The Louisiana Office of Inspector General spent more than twice as much on attending conferences and conventions for fiscal years 2012-2016 than it did on travel for investigating public corruption, the job it is charged by statute with doing, according to RECORDS obtained by LouisianaVoice.
A former investigator for the OIG, which has experienced unusually high turnover among its investigative agents, said Inspector General Stephen Street was always “very secretive” about revealing the agency’s budget to subordinates. “He never let us see any of the agency’s finances,” the former investigator said.
By combining the yearly budgets, the totals reflect that OIG had a five-year budget of $45,475 for all (in-state and out-of-state) field (investigative) travel compared to a combined budget for all convention and conference travel of $75,450, a difference of almost $30,000.
Five-year expenditures for both field travel and conference and convention travel fell well below the respective figures budgeted but conference and convention travel expenditures of $63,735 were more than double the $30,011 spent on investigating reports of wrongdoing by public officials.
By breaking the budgets down to expenditures for only in-state field travel and out-of-state conferences and conventions, the contrast was even more glaring.
Only $11,200 of a total budget of $30,315 was spent on in-state field travel for the five years (an average of $2,240 per year) while the $52,535 spent on out-of-state conferences and conventions ($10,509 per year) exceeded its $42,135 total budget for that purpose by nearly 25 percent.
In looking at yearly budget line items, Street’s office exceeded its budget for out-of-state conferences and conventions by 50 percent in 2013 and by 68 percent the following year.
The budget for travel to out-of-state conferences and conventions was $10,210 for each of those years but in fiscal year 2013, Street’s office spent $15,350 and spent even more—$17,181—in fiscal 2014 on non-investigation related out-of-state travel
Also for both 2013 and 2014, the OIG’s budget for in-state field travel was $11,933 but the agency spent only $2,811 in 2013 and $4,447 in 2014 for that purpose.
TRAVEL RECORDS provided by the OIG’s office show that beginning in August 2012, Street, often accompanied by as many as three or four other OIG personnel traveled on the state dime to such places as West Palm Beach, Clearwater, Destin and Jacksonville, Florida; Austin and San Antonio, Texas, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Boston, Detroit, Memphis, Baltimore, Charlotte, Washington, D.C., Sioux Falls, South Dakota, and Newark, New Jersey.
Of those 22 trips taken by Street and OIG staff members, five (taken by someone other than Street) were described as “investigation related.” All the others were said to have been for training or for Association of Inspectors General (AIG) functions.
Street is the AIG national president and also serves as an adjunct instructor for the National White Collar Crime Center and the Inspector General Investigator Academy. “Whenever I teach for those organizations,” he said, “they cover 100 percent of travel and lodging.”
Still, at the end of the day, one has to wonder how an agency charged with investigating public corruption in a state so riddled with public corruption as Louisiana can possibly justify racking up expenditures for out-of-state convention and conference travel that more than doubles that spent on in-state investigative travel.
But then again, we may have answered our own rhetorical question with that “so riddled with public corruption as Louisiana” line.
Louisiana Voice 
So is the same Stetphen S. still in charge or has he been replaced by Edwards?
Aliica
Still there. Edwards cannot fire him, only the Legislature can.
I thought the Inspector General served at the pleasure of the governor, unlike the Legislative Auditor.
At one time, s/he did. The law creating it was revised in 2008 and 2010 to provide as follows (LRS 49:220.23):
B. The inspector general shall serve a six-year term.
C. The salary of the inspector general shall be fixed by the governor, which amount shall not exceed the amount approved for such position by the legislature while in session. The salary of the inspector general may not be reduced by the governor or the legislature during his term of office.
D.(1) Notwithstanding the provisions of Subsection B of this Section, the inspector general may be removed by the governor provided such removal is approved by a majority vote of each house of the legislature.
(2) In order to obtain the consent of a majority of the elected members of each house of the legislature, the clerk of the House of Representatives and the secretary of the Senate shall prepare and transmit a ballot to each member of the legislature by certified mail with return receipt requested, unless it is determined that the legislature will be in session in time for the ballots to be distributed to them and returned by them during the session. The ballot shall be uniform and include pertinent information as the clerk and secretary shall determine.
Stephen Street is an unmitigated disaster with no backbone whatsoever to buck a witch-hunt attack order from the governor (Painter and delaHoussaye), resulting in STAGGERING legal defense costs: http://www.soundoffla.com/?p=402.
Good reporting, Tom. My experience has been when a Government agency hides budget information from its own people, it’s because they know they’re doing things that they shouldn’t.
Tom, you have my undying gratitude for the work you do in keeping us informed about the goings on in Louisiana. However, I think am going into “corruption overload.” When I think of “making America great again, I am thinking of a time when ethics and morals could determine if you could run for elected office. Sex affairs, pornography, fraud, lies, discrimination against just about anyone was a no-starter, cronyism was not too open, conflict of interest was not tolerated. OK, maybe this never was the case entirely…but, this day all of the evil, corrupt, dangerous acts are just accepted. No religious outcry. No legal call for justice… you seem a lone voice crying in the wilderness. Keep it up!
