| An interesting news release appeared in our email inbox on Thursday (Sept. 1).
The headline beneath the official portrait of Attorney General Jeff Landry proclaimed: Attorney General Jeff Landry Makes Louisiana Public Corruption Arrest
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After Bobby Jindal cut funding for DCFS, case workers were laid off and those remaining found themselves with impossible caseloads and no transportation for field work after repairs went undone. https://louisianavoice.com/2016/03/13/dcfs-funding-slashed-necessitating-driveway-visits-but-overworked-caseworker-is-arrested-for-falsifying-records/
At the risk of sounding like a broken record, LouisianaVoice continues to ask the unanswered question:
How is that the Attorney General and the Inspector General can be so vigilant in pursuing low-level employees while turning a blind eye to those with political clout who are equally guilty of abusing their office for financial gain?
Quite frankly, we have little patience for and even less confidence in those who are in a position to accomplish meaningful reform but choose to pick low-hanging fruit, i.e. rank and file employees with neither the financial means nor the political pull to mount an aggressive defense.
Take the lingering—and obviously ignored—case of Jill Boudreaux.
In April of 2010, the Jindal administration, in an offer to implement across the board savings, made a one-time incentive package offer to various state agencies as a means to encourage state employees to take early retirement.
Handled properly, it appeared at the time—and still does appear—to have been an economical and compassionate way to nudge employees who wanted out but who could not afford to retire, into making the decision to walk away, thus reducing the number of state employees which in turn translated to long-term savings in salaries and benefits paid by the state.
On April 23 of that year, DPS Deputy Undersecretary Jill Boudreaux sent an email to all personnel informing them that the Department of Civil Service and the Louisiana State Police Commission had approved the retirement incentive as a “Layoff Avoidance Plan.”
In legal-speak, under the incentive eligible applicants would receive a payment of 50 percent of the savings realized by DPS for one year from the effective date of the employee’s retirement.
Boudreaux, by what many in DPS feel was more than mere happenstance, managed to be the first person to sign up on the date the internet link opened up for applications.
In Boudreaux’s case, her incentive payment was based on an annual salary of about $92,000 so her incentive payment was around $46,000. In addition, she was also entitled to payment of up to 300 hours of unused annual leave which came to another $13,000 or so for a total of about $59,000 in walk-around money.
Her retirement date was April 28 but the day before, on April 27, she double encumbered herself into the classified (Civil Service) Deputy Undersecretary position because another employee was promoted into her old position on April 26.
A double incumbency is when an employee is appointed to a position that is already occupied by an incumbent, in this case, Boudreaux’s successor. Double incumbencies are mostly used for smooth succession planning initiatives when the incumbent of a position (Boudreaux, in this case) is planning to retire, according to the Louisiana Department of Civil Service.
On April 30, under the little-known retire-rehire policy, Boudreaux was rehired two days after her “retirement,” but this time at the higher paying position of Undersecretary, an unclassified, or appointive position.
What’s more, though she “retired” as Deputy Undersecretary on April 28, her “retirement” was inexplicably calculated based on the higher Undersecretary position’s salary, a position she did not assume until April 30—two days after her “retirement,” sources inside DPS told LouisianaVoice.
Following her maneuver, then-Commissioner of Administration Angelé Davis apparently saw through the ruse and reportedly ordered Boudreaux to repay her incentive payment as well as the payment for her 300 hours of annual leave, according to those same DPS sources.
It was about this time, however, that Davis left Gov. Bobby Jindal’s administration to take a position in the private sector. Paul Rainwater, Jindal’s former Deputy Chief of Staff, was named to succeed Davis on June 24, 2010, and the matter of Boudreaux’s payment quickly slipped through the cracks and was never repaid.
Six years later, in February of this year, Boudreaux finally retired for real, reportedly at the insistence of Gov. John Bel Edwards, who considered Boudreaux and the duplicitous maneuver and her accompanying financial windfall as something of an embarrassment.
When considering how Boudreaux successfully milked the system for what would appear to be a less than legitimate financial gain, one has to wonder how she manages to escape the self-serving law and order diligence of Landry and Street.
Or are their efforts to rid the state of official corruption a case study in selective justice?
