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Archive for August, 2017

Former State Fire Marshal inspector critical of LOSFM cross-training; tells of booze run from B.R. to N.O. in state vehicle

Posted in Uncategorized on August 9, 2017| 53 Comments »

A former employee of the Louisiana Office of State Fire Marshal (LOSFM) has come forward to provide LouisianaVoice more damning information about the manner in which inspections and investigations are carried out by the office.

Byron Wade, who worked for the fire marshal’s office for 11 years before going to work as a boiler inspector for a private insurance company, also gave interesting insight into how the top brass at LOSFM party at the New Orleans Royal Sonesta Hotel.

Along the way, we also learned that one of those major expenditures itemized in our Monday story was for an entity not part of the fire marshal’s office or of any other state agency, making the expenditure potentially illegal.

“I left the fire marshal’s office in part because of the cross-training program Butch (Fire Marshal Butch Browning) put into place,” Wade told LouisianaVoice. “I’m certified as a boiler inspector and as an amusement ride inspector. They tried to make me an arson investigator and I was not qualified to do that and told them so.”

He said he was assigned as the lead investigator on a mobile home fire in which the resident died. “Brant Thompson (LOSFM Fire Chief) told Jason Johnson to make me the lead investigator. Jason Johnson is one of the best, most qualified arson investigators out there. I don’t know to this day why Thompson wanted me to be the lead investigator.”

Wade said allowing unqualified personnel to inspect rides and boilers is a recipe for disaster. “All you have to do is look at the hot water heater explosion in that school in OKLAHOMA,” he said, referring to the hot water heater explosion on January 19, 1982, in Spencer, Oklahoma, killing seven, including six elementary school children. “That hot water heater was never properly inspected,” Wade said.

“They (the fire marshal’s office) is still allowing unqualified personnel do these inspections,” he said. “When they told me I was an arson investigator, I asked a fire chief in New Orleans how much training is needed for that. His answer was to tell me, ‘Do not do arson investigations.’”

Wade also told a story LouisianaVoice had heard on several occasions about a party at the Royal Sonesta Hotel in New Orleans. We held off publishing it because of the lack of a first-person account. He said, however, he could confirm the story because he was present at the event.

Browning, he said, was hosting a convention of firefighting personnel at the Royal Sonesta “four or five years ago” when it was noted that the party was beginning to run short of liquor. A call was put in to Baton Rouge and Shantelle Brent, Browning’s $71,000-a-year personal assistant (officially, an Executive Management Officer) promptly brought a Tahoe loaded with fresh booze from Baton Rouge to the New Orleans hotel, located at the corner of Bourbon and Conti Streets.

“I know about this because not only was I there, but I helped unload the liquor,” Wade said.

The Tahoe was a State Fire Marshal vehicle, he added.

On Monday, LouisianaVoice listed among the fire marshal office’s expenditures $4,900 paid to LR3 Consulting for creation of the “Louisiana Firefighter Proud” website. The organization, we have since learned, is a private entity unaffiliated with the state or the fire marshal’s office. That raises immediate questions as to the legality of the expenditure, particularly since it was done without obtaining bids or quotations—and during a time of repeated budgetary shortfalls and mid-year cutbacks to higher education and other state agencies during the administration of Bobby Jindal.

It also raises the question of whether Gov. John Bel Edwards can afford another public embarrassment from his Department of Public Safety like the one that plagued him during his first year in office with former State Police Superintendent Mike Edmonson.

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Louisiana Inspector General Stephen Street rumored to be up for consideration for U.S. Attorney for Western District

Posted in Courts on August 8, 2017| 12 Comments »

He was first appointed Louisiana’s Inspector General by Bobby Jindal in January 2008.

Now, nine years later, LouisianaVoice is picking up as yet unconfirmed reports that STEPHEN STREET could be the nominee to serve as U.S. Attorney for the Middle District of Louisiana.

Corey Amundson has been serving as Acting U.S. Attorney for the nine-parish district since Donald Trump requested the resignations of U.S. Attorneys throughout the U.S., including that of Obama appointee Walt Green last March.

It’s not uncommon for a new administration to clean house upon taking office, especially if the holdovers are from the opposing political party. What is unusual is the length of time it is taking Trump to nominate new appointees.

Street’s office was tainted by his raid on the home of contractor Corey DelaHoussaye under the mistaken assumption that DelaHoussaye was contracted to the Governor’s Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness (GOHSEP) when in fact, he was contracted to the Livingston Parish Council where Street had no jurisdiction. DelaHoussaye was subsequently exonerated of all charges but never collected all that he said Livingston Parish owed him.

