in this country believed in debate. There was a time when the left preached tolerance.”

—Gov. Bobby Jindal, speaking at the Ronald Reagan Foundation and Library Thursday.

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Jindal reveals his burning desire to become ‘Prophet-in-Chief’ with Thursday’s sanctimonious California speech

Posted in Governor's Office, Teague on February 14, 2014| 23 Comments »

'BEGONE...EVIL CRITICS'(Borrowed from the ‘Forward Now’ blog)

It seems we have all been dead wrong about Gov. Bobby Jindal’s aspirations to become Commander-in-Chief.

He would much rather be anointed as Prophet-in-Chief if that speech he gave at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library on Thursday is any indication.

And you may wish to change the spelling to profit—as in political profit—as might be realized by his shameless pandering to the religious right, the Family Forum, and, of course, the Tea Party.

Three words kept coming to mind as I read the text of his speech—written, by the way, on the Louisiana Governor’s Office letterhead so as to completely blur the line between church and state (wouldn’t his campaign committee letterhead have been far more appropriate?).

Those three words are: sanctimonious little twit.

While wagging his finger in our collective faces, Jindal had the nerve to quote John Adams as saying, “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people.”

There is but one way that statement can be taken: sinners and rapscallions need not apply. The accused no longer are entitled to a fair trial if their crime was not committed in the name of God. Those who profess to no religious belief apparently have no rights under our Constitution if those words are to be taken literally.

But Jindal failed to mention a couple other Adams utterances:

  • “The only maxim of a free government ought to be to trust no man living with power to endanger the public liberty.”
  • “A constitution of government once changed from freedom, can never be restored. Liberty lost once is lost forever.”

The first quote simply means we should trust no one who would impose his version of morality on the rest of us. The second quote is self-explanatory.

And to be sure, the freedom to express no religious conviction is every bit as sacred as setting oneself up as a moralist over society. The U.S. Constitution guarantees freedom of religion—and that includes the practice to not cling to any religious tenet, including Christianity, Hinduism, Judaism, Islam, Buddhism or the Presleyterians/Elviscopalians (those who think they will come back in their next life as Elvis).

Pointing out (correctly) that “every person wants to live out his or her values,” Jindal proceeded to cite several cases in which the federal government (Obama, in his preferred nomenclature) has sought to impose certain conditions, including attempts to force businesses to accept the administration’s contraception mandate under Obamacare, trying to protect a single teacher at a church-affiliated elementary school who became pregnant from being fired by the school, and a ruling by the New Mexico Supreme Court that a photography business had violated the state’s Human Rights Act by refusing to photograph a same sex wedding ceremony.

Even as he invoked the word tolerance (“There was a time when the left preached tolerance.”), Jindal quietly ignored events in his home state: the refusal of a justice of the peace in Tangipahoa Parish to preside over an interracial marriage and the expulsion of a pregnant teenager at a church school in Richland Parish while the boy who impregnated her, a football player, received not so much as a reprimand. Moreover, the school then attempted to impose a policy whereby it could indiscriminately test female students for pregnancies. Public outcry was such that the school quickly backed down from that hypocritical policy.

“There was a time when liberals in this country believed in debate,” Jindal said. “But that is increasingly not the case for the modern left in America.”

This from a man who tolerates absolutely no dissenting opinion in this oligarchy, er… administration.

All one has to do to understand how open this governor is to debate is go down the Jindal Teague List:

  • Tommy and Melody Teague;
  • William Anker;
  • Cynthia Bridges;
  • Mary Manuel;
  • Raymond Lamonica;
  • John Lombardi;
  • Dr. Fred Cerise;
  • Dr. Roxanne Townsend;
  • Scott Kipper;
  • Murphy Painter;
  • Tammy McDaniel;
  • Jim Champagne;
  • Ann Williamson;
  • Entire State Ethics Board;
  • State Rep. Jim Morris;
  • State Rep. Harold Richie;
  • State Rep. Joe Harrison;
  • State Rep. Cameron Henry

These are people who were either fired or demoted for the unpardonable transgression of disagreeing with Jindal on some level of policy or legislation.

So much for any belief in debate by this administration.

And now Jindal, who never seems to find the time to hold press conferences or to give interviews in his home state, goes traipsing off on yet another out-of-state trip in his quixotic pursuit of the presidency to give yet another speech about how everyone else should think and act as he does.

