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FEMA trailers sold by Henderson affiliated company used as permanent housing purposes against posted disclaimers

Posted in Corruption, Ethics, Finances, Media, Public Records on December 4, 2016| 1 Comment »

By Robert Burns

Guest Columnist

It has been over a decade since Hurricane Katrina made landfall on August 29, 2005. When the levees broke, much of the lower sections of New Orleans flooded. Many people were left without any form of housing because their previous homes had been inundated with water.

That’s when the Federal Government (FEMA) sprang into action. Recognizing the massive need for housing assistance, FEMA ordered an astounding 120,000 travel trailers, at a cost of $2.7 billion, from 60 different suppliers. For the next several years, these FEMA trailers would serve as temporary homes for the tens of thousands of residents who’d lost their homes as they rebuilt or, in some cases, opted to relocate and be bought out by FEMA.

Soon after, many residents complained of temporary memory loss, irritating sore throats, sneezing episodes, and similar ailments. The culprit was determined to be formaldehyde, which the National Institute for Health assessed prolonged exposure at rates exceeding eight parts-per billion (ppb) to be a known carcinogenic risk. Formaldehyde testing began to be conducted by the Center for Disease Control, and those results showed average formaldehyde levels of 40 ppb, or more than five times the level considered safe for extended exposure. Some tests revealed readings 40 times the acceptable level. Concerned about the health risks to the public, FEMA suspended sales of the trailers to the public in July of 2007, almost two years after Katrina made landfall. That moratorium expired on January 1, 2010.

FEMA then had a problem on its hands. Incurring storage costs of $130 million a month, the agency needed to unburden itself of its cumbersome inventory of unoccupied trailers. FEMA opted to hand them off to the General Services Administration which, in turn, auctioned them off in massive quantities per lot for a total price of $133 million, approximately seven cents on the dollar for what FEMA originally paid for the trailers. Buyers purchased the trailers for just under $1,000 per unit on average.

Henderson Auctions, located in Livingston, Louisiana, purchased approximately 23,000 of the FEMA trailers, or about one-sixth of all the trailers deployed. To facilitate the acquisition, the principals of Henderson Auctions, Jeff Henderson and Janet Henderson Cagley, the two children of Henderson Auctions’ founder Marvin Henderson, formed a company called the Lottie Group.

Lottie served to pool the resources of several investors to purchase the trailers for the purpose of liquidating them individually to consumers through successive auctions of hundreds at a time since the ban on sales to the public had been lifted. Accomplishing that turned out to be a tricky proposition, however, when the FDA announced that anyone caught reselling contaminated FEMA trailers could face criminal prosecution. The reselling process was also problematic because some states, Mississippi in particular, strictly forbade the resell of the FEMA trailers due to health concerns over the formaldehyde issue.

The first obstacle faced by Lottie and Henderson Auctions was where to store the 23,000 trailers. That problem was solved by the purchase of the old Evangeline Downs racetrack in Carencro in Lafayette Parish. An entity controlled by Jeff Henderson and Janet Henderson Cagley, Evangeline Properties, LLC, recently sold the old Evangeline Downs property for $11 million in a transaction in which their father, Marvin, notarized the Act of Sale for the sellers when, as a convicted felon, he is ineligible to hold a notary license.

The Louisiana Auctioneer Licensing Board (LALB) recently addressed the issue of Henderson’s apparent illegal notarizations but concluded that its hands are tied. The matter has been referred (by the Louisiana Secretary of State) to Livingston Parish District Attorney Scott Perrilloux for appropriate action.

As part of the sales agreements between GSA and buyers such as Lottie/Henderson, GSA insisted upon agreements being signed that the trailers would not be sold for housing purposes but rather only for “storage or recreational” use.

GSA placed stickers on the trailers in all caps declaring the trailers were “NOT TO BE USED FOR HOUSING.” Lottie/Henderson began conducting a series of auctions entailing several hundred trailers at each auction and, despite the fact that representations were made that the trailers were being sold “as is, where is” with all faults and that they should only be purchased for recreational uses such as hunting camps, it didn’t stop many environmentalist bloggers fromlambasting the auctions as well as criticizing the local media for failing to even point out the potential health risks associated with purchasing the trailers.