Street’s office also prematurely terminated an investigation into the case of Billy Broussard who was contracted by FEMA to clean a bayou in Calcasieu Parish following Hurricane Rita in 2005. Broussard was instructed by the gravity drainage district in which the canal was located to also remove pre-storm debris, mostly cypress logs, that had sunken to the bottom of the canal over the years. He was told that FEMA would pay for the additional work but FEMA did not and the drainage district left Broussard holding the bag to the tune of about $1 million.

Likewise, it was Street’s office that investigated and found no wrongdoing in the case of two assistant district attorneys in CADDO PARISH applying for a grant to obtain eight automatic M-16 rifles from the Department of Defense’s Law Enforcement Support Office (LESO). The two claimed on their application that they, as part of a Special Investigations Section (SIS), “routinely participate in high-risk surveillance and arrests (sic) activities with the Shreveport Police and Caddo Sheriff.” Persons interviewed from both agencies, however, refuted the claim that SIS employees took part in such operations.

Street also failed to follow through on an investigation into widespread abuses by the Louisiana State Board of Dentistry. The board, with the aid of its investigator who employed questionable methods, was imposing excessively high fines against dentists for relative minor infractions and even bankrupted one dentist who blew the whistle on faulty jaw implants developed by a dentist at the LSU School of Dentistry.

Retired State Trooper Leon “Bucky” Millet said he filed a formal complaint on February 19 with Street’s office against the four State Troopers who drove the state vehicle to San Diego last October but never received an acknowledgement from Street. “I know he received because I sent the complaint by certified return receipt mail,” Millet said.

Street’s office, in response to a November 2016 public records request from LouisianaVoice, provided a list of FUNDS recovered totaling more than $5.3 million since July 1, 2013, for which he claimed credit.

  • U.S. v Delrice Augustus, Department of Children and Family Services (DCFS): $155,305;
  • U.S. v. Daniel Garcia, Louisiana Economic Development (LED): $900,000;
  • U.S. v. Kaneasha Goston, DCFS: $10,023;
  • U.S. v. Charlotte Johnson, Office of the Governor: $99,874;
  • U.S. v. Winn Johnson, Louisiana Board of Cosmetology: $1,575;
  • U.S. v. Matthew Keith, LED: $1.2 million;
  • U.S. v. George Kostuch, Department of Revenue (LDR): $161,850;
  • U.S. v. Corey Polk, DCFS: $30,760;
  • U.S. v. Gregory Walker (no agency provided): $1,833,619;
  • State of Louisiana v. Theresa Burris, Town of Arcadia: $49,829;
  • State of Louisiana v. Deborah Loper, Department of Health and Hospitals: $1,018,423.

Of course, the recovery of funds is quite different from orders of restitution, which was what each of these cases was. An order of restitution means little if there are no funds to be recovered.

“We have no information regarding amounts collected by those office and we receive none of the funds,” said OIG General Counsel Joseph Lotwick in a letter to LouisianaVoice.

In the Loper case, for example, most of that money had disappeared into slot machines at area casinos so any real chance of restitution is, for all intents and purposes, non-existent.

The LouisianaVoice request was made pursuant to Street’s claim for an accounting of public funds recovery stemming from OIG investigations.

What Street’s office did not say, the difficulty of actually collecting notwithstanding, is that the OIG’s role in many of the above investigations was secondary to the U.S. Attorney’s role and restitution payments, if any, are made through either U.S. Probation or, in the case of the state’s being the lead prosecutor, to Louisiana Probation and Parole.

LouisianaVoice attempted to obtain confirmation of the reports that Street was up for the position from both U.S. Sen. Bill Cassidy and from Street but received no response from either.

One law enforcement official, while saying Street was largely ineffective as inspector general, said the U.S. Attorney’s post could be a fit. “What you have to look at is who he appoints as his first assistant,” he said.

“Do you remember Eddie Jordan? He was the U.S. Attorney in New Orleans and got the credit for convicting Edwin Edwards. But his First Assistant was Jim Letten. Jordan went on to become New Orleans District Attorney and was a disaster. It’s the First Assistant U.S. Attorney who gets the job done. The U.S. Attorney just goes around making speeches and Street might be good at that.”

