Ethics | Louisiana Voice

Archive for the ‘Ethics’ Category

Post mortem examination of SFLPA-E lawsuit reveals blunt trauma from multiple oil and gas campaign contributions

Posted in Boards, Campaign Contributions, Coastal Erosion, Corruption, Ethics, Governor's Office, House, Senate, Lawsuits, Legislature, Legislators, Politicians, Transparency on May 29, 2014| 22 Comments »

When we make a mistake in our attempts to keep you informed about your state government and its elected officials, we make it a point to make amends as quickly and as accurately as possible in order to be fair to all concerned.

With that in mind, we owe a sincere apology for inadvertently misrepresenting the amount of campaign contributions received by certain legislators in our Wednesday post about the House Natural Resources Committee Chairman Rep. Gordon Dove (R-Houma), State Sen. Robert Adley (R-Benton) and Sen. Bret Allain (R-Franklin).

You may remember that we said that Adley had received $70,500 in campaign contributions from oil and gas interests and that Dove and Allain received $10,500 and $6,800, respectively.

We were incorrect and in fairness to them, we want to give the correct figures here and now:

Sen. Robert Adley: $597,950;
Sen. Bret Allain: $34,139;
Rep. Gordon Dove: $28,950.

There, now. We certainly feel better for having cleared the air and we hope the honorable legislators will forgive us our error.

We do not have a revised amount of oil and gas-related campaign contributions for Gov. Bobby Jindal, but we have confirmed that it is at least $545,000, most probably more. A lot more.

If there are any lingering doubts out there that politicians are bought and sold by the special interests like so many sacks of potatoes, consider the money that has been spread among our state lawmakers—just from the oil and gas interests:

The 144 incumbent legislators (remember, this does not include those who have left office) have received more than $5.8 million in campaign contributions by a single special interest group—oil and gas. That comes to an average of $40,357 per legislator.
For the 39 current members of the Louisiana Senate, the aggregate is a little north of $2.8 million, or $51,100 each.
A total of $2.99 million was distributed among the 105 House members—an average of $28, 458 each, the figures show.

So, the obvious question is: what do the oil and gas interests expect in return—other than the continuation of the same good, clean government to which we have grown so accustomed in Louisiana?

How about the dismissal of a pesky lawsuit that could result in the 97 oil companies having to spend some of their hard-earned profits to clean up and restore the state’s wetlands that they have destroyed over decades of misuse and abuse.

Just think what a bummer it would be if ExxonMobil had to dip into that $8.35 billion in net profits it earned during the last quarter of 2013. Same for Shell, with its $2.9 billion in net profits for the final quarter of last year. I mean, c’mon, you have to feel some sympathy for ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson who only makes $2.72 million per year—in salary, that is. An adverse court decision could impact his annual bonus of $3.7 million (plus 225,000 shares of restricted stock worth another $21.3 million). That’s $27.7 million in 2013 alone. http://www.foxbusiness.com/industries/2014/04/11/exxon-ceo-2013-compensation-falls-278519336/

So, by obtaining a dismissal of litigation—before it ever goes to trial or even to the discovery stage—that could conceivably cost oil companies several hundred million dollars by spreading $5.8 million around represents a nice return on investment.

And make no mistake about it: campaign contributions are just that—investments. Nothing more, nothing less. More specifically, they are investments not in good government, but in business. And politics is a business—a very dirty business.

Politics long ago, even before the repugnant Citizens United U.S. Supreme Court decision of 2010, took the citizens of this country and this state out of the equation, eliminated us from the decision-making process on issues that clearly affect our lives each and every day.

And if you still believe our government is of the people, by the people and for the people, then you are either wonderfully naïve or pitifully delusional.

Not all the political back scratching, vote buying and deal making takes place in Washington. With far too few exceptions, it’s as close as our nearest state senator, state representative Board of Elementary and Secondary Education member and yes, even our governor. Especially our governor, the one who supposedly sets the moral tone for all other elected officials.