Selling the FEMA trailers to the public turned out to be a task that took more than three years for Lottie/Henderson to accomplish. Along the way, and in an effort to expand the geographic marketing to consumers in states beyond the Gulf Coast, Henderson reached out to some fellow auctioneers to sell many of the trailers. Once, Charles Easler of South Carolina, a long-time friend of Marvin Henderson, agreed to assist in the effort by accepting over 300 trailers to be auctioned from his facility in South Carolina. That episode, however, didn’t turn out as initially planned as Henderson filed suit against Easler on December 21, 2015 alleging that his one-time friend failed to make payments or account for approximately 60 of those trailers. Easler denied all of Henderson’s allegations.

Meanwhile, amidst all the banking transactions entailed with the trailer sales, Lottie/Henderson found itself in the crosshairs of its own bank, First Guaranty Bank (FGB) of Hammond.  Lottie/Henderson sued, claiming that FGB officials failed to adequately safeguard against their account usernames and passwords from being obtained to execute nearly $1 million in allegedly fraudulent wire transfers. The dates, amounts, and beneficiaries of the alleged fraudulent transfers are summarized in the following table:

 

Date Acct # / Name Amount Beneficiary
       
9/23/11 4767/Lottie $77,000 Golden Door
9/27/11 4767/Lottie $187,400 Time Imports, Inc.
9/28/11 4767/Lottie $5,000 Time Imports, Inc.
9/28/11 4767/Lottie $125,500 Golden Door V & L, Inc.
9/29/11 5806/JAH* $485,740.80 Emirates NBD
10/3/11 5806/JAH* $45,000 VTB 24
10/3/11 8510/JAH* $45,000 Citibank

* JAH is a limited liability corporation doing business as Henderson Auctions.

The lawsuit was not filed until September 22, 2014, well beyond the one-year prescription period to file suit since the final alleged loss was on October 3, 2011. FGB attorneys openly wondered the same, asserting prescription in their answer as one of 27 itemized defenses to the lawsuit. FGB attorneys also claimed that “Plaintiffs are the cause of any loss they have suffered due to their negligence, inattention, failure to investigate, lack of review, lack of management, and/or lack of supervision of the operations of JAH Enterprises, Lottie Group, LLC, including the actions of its members.”

So, where did all these FEMA trailers end up and how are they being used? Environmentalist journalist Heather Smith revealed in her documentary that a good number of these trailers have managed to find their way to North Dakota where the trailers are being routinely utilized as permanent housing for cashiers, fry cooks, and others who have become transplants in North Dakota. Several trailer tenants interviewed said they were lured to North Dakota by the prospect of $17-per-hour jobs as Wal-Mart cashiers (vs. $7-per-hour in their home states). One of the tenants acknowledged that the $1,200 rent on his FEMA trailer is high, but added that it’s the only housing he can afford where costs are so high because of the oil boom in North Dakota.

The VIN of one tenant’s travel trailer was traced in order to learn its origin. It was one of the 23,000 trailers purchased by Henderson Auctions.

The trailer of one tenant was tested and the occupant was told that his formaldehyde count is 30 ppb, or nearly four times the level considered safe for extended exposure. Tenants were encouraged to vent their units clean air from outdoors to dilute the concentrations of formaldehyde—hardly an option for the frigid North Dakota winter months. Shapiro questioned if the $17 per hour wage was worth the health risks to which these FEMA trailer tenants are unwittingly exposing themselves.

 

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MADD mad about D.A. Perrilloux’s furtive moving DWI trial of politically connected Livingston Parish multiple offender

Posted in Corruption, Courts, Ethics, Judges on November 30, 2016| 11 Comments »

What do you do when you just keep getting into trouble whenever you get behind the wheel of an automobile?

How is that when you rack up multiple DWIs (at least three), tickets for speeding, illegal passing, driving under suspension, possession of narcotics, reckless driving, passing a stopped school bus unloading kids, no insurance, no seat belt, following too close—and then fail to even appear in court and you are sentenced to not a day in jail because friendly district attorneys quietly make the charges go away?