But did anyone notice that nowhere in that 4,500-word speech did Jindal once mention the word compassion?

Compassion. That’s a word that has been strangely absent from this entire administration.

Where was Jindal’s compassion when he vetoed that $4 million appropriation for the developmentally disabled last year?

Where was his compassion when he refused the expansion of Medicaid, thus depriving adequate health care for hundreds of thousands of Louisiana’s poor?

Where was his compassion when he attempted to “reform” the state’s retirement program that would have cut some state employees’ retirement by tens of thousands of dollars per year?

Where was his Christian compassion when he said the only reason for Louisiana’s public school teachers remaining on the job was the fact that they are breathing?

Where was his compassion when he turned his back on the people of Bayou Corne, refusing to so much as visit the expanding sinkhole for months on end?

And now he’s going to strap on his halo and wings and travel around the country telling anyone who will listen how great he is, how Christian he is, how tolerant he is, how open to debate he is?

Perhaps Gov. Jindal should read 1 John 4:20.

  • “If anyone says, ‘I love God,’ and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen.”

Never have the words to the song One Tin Soldier been more appropriate than for Jindal and his minions:

Go ahead and hate your neighbor,

Go ahead and cheat a friend;

Do it in the name of heaven,

You can justify it in the end.

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Additional details of LR3’s $717,000 no-bid contract with LDED serve only to raise more questions than they answer

Posted in BESE, Contract, Contracts, Ethics, RFP, Request for Proposals, State Agencies on February 11, 2014| 17 Comments »

The more we look at that contract between the Louisiana Department of Economic Development (DED) and LR3 Consulting, the more unanswered questions arise.

LR3, you may remember from our Feb. 5 post, is run by Lionel Rainey, III, who also happens to be the PR spokesperson retained by those who wish to form their own city of the St. George area of East Baton Rouge Parish, separate and apart from the city of Baton Rouge.

If one didn’t know better (and we truly did not initially), Rainey could easily be taken as the leader of the movement since local television news reports on the pullout efforts invariably feature him reciting the proponents’ talking points. Turns out he’s just a hired gun.

(Proponents, by the way, don’t like the term pullout because, they say, the St. George area is not within the Baton Rouge city corporate limits in the first place, so technically, it is not a pullout or secession; it’s simply a movement to incorporate the currently unincorporated area as a city of its very own.)

Before LR3, there was 3 Lions Consulting which was awarded a three-year contract (July 1, 2012, through June 30, 2015) by DED to “establish a database of potential trainees for continued pre-hire training using a customized assessment instrument to determine skills proficiencies based on individual company requirements” for DED’s Louisiana FastStart program (LFS) at a contract cost of $699,999.

In other words, Contract No. 713974 called for 3 Lions to compile a data base of potential employees for Louisiana plants and businesses—the same thing that the Louisiana Workforce Commission had been doing and which it still does.

But barely three months into the contract and after being paid just under $31,000, Jeff Lynn, LFS executive director, sent a one-paragraph letter of termination to 3 Lions partner Stanley Levy, III. “In accordance with the terms of our contract…Louisiana FastStart hereby provides you with the required five (5) day written notice to terminate our agreement, effective Oct. 19, 2012…”

The reason given for the termination was a two-word message scribbled on DED’s performance evaluation: “Ownership change.”

Levy apparently had parted company with his partner, precipitating the contract cancellation. His 3 Lions partner? Lionel Rainey, III, who had incorporated his new business, LR3, only a month before. LR3 was subsequently awarded an even bigger three-year contract ($717,204) on Oct. 20, 2012, just one day following the termination date of the 3 Lions contract.

The LR3 contract, to run from Oct. 20, 2012 through Sept. 30, 2015, again calls for the “development, establishment and/or delivery of a database of potential trainees for continued pre-hire training using a customized assessment instrument to determine skills proficiencies based on individual company requirements.”

Through January 13 of this year, DED had paid LR3 $186,880.

But the LR3 contract, like that of 3 Lions before it, is broken into three yearly maximums of $217,204 the first year and $249,999 in each of the second and third years.

For 3 Lions, the payment maximums were $169,999 the first year and $249,999 in each of the second and third years.

