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Archive for the ‘Education’ Category

Firm’s advice to fire Orleans teachers after Katrina may cost taxpayers $1.5B; hired for $4M by Jindal to save state money

Posted in Boards, Budget, Commissions, Contract, Contracts, Courts, Education, Governor's Office, Jobs, Judges, Layoffs, Legislature, Legislators, ORM, Office of Risk Management, Privatization, Revenue, Teague on January 17, 2014| 9 Comments »

It’s small wonder that Gov. Bobby Jindal wanted to get out of town quickly—he departed the state for an extended trip to Asia to recruit business and industry investment in Louisiana—given the flak he is receiving from the legislature and radio talk show hosts over his hiring of a consulting firm at a cost of $4.2 million to somehow magically find $500 million in state government savings. http://theadvocate.com/csp/mediapool/sites/dt.common.streams.StreamServer.cls?STREAMOID=sZuDzNJoJK2fudmeRm9FJpM5tm0Zxrvol3sywaAHBAlauzovnqN0Cbyo1UqyDJ6gE0$uXvBjavsllACLNr6VhLEUIm2tympBeeq1Fwi7sIigrCfKm_F3DhYfWov3omce$8CAqP1xDAFoSAgEcS6kSQ–&CONTENTTYPE=application/pdf&CONTENTDISPOSITION=Alvarez%20Marsal%20Government%20Savings%20Contract.pdfhttp://theadvocate.com/news/8045923-123/vitter-super-pac-raises-15

And that contract doesn’t even take into account Pre-Jindal recommendations by the firm that may ultimately end up costing taxpayers $1.5 billion which, of course, would more than offset any $500 million savings it might conjure up that the Legislative Fiscal Officer, the State Treasurer, the administration, the legislature and the Legislative Auditor have been unable to do, largely because of a time honored political tradition affectionately known as turf protection.

One might even ask, for example, why representatives of the consulting firm, Alvarez & Marsal, who somewhat smugly call themselves “efficiency engineers,” were wasting their time Friday at the gutted Office of Risk Management. Isn’t there already a promise of $20 million in savings on the table as a result of Jindal’s privatization of that agency four years ago? For just that one small agency, that’s 4 percent of the entire $500 million in savings Jindal is seeking through the $4 million contract. (The elusive $500 million savings, for the real political junkies, represents only 2 percent of the state budget.)

The Baton Rouge Advocate also got in on the act on Saturday with Michelle Millhollon’s excellent story that  noted that the actual contract contains no mention of a $500 million savings. http://theadvocate.com/home/8131113-125/vaunted-savings-not-included-in

That revelation which is certain to further antagonize legislators, including Senate President John Alario (R-Westwego) whom Jindal will now probably try to teague for his criticism of the governor’s penchant for secrecy.

Hey guys, your contract is only for four months, so why waste your time in an agency that supposedly is on the cusp of a $20 million savings? That ain’t very efficient, if you ask us.

Legislators immediately voiced their displeasure at the contract. “There’s a lot of people who don’t like it,” said Rep. John Schroder (R-Covington), a one-time staunch Jindal ally.

Rep. Tim Burns (R-Mandeville), chairman of the House Governmental Affairs Committee (if he hasn’t been teagued by now), said when the dust settles any cost cutting will ultimately be the responsibility of state officials. “Even the best PowerPoint presentation isn’t going to cut government,” he said. “The trick is to make the political choices.”

The contract raises immediate questions how Jindal, now entering his seventh year in office, could justify the move in light of his many boasts of efficiencies his administration has supposedly initiated.

Ruth Johnson, who is overseeing the contract for the Division of Administration, defended the deal with the simplistic and less than satisfactory logic that “Sometimes you have to spend money to save money.”

And while Jindal has indicated he wants a final set of recommendations in April, the contract runs through 2016, meaning the final cost could far exceed the $4.2 million Alvarez & Marsal is scheduled to receive for its review.

