When the State of Louisiana VOIDED A FLOOD-RECOVERY CONTRACT with Hunt Guillot and Associates (HGA) earlier this month because of a conflict of interest, it wasn’t the Ruston firm’s first brush with state ethics laws.
Paula Tregre, the state’s chief procurement officer whose office oversees the bid review process, voided the $10 million federal-funded contract after finding what she described as several flaws in the contract award. One of those “flaws” was HGA’s intention to use a subcontractor with a couple of employees who had “obvious” conflicts of interest.
One of those employees, Stacy Bonnaffons, served as a contract employee with Restore Louisiana, the state’s disaster recovery agency established to help victims of widespread 2016 flooding in Louisiana.
Tregre said Bonnaffons, listed by HGA as one of its “three most relevant key staff,” appeared to have supervisory authority over one of the bid evaluators.
Bonnaffons, Tregre said, performed contract work and served at one point as interim chief of staff to the Office of Community Development, which Tregre said gave her internal access to information about the Restore Louisiana program and was involved in revising plans that “became integral components” of the bid solicitation for the contract which was ultimately awarded to HGA.
Following the awarding of the contract, a formal protest was filed by losing bidder Hammerman and Gainer (HGI).
Besides its headquarters in Ruston, HGA also has offices in Shreveport, Lake Charles, Baton Rouge and New Orleans.
Questions about the company’s cozy relationship with the state first surfaced way back in 2011 when the Louisiana Board of Ethics gave a thumbs-up on HGA partner JAY GUILLOT to serve on the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education (BESE) from the 5th District while the firm simultaneously held $17 million in state contracts.
LouisianaVoice initiated an inquiry with the ethics board on Nov. 2, 2011, as to the legality of Guillot’s serving on a state board while his firm held the contract with the Office of Community Development (OCD) for recovery efforts from Hurricanes Katrina, Rita, Ike, and Gustav.
That’s when it was first learned that one must have some type of official capacity to have an inquiry recognized by the ethics board.
The board ruled that LouisianaVoice “HAD NO LEGAL STANDING” to request a ruling.
Translation: Louisiana taxpayers are insignificant and powerless to hold public officials and state contractors accountable to state ethics laws. Those laws are only for contractors and elected and appointed officials, thank you very much.
That’s when the damage Bobby Jindal’s “gold standard” of ethics had done to the state really came into sharp focus.
But that wasn’t the end of the HGA ethics questions.
Three years later, LouisianaVoice revealed that HGA had received $1.58 million for work for the RECOVERY SCHOOL DISTRICT AND 12 INDIVIDUAL PARISH SCHOOL BOARDS.
The Department of Education has responsibility for the oversight of RSD and cannot be considered separate entities for purposes of say, a lawsuit against the RSD. At the same time, BESE is the governing authority over DOE, thereby creating a straight line of authority between BESE and the RSD as well as the dozen school boards for whom HGA also performed work.
Section 1113 of The Louisiana Code of Governmental Ethics prohibits public servants and their family members from entering into certain transaction. That section says:
- “No elected official or public employee or member of such public servant’s immediate family, or legal entity in which he has a controlling interest shall bid on or enter into any contract, subcontract, or other transaction that is under the supervision or jurisdiction of the public servant’s agency.”
As might be expected when there is so much money to be made off the suffering of Louisiana citizens, HGA has appealed the action. The firm’s legal counsel, Loretta Mince, said Tregre had “no authority” to ignore an April ruling by the ethics board which she said cleared Bonnaffons and another subcontractor employee to perform the contract work.
Mince said Bonnaffons had no input into “drafting specifications, working on the invitation for bids or exercising any influence on the evaluators.”
Because Bonnaffons does not have a controlling interest in HGA, the matter is likely to evolve into a protracted legal battle.
That appeal goes to Commissioner of Administration Jay Dardenne and his decision, whichever way he rules, is likely to make its way into the courts.
Louisiana Voice 
The Louisiana State Ethics Board is nothing more than a cozy comfortable blanket with wonderful platitudes hand printed on it for the use of particular people.
An elected Council Member was allowed to sit on the Board of a (Non Profit)….. smile on that definition, and vote on everything relative to that particular (Non Profit) that included land and other Taxpayer’s property.
They concluded that there was no issue with that……. it’s all about who you know and what you know on them…… typical (good ole boy).politics.
Wow! Will La. ever recover from the Jindal administration? Crooked La. politics didn’t start with him for sure but he and his ilk certainly made things worse. Like a metastasized cancer that will never be cured. Thanks as always,Tom, for shining a light into the darkest recesses to reveal it..