How is it that you even manage to have a cooperative district attorney submit court records showing you have completed a pre-trial intervention (PTI) program in record time—a program intended solely for first-offenders—so you avoid jail time?

How is it that even the charge of no insurance goes away with the “presentation of proof of insurance” showing that coverage started, conveniently, the day before the ticket was issued—and even though the insurance is in someone else’s name, it’s accepted with no questions asked by the court?

And most puzzling of all, how is it that your court date for your latest DWI was changed from Wednesday, the usual day for the court to hear DWIs when Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) normally monitors the court proceedings, to Monday, December 5—with no notification given to MADD?

Could it be because your grandfather (Marvin Henderson, in whose name the supposed “proof of insurance” was issued) has, over the years, greased the palms of Louisiana politicians, including a former “reform” governor, a state treasurer, a parish president and a state senator currently running for mayor-president of Baton Rouge to the tune of more than $50,000 over the years?

Perhaps it’s just that Cody Bowlin of Livingston is just lucky to have found the district attorneys and judges in St. Landry and Livingston parishes in exceptionally good moods.

More likely, however, it’s Paw-paw.

LouisianaVoice has long held to the position that too many politicians with no souls, no moral compasses and with (they seem to believe) no responsibility to adhere to any code of conduct or ethical values facilitate bad behavior by the politically connected.

Cody Bowlin, 26, a self-employed auctioneer, appears to be connected via his grandfather, Marvin Henderson of Livingston, founder of Henderson Brothers Auctioneers who has contributed more than $50,000 to various political candidates since 2003.

Henderson has experienced legal problems of his own which will be discussed in more detail in a subsequent post. But for now, let’s look at Cody Bowlin.

His citations, in chronological order, include:

  • March 18, 2008—Possession of marijuana;
  • Nov. 21, 2008—Speeding, limitations on passing on the left;
  • Sept. 24, 2009—Following too closely, driving under suspension (amended to improper parking);
  • May 3, 2011—Shoplifting;
  • Dec. 13, 2011—No seat belt;
  • May 31, 2012—Speeding;
  • Nov, 27, 2012—Careless operation, driving left of center, operating a vehicle while intoxicated with controlled dangerous substance;
  • June 2, 2015—Improper overtaking and passing a stopped school bus;
  • Oct. 27, 2015—Possession of drug paraphernalia, possession of marijuana or synthetic contraband;
  • Nov. 17, 2015—Careless operation of a motor vehicle, driving while intoxicated—controlled substance, second offense; operating a vehicle while under the influence of alcoholic beverages, second offense;
  • June 11, 2016—Possession of marijuana, possession of a schedule 3 drug, improper passing, no insurance (all charges dismissed after proof of insurance mailed in showing the insured to be not Bowlin, but his grandfather, Marvin Henderson—insurance coverage that was issued June 10, the day before Bowlin’s arrest and which did not list Bowlin as covered as a driver);
  • June 23, 2016—Speeding;
  • Sept. 21, 2016—Possession of drug paraphernalia.

In at least three cases, Bowlin failed to appear for arraignment and bench warrants were issued for him.

Some with less pull might find himself subject to Louisiana’s three strike law that imposes harsher penalties to multiple offenders.

Bowlin also picked up a DWI in Mississippi several years ago. In that case, he completed a 90-day pre-trial intervention (PTI) program for first offenders, court records from that state indicate.

He later completed another PTI and charges were dropped. PTI programs are intended only for first offenders.

But it is his arrest in St. Landry back in June and the November 17, 2015, DWI arrest that raise eyebrows.

In the St. Landry case, papers submitted to the court by District Attorney Earl Taylor’s office certified that he had completed yet another PTI program in an astonishing nine days (PTIs normally require several weeks to complete, in some cases, months) and charges were dismissed. (Perhaps he was enrolled in the accelerated class, given his experience in the program.)

But it is that Nov. 17, 2015, that warrants special attention.

That’s because in Livingston Parish, where this arrest occurred, DWI cases are always held on Wednesdays. Always, except for Bowlin’s case, that is.

You see, Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) monitors DWI cases and always shows up to track DWI trials.