Jim Engster, host of a talk show on public radio in Baton Rouge, on Friday predicted during an interview with State Treasurer John Kennedy that Alvarez & Marsal’s final report will most likely bear an uncanny resemblance to the 400-plus-page interim report of Dec. 18, 2009, by the infamous Commission on Streamlining Government.

The hearings by that commission, you may remember, gave birth to the term teaguing, a favorite tactic employed by the Jindal administration when a state employee or legislator refuses to toe the line. A state employee named Melody Teague testified before that commission and was summarily fired the following day. Six months later her husband, Tommy Teague, was fired as head of the Office of Group Benefits when he was slow in getting on board the Jindal Privatization Express. Mrs. Teague appealed and was reinstated but her husband took employment elsewhere in a less volatile environment.

The Alvarez & and Marsal representatives have pleaded ignorant to questions of whether their report will draw heavily from the four-year-old commission report and even professed to not know of its existence.

A curious denial indeed, given that Johnson was also the ramrod over the streamlining commission during Jindal’s second year in office. Does she not share this information with the firm or was all that commission work for naught? Or part of Jindal’s infamous deliberative process? Curious also in that Alvarez & Marsal is specifically cited—by name—no fewer than six times in the report’s first 51 pages, each of which is in the context of privatizing the state’s charity hospital system. The report quoted the firm as recommending that:

  • “The governor and the legislature authorize and direct the LSU Health System to adopt the recommendations of Alvarez and Marsal for the operation of the interim Charity Hospital in New Orleans. The governor and legislature direct every other charity hospital in Louisiana to contract for a similar financial and operational assessment with a third party private sector consulting firm, such as but not necessarily Alvarez and Marsal, that specializes and has a proven track record in turnaround management, corporate restructuring and performance improvement for institutions and their stakeholders.”

That’s right. That is where the seed was apparently first planted for the planned privatization of the LSU Hospital system, even to the point of directing the LSU Board of Stuporvisors to vote to allow a Shreveport foundation run by one of the LSU stuporvisors to take over the LSU Medical Center in Shreveport and E.A. Conway Medical Center in Monroe. Alvarez & Kelly performed that bit of work under a $1.7 million contract that ran for nine months in 2009, from Jan. 5 to Sept. 30 (almost $200,000 per month).

Alvarez & Marsal also received a $250,000, contract of a much shorter duration (10 days) from Jindal on April 9, 2013, to develop Jindal’s proposal to eliminate the state income taxes in favor of other tax increases. That quickie, ill-conceived plan was dead on arrival during the legislative session and Jindal quickly punted before a single legislative vote could be taken

But Alvarez & Marsal’s cozy if disastrous relationship with state government goes back further than Jindal, even. http://www.alvarezandmarsal.com/case-study-new-orleans-public-schools It’s a relationship that could become one of the most costly in state history—unless of course, the state chooses to ignore a court judgment in the same manner as it has ignored a $100 million-plus award (now in the neighborhood of a quarter-billion dollars—with judicial interest) stemming from a 1983 class-action flood case in Tangipahoa Parish.

In fact, the state probably has no choice but to ignore the judgment as an alternative to bankrupting the state but that does little to remove the stigma attached to a horrendous decision to accept the recommendation of Alvarez and Marsal which subsequently was rewarded with a $29.1 million three-year state contract from April 4, 2006 to April 3, 2009 to “develop and implement a comprehensive and coordinated disaster recovery plan in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.”

In December of 2005, the Orleans Parish School Board adopted Resolution 59-05 on the advice of the crack consulting firm that Jindal somehow thinks is going to be the state’s financial salvation.

