Louisiana Voice

Louisiana State Government has enough boards to construct a fair-sized house.

The state has an eye-popping 477 boards and commissions, according to the Louisiana Legislative Auditor’s ANNUAL REPORT to the Legislature released last month.

That compares to 287 for Arkansas and 217 for Mississippi. Texas, meanwhile, manages to get by on just 89.

But then, Texas probably does not have a need for an Alligator Advisory Council since that state apparently doesn’t have as many alligators in need of advice.

And it’s questionable as to the real need of a Boll Weevil Eradication Commission, since they’ve been eradicated for some time now.

There well may be a need for the Boxing and Wrestling Commission, however—especially during Louisiana’s often contentious legislative sessions.

But one has to question the effectiveness of the Child Poverty Prevention Council, given the fact Louisiana has one of the highest childhood poverty rates in the nation.

Then there’s the Drug Abuse Resistance Education (DARE) Advisory Board (and there’re certain places where board members DARE not enter).

But just to cover all the bases, we also have the Drug and Device Distributors Board, The Drug Control and Violent Crime Board, and the Drug Policy Board.

And Louisiana still has a huge drug problem, due in part perhaps to the report on the Louisiana Board of Pharmacy which noted that in 2016, there were 14,628 hydrocodone and oxycodone prescriptions missing from the Prescription Monitoring Program database.

There’s the Emergency Medical Services for Children Advisory Council, the Emergency Medical Services Certification Commission, the Emergency Response Commission, and the Emergency Response Network Board.

And I’m not even going to talk about the Crab Task Force.

I could go on, but in case you didn’t notice, I never even got out of the E’s on the list of boards.

For fiscal year 2018, the myriad boards collectively reported $1.3 million paid in board member per diems, $1.7 million for member salaries and $2.1 million for member travel expenses.

The number of boards and commissions, however, is just one area of concern covered in the 44-page report.

• The LSU System did not have adequate controls in place over the preparation of its financial statements, resulting in errors of its 2017 financial report;
• LSU Health Sciences Center (HSC) in Shreveport did not have adequate controls in place over federal, state and private grants and contracts to pursue collection of funds owed to it. The center reported $2 million in uncollected money from 2005 to 2017.
• For the third consecutive year, the HSC Division (HSCD) and LSU did not have a final, signed agreement for all equipment used by the partner managing the University Medical Center New Orleans. Even though a lease agreement requires supplies and other items purchased by the State to be reimbursed by the private partner, repayment of $8.4 million remains outstanding (this is just one of the results of the Jindal privatization of state hospitals). Additionally, HSCD did not even attempt to collect a $163,544 debt from a contractor and HSCD has still been unable to locate movable property totaling more than $1.6 million associated with Earl K. Long Medical Center.
• The Office of Juvenile Justice (OJJ) failed to maintain adequate control over its movable property, resulting in unlocated property and the incorrect reporting of an asset valued at $2 billion when the actual cost was $20,664.
• Five state agencies oversee 78 tax incentives that resulted in the loss of approximately $1.1 billion in revenue in fiscal year 2017. Moreover, auditors found that 25 of the 78 tax incentive reports submitted to the Legislature by March 1, 2018, did not include information on whether the state received a positive return on its investment.
• The Governor’s Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness (GOHSEP) Public Assistance Programs had $149.6 million in federal reimbursement requests that were not supported by sufficient documentation.
• Louisiana spent about $5 million on lawsuits involving sexual harassment claims since 2009. State agencies do not have consistent processes in place to conduct reference checks of prospective employees and state law does not mandate training for employees on ways to identify, report and investigate sexual harassment.
• The Louisiana Department of Health (LDH) did not deposit about $2.8 million into the Medicaid Fraud Fund in accordance with state law. LDH spent $477,000 from the fund in 2017 for salaries that did not appear to contribute to the prevention and detection of Medicaid fraud and abuse and the agency spent $643,000 from the fund in fiscal 2012 for software that was useless because of system compatibility issues.

Additionally, the Legislative Auditor’s office conducted 4,173 audits of local governmental services during 2018, most of those by private auditing firms under contract. “During the 2018 calendar year, local auditee reports contained hundreds of findings related to deficiencies in operations, controls, and compliance with laws and regulations,” the report says. These findings included:

• Misappropriations and ethics violations;
• Noncompliance with federal regulations in local governments’ administration of federal programs;
• Noncompliance with bond covenants or loan agreements;
• Noncompliance with state laws covering public bids, open meetings, untimely deposits, and late filings of financial statements;
• Reconciliation of bank accounts;
• Errors in accounting records;
• Deficit fund balances.

And yet, precious little is ever heard from these reports. Oh, there is the occasional indictment, accompanied by a glowing, self-congratulatory press release from Attorney General Jeff Landry, but on the whole, zilch.

To paraphrase the quote mistakenly attributed to the late Illinois Senator EVERETT DIRKSEN: A million here and a million there and pretty soon you’re talking about real money.

Maybe the state needs to appoint another board or commission to study the problem of legislative apathy and inaction.