And the investments of the oil and gas interests in lawmakers who are supposed to be representing the interests of the state and its citizens are only indicative of a much larger problem, a problem that undermines the trust in the entire body politic, in the political process itself.

Can it be an accident that the seven members of the Senate Natural Resources Committee received an average of $62,902 each from oil interests—$11,785 more than the average for the 32 senators not assigned to that committee?

Do you think it a coincidence that the 19 members of the House Committee on Natural Resources and Environment received an average of $31,670—again, $3,200 more than the average for the remaining House membership?

Oil and gas contributions for the Senate committee members totaled $462,150 and for the House committee members, $394,150—a grand total of $856,300.

And then there is the seven-member Senate Committee on Environmental Quality, chaired by Sen. Mike Walsworth, or as one blogger refers to him, Walsworthless, (R-West Monroe), whose $46,775 was eclipsed by fellow committee member Sen. Dale Erdy (R-Livingston), who raked in $118,400 in donations from oil and gas.

In all, seven senators, including Adley, Gerald Long (R-Natchitoches) and Senate President John Alario (R-Westwego), received in excess of $100,000 from oil and gas interests. Alario, the poster child for using campaign funds for private purposes, received $124,400. That’s a lot of Saints and LSU football tickets and, with his expensive eating habits, a couple of gourmet meals at one of New Orleans’ finer restaurants.

Over on the House side, only one member received more than $100,000. But that just happened to be House Speaker Chuck Kleckley (R-Lake Charles). How’s that for strategic placement of your money?

And then there is Sen. Elbert Guillory (R/D/R-Opelousas) the carpetbagger from Seattle who is an announced candidate for lieutenant governor. Guillory seems to pop up anywhere there are contributions to be had. A member of the Senate Judiciary C Committee, he managed to pull in $130,400, second only to Adley’s $597,950.

These are just some of the highlights of the data we received, courtesy of Moss Robeson of Brooklyn, N.Y., whom we would like to thank for conducting a more thorough data search and for crunching the numbers for us. Working as an intern on behalf of John Barry and the Southeast Louisiana Flood Protection Authority-East (SFLPA-E), he not only ran the numbers on the Senate and members of the House Committee on Natural Resources, he ran them for every member of the entire legislature.

After all, if Gov. Jindal can continue pulling in talent from out of state, then why not bring Ross in for this project—especially since his mom resides in New Orleans?

For the complete list compiled by Robeson, click here: Copy of Campaign Contributions

Here is the way the full House voted on SB 469 on Thursday:

YEAS:

Alario

Adams

Arnold

Barras

Berthelot

Billiot

Bishop, S.

Broadwater

Burford

Burns, H.

Burns, T.

Burrell

Carmody

Carter

Champagne

Chaney

Cromer

Danahay

Dove

Fannin

Garofalo

Geymann

Gisclair

Guinn

Harris

Harrison

Havard

Henry

Hensgens

Hodges

Hoffmann

Honore

Howard

Ivey

Jones

Landry, N.

Leopold

Lorusso

Mack

Miller

Morris, Jay

Morris, Jim

Ponti

Pope

Price

Pugh

Pylant

Reynolds

Richard

Robideaux

Schexnayder

Schroder

Seabaugh

Simon

Stokes

Thibaut

Thierry

Thompson

Whitney

Total — 59

NAYS

Anders

Armes

Badon

Barrow

Bishop, W.

Brown

Connick

Cox

Dixon

Edwards

Foil

Franklin

Greene

Guillory

Hazel

Hill

Hunter

Jackson

James

Jefferson

Johnson

Lambert

Landry, T.

LeBas

Leger

Lopinto

Montoucet

Moreno

Norton

Ortego

Pearson

Pierre

Ritchie

Shadoin

Smith

Williams, A.

Williams, P.