There was a fluff item in The ADVOCATE recently pointing out Mr. Street was recently elected to a second consecutive term as president of his national organization – I think we can see at least part of the reason here.
This is the kind of thing that has bad “optics” [I hate the new use of that word], if nothing else. However, Edith makes a very excellent point above, i. e. people’s perception of how well government is run has reached a new low and the general public has become so jaded they expect this kind of thing and, much worse, accept it without question. The absolutely worst consequence, however, is that when it comes time to try to raise revenue for things that are actually needed, these are the kind of things people think about.
You would think people who have to run for office would be concerned about this, but I guess since we now have a self-professed liar and known huckster as our POTUS-elect in this “post-truth” world anything goes and whoever pushes the right buttons, lying or not, gets elected. To hell with reality – it’s too difficult to wrap your arms around, much less actually do anything about, and most people don’t care (except when its tax election time) anyhow, right?
There is a lot of pressure to get rid of the OIG. This won’t help Street’s case.
The OIG was created because department undersecretaries and internal audit units (to the extent they even existed) failed in their responsibilities (and, continue to do so) for reporting waste, fraud, and corruption. Based on my limited knowledge, the only office in the state effectively ferreting out these things is the Legislative Auditor and his findings don’t get nearly the attention they should.
Again, I ask for the umpteenth time, when will we hold the people we pay good money to run state departments and agencies accountable for waste, fraud and corruption in their very own departments?
It seems so simple. Consider the following scenario:
JBE: I read in the paper this morning about the theft committed by one of your employees. If you don’t fix whatever allowed this to happen, you are a gone pecan.
Secretary X: Yes sir.
Secretary X now can do one of 2 things:
1. Go ahead and resign since he has no intention of doing what the governor has asked.
2. Demand from the highest-ranking person in the problem area a full explanation and tell him/her s/he is a gone pecan if the problem isn’t immediately resolved.
The person at step 2 does pretty much the same thing all the way down the line to the lowest possible level.
Somebody, PLEASE, tell me why this wouldn’t work? I know it wouldn’t get rid of 100% of the problems, but it would at least show somebody cares enough to try. For the most part, government cannot, by its nature, be run like a business. The above, however, is one of the ways it can. And, before you bring civil service into the equation, you need to realize it is simply a scapegoat for poor management. Political appointees have little protection (about the same as executives in the private sector) and civil service NEVER, even in its heyday, protected corrupt or even simply unproductive employees.
Stephen, is there a link you can provide for the JBE employee theft article? I’d like to read it. Thanks, and I hope your holidays are enjoyable.
I believe Stephen’s “article” was fictional. He was laying out a script of how events should unfold in such a scenario.
Uh, oh. My bad. I see right above it is the statement, “Consider the following scenario:”. Here I was all set to accuse TheAdvocate of burying it somewhere! Thanks for the clarification, and I’m sure Gov. Edwards appreciates the clarification too.
I should have inserted “hypothetical” before scenario to eliminate the possibility of confusion.
I consider it my fault, Stephen, for not reading closely enough. I saw the JBE:, and I thought YOU were directly addressing him and said if he (JBE) didn’t fix it, HE was a gone pecan. Then I prematurely scrambled to The Advicate website to try to find the article. I guess you got me a little excited with the strong words that I now realize you’re saying JBE should state to underlings, and I fully concur with you.
The scripture for the OIG is II Timothy 3:7 “always learning but never coming to the knowledge of truth.”
It’s not that he don’t know how “he just don’t want.”
And then Elvis had another way of saying it “you ant nothing but a hound dog crying all the time if you can’t catch a rabbit then you ain’t no friend of mine.”
The only thing he seems to put up a fight about is his budget.
So the bottom line is we can have the smartest OIG in the nation/world but if he ain’t doing anything with it he is no good to us.
I know a person who fits the bill…has the nose…for this job. However, I can’t decide if he would be more valuable to Louisiana as the IG or as the one who publishes LouisianaVoice.
Maybe Street was telling the truth on the witness stand when he testified in the Murphy Painter case that, “I have no knowledge of this case. You’ll have to pose your questions to my lead investigator.” It’s now obvious he was too busy traveling all over the nation (like his boss, Jindal, and remember, the OIG reports to the Governor –check the organization chart) relishing in his colleagues across the nation kissing his ass!
