Feeds:
Posts
Comments

Archive for the ‘BESE’ Category

Rumors of John White’s departure for California, like those of Mark Twain’s death, appear to be greatly exaggerated

Posted in BESE, Education on November 30, 2012| 4 Comments »

The rumors that State Superintendent John White will soon be leaving the Department of Education (DOE) for a similar post in California appear to be just that—rumors.

Several unsubstantiated reports have surfaced over the past few days that White will soon announce his departure in favor of the California superintendent of education post but there are several glitches that would seem to squelch those reports.

First, the California superintendent of education is an elective, not appointive post.

Second, California law says that the superintendent of education must be a registered voter in the state.

Third, and most important, the California superintendent’s position pays only $151,000 per year, only 55 percent of White’s current $275,000 salary.

That would make any such announcement on the part of White premature at best and more than a little problematic.

The next election is not until 2014, so White would have no trouble becoming a registered voter but a move there for the purpose of running for elective office would certainly be a crapshoot given that incumbent Superintendent Tom Toriakson, a Democrat, has given no indication on whether or not he plans on stepping down at the end of his current term.

While vacancies in the superintendent’s office are filled by the governor, it’s not likely that Jerry Brown, a Democrat, would appoint a Jindal sycophant to his inner circle.

Of course, that’s not to say that White wouldn’t accept a similar appointive position elsewhere provided some other state or school district has difficulty separating fantasy from reality but it looks as though the California move at least is off the rumor table.

White, served briefly as superintendent of the department’s Recovery School District (RSD) before being appointed state superintendent last January. His nomination had been blocked by members of the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education but after several new members backed by Gov. Piyush Jindal were elected in October of 2011 and took office in January, the new board quickly approved White’s appointment.

Read Full Post »

Notable Quotables

Posted in ALEC, American Legislative Exchange Council, BESE, Charters, Governor's Office, Notable Quotables, Recovery School District, RSD, Vouchers on November 30, 2012| 3 Comments »

“There is no question in my mind that this is all part of the ALEC game plan.”

—Bloomfield Hills (Michigan) School Superintendent Ron Glass, discussing four bills now pending before the Michigan Legislature that, if passed, would implement public education “reforms” virtually identical to those now tied up in litigation in Louisiana. Glass said the bills were part of the game plan of the American Legislative Exchange Council which writes “model legislation” for its state lawmaker members to take back home for passage.

“This is not a laissez faire plea to defend the status quo. This is about making sure this tidal wave of untested legislation does not sweep away the valued programs our local community has proudly built into its cherished school system.”

—Glass, in a “call to action” that he sent out to opponents of the four bills.

“The coalition of the status quo have fought reform every step of the way…”

—π-yush Jindal, attempting to be clever in referring to the Coalition for Louisiana Public Education which opposes his education “reform” programs. (Psst! Hey, π-yush: it should be, “The coalition….has fought reform….” Gotta make your subject and verb agree. Didn’t they teach you that at Baton Rouge Magnet and at Brown?)

Read Full Post »

Michigan latest to attempt implementation of ALEC-inspired school reform identical to Louisiana’s–even cloning the RSD

Posted in ALEC, American Legislative Exchange Council, BESE, Charters, Education, Governor's Office, House, Senate, Legislature, Legislators, Privatization, Recovery School District, RSD, Vouchers on November 29, 2012| 3 Comments »

At the risk of sounding like one of those freaky conspiracists who wear tinfoil hats and insist we never really landed on the moon, recent events in the state of Michigan have a familiar—and ominous—ring.

The creation of the Education Achievement Authority (EAA) in that state is eerily akin to Louisiana’s Recovery School District (RSD) and certainly lends support to the theory that the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) is behind a national move to turn public schools into for-profit corporate entities with little or no public accountability.

We will return to the Michigan developments presently but first, some background.

The combination of vouchers, charters and computer courses are being promoted by the administration at the expense of public education funding—again, with no accountability built into the so-called “reforms.”

The RSD, which pre-dates the voucher and online courses, for a time was under the leadership void of Paul Vallas, then under equally inept State Superintendent John White and most recently under Patrick Dobard. No matter who heads it up, the RSD has proved a smashing failure and a gaping dark hole into which state revenues seem to vanish.