That resolution, passed in the aftermath of disastrous Hurricane Katrina was specifically cited in the ruling earlier this week by the 4th Circuit Court of Appeal that upheld a lower court decision the school board was wrong to fire 7,500 teachers, effective Jan. 31, 2006. The wording contained in the ruling said:

  • “In December 2005, the OPSB passed Resolution No. 59-05 upon the advice and recommendation of its state-selected and controlled financial consultants, the New York-based firm of Alvarez & Marsal. The Resolution called for the termination of all New Orleans Public School employees placed on unpaid “Disaster Leave” after Hurricane Katrina, to take effect on January 31, 2006.1 On the day that the mass terminations were scheduled to take place, Plaintiffs amended their petition to seek a temporary restraining order preventing the OPSB from terminating all of its estimated 7,500 current employees at the close of business on that day. The trial court granted the TRO and this Court and the Louisiana Supreme Court denied writs on the issue. The TRO was later converted into a preliminary injunction that restrained, enjoined and prohibited the OPSB, et al, from “terminating the employment of Plaintiffs and other New Orleans Public School employees until they are afforded the due process safeguards provided in the Orleans Parish School Board’s Reduction in Force Policy 4118.4.” Nevertheless, Plaintiffs and thousands of other employees were terminated on March 24, 2006, after form letters were mailed to the last known address of all employees of record as of August 29, 2005.”

The appellate court upheld the award of more than $1 million to seven lead plaintiffs in the case of Oliver v. Orleans Parish School Board but adjusted the lower court’s damage award, ordering the school board and the Louisiana Department of Education to pay two years of back pay and benefits and an additional year of back pay and benefits to teachers who meet certain unspecified requirements.

Immediately following Katrina, state-appointed Alvarez and Marsal set up a call center to collect post-Katrina addresses for a majority of staff members in time for the anticipated layoffs. But when the state began the hiring process for schools that had been taken over, the terminated employees were never called, prompting plaintiff attorneys to charge that the entire procedure was intentional and part of the state’s plan to take over the Orleans Parish school system.

Plaintiffs said that then-State Superintendent of Education Cecil Picard chose Alvarez & Marsal to prevail upon the school board to replace acting parish Superintendent Ora Watson with an Alvarez & Marsal consultant.

So, Watson was replaced, 7,500 teachers were fired, and the teachers sued and won, leaving the Orleans School Board and the state liable for a billion-five and the firm that started it all is hired by Jindal to find savings of an unspecified amount. What could possibly go wrong?

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The passing of Wiley Hilburn: like ripping out a part of us even as it reminds us of our foibles and our own mortality

Posted in Education, Higher Education, Media on January 16, 2014| 19 Comments »

Besides my grandfather, whom I consider the greatest man I ever knew and who greatly influenced my personal life, two other men have had an equally tremendous impact on my professional life.

In 1966, tired of climbing poles for the telephone company because it was far too much like work, I walked into the offices of the Ruston Daily Leader in response to an advertisement in the paper for an ad sales representative. It didn’t take publisher Tom Kelly long to realize I had no aptitude for sales and he soon “promoted” me to sports editor.

It was while serving in that capacity that I returned to the classroom, pursuing a major in physical education at Louisiana Tech University with the goal of becoming a baseball coach. It was also about that same time that Wiley Hilburn, only five years my senior, left his position at the Shreveport Times to return to his hometown of Ruston to head the Journalism Department at Tech. Seeing something in my writing that impressed him (I still don’t know what it was), he convinced me to abandon my aspirations of coaching baseball in favor of a journalism major. I often joked with him over the ensuing years that I might someday find it in my heart to forgive him.

It was those two men, Tom Kelly and Wiley Hilburn, who cajoled and encouraged me and molded and shaped my career as a writer. I owe the two of them a debt that can never be repaid.

Today, Thursday, Jan. 16, 2013, Wiley Hilburn died and on this day, I feel a void and a sadness much like the way I felt the day my grandfather died. Though deeply personal, I shall endeavor to share a little of what I know about him.

He had been battling cancer and we were told it was in remission. The news was all good until he recently developed pneumonia. That, along with his already weakened condition, was just too much for his 75-year-old body to endure and today one of my two mentors and a dear friend was ripped away and I feel cheated and empty inside.

