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Archive for the ‘Economy’ Category

DHH gets the word…..by email. Merry Christmas, Happy New Year!

Posted in Civil Service, Economy, Governor's Office, Health Care, Layoffs on October 25, 2010| Leave a Comment »

Here is a copy of an email sent out to all employees of the Department of Health and Hospitals last Friday by DHH Secretary Bruce Greenstein:

October 22, 2010

Dear Colleagues:

Every time I write or meet with you, I hope that our discussions are focused on positive ways for us to do our jobs better and more effectively serve our state’s people. Today, we will do that, but we will also be tempered with our budget reality, the challenging economic times faced by our state and nation, and the real impact they will have on the DHH team. Indeed, since I came to Louisiana last month, I have seen the great devotion and passion each of you brings to your work and the value you add to our collective efforts.

Today, Governor Jindal issued an executive order announcing the state’s $106.7 million shortfall from the 2010 fiscal year and directed each of the state’s departments to take a hard look at our operations and find ways to work better, smarter and more efficiently. Our Governor has long been committed to providing the core health care services and programs that our residents need, while providing maximum value for taxpayers. But, today, like so many families in our state, DHH has to live within our means. We are faced with a $20.8 million reduction as part of this shortfall, and we examined our administrative operations as well as programmatic. Further, we have recognized a $50 million funding deficit in Medicaid caused by unfunded increases in utilization.

Facing our challenges head-on, I asked every office to fully review their budget and programs, remembering that our top priority is to protect and improve the public’s health. Starting with administrative staff, including my office, we focused our plan on consolidating functions and streamlining how we work, while considering every source of funding to offer the same services provided today at less cost.

Today, our plan to address this combined $70 million void in our budget includes Medicaid reductions, program consolidations and savings, facility closures or privatization and staff reductions. In Medicaid, a combination of reducing provider reimbursement rates, closing eligibility processing offices, eliminating the CommunityCare program, standardizing limits on emergency room visits for adults, and restructuring certain financing methods are part of our strategy to preserve access and focus funding on programs that truly improve the long-term health of enrollees.

In the Office of the Secretary, we reviewed our core functions and streamlined work flow to reduce our total positions. OAAS and OBH are making better use of federal funding sources, reducing administrative positions and consolidating regional management. OCDD will transition clients from Bayou Supports and Services Center to private providers and other state centers, as well as transition operations of four Leesville group homes to private providers. OPH will achieve savings by consolidating functions and management positions in regional and central offices, and most significantly, redistributing and reconfiguring staffing and services offered by several parish health units across the state.

These reductions, consolidations and reconfigurations of programs and services will lead to a reduction in staff. To alleviate the burden of this transition, a task force led by the assistant secretaries for each program office is working with DHH’s Human Resources Division and the Louisiana Department of Civil Service to ensure impacted employees are provided, whenever possible, opportunities to fill needed vacancies in other offices or departments. In addition, the transition task-force is exploring initiatives to encourage private providers to hire displaced state employees. Further, each office is working closely with every impacted staff member, family, provider and legislator to ensure we are communicating effectively and timely.

I wish the news today was better.

Our state continues to face tremendous financial challenges and will certainly face our greatest challenge yet next year. The responsibility we have to our residents cannot allow us to think and act the same. We must think differently and innovatively.

Soon, we will send you a news release that will fully explain our budget reductions and the impact on our state. If I or a member of my staff can answer questions or provide additional information, please contact us.

Sincerely,
Bruce

Below is the October 22 “General Notice of Impending Layoff” to DHH employees from Undersecretary Jerry Phillips:

In accordance with the requirements of Civil Service Rule 17.12 (s), general notice is hereby given of impending layoffs to be effective no later that January 30, 2011, in the Department of Health and Hospitals. Positions occupied by employees affected by the proposed layoffs are located statewide in all Offices of the Department.

Once the layoff plans have been approved by the Director of Civil Service, they will be made generally available to all employees. Each employee who is directly affected by any layoff will receive two individual notices prior to the effective date of the layoff.

