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Let’s ask our state leaders: What were you thinking? Have you thought your actions through to a logical conclusion?

Posted in BESE, Boards, Civil Service, Commissions, Contract, Contracts, Education, Ethics, Governor's Office, Higher Education, House, Senate, Layoffs, Legislature, Legislators, OGB, Office of Group Benefits, Politicians, Privatization, Public Records on October 27, 2012| 17 Comments »

Whenever I see a story about some stupid criminal I find myself wishing I could be alone in a room with the poor sap just so I could ask him three questions:

• What was your thought process?

• Did you think this through to its logical conclusion?

• Did you ever, at any point in time, think this would end well for you?

That’s all. Just those three questions.

Until now, I had always limited this wish to stupid criminals:

• Like the guy who pulls up at the drive-through window of a bank and slips a note in it saying “This is a holdup.” The teller, pulls the drawer in, reads the note, flips it over and writes on the back, “I don’t see a gun,” and sends note back to the guy who obligingly puts his gun in the drawer and sends it in to the teller;

• Like the guy who writes his holdup note on any piece of paper with his name and address on it or who is wearing a work uniform with his name tag fully visible;

• Like the guy who tries to outrun police on the interstate;

• Like any idiot who tries to resist a half-dozen police officers;

You get the picture.

But now I have expanded my sentiments to wishing I could pose the same question to some of our bumbling state politicians—particularly our self-promoting, egocentric, ambitious, absentee governor who insists—with a straight face, no less—that he has the job he wants even as he ignores a multitude of problems at home while auditioning for any job that will promote his shameless career goals.

But there are others:

• Any legislator (like Noble Ellington or Jane Smith) who runs for office on the promise of looking out for the folks back home but then accepts a six-figure salary in some department for which he or she has zero qualifications. What were you thinking?

• Any agency head (like Louisiana Workforce Commission Executive Director Curt Eysink) who sends out an email saying there will be no merit raises for employees because of budgetary constraints while almost simultaneously approving a 41 percent increase for a single employee. What were you thinking?

• Any agency head (like Department of Health and Hospitals Secretary Bruce Greenstein) who would attempt to withhold the name of the winner of a $300 million contract with DHH from a legislative committee charged with confirming his appointment as secretary. What were you thinking?

• Any agency head (like Department of Natural Resources Secretary Scott Angelle) who would resign in the middle of a major crisis involving a potentially toxic sinkhole in order to selfishly run for a public office that he thinks will set him up for a run for governor in 2015? What were you thinking?

• Any agency head (like Alcohol and Tobacco Control Office Commissioner Troy Hebert) who would send a uniformed agent to inspect bars where she had recently worked undercover and purchased drugs from dealers. What were you thinking?

• Any agency head (like Superintendent of Education John White) who, on the night before he was to testify before a legislative committee about the New Living Word school in Ruston, sent emails to the governor’s office that he would try to “take some air out of the room” and to “muddy up” the narrative over the his approval of 315 vouchers for the school that had no classrooms, no desks and no teachers. What were you thinking?

• Any agency head (like White) who, within a matter of a few weeks, would hire a $144,000 part-time public relations officer from Florida and a consultant from Los Angeles to serve as a shill for the Department of Education’s (DOE) computer Course Content at a salary of $146,000—both of whom are allowed to commute and/or work from their homes. What were you thinking?

• Any agency head who, while giving no merit increases for three years and while even laying off rank and file employees, continues to give healthy salary increases to employees already earning in excess of $100,000 per year. What were you thinking?

• Any legislator who sees nothing wrong with private Christian schools receiving vouchers but who goes ballistic when it is learned that an Islamic school applied for vouchers under the same program. What were you thinking?

• Any governor who, while busy traveling all over the country promoting his aspirations for a cabinet position should Mitt Romney be elected president, approves closures of and budgetary cutbacks for state hospitals where cutbacks and closures result in the loss of treatment availability for indigent citizens. What were you thinking?

• Any governor who, while spewing outright lies in his many out-of-state visits about how he has the most ethical, most transparent and accountable administration in the country, continues to hide his office behind a veil of secrecy, refusing to provide public records or to grant media interviews. What were you thinking?