During my return to Tech as a student, I left the Daily Leader and took a job with the larger, more regional Monroe Morning World (now the News-Star) where I primarily worked the editing desk laying out the pages and writing headlines. I was fairly proficient at writing headlines for the stories and in my concurrent headline writing class at Tech, Hilburn—deliberately, he confided in me later—always gave me wire stories that he thought would be difficult to write headlines for. “But you still always finished before anyone else in the class,” he would tell me later. “I would get so frustrated trying to challenge you.”

Hilburn loved jokes and he especially loved—and appreciated—practical jokes, even when he was the butt of the joke.

Once, when after graduation, I ran the Ruston Bureau for both the Morning World and the Shreveport Times, he dropped by my office to ask if I had any Times stationery. He said a group of Tech administrators that included Alex Boyd and Weldon Walker, among others whose names I don’t recall, were hand circulating a get-rich-quick chain letter on the Tech campus and he wanted to pull a prank on them.

Together, we crafted a letter to Tech President F. Jay Taylor, who was in on the plot from the beginning. The letter, ostensibly from Times Editor Raymond McDaniel, “informed” Taylor that the Times had become aware of the chain letter and while the perpetrators were not breaking the letter of the law since they were not using the mail to solicit investments, they were nonetheless violating the spirit of the law and that “our man in Ruston, Tom Aswell, will be investigating the matter.”

Taylor, himself a lover of practical jokes (I’ll get to his momentarily), dutifully called the men into his office. There were three or four of them and as Taylor read the letter aloud in the serious and deliberate tone that the circumstances dictated, each one saw his career flash before his eyes. Boyd, knees weak and visibly shaken, had to sit down and kept muttering that his career was finished. Kaput. Walker, however, was defiant. “Aswell wouldn’t do that to me! He’s a friend of mine!” Finally, Walker, ignorant of Wiley’s involvement and by now grasping at straws, hit upon the only obvious solution: “Get Hilburn in here! He’ll straighten this out! He worked for the Times!”

Playing the string out to the end, Taylor obligingly called Hilburn to his office and upon his arrival, he found the men in a collective state of despair. Unable to keep a straight face in the presence of such morose trepidation,  Wiley gave it all away by cracking up with laughter.

Far from amused, a furious Walker swore revenge and we knew he was serious.

A year or so later, right around Christmas, I had moved on to the Baton Rouge State-Times and in a moment of mischievous inspiration, called Walker. “You still want to get even with Hilburn?” I asked.

“Hell, yes.”

“Well, think about this for a classified ad in the Daily Leader: ‘Don’t throw that old Christmas tree away. We recycle and we will pay you for your old tree. Just drop it by (Hilburn’s address, then in the Cypress Springs subdivision in Ruston) with your name and address on a tag and we will mail you $5.’”

“I love it,” Weldon blurted. “I’m gonna do just that.” I was just as thrilled to be part of a plan to turn the tables on Hilburn because I, too, loved practical jokes—and still do.

That weekend, Betty and I traveled to Simsboro just seven miles west of Ruston to spend the weekend after Christmas with her parents. I immediately grabbed my mother-in-law’s Daily Leader issues and began looking for the ad. Nothing. Not a word. Zilch. Disappointed, I called Weldon and asked, “What happened?”

“I’ll tell you what happened,” he thundered. “You and that s.o.b. Hilburn are what happened! I’ll tell you one damned thing: I better not find one damned Christmas tree in my yard or it’s gonna be somebody’s ass!” I could almost see the veins bulging from his neck.

Thoroughly confused by now, I called Hilburn who, laughing and without prompting from me, informed me that Tom Kelly had intercepted the ad before it got into the paper and, recognizing Wiley’s address, called him in. Hilburn asked who took out the ad and when Kelly showed him, Wiley suggested that Weldon’s address be substituted and a single page proof be printed. Wiley then took the page proof and stuck it in Weldon’s mailbox and when Weldon saw that…well, it was far better than the original plan. Only after he was finished did I inform Wiley that I was in on the plan for Weldon’s revenge, all of which made the entire episode even more hysterical to both of us.