Willmott

Woodruff

Total – 39

ABSENT

Abramson

Gaines

Hollis

Huval

St. Germain

Talbot

Total — 6

Read Full Post »

Notable Quotables (in their own words)

Posted in Boards, Coastal Erosion, Commissions, Ethics, House, Senate, Legislature, Legislators, Notable Quotables on May 28, 2014| 2 Comments »

“We’ve really done a lot…thanks to CPRA (the Louisiana Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority).”

—House Committee on Natural Resources Chairman Rep. Gordon Dove (R-Houma), who also is a member of the CPRA, commenting prior to his vote in favor of an amendment to SB 469 which would make the prohibition against suing oil companies for damages to the state’s wetlands retroactive to include the year-old lawsuit against 97 oil companies by the Southeast Louisiana Flood Protection Authority-East (SLFPA-E). (While he was busy patting himself on the back for his accomplishments in protecting Louisiana’s wetlands, one of his trucking companies was being cited by the State of Montana for dumping radioactive waste in that state.)

“This bill is a 110 percent get out of jail free card.”

—SLFPA-E attorney Gladstone Jones, offering his opinion of SB 469 during Sunday’s committee hearing.

Read Full Post »

House Natural Resources Comm. kills SELPA-E suit even as committee chairman cited for dumping toxic oilfield wastes

Posted in Campaign Contributions, Corruption, Ethics, Governor's Office, House, Senate, Legislature, Legislators, Politicians, Transparency on May 28, 2014| 3 Comments »

While Gov. Bobby Jindal continues to flit around the country like a hummingbird on amphetamines, he apparently can be secure in the knowledge that his lackeys in the Louisiana Legislature will have his back in protecting the 97 oil companies that have done so much damage to Louisiana’s coastline and marshlands.

And at least one legislator has been cited for illegal dumping in another state even as he votes to ensure the oil companies may continue to destroy our wetlands with impunity.

The Southeast Louisiana Flood Protection Authority-East’s (SFLPA-E) filed its landmark lawsuit nearly a year ago and the politicians who feed on the mother’s milk called oil and gas immediately closed ranks behind the companies that have destroyed the marshes and in so doing, left the entire Louisiana coastline, from Buras to Lake Charles—and New Orleans—vulnerable to more tragic hurricane destruction like that inflicted by 2005’s Katrina and Rita.

Sen. Robert Adley, R-Benton, who has benefitted from a minimum of $70,500 in oil and gas contributions and armed with predictable righteous indignation, came to the rescue like the Lone Ranger, complete with the silver bullets of anti-lawsuit legislation. He was followed in quick succession by a flood of similar bills from other shameless oil money-dependent lawmakers—the protectors of Louisiana’s citizenry from the bad old lawsuits and greedy lawyers, all following the lead of Jindal who condemned the litigation as if it were an attack on motherhood itself.

One of those bills, SB 469, by Sen. Bret Allain, R-Franklin, was authored by our old friend Jimmy Faircloth. Allain was recipient of at least $6,800 in oil money, his campaign records show. The bill, co-sponsored by Adley, zipped through the Senate by a 24-13 margin with two absentees.

SB 469 “provides that no state or local governmental entity may have, nor may pursue, any right or cause of action arising from any activity subject to permitting under present law or certain federal statutes in the coastal area, or arising from or related in any use as defined by present law, regardless of the date such use or activity occurred.”

In plain English, which most of the great unwashed employ in our everyday communications, the bill simply prohibits any entity like SFLPA-E from attempting to hold oil companies accountable through litigation for the destruction they have unleashed with careless abandon on our coastline and marshlands.

But here’s the real kicker: The bill was amended by the House Committee on Natural Resources to make that prohibition retroactive, thus in effect, killing the SFLPA-E attempt to hold the companies legally responsible for cleaning up the mess they created. As the Church Lady from Saturday Night Live was fond of saying, “How convenient.”

