Feeds:
Posts
Comments

Archive for the ‘Boards’ Category

Difference in Jindal’s 2012 retirement ‘reform’ and these retirement gigs brings double standard into sharp focus

Posted in ALEC, American Legislative Exchange Council, Boards, Civil Service, Congress, GOHSEP, Governor's Office, Health Care, House, Senate, Layoffs, Legislature, Legislators, Transparency on August 10, 2013| 13 Comments »

BATON ROUGE (CNS)—You may recall Gov. Bobby Jindal’s ill-fated retirement “reform” bills of 2012, all written by the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) and introduced individually by Jindal’s lackeys in the House and Senate.

An example of how those “reforms” would have worked if passed can be found in the case of a single state employee whom we know but who is representative of thousands of state civil service workers.

In her case, she was (and still is, given that no civil service pay raises have been approved for five years now) making $52,000 per year and had 20 years’ service in 2012 (21 now). Her plan was to put in 30 years and retire. At her current pay, with no pay raises for the remainder of her career (which appears more likely with each year of the Jindal administration), she would retire at $39,000 per year. With inflation and no raises taken into account, $39,000 a year won’t go very far.

Had Jindal’s “reforms” passed, however, her annual retirement would have been reduced to $6,000 per year—a $33,000 per-year hit. And state employees do not pay into nor do they receive Social Security benefits. Six thousand dollars per year for 30 years’ service. Period.

And she was not an anomaly; stories like this would have been the case throughout state government.

Jindal claimed his retirement package was aimed at restoring the various state retirement systems to some semblance of stability by reducing the unfunded liabilities. But rather than continue to pay the state’s share of contributions to the systems those payments were actually reduced.

The bottom line is Jindal has complete and total disdain for the plight of those in the trenches—the ones who actually make state government work by showing up for work each day (which is certainly more than he does, given his extensive travel itinerary) and listening to the complaints of hostile citizens who don’t understand why they have so much difficulty getting the services they need—from road repairs to college and university infrastructure repair to services for the developmentally disabled where the waiting list is 10,000 persons—and growing. http://theadvocate.com/news/6739937-123/la-officials-try-to-shrink

And he’s made their job much harder by laying off rank and file employees while fattening the unclassified (appointed, non-civil service) payroll.

At the same time, he has been careful to take care of favored legislators with six-figure, do-nothing jobs which serve only to beef up their retirement benefits, some by more than tenfold.

LouisianaVoice, with the information available, did a before and after calculation of retirement benefits for several of those washed up legislators and local politicians. All calculations were based on the assumption they will remain in their new lofty positions at least three years. Here is what we found:

  • Former Rep. Jane Smith, by virtue of her appointment by Jindal to Deputy Secretary of the Louisiana Department of Revenue at a yearly salary of $107,500, saw her retirement benefits climb from a modest $6,700 a year to $56,400 annually.
  • Former Rep. Kay Katz, appointed to the Louisiana Tax Commission at a $56,000 yearly salary will go from $6,700 per year to $29,400 a year in retirement benefits.
  • Troy Hebert who left the House to assume directorship of the State Alcohol and Tobacco Control Board, went from $4,500 to $37,500.
  • Lane Carson, who recently retired as Secretary of the Louisiana Office of Veterans Affairs at $130,000 after five years on the job will retire at nearly $64,000 instead of about $7,500 on the basis of his service in the legislature.
  • Former St. Tammany Parish President and now Director of the Governor’s Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness (GOHSEP) at $165,000 and former St. Bernard Parish President Craig Taffaro, now the $150,000 Director of Hazard Mitigation and Recovery are only guesses. Because we are unsure of their previous salaries or their tenure in office, we have arbitrarily given them 15-year tenures (including their current positions) which put their retirement at $85,000 and $75,000, respectively—estimates both.
  • Former State Sen. Robert Barham saw his modest $7,500 legislative retirement balloon to $84,500 on the basis of his $124,000-a-year position as Secretary of the Louisiana Office of Wildlife and Fisheries.
  • We already wrote about Congressman Rodney Alexander who is leaving Congress to accept Lane Carson’s former position as Secretary of the Louisiana Office of Veterans Affairs at $130,000, a comfortable position that will boost his retirement from 15 years in the Louisiana Legislature prior to his election to Congress from $7,500 to $83,500.
  • But the grand prize goes to former State Rep. Noble Ellington. His 16 years in the House earned him a pension of about $8,900 but his hiring by Commissioner of Insurance Jim Donelon (at the behest of Jindal—his fingerprints are all over this appointment) as Deputy Commissioner of Insurance brought his retirement to almost $100,000 ($99,750).