Vallas, during his tenure, took a state vehicle on personal business to Chicago on more than 30 occasions. On one of those trips, he appeared on a Chicago television station where he announced that he would run for mayor. He never became a candidate and the personal use of the state vehicle for the out-of-state trips was not discovered until he wrecked the vehicle in Chicago.

He also hired cronies from his previous tenures at education departments in Chicago and Philadelphia.

State audits of the RSD have turned up numerous irregularities and there were problems with a private transportation company receiving payment for busing students for the district. The RSD received still another black eye over reports of sexual activity between students at the school, prolonged teacher absences from classrooms (classes reported went unsupervised for weeks at a time) and chargers of attempted bribery. The LDOE official who reported the incidents and his supervisor were summarily fired.

And now comes a report by an outfit called Research on Reforms that reveals that each of the 12 RSD-New Orleans direct-run schools and 38 (79 percent) of the 48 RSD-New Orleans charter schools received 2012 school performance scores (SPS) of “D” or “F.”

The precise definition of a “failing school,” however, has remained in a state of flux since 2005, says the report, entitled Recovery School District in New Orleans: National Model for Reform or District in Academic Crisis.

“The Louisiana Department of Education (LDOE) has continuously revised its definition and labels of ‘failing’ schools to the extent that it is difficult to follow the real progress of any school historically,” it said. “It is imperative that the reader visit the historical state legislative actions that resulted in the creation of the RSD-NO and the disenfranchisement of the citizens in New Orleans in order to determine whether or not the RSD has failed in its commitment to public school students in New Orleans.”

And now Jindal’s education reform packages are tied up in state and federal courts.

In Tangipahoa Parish, a federal judge has already ruled against the state in a lawsuit that could be a precursor to legal problems for the entire Jindal education package passed earlier this year by the legislature.

U.S. District Judge Ivan Lemelle ruled that Acts 1 and 2 of the 2012 legislative session were in violation of a desegregation consent decree currently in effect in Tangipahoa and could have implications for other districts in the state under similar orders.

Lemelle said the acts would “impair or impede” the parish’s ability to comply with federal desegregation laws and that more than 40 other school districts across the state that are under similar agreements could also be affected.

Education Department officials indicated the ruling will be appealed.

On Wednesday of this week, trial kicked off in 19th District Court in Baton Rouge in a lawsuit brought against LDOE by the state’s two largest teacher unions and dozens of local school boards.

The plaintiffs are claiming that Act 2, which created the school voucher system and Senate Concurrent Resolution 99, which is the state’s Minimum Foundation Program (MFP) for funding public education, were unconstitutional.

The argue that the voucher system diverts local funds for purposes for which they were never approved by taxpayers and that the MFP resolution, approved on June 4, the last day of the session, failed to obtained the constitutionally-mandated two-thirds vote because the resolution resulted in a “fiscal impact,” which requires a two-thirds vote.

House Speaker Chuck “the Eunuch” Kleckley (R-Lake Charles) and state attorney Jimmy Faircloth maintain there was no fiscal impact, thus allowing for passage by a simple majority of members present and voting. For the full 105-member House, 53 votes are required for a simple majority. A two-thirds majority would require 70 of 105 votes.

The Legislative Fiscal Office, which is charged with reviewing legislative bills for fiscal impact, disagreed, saying there was a fiscal impact, which reinforced plaintiffs’ arguments.

The resolution passed 51-49, a simple majority of the 100 members present and voting. Sixty-seven votes would have been needed for a two-thirds vote.

There are a couple of interesting twists in the voucher lawsuit in state district court. Faircloth, who is representing the state, contributed $1,000 on Oct. 24 to Judge Kelley’s unsuccessful campaign for the State Supreme Court.

Kelley, meanwhile, is married to Angele Davis, who served as Jindal’s commissioner of administration for the first two and one-half years of his administration.

All of which brings us back to our conspiracy involving the state of Michigan specifically and any number of states in general that either have implemented or are attempting to implement similar programs.

Rob Glass, Superintendent of Bloomfield Hills Schools, it not waiting for the axe to fall; he has issued a call to action to fight pending legislation that would put into place programs strikingly similar to those currently the subject of litigation here in Louisiana.

The legislative proposals in Michigan have prompted critics to ask if that state’s EAA is establishing “a statewide school reform district on the fast track?” That same question is now being raised in Louisiana but unlike Michigan, it is being asked here in hindsight.