Responsibilities of Employees Affected in a Layoff (Civil Service Rule 17.19):

The responsibility of employees affect in a layoff are listed below. This rule applies to active employees and includes employees who are on leave for any reason, on detail to special duty and on temporary interdepartmental assignment.

a) The employee shall read or otherwise make himself aware of agency-distributed information concerning the layoff.

b) The employee shall supply all informaton required by the agency to determine adjusted state service date in the format and by the deadline set by the agency. Failure to do so will result in the employee’s adjusted service date being set at the date of their most recent hire.

c) If the employee is absent from work, he shall provide to the personnel specified by his agency, correct and current information as required by the agency on how he may be reached at all times.

d) The employee shall respond to a relocation offer in a manner determined by the agency. Failure to do so shall be considered a declinaton of the offer.

e) For purposes of meeting the job qualifications of the relocation offer, an employee must have a grade from Civil Service only in the instance of an employee moving from a sub-professional level job to a professional level job. The employee must have the gradfe before the effective date of the layoff to be eligible for that position. The grade need not be active, it may be expired; however, it must be a grade for the test currently in use and must be verifiable.

f) Once an employee accepts or declines a relocation offer, the decision is final.

More information will be provided by LouisianaVoice as details emerge.

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J. Ryan Hudson and Time magazine had it right

Posted in Budget, Campaign Contributions, Economy, Governor's Office, House, Senate, Legislature, Legislators, Public Records, Taxes, Transparency on October 21, 2010| 1 Comment »

J. Ryan Hudson made the most of his 15 minutes.

Just in case you haven’t been paying attention lately, J. Ryan Hudson is the LSU Student Body president who wrote the now-famous op-ed letter to the Keene (New Hampshire) Sentinel in which he opined that Gov. Bobby Jindal “is spending more time in your state than the one he was elected to represent.”

As class sizes at LSU have grown, higher education has undergone $280 million in budget cuts over the past two years and is facing another $290 million in cutbacks, prompting Hudson to write that Jindal should pay more attention to state budget shortfalls than spending time campaigning for Republican candidates in other states.

“On behalf of the students whose hopes for a brighter future will soon be crushed, I beg you to return to Louisiana and fix your state’s serious problems,” Hudson said. “You’ve neglected your constituents long enough.

“You’ll have a much better chance of becoming president if you save, instead of destroy, Louisiana’s universities,” he said, implying that Jindal may have a not-so-secret agenda aimed at seeking higher office.

To be sure, Hudson’s letter was brash, maybe a little rude, and certainly timely.

And, sadly, all too accurate.

Jindal, rather than anchoring himself to the Capitol’s fourth floor office, chooses to globetrot on behalf of Republican candidates most in Louisiana have never heard of while refusing to endorse Republican candidates in Louisiana. One can understand his reluctance to speak out in favor of David Vitter in his Senate race against Charlie Melancon given Vitter’s political baggage, but Secretary of State Jay Dardenne can’t wrangle an endorsement from Jindal even though Dardenne’s TV spots stress his wish to work with Jindal in promoting the governor’s programs.

Even more difficult to comprehend is Jindal’s reluctance to tackle state finances head-on. After all, hasn’t he been telling us over and over that he has the job he wants? If that’s true, then he should stay home and do that job.

Oh, sure, he pays lip service to reducing, or streamlining, state government. But as the state budget turns an ever-darkening shade of red, he stands adamant in his refusal to address a tax increase in the wake of dwindling state revenues.

Tax increases are never pleasant, especially with statewide elections only a year away, but neither is the prospect of a state becoming insolvent. That’s a very real prospect.

And Jindal, along with an out-of-control legislature, must shoulder the blame. The state had money, but the legislature, drunk with one-time revenue, went spend-crazy this year and Jindal wouldn’t—or couldn’t—summon the courage to rein in the insanity with his line item veto power.

Time magazine describes half the states as having joined the federal government “in the fiscal sick ward” as high unemployment and the recession combined with drastically reduced income to deliver a weakened economy that appears at times to be spiraling out of control.

Barely into its new fiscal year, Louisiana is already facing a $100 million deficit, thanks to depressed oil prices and reduced tax revenues, the magazine said. To deal with the crisis, the state has frozen hiring, deferred maintenance on state buildings and canceled $500,000 in new equipment. Legislators, meanwhile, are talking tax increases. “We’ve run out of windfall from Washington,” the state budget director lamented. “We’ve run out of exotic tax measures. Our economy has run out of gas, and in Louisiana, when you run out of gas, you run out of money.”

Sound familiar? The by now all too familiar theme should resonate with anyone who follows Louisiana politics.