Smith, Katz, Hebert, Carson, Barham, Alexander and Ellington qualify or will qualify for a combined retirement of more than $455,000 per year—an increase of $395,700 (667 percent) over their pre-Jindal appointment collective annual legislative retirement incomes of $59,300.

Now we harken back to Jindal’s aborted retirement “reform” which would have reduced our friend’s retirement from $39,000 to $6,000. On contrasting the two scenarios, one must ask, “What’s wrong with this picture?”

What is wrong is we have a governor who is just as slick and oily with the filthy ooze of dirty politics as any governor in the history of this state—while cloaking himself in the mantel of righteousness.

What is wrong is we have a governor who knows how to enrich his friends and stick it to everyone else—while pretending to act in the best interests of the state.

What is wrong is that we have a governor who entered Congress in January of 2005 as a man of modest means but emerged three years later as governor a multi-millionaire—and no one has asked how that happened.

What is wrong is that we have a governor who has demonstrated repeatedly that he has no compassion for the sick, the elderly, the developmentally disadvantaged, the mentally ill, state workers—and certainly not Louisiana citizens in general.

And what is wrong is we have a governor who does all that while hiding behind a façade of honesty, integrity, transparency and a “gold standard” of governmental ethics.

And now that same governor is attempting to call the shots in the election to fill the unexpired term of Rodney Alexander by promoting his puppet State Sen. Neil Riser (R-Columbia) for Congress. He did this by manipulating (a) the timing of Alexander’s retirement, (b) his immediate offer of a cushy job to Alexander, (c) turning over former Chief of Staff Timmy Teepell and chief fundraiser Allie Bautsch to work on Riser’s behalf, and (d) sewing up endorsements from State Sen. Mike Walsworth (R-West Monroe) and a host of Louisiana Republic congressmen, including former Payday Loan magnate John Fleming of Minden.

We in Louisiana are used to being conned by crooked politicians but they did it with so much more class than Jindal and his gaggle of sycophants.

Read Full Post »

Notable Quotables (in their own words)

Posted in BESE, Boards, Education, Ethics, Governor's Office, Notable Quotables, Transparency on July 28, 2013| 2 Comments »

“It is important that ethics board members are completely free of any and all conflicts of interest.”

—Gov. Bobby Jindal, in announcing his appointment of Scott Schneider to the State Board of Ethics on Sept. 23, 2008.

Read Full Post »

State Ethics Board vice chair resigns after conflict of interest over BESE member, TFA Director Kira Orange Jones exposed

Posted in BESE, Boards, Contract, Contracts, Education, Ethics, Governor's Office, Transparency on July 28, 2013| 10 Comments »

One of the primary functions of the State Ethics Board, on paper at least, is to guard against conflicts of interests on the part of state employees and appointive and elected officials.

So what happens when a member of the State Ethics Board has a conflict of interests?

If you are an appointee of Gov. Bobby Jindal, the answer is: apparently nothing.

Nothing, that is, until you are called out by a member of the media.

Then you quietly resign.

Scott Schneider, vice chairman of the Louisiana Board of Ethics, submitted his resignation just weeks after the Tribune, a newspaper serving the African-American community of New Orleans published a story in its May/June issue headlined “Kira, Kira on the Wall” which explained Schneider’s own conflict of interests in ruling on an Aug. 21, 2012, conflict of interest decision about Board of Elementary and Secondary Education (BESE) member Kira Orange Jones.

New Orleans attorney James Babst had sought the opinion on behalf of client Jones because of her position as executive director of Teach for America (TFA) which holds a lucrative contract with the Louisiana Department of Education.

Ethics Board staff attorneys informed the board that the state Code of Governmental Ethics would prohibit Kira Orange Jones, while she serves as a member (of BESE), from providing compensated services to Teach for America at a time when TFA has or is seeking a contractual, business or financial relationship with either the Louisiana Department of Education (DOE) or the Recovery School District (RSD),” the Tribune said.