• Any inaccessible, unreachable, unavailable, unaccountable governor who, in an attempt to further shroud public agencies from having to answer directly to Louisiana citizens, attempts to force disputes with state agencies to be handled via telephone hearings instead of face-to-face hearings. What were you thinking?

• Any legislator who allows this governor and these bureaucrats to snub their collective noses at the citizens of this state with their arrogant actions and their attitude of defiance and mockery.

• Any citizen of Louisiana who would rather watch Dancing with the Stars than hold these sorry excuses for public servants accountable.

What the hell are any of you thinking?

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π-yush obsession with secrecy, loyalty comparable to aura of paranoia that permeated darkest days of Nixon White House

Posted in Boards, Governor's Office, Health Care, Higher Education, LSU, Public Records, Transparency on October 15, 2012| 5 Comments »

In the past we’ve compared Piyush Jindal to Richard Nixon, primarily in the context of Jindal’s desire for absolute power and his intolerance for dissent. For the most part those comparisons were tongue-in-cheek, intended to show the governor’s absurd propensity toward micromanagement.

The comparisons were metaphors as much as anything else and not to be taken literally.

That was then.

Now, less than a year into his second term, Jindal, much like Nixon, is becoming more and more obsessed with secrecy.

Nixon’s attempt to conceal public documents behind a cloak of “executive privilege” has been supplanted by Jindal’s even vaguer term—something called the “deliberative process.”

Jindal demands complete and total loyalty from his minions with no room for dissent.

He is certainly entitled to expect—and demand—loyalty from his appointees. That is his right.

But his problems run much deeper; Jindal’s administration, much like that of Nixon’s is being permeated with the destructive mentality of paranoia.

That is, without question, the most serious and debilitating characteristic that can plague any elected leader and whether one likes Jindal or despises him, it is both sad and disturbing to watch the slow unraveling of what could have been. The realization that his mistrust of anyone who might pose a question about any of his decisions is slowly starting to paralyze the state he was elected to serve. The story of his administration will read not as history as it should, but more like a Shakespearian tragedy.

Now we have proof that he, like Nixon, is not beyond concocting outright lies to conceal his real intent and to advance his agenda. We have known this all along but now we have written documentation and, strangely enough, LouisianaVoice was the catalyst in this new, unfolding drama.

But this isn’t about LouisianaVoice.

This is a much larger and more important issue.

It’s about trust and credibility.

Jindal has steadfastly maintained that he has taken a “hands-off” approach to the day to day operations at LSU, even to the point of the governor’s executive counsel Elizabeth “I didn’t know there was a State Constitution” Murrill’s outright denial on Oct. 9 that she instructed LSU to hide behind the deliberative process privilege.

But nearly two months earlier, on Aug. 16, LSU attorney Shelby McKenzie wrote LSU Interim President William Jenkins that Murrill had specifically asked to review documents requested by LouisianaVoice.

The documents were also shared with Lee Kantrow, a private Baton Rouge attorney who serves as legal counsel to the University Medical Center board.

It seems they were shared with virtually everyone but the media which had requested the information in the first place.

Murrill, along with the rest of the governor’s office, of course, have employed the bunker mentality as they hunker down and now refuse to comment publicly on their being caught in the big lie.

Deliberative process is a legal term that never existed before Jindal took office in 2008.

It powers the process of deciding what qualifies as public record and what does not in that it protects deliberations in the governor’s office as well as in recommendations to the governor by agency officials.

A 45-page report by the Louisiana Law Review at the LSU Law School says of the deliberative process:

• The statutory deliberative process privilege allows the governor to fight the disclosure of any government record (emphasis ours) used in his decision-making process, even if that record is located outside the governor’s office. Some scholars criticize the very concept of the deliberative process privilege as eroding the “power and effectiveness of the citizens who we regard as sovereigns.” By adopting the phrase “deliberative process,” the legislature has attempted to implicate a body of law interpreting a particular exemption under the federal Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). But it is not quite the clean fit the legislature might have envisioned. Left unsettled is whether Louisiana courts will or should embrace all the various intricacies in FOIA jurisprudence or craft solutions more faithful to Louisiana’s historically liberal public records doctrine.