But that story actually ran in Time on Nov. 8, 1982—almost exactly 28 ominously prophetic years ago when Ralph Perlman was budget director and Dave Treen was governor. Louisiana has held seven elections and has chosen five new governors since then. The more things change, it seems, the more they stay the same.

Today, nearly three decades after that story, Louisiana is wrestling with a $108 million budget deficit less than four months into the 2011 fiscal year than began on July 1. Even worse, the administration is anticipating a staggering projected shortfall of up to $2 billion next year.

It’s not as if the administration and legislators were not forewarned: Greg Albrecht, the chief economist for the Legislative Fiscal Office, said in May that he didn’t expect state income tax revenue to meet earlier forecasts.

Now, Gov. Bobby Jindal finds himself trying to find a way to cut state budgets yet another 35 percent—when he’s in the state, which is becoming more and more infrequent. Some legislators said they see the present fiscal malaise as a chance to downsize government in lieu of falling back on the usual accounting tricks to balance the budget.

Sen. John Alario, D-Westwego, called the situation “a grand opportunity for us to scale back government.” Alario, the legislator primarily responsible for the often-criticized state’s $22 million purchase of the financially troubled Players Tournament Club golf facility in Marrero, said downsizing “could never be done if you didn’t have to be faced with this situation.”

Jindal, in lieu of raising taxes, seems intent on slashing higher education and health care. Meanwhile, he keeps popping up in Florida, New Hampshire, New York, Missouri, Georgia, California, Ohio, and Minnesota to campaign for GOP candidates.

Legislators say the anticipated budgets will close hospitals for the poor and cripple higher education while college presidents call the proposed cuts “catastrophic.” Former Gov. Kathleen Blanco says a 35 percent cut would effectively shut down government services and that education would undergo a “meltdown to mediocrity.”

Jindal says spending cuts are preferable to higher taxes and that additional privatization may be in store as a means to save the state money.

He missed his chance to cut spending at the end of the last regular legislative session when he could have exercised his line item veto power to bring the Capital Outlay bill more into line. He had the opportunity to veto more than $450 million in Priority One spending but chose to veto only $9.4 million—all in Priority Two, or second year spending. Among the Priority One appropriations in the Capital Outlay Bill that were allowed to stand were:

• $800,000 for land acquisition for the proposed Allen Parish Reservoir;
• $1.4 million for the proposed Bayou Dechene Reservoir in Caldwell Parish;
• $2.6 million for the Washington Parish Reservoir Commission Feasibility study;
• $17.2 million for Bayou Segnette Festival Park land acquisition and sports complex improvements;
• $28 million for modifications to the Performing Arts Center in Jefferson Parish;
• $2 million for construction of a playground Basketball Gym in Orleans Parish;
• $1.8 million for construction of the Little Theatre of Shreveport;
• $2.6 million for a new Westbank YMCA in Algiers;
• $2 million for the New Orleans Music Hall of Fame;
• $6 million for construction of a new courthouse in Baton Rouge;
• $2.8 million for the Dryades YMCA in New Orleans;
• $5.4 million for the Red River Waterway Commission;
• $7.7 million for the renovation of the Acadiana Center for the Arts in Lafayette;
• $2.5 million for improvements to the Coteau Water System in St. Martin and Iberia parishes;
• $2.4 million for the Union Parish Law Enforcement District;
• $1.8 million for construction for the Robinson Film Center in Caddo Parish;
• $12 million for construction of a convention center complex in Shreveport;
• $3.8 million for a new tennis center in Orleans Parish;
• $4.7 million for construction of the Louisiana Artist Guild Arts Incubator in New Orleans;
• $26.5 million for expansion and construction of the National World War II Museum in New Orleans;

Millions more were spent on construction projects that included recreational facilities, councils on aging, courthouses, sheriffs’ offices, jails, drainage projects, work on parish and municipal road and street construction projects, community centers, and water systems.

As if that were not enough, when legislators found extra money lying around, as they always seem to do during each legislative session, the House quickly pushed HB 76 through, appropriating an additional $33 million in local pork projects. Some of those expenditures:

• $150,000 for the Louisiana Political Hall of Fame in Winnfield;
• $500,000 for the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities;
• $500,000 to “organizations which assist small towns and rural areas with their water and wastewater systems;”
• $250,000 for construction of an animal shelter in St. Charles Parish;
• $1 million to the Lafayette Parish Consolidated Government for infrastructure construction;

Of that $33 million, Jindal vetoed only 32 projects totaling less than $2.5 million.