Enter Schneider to save the day for Kira Orange Jones, Superintendent of Education John White and Gov. Bobby Jindal.

Schneider argued against the staff recommendation, ultimately prevailing with the logic that Jones was merely head of the New Orleans office of TFA and not the entire organization.

In a three-page letter from staff attorney Tracy Barker, the Ethics Board noted that while TFA has contracts with DOE in amounts exceeding $50,000 and that while BESE is required to approve and sign the contracts, and that as a member of BESE, Jones voted on those contracts, somehow no conflict existed.

The legislation cited by the board said there is no conflict so long as the following criteria are met:

  • The employee must be a salaried or wage-earning employee;
  • The employee’s salary must remain substantially unaffected by the contractual relationship;
  • The public servant (BESE member Jones) must own less than a “controlling interest” in the company, and
  • The public Servant (Jones) must be neither an officer, director, trustee, nor partner in the company.

So just what part of “executive director” did the Board of Ethics not understand?

That, it turns out, might be the key. Babst, it seems, merely identified his client as an employee of TFA, being careful to note that she did not sit on the board of directors of the national TFA but apparently neglecting to identify her as executive director of the New Orleans office.

And it seems reasonable to assume that whether or not she continues to receive paychecks would hinge in great part on her success in placing TFA teachers in public and charter schools in the New Orleans area through those lucrative contracts with DOE. So much for her salary remaining “substantially unaffected” by the contractual relationship.

And what was Schneider’s motivation in coming to the defense of Jones even as Ethic Board staff attorneys were ready to point out the obvious conflict?

Well, it seems that The Tulane University Cowen Institute’s partnership with TFA last year boosted Tulane to fifth in the nation in the number of university graduating seniors applying to TFA.

Schneider serves as an associate general counsel for Tulane University but somehow never deemed that fact and Tulane’s association with TFA important enough to inform the Ethics Board staff or to recuse himself from the discussion.

Ethics Board—Schneider—Tulane—TFA—Kira Jones—BESE;

BESE—Kira Jones—TFA—Tulane—Schneider—Ethics Board.

Hmmm. Either way you look at it, it fails to pass the smell test.

Ironically, way back in September of 2008, when Jindal announced his appointment of Schneider, he did so with a strong statement about conflicts of interest.

Mary Dumestre had just resigned from the board, saying she wanted to avoid a potential conflict with her appointment and her private law firm work.

That prompted Jindal to stress how important it was “that ethics board members are completely free of any and all conflicts of interest.”

So, perhaps Gov. Jindal can explain how BESE President Chas Roemer continues to be able to take part in discussions and to vote on matters affecting charter schools while his sister, Caroline Roemer Shirley, serves as Executive Director of the Louisiana Association of Public Charter Schools.

Or how the President and CEO of Biomedical Research Foundation of Northwest Louisiana, which is taking over the LSU Medical Center in Shreveport and the LSU-run E.A. Conway Medical Center in Monroe, can simultaneously serve on the LSU Board of Supervisors which negotiated a blank contract with the Biomedical Research Foundation for that takeover.

The only reasonable explanation for all these things—and we have given this a lot of thought—is that Gov. Jindal simply holds the Louisiana electorate in contempt, in total disdain—inconvenient distractions, as it were, to be mollified only when politically expedient to do so.

Read Full Post »

Former Jindal Executive Counsel Faircloth has history of losing state legal cases but gets big fees: $930K in 2 years

Posted in Boards, Contract, Contracts, Governor's Office, Judges, Politicians, Public Records, Transparency on July 23, 2013| 14 Comments »

BATON ROUGE (CNS)—It would seem that Jimmy Faircloth isn’t doing very well when representing the gret stet of Looziana in the various courtrooms around the state—either as an advocate of an unwinnable case on behalf of the state or as a candidate for the Louisiana Supreme Court.

Faircloth’s name has surfaced more often than bubbles in little Flatulent Filmore’s bath water, but always, it seems, on the losing end of the score.

The first time we heard the Louisiana Tech graduate’s name was when he was named in January of 2008 as Gov. Elect Bobby Jindal’s choice as his executive counsel.