The observation Glass made to LouisianaVoice on Thursday is even more to the point: “There is no question in my mind that this is all part of the ALEC game plan. What we’re seeing in Michigan either has been played out or is being played out in other states and the proposals in all the states are identical,” he said.

The demographic profile of Bloomfield Hills is in stark contrast to that of New Orleans and most of Louisiana.

Bloomfield Hills is a city located in the heart of metro Detroit’s affluent northern suburbs in Oakland County. Located 20 miles northwest of downtown Detroit, the city, with a population of less than 4,000, has consistently ranked as one of the five wealthiest cities in the U.S. with comparable populations. Its median family income in excess of $200,000 per year is the highest of any city outside California, Florida or Virginia.

“If we do not take immediate action, I believe great damage will be done to public education, including our school system,” Glass said in his Nov. 28 call to action. “We have just three weeks to take action before it’s too late,” he said of four bills pending in the current legislative session in Michigan.

The bills are:

• House Bill 6004 and Senate Bill 1358 would expand the EAA, presently consisting of 15 Detroit schools, to a statewide system overseen by a chancellor appointed by the governor and which would function outside the authority of the State Board of Education of state school superintendent. “These schools are exempt from the same laws and quality measures of community-governed public schools,” Glass said. “The EAA can seize unused school buildings (built and financed by local taxpayers) and force sale or lease to charter, non-public or EAA schools.”

• House Bill 5923 would create several new forms of charter and online schools with no limit on the number, many of which would be created by EAA. “Public schools are not allowed to create these new schools unless they charter them,” Glass said. “Selective enrollment/dis-enrollment policies will likely lead to greater segregation in our public schools. This bill creates new schools without changing the overall funding available, further diluting resources for community-governed public schools.”

• Senate Bill 620 known as the “Parent Trigger” bill, this would allow the lowest-achieving 5 percent of schools to be converted to a charter school while allowing parents or teachers to petition for the desired reform model. “This bill…disenfranchises voters, ends their local control and unconstitutionally hands taxpayer-owned property over to for-profit companies,” he said. “Characterized as parent-empowerment, this bill does little to develop deep, community-wide parent engagement and organization.”

Glass said he has never considered himself a conspiracy theorist—until now. “This package of bills is the latest in a year-long barrage of ideologically-driven bills designed to weaken and defund locally-controlled public education, handing scarce taxpayer dollars over to for-profit entities operating under a different set of rules,” he said. “I believe this is fundamentally wrong.”

He said that he, State School Superintendent Mike Flanagan and State Board of Education President John Austin, along with the Detroit Free Press, have expressed various concerns about the bills.

“This is not a laissez faire plea to defend the status quo (a favorite accusation leveled at educators by Jindal). This is about making sure this tidal wave of untested legislation does not sweep away the valued programs our local community has proudly built into its cherished school system,” Glass said.

A familiar and ominous ring indeed…

Read Full Post »

Nothing but the best for DOE: John White hires $170,000 deputy central to Kansas City $32 million bid controversy

Posted in ALEC, American Legislative Exchange Council, BESE, Education, Privatization on November 6, 2012| 9 Comments »

First it was Los Angeles resident Dave “Lefty” Lefkowith of the unsuccessful attempt to auction off blocks of water in Florida on behalf of Enron and now State Superintendent of Education John White has hired another out-of-state executive staff member who brings considerable political baggage to his new job.

Lefkowith, you may recall, is being paid $146,000 to commute from his home in Los Angeles to hype the Department of Education’s (DOE) computer Course Content. Oddly, his title keeps changing.

Originally listed as DOE’s Director of the Office of Portfolio, he identified himself as a “deputy superintendent” when he made a video best described as amateurish in which he promoted the department’s Court Content.

But when White announced a reorganization of his staff last month, he listed Lefkowith as an assistant superintendent “overseeing vouchers, charter schools and other areas.”

Included in that same announcement was the appointment of Mike Rounds who is being paid $170,000 a year as deputy superintendent for district support, whatever that title entails.

Rounds, it turns out, comes from Kansas City where he served as Chief Operating Officer for Kansas City Public Schools.

Both he and White are 2010 graduates of the Broad Superintendents Academy of Los Angeles which critics say turns out superintendents who use corporate-management techniques to consolidate power, weaken teachers’ job protections, cut parents out of decision making and introduce unproven reform measures.

