Louisiana Voice

Sixty-three thousand Louisiana entities received $8 billion in federal stimulus loans under the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP).

That figured included up to $10 million for a pair of New Orleans schools represented by a former New Orleans city official who resigned after having misdirected nearly half-a-million dollars in public funding to family members a decade ago.

Among those receiving the forgivable loans from the Small Business Administration were:

• A major daily newspaper;
• A company with a $10 million state contract through the federal HUD/CDBG program;
• Two national accounting firm with no fewer than a dozen state contracts between them;
• A couple of Louisiana rural electric cooperatives;
• Scores of auto dealerships;
• Television stations in two of the state’s largest cities;
• The LSU Foundation;
• Car washes;
• Restaurants;
• Medical offices and hospitals.

But what jumped off the 180 pages of state recipients were the 225 or so churches and the 90 law firms which, between them reaped between $176 million and $308 million.

I have long contended that the primary purpose of local TV newscasts is to keep the lawyer ads from bumping together—and often even that doesn’t work as we are subjected to successive ads from different personal injury lawyers, principally from New Orleans attorney Morris Bart and Baton Rouge lawyer Gordon McKernan. Both advertise extensively statewide.

Each also received SBA loans of between $2 million and $5 million.

Not that they were only recipients of big money, however. Taylor Porter Brooks & Phillips of Baton Rouge also received between $2 million and $5 million despite holding 10 contracts for legal work for the State of Louisiana totaling more than $2.8 million.

Chaffe McCall of New Orleans has at least one contract with the state for $450,000 but still got a loan of between $1 million and $2 million.

But all of those paled in comparison to Adams and Reese of New Orleans which got between $5 million and $10 million. That firm also has state contracts totaling more than $600,000.

Valluzzo Companies of Baton Rouge also got between $5 million and $10 million. Valluzzo operates 78 McDonald’s restaurants in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama.

Southwest Louisiana Electric Membership Corp. of Lafayette, one of the two electric cooperatives, received between $5 million and $10 million even though its billings for electric power continued unabated throughout the mandated shutdown. The other electric cooperative, Dixie Electric of Central, received a more modest loan of $350,000 to $1 million.

Other recipients of loans of between $5 million and $10 million were Collegiate Academies and Firstline Schools, both of New Orleans. Both are also linked to former New Orleans Deputy Mayor Greg St. Etienne.

St. Etienne, a former bank executive, was listed as a director of Collegiate Academies, according to Louisiana Secretary of State corporate records which also listed him as treasurer of Firstline Schools.

In 2010, St. Etienne, one of six deputy mayors in Mayor Mitch Landrieu’s administration, RESIGNED after a state audit revealed how he directed more than $400,000 in taxpayer-subsidized low-interest loans to his family members while serving as head of a nonprofit organization.

Still, it was the churches that seemed to elbow their way to the front of the line for the government largesse—the same government upon which they heap such condemnation when there are ideological conflicts—that caught the eye.

The breakdown for the churches revealed at least:

• One (Jimmy Swaggart’s Family Life Center) that received between $2 million and $5 million;
• Eight that got between $2 million and $5 million;
• 90 that received between $1 million and $2 million;
• 51 that got between $350,000 and $1 million;
• 75 approved for between $150,000 and $350,000

The attorney breakdown:

• One (Adams and Reese) that received between $5 million and $10 million;
• 13 that got between $2 million and $5 million;
• Two approved for $1 million to $2 million;
• 17 that got between $350,000 and $1 million;
• 57 that received between $150,000 and $350,000