 

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Trump launches news network, Kayleigh McEnany as Minister of Propaganda; reminiscent of past dictators

Posted in Corruption, Elections, Ethics, Fraud, Politicians, Transparency, TV News on August 7, 2017| 24 Comments »

It was inevitable, I suppose. The signs were there for us to see all this time, so it certainly should be no surprise.

Donald Trump has launched his own NEWS SERVICE to give the minions the “real” news. He’s fed up with that fake stuff dished out by the networks that they back up with obviously faked video, doctored photos, falsified documents and biased stories about his bogus university, his refusal to divest himself from his business interests and his coziness with the Russians.

Well, what ostrich-head-in-the-sand couldn’t see that coming?

Of course, the real head-scratcher is why he would go to all that trouble when he has the biggest blowhard of all spewing the right wing extremist line for three hours every day on a smaller-than-before-but-still-large radio network.

But Rush (“Praise the Lord and Pass the OxyContin”) Limburger is basically a mouthpiece for the Republican Party as a whole and that party is going to have to separate itself from ol’ Orange Hair with all due haste if it has a chance to hold its ground in the 2018 elections. So, in that respect, maybe his own “news” network would seem in order to Trump.

After all, this is the man whose motto would seem to be ut per eos testacles in cordibus et in animis sequentur. That’s Latin for “Get ‘em by the testacles; the hearts and minds will follow.” (And he’s certainly known for grabbing those areas.)

Any student of history knows that a dictatorship requires a suspension of all citizens’ rights (see his efforts to clamp down on dissent) and to muzzle all criticism (his repeated attacks on the media). The third requirement, of course, is to take over the media so the dictatorship’s lies can be saturated without fear of challenge.

We may as well start referring to Trump as DEAR LEADER a-la Kim Jong-Un. Somehow, though, I just don’t think I can bring myself to call him Herr Trump.

But the signs are already there. His repeated boasts of non-existent accomplishments, his exploring the possibility of pardoning himself, his exaggerated claims of voter fraud, claims that he had the biggest inauguration crowd in history, attacks of “fake news,” and the list goes on and on ad nauseum. And all easily refutable lies but still he barges ahead with still more lies. His favorite, of course, is calling the special prosecutor’s investigation into collusion with the Russians “a witch hunt.” He uses that one on a regular basis these days.

Adolf Hitler was the first to describe the benefits of the repetitive lie, which he said people would come to believe if they heard it often enough. He called it the “Big Lie.”

In Mein Kampf, Hitler said, “…In the big lie there is always a certain force of credibility; because the broad masses of a nation are always more easily corrupted in the deeper strata of their emotional nature than consciously or voluntarily and thus in the primitive simplicity of their minds they more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie…Even though the facts which prove this to be so may be brought clearly to their minds, they will still doubt and waver and will continue to think that there may be some other explanation.” (emphasis added.)

He would go on to say in Mein Kampf:

“The function of propaganda does not lie in the scientific training of the individual, but in calling the masses’ attention to certain facts, processes, necessities, etc., whose significance is thus for the first time placed within their field of vision.

The function of propaganda is, for example, not to weigh and ponder the rights of different people, but exclusively to emphasize the one right which it has set out to argue for. Its task is not to make and objective study of the truth, insofar as it favors the enemy, and then set before the masses with academic fairness; its task is to serve our own right, always and unflinchingly.”

Hitler’s Minister of Propaganda, Joseph Goebbels, would later expand on der Führer’s philosophy when he said:

“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.”

Extreme examples? Perhaps. But the track that Trump is on is frighteningly familiar to students of history and should not be dismissed lightly.

After all, look at the people with whom he has surrounded himself. Not the least of these is one STEPHEN BANNON who has described Trump as a “revolutionary on the world stage,” and who described himself as a LENINIST who desired “to bring everything crashing down, and destroy all of today’s establishment.”

So, is Bannon Trump’s Joseph Goebbels or will he be his Martin Bormann (Hitler’s private secretary who controlled access to der Führer)? Or worse, will he be Trump’s Heinrich Himmler (commander of the Gestapo)? From this vantage point, the vote would have to go to Bormann.

All these scenarios were unthinkable 18 months ago. No one seriously thought Trump would ever be president. The day of his announcement, I confidently predicted he would “crash and burn” in six weeks.

But then, no one thought Hitler would rise to a position from which he could plunge the world into war.

But now we have an official Trump news service through which he can reach the masses with his own skewed version of reality. And for now, at least, he has an official Minister of Propaganda in Kayleigh McEnany.