But Bowlin was flying under MADD’s radar.

That’s because the case has been scheduled for next Monday, December 5, LouisianaVoice has learned, and MADD is mad.

There was no explanation of why Bowlin’s case was moved from Wednesday to Monday.

Perrilloux has already dropped charges against Bowlin in two other cases, the ones on June 2, 2015, and October 27, 2015. He probably planned to do the same next Monday but with MADD sitting in the courtroom, perhaps he should reconsider.

But now that MADD has been alerted, they will be there, the best (or worst) intentions of District Attorney Scott Perrilloux notwithstanding.

 

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Washington think tank lists major recipients of government-sponsored corporate socialism; Louisiana definitely a player

Posted in Business, Congress, Corruption, Economy, Ethics, Exemptions, Incentives, Finances, Fraud, Grant, Grants, Health Care, Incentives, Jobs, Taxes on November 23, 2016| 11 Comments »

Good Jobs First, a Washington, D.C.-based national policy resource center, has released an extensive study entitled Megadeals: The Largest Economic Development Subsidy Packages Ever Awarded by State and Local Governments in the United States.

Louisiana, with giveaways totaling $3,169,600,328, ranked sixth behind New York, Michigan, Oregon, New Mexico and Washington in the total dollar amount of so-called megadeals, the report shows, $65 million more than much-larger Texas, which had $3,104,800,000.

Louisiana, with 11, tied with Tennessee for fifth place in the number of such budget-busting deals behind Michigan’s 29, New York’s 23 and 12 each for Texas and Ohio.

The report, authored by Philip Mattera and Kasia Tarczynska, is somewhat dated in that it was published in 2013 but it still offers some valuable insights into how states, Louisiana in particular, was more than willing to give subsidies worth millions upon millions of dollars to corporations in the name of new jobs that rarely, if ever, materialized.

The subsidies included in the report, it should be noted, do not include tax incentives, which is another type of inducement. Accordingly, Wal-Mart, which has received more than $1.2 billion in total taxpayer assistance, is not included because its deals were worth less than $75 million each. Good Jobs First has documented giveaways to Wal-Mart in a separate report.

The single biggest example of corporate socialism contained in the report is the 30-year discounted-electricity deal worth an estimated $5.6 billion given by the New York Power Authority to Alcoa. In all, 16 of the Fortune 50 corporations (excluding Wal-Mart) were included as recipients of the report’s megadeals.

The biggest single deal for Louisiana—and the fifth-biggest overall—was the $1.69 billion subsidy in 2010 for Cheniere Energy in the form of property tax abatements and other subsidies for the Sabine Pass natural gas liquefaction plant. That project, the report said, created 225 new jobs—a cost to the state of more than $7,500 per job, the largest single cost-per-job project contained in the report.

Shintech, received a 2012 deal worth $187.2 million in subsidies to the company. That project was said to have created 50 new Louisiana jobs at a cost of $3,744 per job.

One of the biggest recipients of governmental largesse since the year 2000 has been General Motors with more than $529 in subsidies nationwide. Yet, it was General Motors who pulled up stakes pulled up stakes in 2012, leaving upwards of 3,000 former employees without jobs.

The megadeals cited by Good Jobs First in its report were dwarfed, however, by the seemingly insane subsidies given to banks and investment firms since 2000.

Of the top 21 recipients of bailouts by the federal government, the smallest was that of a company most probably never heard of: Norinchukin Bank, a Japanese cooperative bank serving more than 5,600 agricultural, fishing and forestry cooperatives from its headquarters in Tokyo—and it received $105 billion (with a “B”).

That’s nothing when compared with the heavy hitters. In all, 12 foreign corporations received loans, loan guarantees or bailout assistance from a generous federal U.S. government, led by the $942.7 billion received by the United Kingdom’s Barclays.

But Barclays ranked only fifth in terms of subsidies received in the form of federal bailouts:

Consider, if you will, the top four:

  • Bank of America $3.5 trillion;
  • Citigroup $2.6 trillion;
  • Morgan Stanley $2.1 trillion;
  • JPMorgan Chase $1.3 trillion.