Louisiana Voice 
Jindal emasculated every state agency that could or would potentially stand in the way of his heavy-handed tactics. One of those was the Civil Service Commission. Has Governor Edwards restored authority to any of these Boards? To the Civil Service Commission? If so, why are they not investigating this 6 year old “cold case” of outright fraud? Or is the current governor cut from the same bolt as his predecessor?
Because it was the Legislature, acting on the bills advanced by Jindal, that actually gutted the Ethics Commission, not Civil Service, it would require legislative action to undo the Jindal “reforms.” And knowing the collective ethics of the Legislature, if they go back to straighten things out, they would, in all likelihood, make a bad thing worse.
Landry is going to do fine. You can’t undo 200 years of corruption in 9 months. You are being too hard on him, Tom.
I have to respectfully concur with Fairness entailing AG Landry.
When I was a fraud investigator for the FDIC/RTC, there was a failed S & L in Gulfport, Mississippi to which I was assigned to work with FBI agent Greg Fee (New Orleans FBI office). There were two criminal matters we were investigating. One entailed approximately $20,000 in fraud committed by a teller. She utterly stupidly would debit dormant accoutns for a penny or two each month into her own personal account. It got detected when she got so emboldened as to actually close one account of an elderly lady in California which only had about $35 in it. Nevertheless, when the lady died, the heirs knew she’d ever closed the account and called the savings bank about it. That’s when an examination of all she was doing using her teller computer codes began to be investigated, and the FBI and FDIC/RTC were called in.
FBI Agent Fee spent two weeks working nothing but the teller case, whereas my marching orders from FDIC in Washington was to focus on the other element of fraud (I had minimal action with the teller case as my services weren’t needed because it was so cut and dry and EASTY to prove). That act entailed the bank president fraudulently creating approximately $2 million in invoices in the aftermath of Hurrican Juan in an attempt to defraud an insurance company. In sharp contrast to the teller fraud, the work I was having to do was taking months and months (going through boxes of invoices, sending out confirmations to vendors for legitimacy because about $700,000 of the invoices were indeed legitimate). Fee was long gone and had nailed the teller (though even that “simple” case still required two weeks of work on his part) while I was still left behind for months having to druge through all those invoices.
My point in saying all of that is that the ONLY way Landry could have made a big announcement of a major criminal indictment or arrest of a high-level governmental official at this early stage is if he’d inherited a case that had been 80%+ finished by Caldwell. Yeah, right!!! Caldwell was too busy trying to manufacture a way out of the civil suit with CNSI and focusing on a hapless case against Bruce Greenstein.
Having said what I have said entailing Landry, I TOTALLY agree with you entailing Stephen Street, Tom! Unlike the AG Office, THAT office reports to the GOVERNOR, and that is a MAJOR problem no matter who occupies the Governor’s mansion. Stephen Street is a political hack who will pursue whatever the Governor demands him to pursue and ignore what the Governor tells him to ignore. That’s why his daner got so riled up when I confronted him head-on entailing Corey delaHoussaye and Murphy Painer:
So, if I was an appeals court , my ruling is “affirm in part [Street] and remand in part back to the lower court for further proceedings [Landry].
BTW, we’re in a “holding pattern” so to speak on the delaHoussaye and Painter matters (for Painter, it’s basically been a “holding pattern” for over five years, and Preston Castelle and his lawfirm have made a FORTUNE off of that fact), but here are links to the latest court filings earlier this week if anyone would care to read (to me, they make FASCINATING reading material entailing Street’s Office’s operations):
Painter:
Click to access Painter_6a.pdf
delaHoussaye:
Click to access DelaHoussaye_1a.pdf
Hope everyone has an enjoyable extended Labor Day Weekend!!
If and when he decides to go after the $59,000 taken by Jill Boudreaux, I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt. Until that time, he’s just another opportunist politician
Landry’s hands are tied on Boudreaux. The prescription period (known as Statute of Limitations in other states) is five years entailing allegations of criminal acts. As your article plainly indicates, these acts took place in late April of 2010. Hence, by the end of April of 2015, NOBODY could successfully pursue it. A first-year law school graduate will have that thrown out based on prescription in lightning-fast speed (not to mention likely filing a complaint with the Office of Disciplinary Counsel for knowingly submitting a legally-prescribed case).