That’s a sign of a weak governor—one who lacks the singular courage to scale back reckless spending by legislators when the very future of the state depends on it, demands it. As a result, higher education and health care will continue to suffer while golf courses, community centers, baseball parks, sheriffs’ offices, ground water reservoirs, and other local projects will flourish while legislators take the credit and bask in the gratitude of constituents back home.

The name of that 1982 Time magazine article that chronicled economic hard times for state governments?

“Living Beyond Their Means.”

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Who needs education or health care? We got golf.

Posted in Budget, Economy, Golf Courses, Governor's Office, Transparency on September 6, 2010| Leave a Comment »

As the Jindal administration considers even more budgetary cuts—as much as 35 percent—in an attempt to offset the effects of an anticipated fiscal free fall estimated to be as much as $2 billion next year, the sacrificial lambs of higher education and health care are once again being led to the altar for the ritualistic bloodletting.

Meanwhile, as is usually the case when the legislature is faced with budgetary shortfalls, many other spending programs by lawmakers go on unabated. As puzzling as it must be to taxpayers constantly bombarded with bad news out of Baton Rouge, the elected representatives and senators just can’t seem to bring themselves to exercise the fiduciary discipline to keep reckless spending in check.

They are, to use a time-worn metaphor, the foxes guarding the henhouse.

A good example of the leadership void can be found in the way the legislators spend unexpected financial windfalls. When agencies fail to spend all of their budgets during a fiscal year, the excess funding reverts back to the state treasury where lawmakers are waiting like so many vultures to pounce on it for local pork barrel spending.

Take this year’s HB-76, the so-called “ancillary appropriations bill.” As soon as the extra money was “found,” legislators, instead of allocating all the new money to education and health care, poured $33 million into local funding projects like convention centers, municipalities and parishes, arts councils, councils on aging, and museums.

As irresponsible as all this may seem, it pales in comparison to what the state has spent on golf courses, baseball parks, and other recreational complexes down through the years.

Because figures prior to 1997 are unavailable, this post will address only those expenditures dating back to that year. But those 14 years should be sufficient for even the casual reader to detect a disturbing trend in spending priorities in this state.

Since 1997, the state of Louisiana, through the legislative process, has deemed it necessary to spend $141 million on golf courses.

One doesn’t have to be a math wizard to see that that averages out to $10 million per year. And that doesn’t include various university golf courses. These are private golf courses, one and all.

Another $18.5 million was spent during that same time frame on baseball parks, including nearly $4 million on a baseball stadium in Baton Rouge, which has no baseball team.

The real irony in all this can be found in two 2007 appropriations for the city of Westlake, near Lake Charles. That year, $6.12 million was appropriated in Priority 1 funding for golf course planning and development. That same year, $100,000 in Priority 2 funding and $800,000 in Priority 5 funding was appropriated for planning and construction of a new emergency response center for Westlake, which was putting up $900,000 in local matching funds.

The difference in Priorities 1, 2, and 5? Priority 1 means that the fund are virtually a certainty. Priority 2 means next year. Maybe. Priority 5 means lots of luck, you may get the money and you may not.

Over the 14 years in question, the Westlake golf club received nine separate Priority 1 appropriations totaling $37.96 million.

Not to be outdone, the Tournament Players Club in Jefferson Parish got seven separate appropriations totaling $48.2 million. City Park Golf Complex in New Orleans, with seven Priority 1 appropriations, got $33.8 million.

Other golf course expenditures included:

• $16.1 million for the England (Airpark) Golf Course in Rapides Parish;
• $600,000 for the Bayou Segnette Golf Course in Jefferson parish;
• $2.7 million for development of a golf resort at Toledo Bend;
• $2 million to promote the Audubon Trail golf courses in efforts to promote more rounds;
• $16,000 for the Delhi Municipal Golf Course;
• $301,000 for the Black Bear Golf Club at Poverty Point (part of the Audubon Trail);
• $250,000 for the 2002 Compaq Golf Tournament in New Orleans;
• $550,000 for junior golf facilities and the Fore Kids Foundation golf tournament;
• $250,000 for promotion of the Classic Foundation golf tournament in New Orleans;
• $1.7 million for the Louisiana Junior Golf Commission.