Jindal’s pick was controversial from the get-go. Faircloth was still sticky from his three-year hitch as legal counsel for the Coushatta Indians, whom he advised to sink $30 million in a formerly bankrupt Israeli technology firm called MainNet for whom his brother Brandon was subsequently employed as vice president of sales.

It was not the first bad decision by the Coushatta Tribe. Three years earlier, they attracted undesired national attention when it was revealed that they had paid lobbyist Jack Abramoff $32 million to help promote and protect their gambling interests and got little in return.

Those same Coushattas also paid another $400,000 to Aubrey Temple of DeRidder, whom Jindal would later name to the Coastal Protection and Restoration Financing Corp. Temple was never able to account for the $400,000. Temple also was a key player in an attempt by another Jindal ally, Donald T. “Boysie” Bollinger of Lockport, to purchase Toledo Bend water from the Sabine River Authority for possible resale in Texas.

Okay, this is getting way too convoluted. Let’s get back to Alexandria attorney Faircloth.

Faircloth resigned as executive counsel in 2009 to run for the Louisiana Supreme Court. It was a race he lost by 53-47 percent.

Two years later he was fined $1,000 by the Louisiana Board of Ethics for violating state ethics laws when he entered into a contract to represent the Louisiana Tax Commission only six months after he resigned as Jindal’s executive counsel. State law required him to wait a full year before representing any state agency. He returned the $7,000 he had received in legal fees from the Tax Commission.

In December of 2010, Jindal appointed Faircloth to the University of Louisiana Board of Supervisors. In January of this year, Faircloth resigned and was replaced by his wife, Kelly.

The latest episode with Faircloth is yet another legal setback—this time at the hands of the First Circuit Court of Appeal which upheld a lower court decision that the LSU Board of Stupevisors must make public the names of the candidates for LSU president.

The Stupevisors withheld the names of all the candidates except the ultimate selection, F. King Alexander of California State University Long Beach and the Baton Rouge Advocate and the New Orleans Times-Picayune each filed suit to force the board to reveal the names of the three dozen candidates who were considered.

Faircloth, true to form and like his mentor Jindal, refused to admit defeat graciously. He described the matter before the appeals court as “not an appeal” but merely a question of what LSU owed in damages and legal fees. He added that LSU would “get its chance to appeal.”

Normally, only the losing party of a civil court matter would be required to pay damages and legal fees, so it’s somewhat confusing to understand where, exactly, Faircloth is drawing the line between winning and losing or what is and what is not an appeal.

No matter.

Faircloth, if nothing else is a trooper and the matter lives on in the courts—and Faircloth’s meter keeps running.

Other cases in which Faircloth has gone down in flames include a federal case in Tangipahoa in which a U.S. District Court Judge in November of 2012 ordered a halt to implementation of Jindal’s new voucher and teacher hiring laws in Tangipahoa because the state laws conflict with court orders in decades-old desegregation cases in Tangipahoa and at least 30 other parishes.

“They (the plaintiffs) can’t even describe the standard or what programs are affected” by the desegregation order, Faircloth sniffed.

In March of this year, a Baton Rouge district court judge negated the teacher tenure and evaluations section of Gov. Jindal’s education reform.

Faircloth had no comments about that ruling but Jindal had plenty to say. “We expect to prevail in the state Supreme Court,” he said.

Two months later, in May, the Louisiana Supreme Court shot down the Jindal administration’s method of funding the statewide school voucher program, ruling that it diverted money from each student’s per-pupil allocation to cover the cost of private or parochial school tuition.

The very next month, the Supremes struck down a change to the state retirement system that had been pushed through the legislature by Jindal—because the measure had not been approved by the constitutionally-required two-thirds vote.

Ironically, State Rep. Kevin Pearson (R-Slidell), who sponsored the retirement changes in the 2012 legislature, was the same legislator who pushed for the constitutional amendment the previous year that required that any retirement plan which results in an actuarial cost to the state to be passed by a two-thirds vote.

So Faircloth must really feel bad about all those losses, right? After all, those TV lawyer ads say you pay nothing unless you win, right?

Nope and nope. Taking the second question first, those lawyer ads are for plaintiff attorneys who work on contingency. Defense attorneys like Faircloth get paid, win or lose.

That should take care of the first question; Faircloth gets paid, win or lose. And he certainly gets paid well.