All of this, of course, was the direct result of deregulation pushed by a congress whose members were supported by generous campaign contributions from CEOs, officers and stockholders of those very firms.

And yet we have elected officials—and citizens—who dare to rail against so-called welfare cheats, the costs of illegal immigrants, and the costs of health care for the poor.

These are the same people who wring their hands at the cost of social programs yet justify the expenditure of billions of dollars per day in military contracts to campaign contributors to support wars with no apparent objective (other than political payback) and with no end in sight.

These are the same ones who look us in the eye and tell us they support free market capitalism.

But pure capitalism doesn’t give away the public bank in order to entice some company that was probably coming to your state anyway. After all, if Louisiana truly has all these rich oil and gas deposits (and it does), does anyone really believe the oil and gas companies are going to locate their refining plants and pipelines in Idaho in order to mine for Louisiana’s resources?

You can check that box “no.”

What is the logic behind subsidies to lure an industry just so it can exploit cheap labor? Wouldn’t it be smarter to invest in public education and higher education so that our citizens might be capable of demanding higher wages for their knowledge and skills? Why would we opt to perpetuate the cycle of poverty by sacrificing taxpayer dollars to the advantage of some faceless corporation who cares not one whit for our citizens?

Free market capitalism doesn’t reward corporations with these kinds of subsidies while the recipients are simultaneously sending job oversees, depriving Americans of job opportunities.

Pure capitalism would dictate that each and every business in America succeed or fail on its own merit, without having to depend on governmental handouts.

Anything else has to be considered as something akin to (gasp) ….socialism.

But insisting on capitalism for the poor and socialism for corporations and the wealthy is a formula for disaster if ever such formula existed. The two philosophies are simply not compatible

And you will never get that lesson from the disciples of Ayn Rand.

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For Trump, the perfect storm is firmly in place; John Kennedy and David Duke hitch themselves to his star

Posted in Congress, Corruption, Elections, Ethics, Layoffs, Media, Politicians, Transparency on November 21, 2016| 36 Comments »

Martin Niemöller (1892–1984) was a prominent Protestant minister who became an outspoken public foe of Adolf Hitler. As a reward, he spent the last seven years of Nazi rule in concentration camps.

He is perhaps best remembered for this quotation:

First, they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out—Because I was not a Socialist.

Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out—Because I was not a Trade Unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—Because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.

In related incident, a fellow church member approached me Sunday just before services started in an obvious good frame of mind. Turns out he was still celebrating the election of Donald Trump. “We have us a president!” he practically shouted.

When I told him the time would come when he would regret ever hearing the name Trump, he replied that he was better than the alternative. “Hillary’s not even a Christian,” he said.

“And Trump is?” I replied.

“Doesn’t matter. He’s better than Hillary.”

But…but…but he had just implied that it did matter.

While I am far from calling myself a fan of Hillary Clinton, I was, and remain, terrified of Trump and left my fellow Methodist with the warning that he might be singing a little different tune when Trump starts trying to do away with Social Security and Medicare.

And yes, I do believe he will try that, along with the EPA and OSHA as well as several other regulatory agencies charged with protecting the welfare of American consumers and workers.

Consider this:

  • If you like Trump, you’d love children toiling away 12 hours per day in sweat shops.
  • If you like Trump, you’d love purchasing diseased meat ripped off the carcasses of sick and injured cattle in the Chicago stockyards.
  • If you like Trump, you’d love the idea of 60-hour weeks with no health or retirement benefits and no vacation.
  • If you like Trump, you’d love the idea of thugs with guns and clubs attacking union organizers who were attempting to get better pay and decent working conditions.
  • If you like Trump, you’d love the idea of unmonitored toxic dumping in our creeks and rivers by oil and chemical plants.
  • If you like Trump, you’d love the idea of no minimum wage.
  • If you like Trump, you’d love the old Jim Crow laws.

Extreme? Far-fetched? Unrealistic? Scare tactics?

Not so much.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/u-holocaust-museum-alarmed-over-hateful-speech-white-053806789–finance.html

And here’s what David Duke said about Trump’s election.

He’s already making sweeping plans to fire federal employees and to weaken or destroy federal employee unions.