This was done, according to DED Communications Director Gary Perilloux, so as to avoid the necessity of issuing a request for proposals (RFP) and thus avoid “competitive bidding or competitive negotiation.”

The issuing of service contracts is permissible so long as the “total contract amount is less than $250,000 per twelve-month period,” according to Title 39, Section 1494.1 of the Louisiana Revised Statutes which then goes on to say, “Service requirements shall not be artificially divided so as to exempt contracts from the request for proposal process.”

Section 1499 of the same title says, “The head of the using agency or the agency procurement officer shall negotiate with the highest qualified persons for all contracts for professional, personal, or those consulting services for less than fifty thousand dollars, or those social services qualifying under R.S. 39:1494.1(A) at compensation which the head of the using agency determines in writing to be fair and reasonable to the state (emphasis DED’s). In making this determination, the head of the using agency shall take into account, in the following order of importance, the professional or technical competence of offerers, the technical merits of offers, and the compensation for which the services are to be rendered, including fee. Negotiation of consulting services for $50,000 or more or social services not qualifying under R.S. 39:1494.1(A) shall be conducted in accordance with Part II, Subpart B hereof. [RFP]

To justify the contract, an undated letter was sent to Sandra Gillen, since retired as the Director of the Office of Contractual Review, by DED contracts reviewer Chris Stewart which certified that “The services (being contracted for) are not available as a product or a prior or existing professional, personal, consulting, or social services contract.”

But wait. Not so fast.

LouisianaVoice has found yet a third contract with Covalent, LLC, for an even larger amount–$749,997—awarded more than a month after the LR3 contract.

That contract, divided into three equal maximum payments of, wait for it… $249,999, calls for the “development, establishment, and/or delivery of a database of potential trainees for continued pre-hire training using a customized assessment instrument to determine skills proficiencies based on individual company requirements.”

In other words, Covalent’s contract calls for it to perform services which are identical to those of first 3 Lions and then of LR3.

And yes, there is that same letter from Chris Steward to Gillen’s successor, Pamela Rice which certifies that “The services (being contracted for) are not available as a product or a prior or existing professional, personal, consulting, or social services contract.”

But…but…what about the LR3 contract?

Good question. It looks as though someone misrepresented the facts with that certification. DED now has two firms performing services that appear to be duplications of work being done by LWC—and neither of the contracts which combine for almost $1.5 million, was awarded on a competitive bid basis.

Apparently, Covalent is performing some work, though not nearly as much as LR3. From Jan. 3, 2013 through May 30, 2013, Covalent has been paid a grand sum of $35,465—and nothing since May 30. That’s a far cry from the $249,999 allowed under its contract.

All of which raises the obvious question: Why do these firms require such massive contracts and why did DED find it necessary to break them up in apparent violation of state statutes just so it could make the contract awards to whom it wanted?

And why did DED desire the services of Rainey over Levy to the point of cancelling the 3 Lions contract so it could award a second no-bid contract to Rainey’s new company? And why, only six weeks after awarding Rainey a $717,000 contract did DED contract with Covalent for $749,997 to perform the same services as Rainey?

What were the backgrounds of Levy and Rainey? And why did they terminate their partnership, especially when it cost Levy a nice, fat state contract?

For openers, LouisianaVoice found records that show LR3 was on the payroll of State Rep. John Schroder (R-Covington) since November of 2012 and has received $16,250 in 11 monthly payments of $1,250, one payment of $1,875 and another of $625. All payments were made at least a year after the 2011 elections.

3 Lions, before the dissolution, also appears have spread its services around. The firm received $5,600 from John Conroy in 2012 before Conroy dropped out of the Baton Rouge mayor’s race; $8,000 from State Treasurer John Kennedy, $34,000 from Board of Elementary and Secondary Education President Chas Roemer during Roemer’s campaign for re-election in 2011, and $52,600 from Secretary of State Tom Schedler during his 2011 campaign for re-election.

While Rainey and LR3 got the $717,000 contract with DED and a $20,000 contract with the Secretary of State’s office, Levy, with his new company, Fuse Media, has only managed a modest $49,825 post-LR3 contract to “develop a strategic communications plan, video series and animated PowerPoint slides for the Governor’s Office of Coastal Restoration.”

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