LouisianaVoice made our customary public records request. On July 9, we asked the governor’s office, the Office of Risk Management (ORM) and the Division of Administration (DOA) for an accounting. The answer finally came on July 19, eight days late under the state’s public records laws.

There was a caveat with which we take issue: The response from DOA attorney Joshua Melder said, “Some information has been redacted pursuant to the Office of Risk Management’s pending claims privilege.”

The public records law, as we understand it, does protect matters of attorney-client privilege or details of ongoing litigation such as settlement negotiations. Attorney fees would not, as we interpret the law, be protected but we let it pass for now. After all, we don’t possess the knowledge of the great legal minds who protect the state’s interests so proficiently.

The figures for fiscal years 2012 and 2013, exclusive of the figures redacted pursuant to ORM’s pending claim privilege, show that the Faircloth Law Firm pulled down an eye-popping $931,000 in those losing causes–$843,300 of that in FY-2013.

Not a bad return on Faircloth’s $23,000 in campaign contributions to Jindal campaigns in 2003, 2006 and 2010.

Now if he would just win an occasional case, Jindal might be a little happier with his favorite attorney.

Read Full Post »

$70,000 job monitoring state boards & commissions went to a director of Bobby Jindal’s re-election campaign committee; an example of the fox serving as gatekeeper to the henhouse?

Posted in Boards, Commissions, Governor's Office, Jobs, Public Records, Transparency on July 7, 2013| 12 Comments »

For eight months, from Oct. 16, 2012, until June 28, Gov. Bobby Jindal had a director of his re-election committee on the state payroll overseeing state boards and commissions, according to state records.

The duties of Kendal Melvin, director of the Department of Boards and Commissions, was reassigned to Kyle Plotkin, communications director for the governor’s office, according to an announcement by Jindal on Friday, June 28. Plotkin was promoted by Jindal to Assistant Chief of Staff at that time and was given the supervision of state boards and commissions.

Plotkin was given a pay increase, from $90,000 to $110,000 to assume the additional duties, according to Jindal press secretary Sean Lansing.

Melvin, a Vermont native, was initially hired as Director of the Department of Boards and Commissions on Oct. 16, 2012, at a salary of $70,000 per year.

But records provided by the Secretary of State show that she was simultaneously serving as a director of the Committee to Re-elect Bobby Jindal.

Before becoming a state employee, she was on Jindal’s campaign payroll at annual salary of $44,578, according to Jindal’s campaign expenditure report. Her last paycheck from the campaign was for $1,711.86 on Oct. 15, 2012, the day before she went onto the state payroll, records show.

Each of her 46 checks from Jindal’s campaign between Jan. 14, 2011 and Oct. 15, 2012 was issued to her home address in Barre, Vermont, records show, a possible indication that she never moved her legal address to Louisiana even though she was working here.

Her hiring would again raise the question of why, if Jindal really wants to keep Louisiana’s best and brightest in the state as he says, does he continue to go out of state to hire many of his top appointees? Plotkin, for example, is from New Jersey and Jindal policy director Stafford Palmieri is from New York.

Jindal was re-elected in October of 2011 but his committee has continued to function, even filing an annual report on Jan. 10 of this year that showed Melvin was still a committee director.

All campaign expenditures however, are listed in the State Ethics Commission’s campaign finance records in Jindal’s name but no expenditures are listed for either the Committee to Re-elect Bobby Jindal or Friends of Bobby Jindal, the committee’s original name when it was first incorporated in January of 2004.

Jindal entered the 2011 election with nearly $9 million in his campaign treasury and facing only token opposition, so it naturally generates questions as to why his campaign committee remains active, even to the point of filing an annual report in January, instead of disbanding.

Since his re-election, Jindal has continued to collect more than $1.6 million in campaign contributions, leading to renewed speculation about his intentions to seek national office. He is presently 18 months into his second term and is constitutionally prohibited from seeking re-election.

What other reason could explain the need to continue fund raising, especially the $35,000 he raised in New York on a single day—Oct. 25, 2012? His 2012 inauguration, for example, only cost his campaign $156,000.

But an even bigger question is why an active director of Jindal’s campaign committee would be allowed to simultaneously draw a state paycheck for eight months.