 

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You’d never know there was a budgetary crisis from tracking Fire Marshal’s purchases of trinkets, cookware, sponsorships

Posted in Corruption, Ethics, Finances, IT, Public Records, State Fire Marshal, Transparency, Waste on August 7, 2017| 20 Comments »

Word from inside the Louisiana Office of State Fire Marshal (LOSFM) is that state auditors have come calling and are taking a close look at agency expenditures.

Without being privy to any specific findings by the Legislative Auditor’s Office, it’s a pretty safe bet that the bean counters are going to find that the LOSFM likes to worm its way around the rules by making multiple purchases in amounts that fly—barely—under the radar, as it were, of minimum amounts for which quotes are required.

Other expenditures that might be questioned by auditors include meals at Mike Anderson’s Restaurant, purchases from a grocery store, a seafood market, a deli, a cookware outlet, association memberships and convention fees,

The  LOUISIANA PROCUREMENT CODE (LPC: that would be R.S. 39:1551-1755 for whoever is wearing military medals at LOSFM these days] does not require competitive bidding for purchases that are $5,000 or less. Purchases that are greater than $5,000, and up to $15,000, require quotes from at least three vendors by telephone, fax or other means. (emphasis ours.)

LouisianaVoice recently spent the better part of a week poring over and scanning stack upon stack of purchasing records by the fire marshal’s office. Several years’ worth of receipts, no less.

If LOSFM is an indication, the so-called state budgetary crisis is largely a myth and U.S. Sen. John Kennedy, erstwhile State Treasurer, was correct when he said the state didn’t have a revenue problem; it has a spending problem. (Kennedy, alas, not knowing when to call it a day, would go on to talk about drinking weed killer and quoting a mysterious Louisiana adage known only to him about how we should love one another but should also carry a handgun).

State Fire Marshal Butch Browning apparently makes a lot of photocopies and prints volumes of documents, judging from the toner purchases made by his office. But those notwithstanding, it became fairly obvious from our findings that Browning, his second in command, Brant Thompson, and other top honchos like to split their purchases so that they fall just under that magical mystical $5,000 amount.

We even stumbled across one purchase of $4,999.99 on September 6, 2016, from Broad Base of Harvey for the purchase of 10 washers and 10 dryers for the agency’s laundry trailer. Apparently, they learned well from the Jindal administration which would issue state contracts for $49,999 so as to avoid the laborious approval of the old Office of Contractual Review, a requirement that kicked in at $50,000 and above.

LOSFM also liked a well-dressed agent. In 2015, it spent $33,490 with Guidry Uniforms of Lafayette, with at least three of those purchases being in increments of $5,000 and another for $5,000.01 (oops).

On April 7, 2015, the fire marshal’s office spent $2,558.59 with Guidry’s and immediate recorded another purchase that same day for $685.83. Six days later, on April 13, another $5,000 was spent with Guidry’s, all apparently without benefit of the required three quotes as there were no such quotes provided along with the receipts.

In 2014, records were found for expenditures with Guidry’s of $4,531.53 (September 15) and $5,000 (November 14). Another $17,600 was spent at Guidry’s in 2016, including individual purchases of $1,069 on March 31 and payments on outstanding invoices of $4,932.67 in April 12 and $2,517.61 in April 20.

“Agencies should maintain documentation of each quote received,” the state law says. “Procurement amounts may not be artificially divided in order to circumvent the LPC.” (emphasis ours) Quotes may be taken by telephone, facsimile or other means. The quotes must, however, be in writing if the price exceeds $5,000. Awards shall be made to the lowest responsive quotation.

Other apparent split purchases made without obtaining the required three quotations:

  • Tri-Parish Communications of Baton Rouge: March 10, 2015 ($1,870.75), March 16 ($1,876 and $382.80), March 18 ($107.80 and $148.30), March 19 ($232.85) and March 24 ($274.85 and $359.85) for a total of $5,253.20.
  • Louisiana Office Solutions of Baton Rouge: January 14, 2016 ($269.32), January 21 ($2,668), and January 22 ($2,828) for a total of $5,765.32.
  • Preferred Data Voice Networks of Baton Rouge: April 5, 2016 ($1,873.60), April 12 ($3,248.80), April 19 ($4,970.80) for a total of $10,093.20 with all three purchases precisely one week apart (clever).
  • Quality Lapel Pins of Littleton, Colorado (we’ll have more on them later): February 21, 2016 ($3,569), March 9 ($3,569—yep, identical amounts in two separate purchases barely two weeks apart), and March 30 ($1,040) for a total of $8,178 over a span of five weeks.
  • Quality Lapel Pins: June 27 ($4,862), July 13 ($921.02), and July 18 ($1,828.20) for a total of $7,611.22 purchased over a period of three weeks.
  • Goodyear Commercial Tire of Baton Rouge: March 26, 2015 ($3,484.17) and March 30 ($2,677.43), a total of $6,161.60.
  • Ferrara Fire Apparatus of Holden: December 11, 2014 ($4,985), December 12 ($2,747.52), and December 22 ($2,190.14), a total of $9,922.66.
  • Ferrara Fire Apparatus: April 2, 2015 ($3,784.38) and April 8 ($1,712.16), a total of $5,496.54.
  • Ferrara Fire Apparatus: March 18, 2016 ($4,828), April 14 ($3,196 and $1,164), and April 26 ($4,342), a total of $8,702 (grand total of split purchases: $24,121.20). Additionally, LOSFM had individual purchases from Ferrara of another $10,321 in the years 2014-2016, including one purchase of $4,985, just $15 below the amount requiring quotations.
  • Teeco Safety of Shreveport: November 6, 2014 ($4,731.50) and November 14 ($4,994.50), a total of $9,726.
  • Teeco Safety: December 5, 2014 ($3,979.30) and December 11 ($3,248.32), a total of $7,227.62.
  • Teeco Safety: February 13, 2015 ($3,525, $564.30, and $711.76) and February 19 ($546), a total of $5,347.06.
  • Teeco Safety: November 6, 2015 ($2,763), November 12 ($4,763.14), and November 16 ($1,413.96), a total of $8,940.10.
  • Teeco Safety: December 18, 2015 ($3,606.79 and $179.76) and December 22 ($2,601.31), a total of $6,387.86.
  • Teeco Safety: September 9, 2016 ($4,587.96), September 14 ($3,433.92), and September 30 ($1,919.76), a total of $9,941.64. LOSFM also made individual purchases of $4,941.98 on October 30, 2014, and $4,777.80 on April 8, 2015, and had three purchases totaling $4,804 in December 2016.

Documents provided by LOSFM indicated that an occasional quotation was obtained from Teeco prior to purchases, but there were no quotes from other vendors.

Besides the four purchases of $5,000 each from Guidry’s and the $4,999.99 from Broad Base, the fire marshal’s office also chalked up at least a dozen one-time purchases that fell just below the $5,000 amount requiring quotations. Those purchases ranged from $4,000 to $4,900, $4,990 and $4,999—all without benefit of quotations.

That $4,900 expenditure was for a deposit to LR3 Consulting for creation of the “Louisiana Firefighter Proud” website. The State of Louisiana has IT personnel to perform such tasks.

Over a relative short span, from May 9 to September 22, 2016, LOSFM spent $9,600 at Best Buy on such items as juice boxes, computer and video cable, and other computer-related equipment.

Another $8,754 was spent on association memberships and sponsorship fees for conventions, records show. Those included:

  • $1,300 for 2015 memberships in the Merchant International Association of Arson Investigators (IAAI);
  • $1,875 for 2016 memberships in the Louisiana IAAI;
  • $1,175 for 2017 IAAI membership;
  • $1,404 for 2015 membership in the Automatic Fire Alarm Association (AFAA);
  • $700 for sponsorship of the Louisiana Municipal Association (LMA) 2015 convention;
  • $750 for sponsorship of the LMA 2016 convention;
  • $800 for sponsorship of the LMA 2017 convention;
  • $750 for sponsorship of the Louisiana Police Jury Association (LPJA) 2017 convention;

On December 3, 2015, LOSFM employees were treated to a Christmas meal at Mike Anderson’s Seafood Restaurant at a cost of $2,195. Another $1,014 was spent at LeBlanc’s Food Stores and $126.62 was dropped at Tony’s Seafood Market & Deli in January 2016, and $479.85 was spent at Jason’s Deli in April 2016.

On January 21, 2015, $895 was spent at Krazy Kajun Cookware for the purchase of a 30-gallon roll-around combo set, including the pot and accompanying paddles—apparently to compliment the purchase later that year (May 18) of a special service trailer for “emergency field food service” to support USAR events/emergencies. (A quick Google search of USAR came up with U.S. Army Reserve and Urban Search and Rescue.)