How’s that for giving a kid your credit card in a toy store?

So, what makes the committee vote on the amendment so different from any other backroom deal by lawmakers to protect not their constituents but the ones who bankroll their election campaigns?

For starters, we have the chairman of the House Committee on Natural Resources, one Gordon Dove (R-Houma), who voted in favor of the amendment.

gordon dove

(CLICK TO VIEW IMAGE)

Dove, who has been the recipient of at least $10,500 in oil and gas campaign money since 2005, just happens to own a trucking company that was cited last month for dumping radioactive waste in the state of Montana.

http://m.missoulian.com/news/state-and-regional/company-suspected-of-dumping-radioactive-waste-in-montana-ordered-to/article_e63b89ac-cdc2-11e3-b909-0019bb2963f4.html?mobile_touch=true

Dual Trucking and Transport of Houma has been ordered by the Montana Department of Environmental Quality to cease all operations near the Bakken community of Bainville after it was determined that the company was believed to have illegally dumped radioactive oilfield waste in an Eastern Montana landfill over a two-year period.

The Montana Secretary of State listed Dove and Tony Alford of Houma, president of the Terrebonne Levee and Conservation District Board, as principals in the Montana trucking company. Another Montana company, KJK Trucking, lists Dove’s daughter, Jackie Elizabeth Dove (Sye), as its registered agent.

The Montana DEQ said the waste site is only a couple hundred yards upwind from a housing development and is located in a sandy-soiled region where the water table is sufficient high to produce wetlands.

That sounds vaguely familiar. Oh, wait. It was only five months ago that Plaquemine Parish accused BP and Chevron in a federal lawsuit of dumping toxic waste—some of it radioactive—from their drilling operations into the parish’s coastal waters.

Dual was issued a warning nearly two years ago, in September of 2012, to cease operations until it was licensed by DEQ’s Solid Waste Program and the company did begin the permit process but subsequently refused the state’s requests for additional information, saying it was no longer processing oilfield waste and did not require a permit.

But in April of this year, DEQ again inspected the site and found that Dual was still hauling the oilfield waste without a permit.

The Montana regulatory action arose from growing reports of illegally disposed of waste from the Bakken shale oilfield in nearby North Dakota. Garbage bags full of the oilfield sock filters were also discovered in an abandoned North Dakota gas station and on a flatbed trailer near a landfill in that state. Neither of the North Dakota sites has been tied to Dove’s trucking company.

The citation issued to the chairman of the Louisiana Committee on Natural Resources by the State of Montana apparently has no relevance when it comes to the all-important duty of our elected officials to protect the very ones who are destroying our coastline.

But it does raise another important issue.

Gordon Dove is merely symptomatic of a much larger problem in Louisiana and that is one of trust.

For our part, we find it impossible to place any degree of confidence in those who would go against the best interests of our state in favor of prostituting themselves to political benefactors while at the same time flaunting environmental laws in another state and in effect, flipping off the citizens of both states.

The Louisiana official motto “Union, Justice and Confidence” has become a cruel hoax perpetrated on the citizens of Louisiana and Bobby Jindal and Gordon Dove are right out front as the primary proponents. There is no justice nor is there confidence. There is, of course, ample evidence of the unholy union between the big oil donors and those who took oaths to protect the interests of this state.

Public Service Commissioner Foster Campbell (D-Elm Grove) made two important points during an appearance on the Jim Engster Show on Louisiana Public Radio several months ago:

As a member of the legislature, he supported former Republican Gov. Dave Treen’s unsuccessful efforts to pass the Coastal Wetlands Environmental Levy (CWEL)—a tax on the transportation of oil and gas through the state’s coastal wetlands;
If someone drives his car through your fence, destroys your lawn and a storage building, you would justifiably expect that person or his insurance company to pay for those damages.

But apparently that’s just not the case in Louisiana.