The state also spent an additional $5.25 million on the LSU golf course, part of which was relocating four holes on the course, money some might suggest would come from the LSU athletic department.

Of course, golf is not the only interest of the legislature. It also has appropriated funding for such projects as the Hot Air Balloon Championship in Baton Rouge ($50,000), the RedFish Tour ($75,000), the National Baptist Convention in New Orleans ($75,000), and the Bayou Classic football game between Southern and Grambling universities ($100,000), the Zephyrs’ baseball stadium in Jefferson Parish ($4.68 million over four years), a baseball complex for Iberia Parish ($7.34 million over eight years), improvements to a Baton Rouge baseball stadium with no tenant ($3.95 million over three years), construction of baseball fields at Negreet and Killian high schools ($35,000), and construction of a baseball-softball complex in Rapides Parish $2.73 million).

The Black Bear Golf Course at Poverty Point was constructed on private property owned by the Poverty Point Development Corp. under the auspices of the Louisiana Department of Transportation and Development as part of a retirement community developed by State Sen. Francis Thompson and his brother, Mike Thompson. Once completed, the golf course was donated to the Louisiana Office of Culture and Tourism with the proviso that a “professional manager” be appointed to administer the day to day operations of Black Bear. The manager appointed was Mike Thompson.

The Tournament Players Club Louisiana Golf Course (TPC) has proved to be the real money pit for the state. Promoted by Sen. John Alario of Westwego and developer Buckner Barkley, Jr., TPC has been a money loser from the outset. The course was developed in an effort to pull a major PGA tournament into Jefferson Parish.

The state, during the administration of Gov. Mike Foster, entered into an agreement with TPC and Marrero Land and Improvement Association whereby the state guaranteed a minimum number of rounds played. The rounds were required to be booked through New Orleans hotel concierges promoting the course. The hotel industry initially was not informed of the agreement and was unable to meet booking quotas.

The annual Zurich Classic is played at TPC and the fear was that it would lose the tournament and should that have happened, the property, with no professional tournament facilitator, would revert to Marrero Land. To avert that occurrence, the Superdome Commission and commission chairman Doug Thornton negotiated a new deal whereby the state would pay off TPC’s $10 million indebtedness and take ownership of the property in exchange for a six-year commitment from the PGA to keep the Zurich Classic there.

While some legislators maintain the state should not be in the golf business, proponents of the arrangement insist it is the best option for the state, that it is good for the economy.

Likewise, supporters claim that the golf courses, such as Black Bear, are good for economic development and make the state’s investments a good idea.

Manufacturing plants, Wal-Marts, and job-intensive industry also make good economic sense. So why doesn’t the state just go out and buy a dozen or so Wal-Marts, open a few car dealerships and manufacturing plants and give people jobs instead of taking over golf courses and putting a legislator’s relative in charge?

Don’t be surprised when next Spring, one of those tiny Smart Cars pulls up in front of the State Capitol and 144 clowns, complete with orange wigs, big shoes, red noses, seltzer bottles, pies, and horns, pile out, run up the steps of the Capitol and into the Senate and House chambers to call the 2011 legislative session into disorder.

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Read the bill, Mr. Speaker, read the bill

Posted in Budget, Economy, Governor's Office, House, Senate, Legislature, Legislators, Transparency on September 5, 2010| 1 Comment »

At a meeting of the Joint Legislative Committee on the Budget during the legislative session earlier this year, House Speaker Jim Tucker popped in long enough to admonish fellow legislators (primarily state senators, it’s presumed) to “read the (state) Constitution.”

His remarks, however condescending they may or may not have been, were prompted by a running dispute he was having with Senate President Joel Chaisson in particular and the senate in general.

“Read the Constitution.” Terse, dramatic, patronizing. Exit left.

Now it turns out that Speaker Tucker might be advised to do some reading of his own.

Tucker, in a recent address in Monroe, blamed the Senate and Gov. Bobby Jindal for their failure to make deeper cuts in an attempt to mitigate next year’s anticipated $2 billion budgetary shortfall.

Speaking to the Monroe Chamber of Commerce on September 1, Tucker said of next year’s impending fiscal crisis, “We knew this was coming. We’ve been trying to manage this in the House for three years, but we were rebuffed by the Senate and the governor.

