Louisiana Voice

When I woke up Friday morning, it was 2012 all over again.

The only things missing were Bobby Jindal his own self, along with cow chip-kicking political guru Timmy Teepell, and former Commissioner of Administration Kristy Nichols.

But there it was, in black and white in Friday’s Baton Rouge Advocate: the ghost of nightmares past in a pious pose, being prayed over by State Rep. Rick Edmonds (R-Baton Rouge), who also is an outreach pastor and vice president of Louisiana’s Family Forum, and Ben Clapper, executive director of Louisiana Right to Life.

The event was a statewide pro-life demonstration and Liz was there as the Louisiana Attorney General’s Office’s Solicitor General prior to her unsuccessful defense of the state’s anti-abortion law before the U.S. Supreme Court.

That rally was in January 2020 and the Supreme Court’s 5-4 decision came the following June but now Lizzie’s back in full campaign mode – that is, so long as her boss, AG Jeff Landry opts for promotion to the fourth-floor suite across the Capitol Lake in the 2023 gubernatorial election.

That was the gist of The Advocate’s story last Friday. If Landry runs for governor as expected, Murrill intends to run for her boss’s job as the top legal mind (and I use that term ever-so-loosely) in the state. Actually, I prefer the term I heard used by an old friend from my Ruston Daily Leader reporting days, former Ruston City Council attorney Hale Walker, who somewhat cynically referred to the attorney general as “just another lawyer.”

But Landry as governor? Liz Murrill as AG? Folks, we’re looking at Jindal 2.0. (Actually, with the political baggage that Landry is totin’ around, I don’t think there’s a chance in hell he can get elected governor or possibly even reelected AG.)

Be that as it may, Murrill definitely has her sights set on bigger and better things. And why not? Her career track record is reflective of one who is never satisfied with the status quo. And while there’s nothing wrong with that – who, after all, wouldn’t want their career to progress? – it’s interesting to see WHERE SHE’S BEEN to get an idea of where she would probably like to go, and to consider the possible obstacles in her path.

Let’s go back to Oct. 1, 2012. That’s the date that Jindal named Nichols as his Commissioner of Administration. Murrill, meanwhile, worked in the governor’s office from November 2008 and served for 2 ½ years as Jindal’s Deputy Executive Counsel before she was elevated to Executive Counsel, which is the chief legal advisor to the governor.

When Nichols was appointed Commissioner of Administration, she brought Murrill over a month later, in November 2012, as Executive Counsel to the Commissioner, where she remained for two years.

While working for Nichols, Murrill became embroiled in a difference of interpretation of regulations by then Attorney General Buddy Caldwell and then-State Rep. John Bel Edwards when the Jindal administration gutted the Office of Group Benefits’ reserve fund. Through all the testimony during legislative committee hearings, Murrill was caught on camera as she continually exchanged TEXT MESSAGES with someone, probably some staffer in the governor’s office.

She left the commissioner’s office soon after that hearing and bounced around several jobs before joining Landry’s office in January 2017.

Back in 2009, while employed in Jindal’s office, Murrill became involved in a DISPUTE with LouisianaVoice over the release of public records related to the LSU Board of Supervisors’ decision to cut health care spending and to privatize state hospitals. Shelby McKenzie, an attorney retained by LSU, said that Murrill had advised him that the board should invoke the so-called “deliberative process” in order to deny the release of the records.

The deliberative process gambit is a loose interpretation by which public officials, afraid of any light being shone on what they’re doing, may refuse to allow the public to see what they’re doing or to understand the motivations behind their actions.

But let’s re-examine the employment of Shelby McKenzie in this particular issue.

Shelby was an attorney with the Baton Rouge law firm Taylor Porter at the time he gave that advice to the LSU Board. He currently serves OF COUNSEL to the firm and is an adjunct professor of law at the LSU Law Center and has taught Insurance Law there since 1971.

Likewise, one JOHN P. MURRILL is currently a partner at Taylor Porter and serves on the firm’s Executive Committee. He is married to Liz Murrill.

Taylor Porter currently has at least a dozen contracts with the State of Louisiana totaling more than $3 million and until earlier this year, was the legal counsel for LSU. Such legal contracts with state agencies are generally issued by the Attorney General’s Office with the concurrence of the agency to be represented.

State law prohibits any person holding at least a 25 percent ownership in an entity from doing business with an agency that employs an immediate family member. It’s highly doubtful that John Murrill is a 25 percent stakeholder in a large firm such as Taylor Porter, which would allow the firm to legally contract with the state.

Still…