• Under Act 495, the governor will also be able to deny access to “intra-office communications” between himself and his staff. Courts will have to decide just what types of communications qualify for this exemption, as a broad interpretation will result in this “new” addition to the statute amounting to little more than a smaller version of the governor’s prior custody-based exemption.

• Finally, Act 495 raises an interesting dilemma: are governors now required to archive records, rather than shred them upon leaving office? One reading of the new law seems to allow governors to shield forever the documents that they independently deem as revealing of their deliberative process, denying potentially valuable and enlightening information to historians and future generations.” (emphasis ours)

Apparently, all an agency head has to do to protect public records from scrutiny is to couch them in the form of recommendations to the governor.

To be fair to McKenzie, he apparently recognized the legal problems of hiding behind the deliberative process shield and attempted to straddle the issue with his letter. “The express provisions of the statute are not broad enough to apply to the current public records request,” he said. “An argument could be raised that the privilege is grounded in constitutional principles (oops! Just lost Murrill) “of separation of powers and personal freedom of expression,” adding that a resolution of the issue “is a genuine legal dispute” that only a court could resolve.

He said that because the deliberative process is being invoked by several state agencies, “it is unlikely that LSU will be the target of any legal attack on the privilege.”

So, while the prevailing philosophy seems to be to employ the deliberative process so liberally and so often that those seeking information to which the public is entitled become so confused and exhausted in their efforts that they will give up.

Don’t count on it.

Nixon did.

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Notable Quotables (in their own words)

Posted in Boards, Civil Service, Governor's Office, Jobs, Layoffs, Notable Quotables, State Agencies on October 8, 2012| 2 Comments »

“Yesterday afternoon, I submitted a request to Civil Service for the Layoff Avoidance Measure of withholding performance adjustment pay increases (or merit increases) for the upcoming year. I sincerely regret that this is necessary for a third year in a row, but I made this request to minimize the impact of budget pressures on our levels of staffing and on the agency.”

–Louisiana Workforce Commission executive director Curt Eysink, in a September 26 email to his employees informing them they would not be receiving 4 percent merit increases.

“I’m not going to cast a vote to set a precedent for one employee.”

–State Civil Service Commission member Scott Hughes, less than week later, speaking out against a proposed $19,430 annual pay increase (40.8 percent) for a Louisiana Workforce Commission mid-level manager. Despite Hughes’s opposition, the compliant Civil Service Board rubber stamped the pay increase from $47,570 to $67,000 for the employee described by Civil Service assistant director Jean Jones as barely meeting minimum job standards.

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Notable Quotables (in their own words)

Posted in Boards, Budget, Campaign Contributions, Governor's Office, Higher Education, Legislature, Legislators, LSU, Notable Quotables on October 4, 2012| Leave a Comment »

“He seems to have little interest in strengthening its educational mission. He’s slashed its budget by an obscene amount (almost half a billion dollars in cuts for Louisiana higher education in the past three years). In that time, state appropriations as a percent of LSU’s budget have gone from 60 percent to about 35 percent. Ten percent of the faculty has left or been laid off. Courses have been cancelled. Class size has grown. Tuition has increased dramatically.”

–Bob Mann, director of the LSU School of Mass Communication’s Reilly Center for Media & Public Affairs, on Gov. Piyush Jindal’s persistent meddling in the day to day operations of the state’s flagship university, a practice Mann says can endanger the school’s accreditation.

“Perhaps the only reason he hasn’t yet started stuffing LSU with friends and washed-up legislators is that he only recently acquired a strong majority of the LSU Board of Supervisors.”

–Bob Mann, further elaborating on Jindal’s possible motives in assuming political control of LSU. (Mann, however forgot to mention that Jindal achieved that “strong majority” by appointing to the board a man who has less than a year of college education. Ya gotta love it.)

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Like the proverbial frog in the water, π-yush may not yet feel the heat being turned up over his blatant coup d’etat at LSU

Posted in Boards, Budget, Campaign Contributions, Ethics, Governor's Office, Higher Education, Legislature, Legislators, LSU, Politicians, Teague on October 4, 2012| 1 Comment »

Much like the proverbial frog in the pot, the heat is being turned up on Gov. Piyush Jindal and he may not even realize it until the water starts boiling.

