Louisiana Voice

One thing you can always count on in times of crisis is price-gouging by unscrupulous individuals willing to take advantage of others’ misfortunes in order to turn a quick buck.

What you don’t usually count on is for those individuals to be public employees assigned to help disaster victims.

But then, the State Fire Marshall’s Office is, along with Louisiana State Police, part of the Louisiana Department of Public Safety and Corrections, so I guess you’d come to expect some degree of underhanded – if not outright illegal – behavior, especially from the administrative offices of these agencies.

Still, it seems more than a little twisted that the very ones charged with protecting the public’s interests can work so long and hard at perverting the process for personal gain. And make no mistake, whether they have the integrity to accept it, those at the top own responsibility for subordinates’ actions.

The sign on Harry Truman’s desk said it best: “The buck stops here.”

Administrators who deceive themselves into thinking they can fire miscreants and then wash their hands of the scandal often end up like Macbeth’s wife who attempted to rinse the stain of Duncan’s blood from her conscience while pleading, “Out damned spot.”

It was first REPORTED on July 9 that six persons, including an attorney who once worked as a fraud prosecutor (oh, the irony), his twin brother who worked for the state Fire Marshal’s Office, had been indicted on charges of defrauding Louisiana of more than $800,000 in a scheme to profit off the state’s hurricane relief efforts last year.

Four others were also indicted. They included Philip Sibley, Stacy Smith, Bernard Christmas and Ava Richardson. Secretary of State records listed the McCormick Law Firm as the agent of record for one of the companies involved in the scheme, Emergency Logistics Solutions, managed by Sibley.

All six were tied to a number of companies that were used to launder the money was the law firm of Robert McCormick’s brother, former fraud prosecutor Tom McCormick who used the money to pay credit card bills, car payments and school tuitions. In just one example, participants purchased 16,000 bottles of water at 13 cents per bottle and submitted vouchers to the state for $1.50 each through Robert McCormick, who worked for the fire marshal’s Office as its emergency management officer in charge of procuring supplies for relief efforts following the devastation to Southwest Louisiana during the 2020 hurricane season.

Robert McCormick, through his position with the fire marshal’s office took advantage of his position of procuring materials and supplies for emergencies to approve the fraudulent payments.

The investigation, first initiated by the Legislative Auditor’s Office and later turned over to 18^th Judicial District DA Tony Clayton.

The investigation led to the discovery of unspecified violations by Robert McCormick’s supervisor and reserve deputy fire marshal Stacy Smith and her husband, Dean Smith, who, also resigned even though Dean Smith was not named in the indictments, according to The Advocate.

So, who is Dean Smith?

It’s not the University of North Carolina basketball coach who passed away in February 2015.

I’m talking about the Dean Smith whose last day as police captain for the Pontchartrain Levee District was January 27, 2017, and who went to work as a Fire Chief for the Louisiana Office of State Fire Marshal three days later at a cool $85,000 per year.

Nothing in his background would seem to qualify him as Fire Chief.

Louisiana Civil Service Department records show that Dean Smith began working for the Pontchartrain Levee District as a Police Captain on July 1, 2010 at a salary of $61,000 per year.

On March 12, 2012, he was designated as a Police Captain A and on October 1, 2015, his salary was $71,000 and remained at that level until his departure to join the fire marshal’s office. Three days after he left the levee district and with no professional experience to qualify him for his Fire Chief position, his salary jumped by $14,000 per year, to $85,000 in his new post.

Smith’s employment history prior to joining the fire marshal’s office was spotty at best.

He was a volunteer fireman in Gonzales when Browning was Fire Chief there and the two are close friends, often joining each other on motorcycle rides.

Smith was also an Ascension Parish deputy sheriff at one time. While in that capacity, he had a gun to discharge accidentally, striking a prisoner in the spine and rendering him a paraplegic. He left the sheriff’s office after that, was elected a justice of the peace and eventually resigned to work for the levee board.

Irony of ironies, we are informed that one of the duties of the man who once accidentally shot and paralyzed a man was to serve as firearms instructor for the Fire Marshal’s office.

Despite holding down a critical job like Fire Chief, it proved impossible to reach Smith by telephone when attempts were made to reach him when we did our initial story on him back in 2017 because he had no phone extension at the Fire Marshal’s office. None. Nada. Nil. Zip. Attempts to call him on two separate occasions by LouisianaVoice met with explanations that he had no extension but that a message would be given him to return the call.

Of course, he never did.

Wanting to know just what it was that Smith did to earn his $85,000, I emailed State Fire Marshal Butch Browning, the man himself. He should know, after all:

From: Tom Aswell [mailto:azspeak@cox.net]
Sent: Friday, August 11, 2017 1:07 PM
To: ‘butch.browning@la.gov’ <butch.browning@la.gov>
Subject: FW: DEAN SMITH

Mr. Browning:

How long has Dean Smith worked for the Louisiana Office of State Fire Marshal and why does he not have a phone extension?

What, exactly, is his title and what are his duties?

You will notice my email was sent at 1:07 p.m. on Aug. 11, 2017. Minutes later I received a receipt showing that Browning had read our email at 1:08 p.m.

_____________________________________________
From: Butch Browning [mailto:Butch.Browning@la.gov]
Sent: Friday, August 11, 2017 1:08 PM
To: Tom Aswell <azspeak@cox.net>
Subject: Read: FW: DEAN SMITH

Your message

To: Butch Browning
Subject: FW: DEAN SMITH
Sent: Friday, August 11, 2017 1:07:24 PM (UTC-06:00) Central Time (US & Canada)
was read on Friday, August 11, 2017 1:08:01 PM (UTC-06:00) Central Time (US & Canada).

But Browning never answered my inquiry, so four hours later, at 5:12 p.m., a follow-up email was sent but alas, he must’ve already started his weekend for he never opened that message:

So, to learn just what else besides teaching firearms safety did a Fire Chief at SFM do to earn his $85,000, I was forced to turn to other sources, namely a couple of employees in the Fire Marshal’s office, both of whom said Smith and Browning were pals from way back.

One of those says Smith was hired to oversee the non-existent SFM fleet of boats. Well, it shouldn’t too difficult for a Fire Chief with no apparent firefighting experience to watch over boats that don’t exist.

He also cooked jambalaya for attendees at a firefighters’ conference held in Houma the weekend of July 19-22. Maybe that’s what the title Fire Chief meant.

If that conference could somehow be deemed an emergency, perhaps that might justify the use of the SFM’s special service trailer. The trailer was “up-fitted” in May 2015, 2017, from 5 Alarm Fire Apparatus of Raceland at a cost of $4,649 “for USAR emergency field food service cooking during emergencies.” The Fire Marshal’s office said at the time the expenditure was necessary, that the office “has no way of supporting USAR events or emergencies when they take place. This up-fit cooking trailer will now support events and emergencies with equipment for field food services when necessary.”

They probably also made good use of the 30-gallon roll-around combo set (complete with paddles for stirring the jambalaya) purchased in January 2015 from Krazy Kajun Cookware for $895.

But, despite the apparent critical need for an $85,000 per year Fire Chief, Boat Watcher and Jambalaya Cook, he didn’t even have a telephone extension at the Fire Marshal’s headquarters in Baton Rouge even though that’s where he worked reported to collect his salary.