The amended version of SB 469 is scheduled for floor debate in the full House tomorrow (May 29). If you wish to email your legislator, you don’t have much time.

Here are the links to both the House and Senate:

http://house.louisiana.gov/H_Reps/H_Reps_ByName.asp

http://senate.legis.louisiana.gov/Senators/Default.asp

(Click on legislator’s name to access email address and House or Senate phone number.)

Next from LouisianaVoice: a complete list of oil and gas company contributions to all members of the House Committee on Natural Resources and the full Senate.

Read Full Post »

Notable Quotables (in their own words)

Posted in Budget, Campaign Contributions, Ethics, Governor's Office, House, Senate, Legislature, Legislators, Notable Quotables on May 26, 2014| 3 Comments »

“We’re taking money away from the disabled community and giving it to motor sports?”

—State Sen. Dan Claitor (R-Baton Rouge), questioning the transfer of $4.5 million for the developmentally disabled to fund repairs to an auto race track in Jefferson Parish.

“The answer to your question, Sen. Claitor, is ‘yes.’ All right, any other questions?”

—State Sen. Jack Donahue (R-Mandeville), chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, in his response to shut down discussion of the move and to silence Claitor.

Read Full Post »

Senate Finance Committee craters to Jindal; rips $4.5 million from developmentally disabled for racetrack

Posted in Budget, Campaign Contributions, Corruption, Ethics, Governor's Office, House, Senate, Legislature, Legislators, NGOs on May 26, 2014| 25 Comments »

The best thing about blogging is that we are not bound by the constraints of pseudo-objectivity as are the reporters for your local daily. Every post for us is an op-ed piece in which we are free to express our disgust with or enthusiasm for people and events.

At this stage of the 2014 legislative session in Baton Rouge, we tend to get a little confused so excuse us if we can’t quite remember if it was Billy Wayne Shakespeare or Forrest Gump who said, “Stupid is as stupid does.” Despite the rapid onset of CRS Syndrome, we have no trouble or hesitancy in calling something—or someone—stupid if that is the way we perceive it.

And sometimes we are willing to go a step further in injecting words like “corruption,” “duplicity,” “sleaze” (we especially like that one), or even “malfeasance.”

And so it is that after receiving a heads-up from our friend and fellow blogger C.B. Forgotston, we employ each of these adjectives in describing the actions of the Senate Finance Committee on Sunday after 10 of its 11 members (Sen. Dan Claitor was the lone member to cling to his principles) discarded their oaths of office—their sworn duty to protect the interests of the people of Louisiana—in favor of political expedience of the very lowest sort by ripping $4.5 million from the budget for Louisiana’s developmentally disabled and allocating the money for a Verizon IndyCar Series race at the NOLA Motorsports Park in Jefferson Parish.

It’s bad enough that this state, thanks to the idiotic fiscal foolishness of Gov. Bobby Jindal, is so deep into the financial dumpster but still places a priority to lavishing millions of dollars on things like something called an IndyCar Series race, but to take that money from developmentally disabled citizens who so desperately need state services just to survive is nothing short of criminal.

Jindal, while traipsing all over the country with his goofy grin, rejects expansion of Medicaid that might alleviate some of the suffering, and after vetoing last year’s appropriation of extra funding to help shorten the waiting list for services for the developmentally disabled, now displays the sheer callousness, or stupidity, of committing to find the money for facility and track improvements. http://www.auctioneer-la.org/Disable_to_Racetrack.mp3

That’s correct. He made a commitment to the owners of the facility to drop $4.5 million on them. And who benefits from this largesse? The state? Teachers? Health care? State employees?

You can check those boxes no, no, no and no. A privately owned auto racetrack would be the correct answer.

Our first impulse was to plunge into the campaign contributions of campaign fund abuse poster boy Republican Sen. John Alario of Westwego in Jefferson Parish, president of the Senate. The whole deal just had that smell to it.