At any rate, Shane Evans, the investigator to whom Street deferred, readily testified he did nothing more in the form of an investigation of Painter than to “write down what Brant Thompson said about him.” What Thompson said was that Painter was “manic-depressive, out-of-control, and selectively enforcing alcohol statutes.” Based upon that statement by Thompson, Painter was summoned to Gov. Jindal’s office and fired mere hours after Thompson made the statement, and now 5 1/2 years later, after STAGGERING legal bills (including $500,000 to Painter’s defense team when he was acquitted of any wrongdoing), here we are with no end in sight on either his or delaHoussaye’s civil suits.
Un-freaking-believable!!
This seems to be the reality that the voters of Louisiana want. Otherwise why would they keep voting for it?
Now we need investigators to investigate the investigators. There’s no end to it when you have people spending other people’s money.
JBE, Honor Code Enforcer, should know EXACTLY how to go about establishing a culture of honesty. Since Honor, Loyalty, and Integrity start at the top, let’s see leadership from JBE.
Tom, I was reflecting on your many exposés in the few months I’ve known you. An effective governor – I can dream – would give you his private phone number and delegate someone to investigate and correct the many problems you’d report… Your factual reports could easily keep ten+ people occupied with corrective action tasks.
It’s tough trying to understand how the state / local government entities are staffed with those who do everything possible to serve themselves and cronies while ignoring those they supposedly represent. It’s very sad to have the majority of citizens remain oblivious to the reality of Louisiana government foibles and how much of the taxes they pay are wasted or pilfered. Most who know are unwilling to attack the problems head-on. Sadly, laissez les bons temps rouler is unquestionably not a battle cry! I can only imagine that the media in Louisiana has a distaste for stories that might affect reputation or advertising revenue.
We in the D/FW area are lucky. Each news channel is staffed with one or two investigative reporters who take calls from residents and select the bona fide complaints for immediate action. There are no untouchables in government or business that get a pass. If a citizen can’t get a bureaucrat to answer a phone or call-back, the station will tape a segment on the problem and invite the official or representative to participate in an interview with the wronged individual. That seldom happens, but problems are magically fixed the following day.
Today in Texas we even have the AG under indictment. http://bit.ly/2hbNqM7
I’ve thought about this article for the last 2 days. Last December, I turned over evidence that a state agency had agents that falsified evidence, created false scenarios, perjured themselves under oath, and committed billing fraud. To date, NOTHING has been done about it. Just lots of excuses. And there remains no accountability. I would honestly be surprised if the OIG acts on it at all. They are singing the same old song and dance and making excuses. It’s a shame, since their office is facing being shut down by the legislators. Maybe it should be closed if tangible results can’t be obtained in a timely manner. Any private business is measured on results. If the state had similar accountability, the OIG would be going out of business.
Good points.
A long, long time ago before Mr. Street ascended to the throne. I went to the OIG with hard evidence to support a case that, between having a full-time state job AND several state contracts, a psychiatrist on the state payroll was being paid for working a minimum of 114 hours per week. I thought that was a little odd, wouldn’t you? Several weeks later I got feedback from the IG that this matter had been fully investigated and everything was fine. Needless to say, There was little I could do on my own and the head of the department involved apparently also thought it was reasonable that this person was being paid for what amounted to working over 16 hours per day, 7 days a week. How many times after that do you speculate I asked for help from the IG?
P. S. In full disclosure, I wanted to be the IG when that office was created. Instead I got the most thankless job in state government, state budget director. After several years, people got tired of hearing me say the same things over and over and over so they simply stopped listening. There are relatively simple, common-sense things we could do to address our problems, but our leaders find it necessary to make things look so complicated they seem impossible – a clever way to get off the hook, no?.
Thank you so much for sharing this, Stephen. It’s something I never knew. Consider yourself lucky Street didn’t threaten to prosecute YOU for reporting the situation. If you care to watch from the 24:00 – 26:30 mark of the video on this page, http://www.soundoffla.com/?p=402, you’ll see that’s EXACTLY what the man did with me!!
Despite the most skilled and expensive lawyer I unfortunately had my medical license suspended and I continue to fight these scoundrels in court. I would appreciate any positive press that we can use to help me fight this battle as you know we are dealing with deep corruption. I hope you have a merry Christmas and a happy holiday season.
Best regards
Dr Arnold FELDMAN
[…] December 8, 2016, investigative journalist Tom Aswell published this article demonstrating that Louisiana Inspector General Stephen Street has spent considerably more on […]
Great article and comments! I only note that the La. Republicans are so proud of Street and his national travels/appointments and his commitment to elect only republicans to office and at taxpayer expense. the lobbyists and $$$ pacs are totally controlling and destroying our Democracy/republic.Look at all of the legislation passed to protect the appointed dept heads, via “policy” statements. and the great republican sleuths like Greg Phares who found in the veterans nursing home that some patients fell out of bed and the documents were inaccurate, but added much to the Republican crap to privatize the Vet. homes, love always ron thompson
No one lines or needs partisan comments. Anyone fair minded can see through all of this. Comments about “republicans being so proud” are just disingenuous.