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Archive for the ‘Ethics’ Category

LouisianaVoice set to launch online newspaper ‘Louisiana Free Press’ to be devoted exclusively to state political news

Posted in Attorney General, Auditor, BESE, Boards, Civil Service, Commissions, Contract, Contracts, Education, Ethics, Governor's Office, Health Care, Higher Education, House, Senate, Jobs, Legislature, Legislators, Lobbyist, Politicians, Privatization, Public Records, Recovery School District, Regents, Retirement, Revenue, State Agencies, Taxes, Transparency, Veto, Vouchers, Waste on August 10, 2012| 19 Comments »

LouisianaVoice will soon have a sister publication in the form of an online state newspaper, according to publisher Tom Aswell.

The new feature, which will be published online in newspaper format, will be a weekly publication geared exclusively to Louisiana political news.

“This will be a free-subscription publication because we want everyone in Louisiana—and elsewhere—to have access to what elected and appointed officials are doing that affect the daily lives of Louisiana’s citizens,” Aswell said.

The name of the new publication will be Louisiana Free Press and will be accessible via the link http://www.louisianafreepress.com, Aswell said.

Louisiana Free Press will be supported 100 percent by advertising revenue and our coverage will be broadened from publishing a single story at a time. There will be multiple stories posted each Friday and the coverage will vary greatly.

Several writers will be contributing coverage of many more agencies than have historically been covered by LouisianaVoice.

These writers will be covering the Louisiana Supreme Court proceedings, Louisiana Attorney General opinions, audit reports of all state and local agencies as they are provided by the Legislative Auditor’s office. Moreover, coverage of agencies will be increased—agencies like the Department of Health and Hospitals, Department of Environmental Quality, Department of Natural Resources, Department of Wildlife and Fisheries, and the Department of Education, the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education, Board of Regents, University of Louisiana System Board of Supervisors and the Public Service Commission, the governor’s office, the lieutenant governor, state treasurer and the legislature, as well as other more obscure state boards and commissions.

“We feel it is important that Louisiana’s citizenry remain informed about what their public officials are doing in Baton Rouge, New Orleans and elsewhere,” Aswell said.

“This is an ambitious endeavor but for too long, too many agencies, board and commissions have operated under the radar of the media,” Aswell said. “We anticipate that is about to change.

“That is not to say that everything we write will be of an investigative nature or that each story will be some major exposé. Most will be of a routine nature but will provide news otherwise not available to the public.”

LouisianaVoice will issue further updates as the schedule for launching Louisiana Free Press develops.

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Piyush Friday night massacre: BCBS gets OGB contract for PPO per game plan; SE LA. Hospital closing; 477 jobs gone

Posted in ALEC, American Legislative Exchange Council, Budget, Contract, Contracts, Ethics, Governor's Office, Health Care, LSU, Privatization, Transparency on July 20, 2012| 35 Comments »

True to form, Gov. Piyush Jindal waited until a Friday, considered one of the slower news days of the week, to make the long-anticipated announcement that Blue Cross/Blue Shield (BCBS) had been selected to administer the Preferred Provider Organization (PPO) for the Office of Group Benefits, a move that will eliminate 177 positions in the office.

Jindal was considerate enough to release the announcement through his favorite publication, the Baton Rouge Business Report, which ran the story on its web page. The OGB web page also carried the announcement.

The administration likewise waited until Friday to make the announcement that the 348-bed Southeast Louisiana Hospital in Mandeville will begin closing down operations, effective, Oct. 1, costing another 300 employees their jobs.

St. Tammany Parish has the highest suicide rate in the state and the move leaves up to a quarter-million people with no facility for treatment of depression or suicide prevention.

The move with Southeast Louisiana Hospital came as a major surprise considering some of Jindal’s strongest support has historically come from legislators in St. Tammany.

Both events might be considered as part of what Capitol Bureau reporter Marsha Shuler described in Friday’s Baton Rouge Advocate as Jindal’s health care “train wreck.”

The administration on Friday sent separate letters to BCBS, Humana and United Healthcare. The letters to Humana and United Healthcare informed them that their proposals were not accepted while the one to BCBS announced it had won the contract to be OGB’s third party administrator (TPA) for both the state’s HBO and PPO, which the administration said will save the state $20 million per year.