But, no, that was not the connection. His contributions from the principals were negligible in the overall scheme of things—something in the area of $3,500. That’s not enough to pay for one of Alario’s legendary meals at a fancy New Orleans eatery or to pay for one of his luxury boxes at the Superdome.

Nor were there any contributions to any of the Finance Committee members from NOLA Motor Club, LLC., operators of the raceway.

Our next step was to check in with the Secretary of State’s web page and conduct a corporations search for NOLA Motor Club, LLC. Voila! Whose name should pop up as one of the principals? Laney Chouest, that’s who.

So, who is Laney Chouest, you ask?

Well, he also showed up as an officer in a few other corporations run by the politically active Chouest family of Galliano. Their main business is in shipbuilding and marine transportation and Laney Chouest was listed as an officer in Edison Chouest Offshore, Inc., Alpha Marine Service Holdings, LLC., and Beta Marine Services, LLC., to name only three.

So, armed with that information we did a campaign contribution search of only the last name of Chouest and we hit the mother lode.

Between 2007 and 2010, members of the Chouest family and their various businesses contributed a whopping $106,500 to Jindal.

Laney Chouest was active in the political arena during that same period, contributing tens of thousands of dollars to minor candidates, but he was smart—or lucky—enough to stay away from Jindal and members of the Senate Finance Committee, thus making the direct link difficult.

The question then becomes why the hell is the state bailing out this family, which can well afford to make its own updates and repairs to the racetrack? Why indeed.

To take money from Louisiana’s very most unfortunate citizens and hand it to the Chouest family on a silver platter is not only unconscionable, reprehensible, irresponsible, immoral, or whatever other appropriate word you may wish to invoke in condemning this classic example of political corruption, it should be criminal and should carry the same penalties as embezzlement, public bribery or child abuse.

Instead of retreating to reality TV, those of us fortunate enough to have mentally and physically healthy children, siblings, parents and spouses should take a few minutes and consider the plight of our neighbors who are not so fortunate. They are the ones who can never enjoy dining out in a restaurant, going to a movie, taking family vacations or watching your reality shows because providing care to family members in dire need is a full time job without the downtime of cheering for LSU, Southeastern or ULL in this year’s regionals, super regionals or College World Series.

Extreme? Strident? Outraged? Damn right, hell yeah on all three.

The oath of office our elected officials take comes with a huge responsibility to place the welfare of our citizens uppermost above all else. Jindal and 10 members of the Senate Finance Committee have turned their backs on that promise by once again knuckling under to our absentee governor (and demanding this appropriation on his part) and in so doing, have committed the most disgraceful form of malfeasance.

Accordingly, here are the names of the 11 members of the Senate Finance Committee, how they voted on the amendment to take the $4.5 million away from the developmentally disabled, and their email addresses—just in case you might have something to add to what’s already been said here.

Sen. Jack Donahue (Chairman) (YES)R-Mandeville donahuej@legis.la.gov

Senator Norbèrt N. “Norby” Chabert (Vice-Chairman) (YES) R-Houma chabertn@legis.la.gov

Senator R.L. “Bret” Allain, II (YES) R-Franklin allainb@legis.la.gov

Senator Sherri Smith Buffington (YES) R-Keithville smithbuffington@legis.la.gov

Senator Dan Claitor (NO) R-Baton Rouge claitord@legis.la.gov

Senator Ronnie Johns (YES) R-Lake Charles johnsr@legis.la.gov

Senator Eric LaFleur (YES) D-Ville Platte lafleure@legis.la.gov

Senator Fred H. Mills, Jr. (YES) R-New Iberia millsf@legis.la.gov

Senator Edwin R. Murray (YES) D-New Orleans murraye@legis.la.gov

Senator Gregory Tarver (YES) D-Shreveport tarverg@legis.la.gov

Senator Mack “Bodi” White (YES) R-Baton Rouge whitem@legis.la.gov