Of course, that was the liberal Washington Post saying that about firing federal employees, so why should you listen to them? Well, it was the conservative Washington Times that chronicled David Duke’s laudatory remarks about our president-elect.

If you and State Treasurer John Kennedy want to align yourselves with Donald Trump and David Duke, go right ahead. I think I’ll pass.

One of the most disappointing developments I’ve witnessed on the state political scene (other than the eight years of Bobby Jindal’s disaster (which goes unchallenged as the high water mark for disappointments), it’s John Kennedy’s current TV ad in which he says he has been “with Donald Trump since the beginning.” Funny he never said that before Trump got the nomination.

(Full disclosure: I have considered Kennedy a friend and he even made a monetary donation to this blog’s fundraiser last year. What I am about to say will probably place a serious strain on that friendship.)

Kennedy, of course, is the former Democrat who supported John Kerry until he held his finger up and detected a strong Republican breeze a-blowin’ and switched parties. Just like that: did a complete 180 on his entire political philosophy. And if you look at the polls, it’s obvious no one was taking notes.

John Kennedy is such a chameleon that if you threw him into a box of crayons, he’d explode from overload. He’d look like he was in an explosion in a paint factory.

Kennedy is the same one who while serving as Secretary of the Department of Revenue, ran for State Treasurer with a TV ad boasting that while revenue secretary he “reduced small business paperwork by 150 percent.”

Think about that for a moment. If you reduce anything by 100 percent, there’s nothing left. So how the hell did he reduce paperwork by another 50 percent? And this is the guy who handles the state’s finances and proclaims we don’t have a revenue problem yada, yada, yada. Unfortunately, he has quickly become a one-trick pony.

And now he’s running on the coattails of a man who most probably doesn’t have the faintest clue who Kennedy is. But then Trump each day validates the rock-solid theory that he knows nothing about political leadership or anything of any real substance other than how to tweet his displeasure at any and everything.

He wants to build a wall along our southern border and make Mexico pay for it. I’m hearing that Canada wants to build a wall along its southern border and they’ll gladly pay for it.

I have a Jewish friend both of whose parents survived Hitler’s Holocaust that people like Trump love to say never happened. My friend is angry and scared—and with good reason.

Trump is loading up his cabinet with some very disturbing appointments. These are men who make Spiro Agnew look like a great civil libertarian.

He is a petty man with petty grievances. He has an ego as big as all outdoors and now he has the reins of power. He would shut down (or at least boycott) the smash Broadway play Hamilton because of a benign statement read to Trump’s vice president by cast members at the close of a performance last week.

He somehow finds the time to watch—and criticize with even more tweets—Saturday Night Live for its parody of him. Every president since Nixon has been victimized by the show and yet he is the only one to lash out.

It’s called Freedom of Speech and it remains, for the time being at least, protected by the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, a document he obviously has little passing familiarity with.

But all things are subject to change. It happened in Germany and it happened in Cuba. Don’t think for a moment it can’t happen here.

If you don’t believe there’s much of a chance of his implementing the programs he’s advocating (and some he hasn’t yet revealed), consider this:

He is coming into office with an agenda and a Republican-controlled Senate, a Republican-controlled House and a Republican-controlled Supreme Court.

It’s the perfect political storm, folks.

 

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Nevada governor reins in that state’s rogue dental board’s Gestapo tactics; Louisiana’s, however, remains unchecked

Posted in Auditor, Boards, Contracts, Corruption, Courts, Ethics, Finances, Governor's Office, Judges, Legislature, Legislators on November 18, 2016| 15 Comments »

The Republican governor of Nevada has done what Bobby Jindal for eight interminable years refused to do and what Gov. John Bel Edwards should have already done.

Gov. Brian Sandoval, saying, “There’s something not right here and it needs to be fixed,” ordered Nevada’s state dental board on Nov.8 to address—and fix—problems of corruption, bullying and extortion rampant in the board’s patient-complaint/resolution process.