On another occasion, a July 4 weekend, I drove over to Canton, Texas, to attend the world’s largest flea market and returned with several antique typewriters and a fire truck siren—items I had absolutely no use for. Almost, anyway. One fine day, with nothing else to do, I wired the siren into the ignition of Wiley’s old red Volkswagen Beetle and then walked across the campus to the Wyly Tower and took the elevator up to Taylor’s office and told him what I’d done.

Without a word, he picked up the phone and dialed Hilburn’s office. “Wiley,” he said, “I’ve had my car in the shop and they just called to say it’s ready. Could you give me a ride to pick it up?”

“I’ll be right there,” Hilburn replied.

We laughed like high school sophomores as we listened to the wail of the siren as he drove across campus to pick up his boss and by the time he walked into the office, Taylor was in tears.

Wiley Hilburn loved life and he loved and kept up with his students. He could tell you where each of his former students were long after they had left Tech. And make no mistake about it, his students loved and respected him.

But as much as he loved life and those around him, his life was still incomplete: Regrettably, he never got to see his beloved Chicago Cubs win the World Series—or even play in one.

This morning, feeling somehow that the end was near, I sat down and composed the following in his honor. It’s not classic poetry but I believe it accurately—and adequately—conveys my sentiments:

The Coffins That Pass Me By

As I pass from middle age to my golden years,

And contemplate how time can fly,

It’s not the setting sun that brings the tears,

But the coffins that pass me by.

 

Whether ’twas friend or foe matters not a drip,

For one and all, life’s wells run dry;

And it’s not that I fear making that trip,

It’s those coffins that pass me by.

 

Friends and loved ones will pay their respects

As they share stories and laugh and cry;

And each one standing there quietly reflects

On the coffins that pass us by.

 

Whether ’tis loved one or stranger who goes on first,

Our own fate is to one day ride

On that dreaded journey we all have cursed

In that damned coffin that once passed us by.

Go in peace, my friend.

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Baton Rouge newspaper earns title as ‘Press Release Central’ with puff piece by Michelle Rhee on Louisiana education

Posted in BESE, Education, Governor's Office, Media on January 15, 2014| 9 Comments »

In the relative short existence of LouisianaVoice, we have deliberately avoided antagonizing the so-called mainstream media. First of all, we really don’t even like that term and second, we saw no reason to go out of our way to make additional enemies now that we have been removed from Gov. Jindal and John White’s Christmas card lists.

But today’s (Jan. 15) shameless publication—without proper vetting—of what obviously was a verbatim press release either from Jindal or White’s offices, perhaps both, does a serious disservice to The Advocate’s credibility and is nothing less than an insult to its readers’ intelligence.

The nine-paragraph story, credited to the Capitol News Bureau, is nothing more than a puff piece extolling Louisiana for having the best “policy environments” (whatever that may be) for improving public schools. http://theadvocate.com/home/4857391-125/studentsfirst-group-rates-louisiana-education

While the story does attribute the report to an outfit calling itself StudentsFirst and while it did mention in passing that StudentsFirst is headed by Michelle Rhee, it was woefully inadequate in explaining what—and who—StudentsFirst and Michelle Rhee are.

A maximum of five to 10 minutes of research would have shone a glaring light on both that would have gone far in putting this hoax of a story into its proper perspective.

We feel The Advocate owed that much to its readers.

And it failed. Miserably.

If you think we are feeling smug about this, think again. Investigative reporting, in our simplistic definition, simply means telling the full story. We are truly saddened to see a publication fail so glaringly in its duty to inform fully.

StudentsFirst has poured funds into the campaigns of Board of Elementary and Secondary Education candidates but more important, Rhee was forced out as head of the Washington, D.C. school system in 2010 after reports of widespread cheating on standardized testing surfaced. The episode turned into one of the biggest student test score cheating scandals in the nation and was the subject of a Frontline story on LPB on Jan 8, 2013.

