Louisiana Voice

At the risk of sounding like a televangelist, we are launching our second ever solicitation of financial support from our readers.

In more than four years of our existence, we have done this exactly once before, in June, and the response was both heartening and humbling—heartening that you would respond in such a positive way and humbling to think that there are so many out there who were willing to help us in such a generous manner.

Still, like everyone else, we have growing expenses. When we began LouisianaVoice, our efforts were limited to the immediate Baton Rouge area and there were few issues with which we dealt.

Today, we travel the state, from New Orleans to Shreveport, from Slidell to Lake Charles, from Morgan City to Monroe and it seems that the number of issues we’ve tried to address has grown exponentially.

Because of this, we are again asking our readers to assist us in our efforts to report the stories no one else appears willing to report.

While not every lead or tip that we follow produces a story, we still devote considerable time, energy and expenses in an effort to determine if there is a story. Even though there may be no initial story, we file away the information and often that information surfaces at a later date to fill in gaps in subsequent stories.

Recently, we filed a public records suit against the Division of Administration (DOA) over its slowness to respond to our request. DOA, we believe purposely, drags out its compliance to our requests simply because they can. After we filed our lawsuit, the records were magically made available and while we truly felt that the judge desired to award damages and legal fees and to impose fines against DOA, he said the letter of the law prevented him from doing so. Accordingly, we were forced to pay our own legal costs in obtaining the records.

We want to continue to provide stories like the one that we were first in the state to break regarding the efforts to enhance State Police Superintendent Mike Edmonson’s retirement by as much as $55,000 per year. Because of our story, that unconstitutional attempt by our governor and his allies in the State Senate and the Department of Public Safety was thwarted.

Other stories we were the first to break include:

• Efforts by Gov. Bobby Jindal to force retirees out of the Group Benefits health program with irresponsibly unaffordable increases in co-pays and deductibles, a story that eventually prompted hearings by the House Appropriations Committee;
• The subsequent revelation that the document cited by DOA and the Office of Group Benefits (OGB) representative as the basis for the health benefits changes in reality said just the opposite of what was testified to;
• A story about problems encountered by OGB members in getting prescription coverage approved by MedImpact, Inc., a San Diego company that holds a $360 million contract with OGB and which has political ties to Newt Gingrich;
• A recent story about major pay increases given unclassified employees in the Jindal administration at the same time rank and file state employees have been denied raises for five years;
• Stories about generous tax incentives, exemptions and other favorable treatment given corporations that are costing the state some $3 billion per year and how repeal of the Stelly plan has cost the state $300 million per year;
• Stories about widespread abuses by the State Board of Dentistry and its contract investigator who, despite being a private contractor, was provided office space by the state;
• Bruce Greenstein’s initial refusal in testimony before a Senate committee to name the winner of a $200 million contract with the Department of Health and Hospitals and his eventual admission that the contract went to his former employer—testimony that eventually led to his indictment on nine counts of perjury;
• The story about attempts by the Department of Education to enter into a data sharing agreement whereby sensitive personal information on students in the state’s public schools would be made available to a company controlled by Rupert Murdoch, head of Fox News;
• Funding sources for Jindal’s political organization Believe in Louisiana—sources who have received major concessions and political appointments from the Jindal administration;
• The real reason for the firing and indictment of former head of the Office of Alcohol and Tobacco Control (ATC) Murphy Painter: Painter’s refusal to crater to demands from the governor’s office that favored New Orleans Saints owner Tom Benson, a major contributor to Jindal’s political campaigns (Painter was subsequently acquitted of all charges and the state was forced to pay his legal expenses of some $300,000).

Some contributors in our last fund raising effort gave $50 and $100. We’re not asking everyone to do that because we know many of you cannot afford these types of expenditures. We only ask that you please give what you can, even if it’s only $5 or $10.

You may contribute by credit card by clicking on the yellow Donate icon on the right hand side of this page. Then click on Continue immediately above the display of credit card logos. There is an option for you to make an automatic monthly donation, if you so desire.

If you prefer not to conduct an internet transaction (and many people don’t like paying online), you may mail a check payable to:

Capital News Service/LouisianaVoice

P.O. Box 922

Denham Springs, Louisiana 70727-0922