The academy, founded by billionaire businessman Eli Broad, offers a six-weekend course spread over 10 months. There are no qualifications that students have any experience in education, just that they have a bachelor’s degree.

Critic Sharon Higgins says she became alarmed when she witnessed her school district in Oakland go through three Broad-trained superintendents in quick succession. She said she saw principals and teachers whom she described as “high-quality, dedicated people,” force out by Broad superintendents trained to aim for “maximum disruption” when they came to a district, with little regard for parent or teacher concerns.

Rounds resigned his Kansas City position last March 16 following an investigation by a local television station into bid irregularities involving a $32 million renovation project for Kansas City schools.

A month after his resignation, the contract was cancelled.

Ryan Kath, a reporter for KSHB-TV in Kansas City, broke the story of a contract awarded to an unpaid consultant who had been brought in by Rounds to help in the selection process on the original request for proposals (RFP) by the school system. After all the bids on the first project were rejected, a new RFP was issued and the consultant founded a company which subsequently bid on and won the contract.

In early 2011, Kath said, the Kansas City Public School system decided to upgrade a number of school buildings after decades of neglect and deferred maintenance. Specifically, much of the work was to upgrade central air conditioning in several of the schools. Initially, the project was to cost about $85 million and many of the area’s leading construction companies spent thousands of dollars assembling bid packages.

School district staff needed outside help to wade through the complex selection process and Rounds retained a pair of paid consultants to oversee the process.

Rounds, who was in charge of selecting a company to manage the project, also brought in a voluntary adviser, Dayton “Buddy” Hahs, an area businessman with an extensive background in energy conservation. Rounds told Kahn he asked Hahs for help because of his expertise in the industry and because Hahs did not charge a fee for his work. “He wanted to make sure than when we selected an energy performance contractor that it went well,” Rounds said.

Hahs reviewed bids, formulated questions for bidders and sat in on interviews.

On Aug. 30, bidders received emails informing them that all bids were being rejected “in the best interest of the district.” No other explanation was provided.

Also on Aug. 30, Rounds emailed Hahs saying, “I would still really like to sit down with you to discuss the way forward on our infrastructure requirements” and a couple of weeks later, Hahs and a business partner attended a meeting with district personnel.

On Oct. 7, the district divided the project into several tiers and issued a second RFP on the first tier of construction along with a fee for acting as project manager. Many of the same companies bid on the revamped project.

The district on Nov. 16 awarded the contract to a “mysterious new company” that no one had ever heard of,” Kath said. The contract was awarded despite the company’s submitting a bid that was $2 million higher than the low bid.

That company was HMM Construction Services, founded by Dayton “Buddy” Hahs, the same unpaid consultant who had participated in interviews on the initial RFP. State corporate records were filed on Oct. 11, just four days after the second RFP went out and only a couple of weeks before the deadline for submitting bids.

Moreover, Kath learned that Hahs was never required to sign a non-disclosure agreement which is considered standard protocol for consultants and advisors and despite advice from the district’s legal counsel that a non-disclosure agreement be signed by Hahs.

William Black, a law professor at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, said that the bid “destroys the heart of what it means to have competitive bidding.”

Others called the contract a “monster inside deal.”

On March 13, just over a month after Kath’s initial story, it was announced that Rounds would resign, effective March 16, “to give his full attention to land a superintendent job in an urban school district,” according to a statement from the district.

On April 14, Kansas City Public Schools Superintendent Stephen Green announced that the district was terminating the contract after it became clear that HMM would not be able to meet its deadline and also would run over budget.

In May of this year, Missouri State Auditor Tom Schweich released an audit of the district that was harshly critical of the contract. “Any case where a friend or relative or someone on the inside is getting a contract, you have to really document why they were the best person because there’s going to be immediate suspicion on the part of the public,” Schweich said.

So, after issuing a controversial contract to a contractor with inside knowledge at a cost $2 million more than the low bid, Rounds leaves the Kansas City School system to seek a superintendent’s job “in an urban school district,” only to wind up as Deputy Superintendent for District Support for the Louisiana Department of Education—working with John White, his old classmate from that bastion of educational achievement, the Broad Superintendents Academy.

First there was Lefty Lefkowith commuting to Louisiana from Los Angeles to serve as an assistant superintendent and now we have Mike Rounds of Kansas City as a deputy superintendent—at a combined salary of $316,000.