We first reported on this organization and its leader on that date almost exactly a year ago at https://louisianavoice.com/2013/01/08/1st-in-education-reform-%CF%80-yush-john-white-release-glowing-report-from-michelle-rhees-less-than-credible-studentsfirst/ and at https://louisianavoice.com/2013/01/13/%CF%80-yush-white-hawk-yet-another-national-study-lauding-la-education-reform-oops-part-of-study-gives-state-an-f-grade/

Our friend Jason France over at the Crazy Crawfish blog also called out Jindal and White on the (forgive the bad pun) whitewash. http://crazycrawfish.wordpress.com/2013/01/08/1013/

At the time, we commented that we were “being asked to believe Jindal and White when they regurgitate a highly suspect report churned out by Michelle Rhee.”

Some things, apparently never change and now the State Capital’s daily newspaper is allowing itself to be used in such a sordid, unabashed manner.

Shameless. Shameless and sad.

And now, a few hours after first writing this post, we learn that the Lafayette Advertiser ran essentially the same self-serving press release—with no questions asked. The Advertiser even included quotes from Jindal meant to give us all that warm fuzzy feeling. http://www.theadvertiser.com/article/20140114/NEWS01/301140013/Louisiana-ranks-first-nation-education-reforms

At least Washington Post writer Valerie Strauss did a little digging and debunked Rhee and her report, saying that the report “has no solid evidence to back it up” and that The report card “wouldn’t be worth mentioning, except that she (Rhee) remains a force in the public education debate and is able to attract major money from private donors.” Strauss also noted that the fact that criteria used in arriving at the grades are not a factor in improving student achievement “doesn’t seem to matter.”

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2014/01/14/michelle-rhee-gives-the-nation-a-d-in-school-reform/

Good to know there are still a few real reporters out there.

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Notable Quotables (in their own words)

Posted in Campaign Contributions, Education, Elections, Ethics, House, Senate, Legislature, Legislators, Notable Quotables, Politicians, Retirement on December 30, 2013| 5 Comments »

“If I closed my mind when I saw this man in the dust throwing some bones on the ground, semi-clothed, if I had closed him off and just said, ‘That’s not science, I am not going to see this doctor,’ I would have shut off a very good experience for myself and actually would not have discovered some things that he told me that I had to do when I got home to see my doctor.”

—State Sen. Elbert Guillory (R/D/R-Opelousas), defending Louisiana’s Science Education Act, the 2008 law that allows creationism to be taught in public school science classrooms during a Senate Education Committee hearing last May. 

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Chameleon Sen. Elbert Guillory: Republican, Democrat, Republican, runs for Lt. Gov. after consulting witch doctor

Posted in Campaign Contributions, Education, Elections, House, Senate, Legislature, Legislators on December 30, 2013| 13 Comments »

State Sen. Elbert Guillory is the first to make it official that he is a candidate for lieutenant governor for 2015 but not before he changed his party affiliation—a second time within a span of seven years—to fit what he must consider to be the state’s demographic profile the same way he changed the first time to fit the St. Landry Parish demographic profile.

Besides his chameleon-like political persona, Guillory is an object of some interest in a couple of other ways, including his abruptly leaving his post with the Seattle Human Rights Department under a cloud, a reprimand by the state attorney disciplinary board and the expenditure of his campaign funds in payments to apparent family members.

Seven separate payments totaling $10,000 were paid in 2009 and 2010 to Yvonne Guillory of Opelousas who happens to be Guillory’s ex-wife. Another payment of $1,000 was made in 2007 to Marie Guillory of the same address as Yvonne Guillory.

Another $2,500 payment was made in August of 2011 to Guillory Window Tinting of Eunice for campaign vehicle signs.

It is his repeated brushes with ethics problems, however, that might be Guillory’s biggest obstacle to being elected to statewide office.