Tucker said the House had more significant cuts in the 2011 budget than the version ultimately approved after Jindal supported the Senate version, which, according to the House Speaker, used one-time money to postpone more severe cuts.

“So next year we’re going to deal with it as a crisis,” he said. “It’s not how I would have preferred to deal with it. I was disappointed, but we’ll deal with it as it comes.”

Perhaps Speaker Tucker should take his own advice and go back and read over HB 76 that passed the House by a vote of 88-0 and was signed by the governor as Act 41. HB 76, the ancillary appropriations bill, was the notorious bill that dumped some $33 million into local pork projects after additional funds were “found.”

Of that $33 million, Jindal managed to find 32 projects totaling less than $2.5 million that he could veto. Of the remaining $30 million-plus, $3.4 million was for local arts councils, $1.5 million was for local councils on aging, and another $12.8 million was appropriated for local parishes and municipalities, some of those with no explanation of how the money would be used. The City of Baton Rouge, for example, got two separate appropriations totaling $515,000 with no explanation of how the funds would be spent.

Of the appropriations for the councils on aging, $325,000 was for the Jefferson Council on Aging. Tucker is from Jefferson Parish.

The St. Landry School Board received $750,000 for “enhancements to public elementary and secondary education.”

The expenditures contained in HB 76, however, do not even approach the waste included in HB 1 (General Appropriations) and HB 2 (Capital Outlay).

Those two bills included, among other expenditures:

• $12 million for the Convention Center Complex in Shreveport;

• $6.1 million for the Baton Rouge Riverside Centroplex;

• $6.6 million for City Park Golf Complex in New Orleans;

• $6.12 million for golf course development in Westlake;

• $301,184 for Black Bear Golf Club at Poverty Point;

• $325,000 for promotion of the Audubon Golf Trail;

• $5,000 for the Delhi Municipal Golf Course;

• $200,000 for Junior Golf training facilities in Shreveport;

• $1.17 million for repairs to Zephyrs baseball facilities in Jefferson Parish;

• $17.5 million for professional sports facilities in Jefferson and Orleans parishes;

• $1 million for a recreational complex in Iberia Parish;

• $1.4 million for baseball stadium improvements in Baton Rouge.

Baton Rouge has no baseball team.

Is this House Speaker Jim Tucker’s idea of fiscal responsibility?

Read the bill, Mr. Speaker. Read the bill.

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Francis Thompson: Water Water Everywhere….but we need more

Posted in Budget, Economy, Governor's Office, House, Senate, Legislature, Legislators, Transparency, Water Reservoirs on August 25, 2010| Leave a Comment »

State Sen. Francis Thompson is not only the family employment champion among state lawmakers (a news report from the 1980s claimed that he had more relatives on the state payroll than any other member of the legislature) but he also appears perfectly capable of siphoning off millions of dollars in state revenue for pet projects. Those projects primarily include ground water reservoirs in more than a dozen parishes costing taxpayers more than $163 million since 1997.

In a state teeming with hundreds of lakes and reservoirs while reeling from dwindling tax revenues, Sen. Thompson has managed to convince fellow legislators and three governors of the necessity of constructing even more. With the passage of each piece of legislation to appropriate funds for a new reservoir Thompson’s brother, former Delhi mayor Mike Thompson, secured a $100,000 per year consulting contract from the Louisiana Department of Transportation and Development (DOTD). That’s $100,000 per year per reservoir project.

Mike Thompson earlier this year was sentenced to 18 months after having been found guilty of one count of using district employees to work on his home in Delhi and charging the Poverty Point Reservoir District for the labor in violation of the Hobbs Act. The Hobbs Act was enacted by Congress in 1951 to combat racketeering in labor-management disputes but is often invoked in cases involving public corruption. He could have been sentenced to up to 20 years in prison and prosecutors did argue for a sentence of 41-50 months. He was scheduled to report to prison on Monday of this week.

Francis Thompson’s older brother, Clyde Thompson, currently employed as executive director of the Madison Parish Port Commission at $49,207 per year, once served as second in command to DOTD Secretary Paul Hardy during the administration of former Gov. Dave Treen.