That responsibility fell upon a gentleman by the name of James D. “Buddy” Caldwell who, based on my personal experience, was FAR, FAR more interested in pursuing whistleblowers as he specifically did in my case by insisting that the Auctioneer Licensing Board hire convicted felon Larry S. Bankston (sidebar: JBE is long-time friends with BOTH Caldwell AND Bankston) to pursue my auction license for having reported the payroll fraud transpiring in that office:
http://www.auctioneer-la.org/problems_robert_burns_91212_payroll.htm
I’ll be making the announcement of the rollout of the website in about a week, but I’ve already registered a domanin name for posting videos in their entireties of the State Board of Contractors. The Executive Director of the Contractor’s Board, Michael McDuf,f has been quoted as stating, “We are confident with the integrity and character of Larry Bankston.” That statement ALONE gives me GREAT pause for concern. Hence, I’ll be adding considerable transparancy to the Board by way of openly videotaping their meetings in their entireties and posting them to the new website for the world to see.
Tom, I share your frustration on nothing being done entailing Boudreaux, but as the saying goes, “that ship sailed,” and Caldwell let that and many other instances of corruption go unchecked, and it’s my hope and prayer that Jeff Landry won’t do the same. At this point, I’m certainly willing to give him the benefit of the doubt.
Caldwell spent hundreds of thousands of dollars defending those that shouldn’t qualify for state defense or that have actually broken the law. I’m quite confident $59k is a drop in the bucket of the corruption and isn’t then on Landry’s radar at the moment. And no La Educator…Landry is not corrupt. Keep dreaming.
I agree with the rest of you that Jeff Landry is not corrupt. He has done a fair job of trying to clean up the mess that was left to him from the previous A.G.
I don’t think any politician is perfect but al least he is trying to do the right thing. Is he perfect? No and no other person would be either. I really believe if he gets the old cases cleaned up and he handles the new cases that come before him in a timely manner, than we can all be grateful to him and his office for that. He had a lot of old cases left to him and that is hard to clean up. House cleaning is not an easy task especially with new people coming in and when they don’t know about these old cases. It will take time but I have faith in him and his staff to get the job done. Will it all be done according to everyone’s satisfaction? Probably not, but no one is perfect. No one.
As far as John Bel Edwards I think he is doing a fair job too. He is trying and that is the best we can ask for. He has had a whole lot to deal with in a very short period of time and overall he gets an A rating from me,just like Jeff Landry gets the same A rating.
I voted for both Landry and Edwards and would vote over again for them if the same election was held again today. They can’t fix everything that is broken in our State. Things don’t happen that quickly when dealing with law. There are so many twist and turns and it all has to be presented the right way to have victory. I always thought of a courtroom as acting. The winner to me is the one who presents the best performance because that is what it is all about. Who was the best of the best in the room when the dust falls and the lights go off.
I think everyone should leave Landry and Edwards alone and let them finish their terms. Have faith in both of them and please pray for both of them because when they win, we the citizens win and I don’t like to loose either. Our future depends on it.
Stay focused, corruption will kill us, not coastal erosion. Fight will all you have left in you to correct this mess. Pray, pray and pray some more. In the end that is all we have.
Landry needs to stay focused on the work left to be done in his office for now and then when he has cleaned up all his mess in this office, then run for a higher office. If he did that then he would have a sure ace win when that time comes.
I would say the same for John Bel Edwards too. If he completes his task in his office then he will surely get himself re-elected if he chooses to run again.
Meanwhile let us all pray and pray and pray some more for Louisiana.
Sad to say it will not be erosion that will destroy us. It will be Corruption.
Prayers go further than anything known to man so lets all hope and pray that we the citizens of Louisiana will be saved not only by good honest politicians but politicians who will clean up the real mess of what is destroying one day at a time…….CORRUPTION TO THE CORE!!
Keep after Jeff Landry, Tom. He is a corrupt & self-serving political whore. Every action is to further his political standing. Keep up the good work!
Jeff Landry’s news releases read exactly the same except for the names. Is he too lazy to change the wording of his propaganda, or is he really that stupid?