First, two national publications, and now a Baton Rouge blogger have taken dead aim of the political mauling of the state’s flagship university at the hands of Jindal and his hand-picked Board of Supervisors and an outfit calling itself Louisiana’s Flagship Coalition.

That blogger just happens to be none other than Robert Mann who holds the Manship Chair at the Manship School of Mass Communication at LSU and who is director of the school’s Reilly Center for Media & Public Affairs. He has written several critically acclaimed political histories of the U.S. civil rights movement, the Vietnam War, and American wartime dissent. His most recent book, Daisy Petals and Mushroom Clouds: LBJ, Barry Goldwater and the Ad that Changed American Politics, was named by the Washington Post as one of the best political books of 2011.

He has worked for three U.S. senators (John Breaux, Bennett Johnston and Russell Long) and a Louisiana governor (Kathleen Blanco).

That said, when Mann takes on the governor, he is not to be taken lightly.

Given the fact that Jindal is in full control of his rubber stamp LSU Board of Supervisors and equally compliant university Interim President William Jenkins, Mann’s recent blog post raised more than a few eyebrows in and around Baton Rouge.

Jindal, after all, has already teagued former President John Lombardi, health system head Dr. Fred Cerise, Interim LDU Public Hospital CEO Dr. Roxanne Townsend and LSU System General Counsel Ray Lamonica.

And that’s just at LSU. Jindal has fired subordinates and demoted legislators for the simple act of disagreeing with him or thinking independently so one has to wonder if Mann’s scathing column is enough to provoke the little dictator into firing Mann, one of the most esteemed members of the Louisiana Fourth Estate.

Just the title of his post was provocative enough: So, Gov. Bobby Jindal is running LSU. Why should we care? In the column itself, Mann said, “Jindal doesn’t care much about putting LSU on stronger financial footing and he has made no effort to explain his cuts to students or faculty. Here is the link to Mann’s post:

http://bobmannblog.com/2012/09/18/so-gov-bobby-jindal-is-running-lsu-why-should-we-care/

“What he may care about is the LSU jobs available to his friends and campaign donors. His history of favoritism in other state departments (not to mention his intolerance of dissent) is well-known. Perhaps the only reason he hasn’t yet started stuffing LSU with friends and washed-up legislators is that he only recently acquired a strong majority of the LSU Board of Supervisors.”

It should be noted that one of the board members recently appointed by Jindal is campaign contributor Lee Mallett of Iowa, who attended less than a year of college at McNeese State University in Lake Charles. So, a member of the governing board of the state’s flagship university serves sans degree. Nice.

“With Just a few years left in office, it’s time to start finding well-paying jobs for his friends and campaign contributors. Jindal’s ‘Jobs Plan for Friends’ plan, however, assumes there’s a viable accredited university still in existence,” Mann said.

Accreditation was the thrust of Mann’s column. “Losing accreditation—or being deemed non-compliant in a major category—would be very harmful or even deadly for LSU and its budget,” he said. “If it lost federal student aid, the university would not survive.”

One of the major criteria for accreditation by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools (SACS) is governance and administration of institutions “free of undue political influence,” Mann said.

He cited Section 3.2.4 under Governance and Administration in the SACS Principles of Accreditation which requires that “The governing board is free from undue influence from political, religious, or other external bodies and protects the institution from such (external) influence.”

“Can anyone say with a straight face that LSU is in compliance with this standard?” he asked—perhaps rhetorically and perhaps not.

Mann provided internet links to two separate publications that address the problems of governors attempting to run state universities. One of those specifically cited the present political atmosphere at LSU.

The Pew Center on the States in August published a report entitled How Governors govern Higher Ed. While that report never mentioned LSU or Jindal, it did name Florida Gov. Rick Scott and Texas Gov. Rick Perry, two of Jindal’s closest allies, for their interference in the affairs of Florida A&M and Texas A&M, respectively.

The strongest indictment of Jindal, however, was contained in Lombardi’s Firing at LSU Puts Spotlight on Governor’s Reach into University Affairs, a report published by the Chronicle of Higher Education.

That report accuses Jindal staff members into trying to “strong-arm Mr. Lombardi into firing people” and further describes the governor’s office as “intent on inserting itself into the day-to-day management of the university system, often in alignment with a group called the LSU Flagship Coalition.”