But that pales in comparison to more than $62,000 spent by the Louisiana Fire Marshal’s Office between May 2014 and September 2016 on such things as badges, ribbons, plaques, coins, medallions, stadium cups, lapel pins, and decals—all without benefit of obtaining quotations. A couple of those nudged right up against that $5,000 limit:

  • $5,000 with Quality Lapels and Pins in February 2016, $7,138 in two purchases of identical $3,569 on February 21, 2016 and again 16 days later, on March 9, and $4,862 on June 27;
  • $4,617 from Rebel Graphics of Baton Rouge in June 2016, and
  • $4,997 with Action Flags of Baton Rouge (no invoice date).

There was no indication if any of those purchases were for military medals to be worn by Browning.

 

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Cleaning up yet another cover-up at a Louisiana Veterans’ Home: Little being done to protect institutionalized vets

Posted in Corruption, Crime, Ethics, Fraud, Media, Public Records, Transparency on August 3, 2017| 3 Comments »

By Ken Booth

Guest Commentator

Employees at the Monroe Veterans’ Home were rushed into recalling a mysterious incident five years ago this month at the Home which has until now remained undisclosed. Two employees were called upon to sign affidavits about the unusual episode that occurred on August 10, 2012. Their affidavits were signed only this Tuesday (Aug. 1).

This, following my public records request issued on August 1 to the Louisiana Department of Veterans Affairs in Baton Rouge for a work order to a West Monroe security firm to remove and replace the hard drive from the Monroe Veterans Home’s security set-up.

Documents from the security firm show the work was requested by Ken Houston, the former Home administrator who abruptly ‘retired’ last week.

The signed employee affidavits stated it was Houston who on that day asked them to “open the door to the telephone room” presumably to allow the security technician access to the hard-drive in question, before shooing the maintenance worker away, telling him he didn’t need help and “I’ll take it from here.”

An invoice detailing the security company’s work issued to the NELA Home indicates it charged a total of $281 for the job, which included $218 for a new hard-drive.

What happened to the hard-drive which was replaced is not known. In fact, none of this was known until last Tuesday when our records request startled employees at the Veterans Home, some of whom had no knowledge themselves this had ever happened.

Why Houston may have wanted that hard-drive removed and replaced is not known. Why this was done outside the knowledge of other Home officials is also unknown.

However, this is not the first time matters which might be considered curious in nature at the Home have been hidden away out of public view.

You may recall that it was in August of just last year that agents from the office of Louisiana Inspector General and auditors from the Office of Legislative Auditor were digging into allegations of alleged mistreatment of Home residents which also, ironically, dated back to 2012.

Those allegations were documented and filed with the Secretary of the Dept. in Baton Rouge but somehow escaped being publicly disclosed until July of last year when an anonymous letter, slipped under the door of Congressman Abraham, triggered action by LDVA Secretary Joey Strickland to investigate why all of those allegations had never seen the light of day.

At the time, James Ken Houston was administrator at the Monroe Veterans Home. Tommy Shoemaker was the assistant administrator.

Amid the renewed probe, Shoemaker was arrested and charged with felony theft of $9000 from a 69-year-old resident of the Home, Roland J. Matheny. Matheny is now deceased. His family is said to be seeking restitution.

Now we know that computer system hard drive was removed and for some reason replaced about a week before Shoemaker and Vets Home accountant Misti Dawn Westbrook both signed a check in the amount of $9000 from the fiduciary account of Mr. Matheny ostensibly to pre-pay for his burial. Those expenses were never paid. The money was deposited into Matheny’s private account at Progressive Bank but on August 6, four days before the hard-drive was replaced, about $2000 was paid to an Orchard Bank credit card account in the name of Thomas W. Shoemaker.

In addition, bank records show a number of ATM cash withdrawals from Matheny’s account totaling about $3200 as well as another $1200 in retail purchases made on Matheny’s ATM card.

We could find no written authorization by Matheny for Shoemaker to make these withdrawals from his Progressive Bank account.

Ken Houston, then administrator, imposed a one pay period reduction in Shoemaker’s salary from $2,076 to $1,453 bi-weekly.

Fast-forward to last week when James Ken Houston abruptly “retired” from his job at the NELA Veterans Home. Ironically, his swift departure announcement came within 24 hours to the very day five years ago Shoemaker and Westbrook signed that $9000 check.

—Ken Booth, now residing in Arizona, is retired from KNOE-TV in Monroe, where he worked for many years as a highly-respected investigative reporter.

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