A STORY in the Las Vegas Review-Journal sounded eerily familiar to a number of LouisianaVoice stories dating back to March 2014 about abuses perpetrated by the Louisiana State Board of Dentistry through harassment, intimidation, and exorbitant penalties—including ruined careers—for minor infractions and sometimes none at all.

https://louisianavoice.com/2014/03/07/state-board-employs-intimidation-harassment-to-generate-funds-to-pay-for-lucrative-contracts-worth-millions-of-dollars/

https://louisianavoice.com/2016/03/18/like-dental-board-louisiana-board-of-medical-examiners-survives-on-fines-and-incentive-to-punish/

https://louisianavoice.com/2014/03/23/appeal-court-slams-lsdb-tactics-in-reversing-kangaroo-court-license-revocation-board-attorney-rules-on-his-own-objection/

And should Edwards take it upon himself to rein in the rogue dental board, he may well also wish to take a long hard look at a few other boards that have gone off the reservation over the years.

  • Here are just a few that warrant a closer look:
  • The State Board of Cosmetology;
  • The Auctioneers Licensing Board;
  • The State Board of Medical Examiners;
  • The State Board of Examiners of Psychologists

Each of these boards has been the subject of considerable controversy over the manner in which they investigate complaints and assess penalties without giving their targets the benefit of the same due process to which accused criminals are entitled under 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

Several dentists and dental hygienists protested a $500,000 increase in the contract for the Nevada dental board’s outside legal counsel, John Hunt and their testimony quickly escalated to shouting a crying by those who said Hunt coerced them to acknowledge wrongdoing and to pay money to the dental board.

Several of them accused Hunt of benefitting from money collected by the board.

As we said earlier, eerily familiar.

https://louisianavoice.com/2015/11/16/dentistry-board-facing-difficult-future-because-of-policies-contracts-with-attorney-private-investigator-are-cancelled/

At least in Nevada, complaints by victims of the dental board led to action.

A legislative audit of the board concluded that the board imposed excessive penalties on those it was investigating and also took issue with the board’s handling of Hunt’s contract. The board’s handling of patient complaints, it said, left targets of investigations with the belief that they either had to accept a settlement agreement or risk steeper punishment if found guilty in a final board hearing.

“That’s where the allegation of extortion comes in,” State Assemblyman Glenn Trowbridge, a member of the subcommittee that conducted the audit, said in June. “Either pay me now or we’ll look into it deeper and you’ll pay me more.”

Again…eerily familiar.

https://louisianavoice.com/2016/07/18/case-of-slidell-dentist-illustrates-unbridled-power-of-dentistry-board-to-destroy-careers-for-sake-of-money/

Sandoval appoints the members of the dental board. He said the time has come for the 11-member board to address the problem. Citing his experience with other state boards during his political career, he said, “I’ve never seen …people as upset as they are.”

The board, following Sandoval’s scolding, postponed action on Hunt’s contract amendment.

A 1980 U.S. Supreme Court specifically addressed the issue of excessive penalties in the case of U.S. Secretary of Labor v. Jerrico, Inc.

In that case, the Supreme Court reduced a $103,000 penalty to $18,000 in that the higher penalty constituted an unconstitutional risk of bringing “impermissible factors into the prosecutorial decision.”

In an earlier, even more pointed decision, the Supreme Court ruled in 1973 that “board members’ pecuniary interest disqualified them from passing on issues.”

In citing an Alabama case in which the Board of Optometry revoked the licenses of all optometrists employed by corporations such as Lee Optical, the court said, “Because the Board of Optometry was composed solely of optometrists in private practice for their own account, the District Court concluded that success in the board’s efforts would possibly (contribute) to the personal benefit of members of the board, sufficiently so that in the opinion of the District Court, the Board was disqualified from hearing the charges filed against the appellees.

“It is sufficiently clear from our cases,” the court continued, “that those with substantial pecuniary interest in legal proceedings should not adjudicate these disputes.”

As simple to understand as that ruling is, one must wonder why, 43 years later, the Louisiana Board of Dentistry and other licensing boards in the State of Louisiana are still allowed to operate their own respective fiefdoms with carte blanche.

Are their legal counsels not able to read and understand the law?

Is there not a single board member among them with the decency to say, “This isn’t right”?

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