State Civil Service rules generally prohibit state classified employees from engaging in political activity. Unclassified employees, however, may participate in political activities so long as such activity is carried out on the employee’s own time. (emphasis ours.)

Melvin was an unclassified, or appointed, employee.

A second question would be how Plotkin could assume assistant chief of staff duties and the directorship of Melvin’s department at an additional salary of only $20,000 compared to the $70,000 paid Melvin for a single function.

Put another way, how is it that Melvin required $70,000 to perform her job and Plotkin was able to absorb that and the assistant chief of staff’s duties for $50,000 less than her former salary for her one job?

Those questions were submitted via email to Plotkin but an automated response said he was out of the office until Monday, July 8. The automated response directed all questions to Sean Lansing of the governor’s office.

Accordingly, the questions were then directed to Lansing, who never responded.

What exactly is the Department of Boards and Commissions anyway, other than an obscure agency tucked away within the Executive Branch?

Basically, it is charged with the responsibility of processing and retaining records of all appointments made by the governor. The St. Peter of Louisiana boards and commissions, if you will.

So the department director is essentially the gatekeeper for all the boards and commissions (and there are many of them) to which the governor may appoint favored campaign contributors—which may go a long way in answering the second question because the job’s duties otherwise appear to be quite mundane.

Who better then to head up the department than a director of his re-election campaign? Such an individual theoretically would know who to reach out and touch for contributions and to not-so-subtly remind them to whom they owe their appointments to prestigious state boards and commissions.

During her tenure at the department, which began a full year after Jindal’s re-election, Jindal received more than $585,000 in campaign contributions, at least $42,000 of that from nine of his appointees to state boards and commissions. Those include:

• Tony Clayton, Southern University Board of Supervisors: $5,000;

• Charlotte Bollinger, State Board of Regents: $5,000;

• Carl Shetler, University of Louisiana Board of Supervisors: $5,000;

• William J. Dore, Sr., Southern States Energy Board: $5,000;

• Dave Roberts, Louisiana Stadium and Exposition District (Super Dome) Board: $5,000;

• Hank Danos, LSU Board of Supervisors: $5,000;

• Lee Mallett, LSU Board of Supervisors: $5,000;

• Blake Chatelain, LSU Board of Supervisors: two contributions totaling $2,000;

• Moore Investments (James Moore), LSU Board of Supervisors: $5,000.

Between Jindal’s re-election in October of 2011 and Melvin’s appointment to her state position in October of 2012, Jindal raked in a little more than $1 million, including $76,500 from eight appointees to boards and commissions. The bulk of that $76,500 came from $50,000 in 10 separate contributions from Board of Commerce and Industry member Bryan Bossier of Alexandria, family members and assorted businesses run by him.

The web page for the department features a question and answer section about the procedure for applying for appointment to a board or commission. Call us cynical, but we have taken the liberty of adding our own tongue-in-cheek answers (in parentheses and italics) to those provided by the department:

• (Q): How do I apply for a position on a board of commission?

• (A): Submit an official application, along with a letter stating why you are qualified or experienced in the area of the board’s activity. (read: Submit an official application, along with a letter stating your net worth and how much, in terms of contributions, you are willing to give);

• (Q): What happens after I submit an application to the Governor’s office?

• (A): When it is time for the Governor to make an appointment, an analysis is presented that includes the statutory restrictions and information on professional or personal experience either necessary or preferable to the board’s function. The analysis is reviewed and applicants screened. The Governor then makes his selections. (read: When it is time for the Governor to make an appointment, all political contributions are taken into consideration along with those of other applicants. The comparisons are reviewed and the Governor makes his selection based on the amount contributed by each applicant);

• (Q): How do I know if I am eligible to be appointed?

• (A): Most of the seats on the boards and commissions are restricted by statutes. You can research boards and commissions and the laws that govern them on the Internet. You may apply for any boards or commissions that interest you. Please specify your first and second choices. (read: Most of the seats on the boards and commissions are doled out on the basis of the applicant’s financial stability and willingness to contribute to the Governor’s campaign and on the applicant’s willingness to vote in the manner dictated by the Governor, with no questions asked or by asking only those questions approved in advanced and passed on to the member by the Governor’s staff).

Read Full Post »

« Newer Posts - Older Posts »