Apparently all those urban school districts out there did a better job of vetting Rounds than did the Louisiana Department of Education. Aren’t we lucky?

And let’s not forget that this state is broke.

We can’t wait to see White’s next personnel move.

Read Full Post »

Angelle’s performance before congressional committee embarrassing; Ponti embellishes his accomplishments

Posted in BESE, Campaign Contributions, Commissions, Governor's Office, Politicians on November 5, 2012| 11 Comments »

Editor’s note:

Within a couple of hours of posting this story, LouisianaVoice received a telephone call. The display on our phone indicated it was from one Holly Boffy. Boffy is the District 7 member of the Louisiana Board of Elementary and Secondary Education (BESE). That is in the southwest corner of Louisiana. Why would she be calling us? we wondered.

It turns out that it was a robocall on behalf of the candidacy of Scott Angelle for the District 2 Public Service Commission seat.

So, why was a BESE member from the Lake Charles area allowing her telephone to be used on behalf of a Public Service Commission candidate from the Baton Rouge area? In all likelihood, she doesn’t know bean dip about the machinations of the Public Service Commission.

The answer is simple.

Boffy, of Youngsville, Louisiana, received two $2,500 campaign contributions in her run for office last fall from Jindal—one on Aug. 25 and a second on Aug. 29. Angelle was originally appointed by former Gov. Kathleen Blanco but held over by Jindal as Secretary of Natural Resources—until he abandoned his post in the middle of the crisis over that toxic sinkhole on Bayou Corne in Assumption Parish.

Connect the dots.

The Piyush Jindal dynasty won’t be satisfied until it has complete control of the state, every agency, board and commission, from top to bottom.

Read on:

Whatever your sentiments about the resumption of offshore drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, voters in Louisiana Public Service Commission District 2 would do well to examine the records of the top two contenders in Tuesday’s election to replace retiring commission member and Vice-chairman James Field.

In spite of the erroneous claim by one crackpot blogger that Scott Angelle faked that TV ad showing him addressing thousands of rabid supporters (oh, wait; that was LouisianaVoice, wasn’t it?), it is still worthwhile to take a close look at the candidate. His performance before a congressional committee nearly a year following BP’s disastrous Deepwater Horizon explosion that killed 11 men and injured 17 others and which produced a oil spill that spewed 4.9 million barrels of oil into the gulf over a three-month period would be comical were it not so pathetic.

At the time of his questioning by Congressman Ed Markey (D-Mass.) during the March 16, 2011, hearing by the House Natural Resources Committee, Angelle was Secretary of the Louisiana Department of Natural Resources.

He recently resigned that position in the midst of the still-ongoing Bayou Corne sinkhole disaster in northern Assumption Parish to seek the District 2 Public Service Commission seat, leaving it to others to grapple with a potentially disastrous situation that has produced the sinkhole that is now more than five acres in size and which has caused the evacuation of scores of residents.

Nor has his former boss, Gov. Piyush Jindal shown his face at the sinkhole site despite his propensity to seek camera face time anytime an oil spill or hurricane threatens the state. That’s because the Bayou Corne situation came about because of permits issued on his watch.

And lest we be accused of being a shill for his leading opponent, State Rep. Erich Ponti, rest assured we have some pointed remarks about his misleading TV ad campaign as well.

Besides touting his business acumen, Ponti makes the claim in his ads that he balanced the state budget which, for those even vaguely familiar with the Louisiana legislative process, is an outrageous claim, a preposterous misrepresentation.

First of all, state law mandates that the legislature pass a balanced budget. Unlike Congress, the legislature is forbidden from approving a deficit budget. So, Ponti and his 104 colleagues in the House and the 39 in the Senate in reality had no choice in balancing the budget. It is a claim that each of the other 143 legislators have just as much right as Ponti to make—none.

Second, Ponti is not even a member of any of the House committees that consider the budget before it goes to the House floor. He is chairman of the House Commerce Committee, but it does not consider the budget. Neither does the House Committee on Homeland Security or the Joint Committee on Homeland Security, on both of which he sits. Nor does the Capital Region Legislative Delegation or the Louisiana Republican Legislative Delegation, the two caucuses of which he is a member.

He is not a member of the House Appropriations Committee. Nor is he a member of the Joint Budget Committee or even the Legislative Budget Control Committee.