In alignment with LFC? Really?

LFC describes itself as “a group of business leaders and citizens from across the state supportive of maintaining and enhancing LSU as a flagship university. The Coalition’s focus is on a top-tier research university that continues to improve its performance through admission standards, faculty research and productivity and higher retention and graduation rates. We believe LSU should be a driving force in the state’s workforce objectives, economic development strategies and innovation opportunities.”

Sounds noble enough. But let’s take a closer look at the LFC makeup.

Of its 57 members 33 combined to contribute nearly half-a-million dollars ($496,000) to Jindal political campaigns.

That’s in addition to the nine members of the LSU Board of Supervisors who chipped in another $162,000 and seven members of the University Medical Center Management Corp. Board who gave an additional $203,800. Because a couple of contributors serve on more than one of the boards, we have to be fair and say the total comes to something in excess of $800,000 (not the $861,000 at first glance) for the privilege of a handful of political cronies to run the state’s flagship university.

The desire by Jindal to have Lombardi fire Mike Gargano, chief of staff and vice president for students and academic support, Lamonica and Charles Zewe, vice president of communications and external affairs was “reinforced” by Jindal staff members during two separate meetings with Lombardi.

Jindal wanted them gone because he considered them insufficiently responsive to directives from the governor’s office. When Lombardi refused, LFC member Sean Reilly called Alvin Kimble, then a member of the LSU Board of Supervisors. “Sean called me and said we need to get rid of John Lombardi,” Kimble said.

Lombardi was fired in April of this year and Lamonica was “reassigned” last month.

While the LFC touts its agenda as aimed at turning the Baton Rouge campus into a “top tier” research university, there are those who have their doubts.
Kevin Cope, chairperson of the LSU Faculty Senate, said there has not been “a single example of work-force development that is aimed at basic research or advanced research.”

Cope said he also is concerned about apparent conflicts of interest between the LSU provost and a company run by an LFC member.

Provost John Maxwell Hamilton is a member of the board of directors of Lamar Advertising where LFC member Sean Riley is chief executive.

Hamilton has averaged $130,856 per year as his annual compensation from Lamar, including cash and stock, according to the company’s proxy statements.

Hamilton said his board membership at Lamar presents no conflict of interest.

Here are the contributions to Jindal’s campaigns by LFC members, their family members, their businesses and business associates:

• Hank Anderson: $20,000;

• Brent Bankston: $1,000;

• Boysie Bollinger: $58,850;

• David Bondy: $24,000;

• Jeff Brooks: $21,150;

• Terrell Brown: $2,000 (Brown was head of United Companies in Baton Rouge when the company went bankrupt);

• Ron Cambre: $25,000;

• Jay Campbell: $1,500;

• Jim Flores: $5,000;

• Todd Graves: $31,000;

• Lane Grigsby: $33,000;

• Frank Harrison, Jr.: $5,000;

• Brian Haymon: $1,000;

• Gary Laborde: $6,000;

• Richard Lipsey: $28,000;

• Roy O. Martin: $24,000;

• James Maurin: $11,000 (Maurin and Roger Ogden were both officers with Stirling Properties which contributed $5,000. Stirling’s contribution is included with Maurin but not Ogden.);

• Henson Moore: $6,000;

• Ron Neal: $500;

• Jake Netterville: $7,000;

• Roger Ogden: $5,000;

• Will Pecue: $34,500 ($15,000 of that from Taylor Energy, which has been leaking oil into the Gulf of Mexico for more than eight years);

• Michael Polito: $38,400;

• Sean Reilly: $11,000;

• William “Billy” Rucks, IV: $17,500;

• Rob Stuart: $16,000;

• Richard Sturlese: $3,500;

• Carol Suggs: $2,300;

• Cyril Vetter: $2,500;

• Charles Weems: $5,000;

• Michael Worley: $15,000;

• Gary Young: $16,000;

• Richard Zuschlag: $17,384.

LFC Executive Board members include Bollinger, Flores, Grigsby, Haymon, Martin, Maurin, Ogden, Reilly and Young.

Those nine combined to contribute more than $166,200, or an average of $18,470 each.

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