Louisiana Voice

To paraphrase Marcellus in Shakespeare’s Hamlet, something is rotten in the Parish of St. Landry.

So rotten, in fact, that even the otherwise moribund, impotent, lifeless Louisiana Board of Ethics found it necessary to actually recommend that the Ethics Adjudicatory Board (gasp) take disciplinary action against an individual found to be in violation of the state’s “gold standard of ethics” as set forth by Bobby Jindal more than a decade ago.

How rotten?

Try $336,407 worth of rotten.

Try a member of the LSU Board of Supervisors rotten.

Or could it be let’s try to embarrass Gov. John Bel Edwards rotten?

Here are the sordid details.

Patrick C. Morrow, Sr., a founding partner of the Opelousas law firm Morrow, Morrow, Ryan, and Bassett, was appointed on Jan. 5, 2012, as a member of the Opelousas General Health System Board of Trustees and served in that capacity until his resignation on July 15, 2020.

Morrow is the sole owner and operator of Patrick Morrow, a Professional Law Corporation (PMPLC). PMPLC, on the other hand, is a 25 percent partner of the law firm, Morrow, Morrow, Ryan and Bassett, A Louisiana Partnership (MMRB).

Morrow is the managing general partner of MMRB. All “significant” decisions are made by a vote of the four partners, the ethics board said in its ruling.

On Aug. 17, 2016, the Opelousas General Hospital Authority, a public trust doing business as Opelousas General Health Systems (OGHS), entered into an attorney representation agreement with MMRB whereby MMRB agreed to represent OGHS in a class action lawsuit against Blue Cross Blue Shield of Louisiana.

Morrow executed that agreement on behalf of MMRB on Aug. 26, 2016, and a petition, signed by Morrow, was filed by OGHS’s behalf by MMRB.

The agreement provided for compensation of MMRB in exchange for the law firm’s services as OGHS’s legal counsel in the class action litigation. As a 25 percent partner in MMRB, PMPLC would conceivably receive 25 percent of the compensation received by MMRB.

As sole owner of PMPLC, Morrow would thereby have an interest in the fees earned by PMPLC.

There are two active lawsuits in which OGHS is a plaintiff. The first is the Blue Cross litigation and the second is an Opioids product liability class action lawsuit. Morrow and MMRB filed a notice of withdrawal as counsel in the opioid litigation on June 2 of this year, about six weeks prior to Morrow’s resignation as a member of the OGHS Board of Trustees.

Morrow, PMPLC, and/or MMRB received $336,407 IN compensation as a result of the legal services that were provided to OGHS – $40,000 ON Sept. 26, 2016; $202,607 on Jan. 2, 2018, and $93,800 on April 2, 2018.

In its’ ruling, the ethics board said:

• R.S. 1111(C)(2)(d) (sic) provides that no public servant and no legal entity in which the public servant exercises control or owns an interest of more than 25 percent shall receive anything of economic value for or in consideration of services rendered, or to be rendered, to or for any person during his public service unless such services are neither preformed (sic) nor compensated by any person from whom such public servant would be prohibited by (statute).
• R.S. 42:1115(A)(1) prohibits a public servant from soliciting or accepting, directly or indirectly, any thing (sic) of economic value as a gift or gratuity from any person or from any officer, director, agent, or employee of such person, if such public servant knows or reasonably should know that such person has or is seeking to have a contractual, business, or financial relationship with the public servant’s agency.

“Based on the foregoing facts,” the ethics board said, “Mr. Morrow violated R.S. 42:1111(C)(2)(d) by virtue of his receipt of a thing of economic value for services rendered to PMPLC/MMRB at a time when he served as a member of OGHS, and at a time when MMRB had a contractual, business, or financial relationship with OGHS.”

• The board requested that the Ethics Adjudicatory Board:
• Conduct a hearing on the foregoing charge;
• Determine that Patrick C. Morrow, Sr. violated (state statutes), and

Assess the appropriate penalties in accordance with the recommendation of the board to be submitted during a public hearing “or at another time deemed appropriate by the Ethics Adjudicatory Board.”

Granted, on the surface, things do look somewhat suspect from the standpoint of existing state ethics laws.

But why now? Why this particular individual?

But may have noticed that bold-faced “more than” earlier.

That might well be a technicality on which Morrow may hang his defense. He is, after all, only a 25 percent partner in MMRB, not “more than” 25 percent, as the law specifies as being the bar. It’s a fine point, but one worth attention going forward.

It wasn’t too many years ago that this same ethics board let three BOARD OF ELEMENTARY and SECONDARY EDUCATION (BESE) members and the sister of the BESE president off the hook for similar activity.

Jay Guillot, a board member from Ruston, was given the green light with the awarding of a $16 million state contract to HGA, a company in which he had/has a major (partnership) stake.

Then-BESE President Chas Roemer consistently voted on matters concerning charter schools despite his sister, CAROLINE ROEMER SHIRLEY’S simultaneously serving as executive director of the Louisiana Association of Public Charter Schools.

And then there’s BESE member KIRA ORANGE-JONES, who served as executive director for Teach for America (TFA), which simultaneously had contracts with the Louisiana Department of Education.

BESE member Holly Boffy likewise managed an outfit called EdTALENTS in Lafayette. EdTalents contracted with local school districts which were governed and regulated by BESE.

Orange-Jones and Boffy continue to serve on BESE.

Another glaring contradiction by the ethics board which left observers scratching their heads involved former State Police Superintendent Mike Edmonson and that infamous road trip to San Diego via the Grand Canyon and Las Vegas taken by four of Edmonson’s state troopers back in 2016.

In that case the ethics board first ABSOLVED the troopers of wrongdoing – in secret – in April 2018 when it said they were merely following orders from Edmonson. But in August 2019, that same ethics panel CLEARED EDMONSON. And guess who Edmonson’s attorney was in that ethics board hearing? Non other than Gray Sexton, who once headed the board but who now represents clients before his old board.

So, it’s pretty easy to see how the ethics board conveniently overlooked other apparent conflicts before it decided to knuckle down and do its job with Morrow. The question, though, is why, why now and why Morrow?

Could it be that Morrow was singled out because he was appointed to the LSU Board of Supervisors by Gov. Edwards, thus making him an expedient political target?

Or perhaps it’s because of the high-profile status of MMRB with former Federal District Court Judge Richard T. (Ted) Haik’s affiliation with the firm in 2016 as of counsel status?

Whatever the ethics board’s motives, you can bet there’s a back story to all this somewhere that has yet to be told.

Perhaps the Ethics Board should be hauled before a different ethics board, if such a board only existed, for a hearing on its numerous breaches of ethics.