I totally agree with La. Educator. Civil Service needs a lot of work, we now have an “at will” system just like Corporate America, “policy” is key word to override any Constitution provisions to protect the employee. Thanks to the Jindalite revolution and the Republican legislature. Keep learning and sharing ron thmpson
Jeff Landry takes cash from the Koch Brothers & Big Oil (among others) to take their side or look the other way when necessary. This is well documented here at Louisiana Voice. I stand by my criticism of him.
Mr. Burns, I am not a criminal lawyer, but could not Jill Boudreaux’s continued employment up until February of this year constitute a continuing criminal act? If so, the prescriptive period would not began to run until she left the employ of the state. Just asking.
Hi Clifford. I too am not a criminal lawyer; however, I interact with quite a few who follow this blog religiously and they have my email account. I would hope that, if I was way out in left field, one of them would have communicated that fact to me privately, and none did.
I think the problem with a successful prosecution of Boudreaux is that the incentive payment, which is what is alleged may have been illegal, was a lump sum transpiring in 2010. There is no law violation for her to hold a position, albeit a promotion with a higher salary, as a result of the sham. Even Jindal’s then-Commissioner of Administration, Angelle Davis, merely sought repayment. To prove a crime after the five-year prescription period expired, I think a prosecutor would have to prove a different criminal act (e.g. payroll fraud) transpired within the five-year prescription period.
Probably the best shot anyone had with that was the late C. B. Forgotston’s Hail Mary allegation entailing Boudreaux during the “Edmonson Amendment scandal.” Unfortunately, a decision was apparently made not to renew C. B.’s blog; however, his allegation is available just below Boudreaux’s picture at the following link: http://www.lspripoff.com/act11.htm.
I applaud Edwards’ insistence upon Boudreaux’s resignation. Unfortunately, that one single act is being drastically overshadowed by his acts of incredible cronyism that appear destined to challenge, if not exceed, those of former AG Buddy Caldwell. Heck, even mainstream media outlets such as WWL-TV (http://www.wwltv.com/news/investigations/lawyer-drops-claims-against-state-can-now-join-governors-team/312639788 & http://www.wwltv.com/news/investigations/critics-say-gov-edwards-is-running-his-own-buddy-system/312078675) and The Advocate (http://www.theadvocate.com/baton_rouge/news/politics/article_2d629298-712d-11e6-b66b-4f996a7bf239.html?sr_source=lift_amplify) and the Houma Today ( http://www.houmatoday.com/article/20160902/wire/160909912) are routinely reporting on them on a near-daily basis! Not a good sign for an administration only eight months into its tenure!!
This may be a stretch, Robert, but what if Boudreaux’s taking her salary through her retirement earlier this year was considered an ongoing act? Yes, the taking of the incentive while knowing she was not really leaving has prescribed. But the continued taking of her salary after receiving the incentive could be construed as an ongoing act.
I think “stretch” is probably a good word to characterize the prospects of a successful prosecution, but there’s nothing to lose submitting it to the AG’s Office to see what their take is. The gentleman heading the criminal division in Landry’s office is Brandon Fremin. What’s the worst that can happen? They send back a response saying any avenue for criminal prosecution has prescribed. As my dad used to always say, “Nothing ventured, nothing gained.”
I agree with you Robert. This was a good suggestion. This should be looked over by the Criminal Department. If this is not criminal it sure appears criminal. This falls under the line of a whole lot of fouger boo(Cajun style slang) going on in that office.
This also kinda sounds like the old saying if it looks like a duck, quacks like duck then it IS a duck!!
It always throws me back when I read stuff like this. How can these people justify that they are entitled to this kind of thing? I guess it is because they are in there so long, they think we the taxpayers owe them.
Mr. Fremin would be a good person to check this out because he was in this office before and has changed positions but he may have some first hand knowledge about this. What harm would it do to let him take a quick look? After all, that is what we are paying them to do, catch the criminals and prosecute them to the fullest extent of the law. If she is not guilty then so be it, put a period and move on. At least we would all know the facts and this would finally be resolved once and for all. That is a whole lot of money they are dealing with and it should be looked at by someone soon.
Thanks Robert!