A story in the Dec 31, 1981, Seattle Post-Intelligencer noted that Guillory had dropped out of sight and his office had no word of his whereabouts after it was learned he was under investigation for ethics violations.

After only a little more than a year on the job as director of the Seattle Human Rights Department, Guillory was suspended without pay and subsequently resigned after being charged with five counts of violating the city’s ethics code.

Among the things the investigation found that Guillory had done:

  • Awarded a $9,999 contract (one dollar below the $10,000 threshold requiring contracts to be publically bid) to the Seattle firm of LombardSyferd Communications. One of the partners in the firm, Mona Gayton, signed off on payment for contract work that was never done. She and Guillory took out a marriage license on Nov. 23, 1981 and they were later married.
  • Billed the city for two weeks’ work while he was on his honeymoon in Tahiti (even though he had no accumulated vacation time);
  • Allowed an employee to bill the city for time spent driving Guillory’s car cross-country from his former residence in Baltimore;
  • Hired two friends from Baltimore to teach seminars to his human rights staff at $500 per day plus expenses.

Guillory later claimed he had compensatory time coming even though he was told he was not eligible for vacation. He said the employee who drove his vehicle from Baltimore on work time was attending a conference, though he did not say where the conference was.

He also said he had made Seattle Mayor Charles Royer aware of the potential conflict with the contract to his girlfriend but Guillory later resigned before the official ethics hearing could be held, saying he thought Royer would protect him but instead, turned his back on Guillory.

He later moved back home to Opelousas and in 2002, he was reprimanded by the Louisiana attorney Disciplinary Board for notarizing a succession document for his client, former Opelousas Police Chief Larry Caillier. It turned out there was a minor problem: some of the signatures on the document had apparently been forged.

Guillory admitted he was mistaken in relying on the word of his client that the signatures were valid.

Mistaken? Really? In that case, I have a title to the Atchafalaya Basin I’d like him to notarize.

He also served on the Republican state central committee until 2007, when he ran for and was elected to the Louisiana House of Representatives. Just in time for the election, he coincidentally—or conveniently—switched to the Democratic Party in heavily Democratic St. Landry Parish, explaining that fundamental differences with the Bush administration precipitated his move.

Two years later he was elected to the Senate in a special election to fill an unexpired term. As state senator, Guillory served as Chairman of the Senate Retirement Committee and authored the Senate versions of Gov. Bobby Jindal’s ill-fated sweeping retirement reform bills, all of which eventually either failed in the legislature or were ruled unconstitutional by the courts.

He also raised a few eyebrows earlier this year when he shared his experience with a witch doctor he visited and cited that experience as a bewildering, convoluted defense of the Louisiana Science Education Act, the law that allows creationism to be taught in public school science classrooms through the use of materials that critique evolution.

Guillory explained last May that he would not wish to dismiss faith healing as a pseudoscience because of his encounter with a half-naked witch doctor who used bones in his healing ceremony.

Later that same month, not yet halfway through his first full term in the State Senate as a Democrat, he made the switch back to Republican, becoming the state’s first black Republican legislator since Reconstruction. He explained that he had come to disagree with the direction of the Louisiana Democratic Party. Specifically, he said he took issue with the Democrats’ positions on abortion, the Second Amendment, education and immigration.

Well, guess what? neither the national and Louisiana Democratic parties had altered their positions on those issues since 2007 when he pulled his first switcheroo from Republican to Democrat. So his reasoning for morphing back doesn’t quite pass the smell test.

Then earlier this month, on Dec. 12, 2013, he made the formal announcement that he was a candidate for lieutenant governor because, he said, it provides the best opportunity for him to help more Louisianians.

And of course, The Hayride couldn’t wait to endorse him. http://thehayride.com/2013/12/elbert-guillory-is-running-for-lt-governor-and-he-has-our-endorsement/

His announcement goes a long way in explaining why he suddenly decided he was again a Republican in a lopsidedly crimson state.

Another coincidence? How about political expedience and half-naked, unabashed opportunism?

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