So, any claim on his part that he had a hand in balancing the state budget is, at best, disingenuous and at worst, an outright lie.

But back to that hearing in March of 2011:

Here are excerpts from the questioning by Markey, the ranking member of the Natural Resources Committee, and Angelle’s responses:

• Markey, discussing safety comparisons that show better safety records for rigs in European waters than those in U.S. waters even though the same companies were operating in each, asked: “Don’t you think we need to insure that these rigs are operating safely in order to protect lives of workers on these rigs? Don’t you think that the safety recommendations of the BP Commission should be implemented?”

• Angelle: “I’m not familiar with the safety recommendations.”

• Markey: “You haven’t analyzed the recommendations?”

• Angelle: “I have not.”

• Markey: “Given your job, don’t you think you should’ve looked at those safety recommendations?”

• Angelle: “I have not analyzed those recommendations, sir.”

• Markey: “Could you analyze them and give a set of responses to the safety recommendations back to the committee?”

• Angelle: Sir, I have not analyzed all those recommendations. I will tell you that in my comments, I indicated it would not be business as usual and we support it not being business as usual.”

• Markey: “Does that include implementing the safety recommendations of the BP Commission?”

• Angelle: “I am not aware of all of the safety recommendations of the BP Commission.”

• Markey: “Are you aware of any of the safety recommendations of the BP Commission?”

• Angelle: “I am aware of some of the safety recommendations, yes sir.”

• Markey: “Are there any of those safety recommendations that you recommend be implemented? Can you tell us what those are?”

• Angelle: “I would just simply say that generally, I believe that repetitive safety measures as…blow out preventers and those kinds of things are very important. I certainly understand containment issues (as) being very, very important but I would say again that having the new regulations that have been promulgated, we are now at a point that the industry has demonstrated to the government the ability…”

• Markey: “Even though you are not familiar with the safety recommendations of the BP Commission, you’re ready to say it’s safe and people should go out there, is that what you’re saying?”

• Angelle: That’s not what I said. I said that it’s my understanding that the Bureau of Ocean Energy has promulgated new rules and regulations and the industry has demonstrated an ability to comply with those and now is the time to begin issuing permits inasmuch as industry has begun to comply with those recommendations.”

• Markey: “And they issued those recommendations last month. So we’re ready to go. Are you satisfied with the recommendations that were promulgated by the…”

• Angelle: “It’s not for me to be satisfied. I come here not to blame but to bring about a solution and that is the industry has demonstrated an ability and we need a sense of urgency in issuing permits.”

• Markey: “In your testimony, you say that seven rigs have already left the Gulf since the moratorium was declared. But according to the Department of the Interior, at least four of these seven rigs have returned to the Gulf in 2011 and five new rigs have already arrived or are scheduled to. Overall, there are 125 (rigs) in the Gulf of Mexico today compared to 122 one year ago. Doesn’t it misrepresent what is happening in the Gulf to only mention the rigs that have left without mentioning the new ones that have come in?”

• Angelle: I would say that whatever new ones that have come in, they are not working. It’s just inventory and it’s like having automobiles on a lot; you can have a lot of automobiles on the lot but if you’re not selling them, you’re not creating economic activity.”

• Markey: “But we have the new regulations and we’re ready to go and the administration is now issuing new leases and the rigs are returning. These companies are capitalists; they are returning and new ones are arriving, so it represents a confidence on the oil industry in what is happening or else they would not be returning and they would not be adding new rigs.”

• Angelle: “The Obama administration is not issuing new leases. The Lease sales scheduled for this year have been cancelled.”

• Markey: “I do not think oil companies are sending rigs back just to sit idle. That’s not how oil companies operate. They’re sending them back because there are new opportunities for them.”

So what this race boils down to—or at least what it should boil down to is these two questions:

• If Scott Angelle would walk into a congressional hearing totally unprepared to discuss something as important as proposed safety regulations for offshore drilling—an issue that was certain to impact the Louisiana economy and hundreds of jobs for Louisiana workers—what makes voters think he would adequately prepare himself for such matters as utility rate increases and regulations for, say, the trucking industry in Louisiana as a member of the Louisiana Public Service Commission?

• Is Scott Angelle simply being opportunistic in trying to set himself up for a run at the governor’s office in 2015?

Read Full Post »

« Newer Posts - Older Posts »