Monroe engineer Terry Denmon just as consistently was awarded engineering contracts for each of the reservoir projects undertaken. His contracts ranged from $200,000 to more than $700,000. Like Francis, Mike, and Clyde Thompson, Denmon is a graduate of Louisiana Tech University in Ruston and as recently as 2007 was chairman of the Louisiana Wildlife and Fisheries Commission.

None of the reservoir projects has proved as expensive to the state and profitable—and troublesome—to the Thompsons and Denmon as the centerpiece of all of Francis Thompson’s reservoirs, Poverty Point Reservoir in Richland and Madison parishes. That project alone has cost the state more than all the others combined in priority 1, or first-year, funding. From 1997 through the 2010 regular legislative session that adjourned on June 21, Poverty Point has cost state taxpayers at least $81,855,000. That compares to $81,257,000 for all the other reservoir projects combined.

Not that the Bayou Dechene Reservoir project in Caldwell Parish isn’t in the running. The cost of that proposed lake to date is $40,650,000 in priority 1 funding—and counting.

Even as the state budget was swimming in a sea of red ink that forced major cutbacks to higher education and health care this year, the legislature plowed ahead, appropriating nearly $8.1 million in funding for Thompson’s reservoir projects in 2010. That amount included $3,152,000 for Poverty Point and $4,940,000 for four other reservoir projects in Allen ($800,000), Caldwell ($1,415,000), Washington ($2,625,000), and LaSalle ($100,000).

Those figures can be misleading because if bonds approved are not sold or funding appropriated for a project are not spent, the project must obtain renewed approval the following year. Bayou Dechene, for example, has received approval of identical amounts of $1,415,000 in each of the last seven years, including 2010.

What is not misleading, however, is how the Thompsons, through the efforts of Francis, have ensconced themselves in profitable recreational lakefront property development largely at the expense of taxpayer dollars. Francis Thompson even convinced the state in 2006 to take control of the 439-acre Black Bear Golf Course which is part of the Poverty Point Reservoir development and to install Mike Thompson as administrative director of the golf course.

But more significantly, was the plan to develop an elaborate retirement community at Poverty Point Reservoir. After purchasing the land and constructing elevated berms on which the state constructed roads and cul de sacs that would extend outward as island lots into the still-to-be-built lake, Thompson, then serving in the House, pushed through HB 1136 in the 2001 session which called for the state to purchase 2,586 acres that would become the Poverty Point Reservoir, excluding of course mineral rights and the berms that would make up the residential island lots on which Francis and Mike Thompson planned to develop a retirement community. That sale was consummated in early 2003 when the state paid the Poverty Point Reservoir District more than $2 million. The state, according to a 2002 state audit, also paid $1.2 million to develop the island lots, one of which was sold to a neighbor of Francis Thompson for $621,200. The state also paid $2.2 million for a keyed-gate entry private road to the lots and another $300,000 for an office burglar alarm system.

Then, during the 2002 legislative session, then-Rep. Francis Thompson struck again with what he probably felt would be the major coup. HB 84 of that session called for the exemption of a “developer of a qualified retirement community” from having to pay state or local ad valorem (property) taxes. The measure passed Senate by a 33-0 vote and the House with only seven dissents. Thompson might have been expected to abstain from voting on a measure that stood to benefit him financially—but he didn’t. Instead, he was among the 93 members voting in favor of the bill that eventually became Act 57 when signed by then-Gov. Mike Foster. Likewise, Thompson was one of 99 House members who in 2001 voted in favor of HB 1136, Thompson’s bill to sell Poverty Point Reservoir to the state for $2 million.

The only fly in the ointment was that the measure would have to go before the voters as a constitutional amendment in the Nov. 5, 2002 statewide election. It turned out to be a major problem when voters rejected the proposed amendment.

Thompson, upon being term-limited in the House, was elected Senator in 2007 to succeed similarly term-limited Charles Jones. Undeterred over the failure of the 2002 proposed constitutional amendment, he tried again, this time with SB 584, a bill identical in language to the 2002 House bill. This time, opponents were better prepared. The Legislative Fiscal Office provided estimates that the bill, if successful, would cost local and state governments as much as $600,000 per year in lost revenue.

Perhaps Francis Thompson, in voting in favor of HB 84 back in 2002, a bill that had the potential of enriching himself by as much as $600,000 per year was not joking when in his farewell address to the Louisiana House in 2007, he admonished fellow House members to “never allow ethics to get in the way of a good bill.”

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