BCBS has already been serving as the TPA for the HMO and effective Jan. 1, will be assuming administration of both.

The privatization of OGB’s PPO has been controversial since first being proposed by Jindal more than a year ago. The root of that controversy lies in the fact that the OGB employees paid claims with a turnaround time of less than three days, much to the satisfaction of the 62,000 state employees, retirees and their dependents.

Moreover, the PPO had gone from a $60 million deficit to a $500 million surplus in the five years during which it was run by former director Tommy Teague. Teague was fired on April 15, 2011, when he didn’t sign on to the privatization plan quickly enough to please Jindal.

His successor, Scott Kipper, lasted only six weeks after testifying before a legislative committee that were it left up to him to decide, he would not lay off any of the OGB employees. That remark, made in response to a direct question from a committee member, appeared to irritate his boss, Commissioner of Administration Paul Rainwater who, only moments before, had indicated a need to downsize the agency by 149 positions.

The quick turnaround of claim payments combined with the agency’s $500 million surplus seems to be in stark contrast to Rainwater’s statement on Friday: “The selection of a third-party administrator is an important step toward providing quality care and service to plan members in the most cost-effective way.”

Former State Sen. D.A. “Butch” Gautreaux (D-Morgan City), who served as chairman of the Senate Retirement Committee and as a member of the OGB board of directors before being term-limited last year, fought the governor’s privatization efforts every step of the way.

Contacted Friday, Gautreaux was typically critical of the move. “Sometimes it just isn’t satisfying to be right,” he said.

“It was told to me confidentially well over a year ago and re-stated by in a Senate Retirement Committee hearing that the PPO was going to Blue Cross/Blue Shield.

“I hope Bobby Jindal leaves soon but I feel sorry for his successor. The cost of employee and retiree health insurance will be rising once we get over the one-year hump.” He was referring to a one-year moratorium on premium increases promised by the administration. Gautreaux said the information about premium increases was shared with him by the same source.

Because the state paid no taxes on premium income and because there is no requirement for a profit as long as the PPO was administered by the state, skeptics fear the need for profit and the requirement to pay taxes on profits will necessitate a rate hike by a TPA.

“It really is a shame that we, the taxpayers of Louisiana, will have to face the real cost of Bobby’s ambition for a very long time,” he said.

St. Tammany has had 124 suicides since 2009 and many more reported attempted suicides during that same period.

“The department (Department of Health and Hospitals) is very aware and concerned about the suicide rate,” said DHH press secretary and director of the Bureau of Media and Communications. “Our commitment and ability to respond to patients who will need beds and treatment remains the same,” he said.

State Sen. Jack Donahue (R-Mandeville) said the announcement caught him off guard. “It was not discussed during this legislative session to my knowledge. I was told 15 minutes before the announcement was made.

Rep. Scott Simon (R-Abita Springs), chairman of the House Committee on Health and Welfare, was equally unaware and expressed his “shock” that Jindal would take such action.

To abruptly close down one of the largest employers in St. Tammany in a parish where Jindal has enjoyed some of this strongest support is bad enough. But to do so without even extending the courtesy of giving his legislative allies a heads-up to prepare them only compounds his insensitivity and boorish contempt for the citizens of St. Tammany in particular and citizens of the state in general.

While Jindal and GOP presumed presidential nominee have been accusing Pres. Barrack Obama of being “out of touch,” Shuler was quick to point out the governor’s own inconsistencies and what might appear to some as his deliberate moves to dismantle the state charity hospital system.

The Advocate reporter said Jindal, who is rarely in the state anymore, choosing instead to stump for Romney while auditioning for the vice presidential nomination, seems almost aloof to the financial straits Louisiana’s Medicaid health care program suddenly finds itself in.

A new federal law gutted more than $859 million from the state’s Medicaid funding but Jindal, Rainwater and DHH Secretary Bruce Greenstein say the state can overcome the cut by sacrificing services offered by the LSU hospital system’s care for the uninsured and physician training programs. Further cuts would come through reducing payments for uninsured care by rural hospitals.

As recently as late May, Greenstein and Jindal were united in predicting a doomsday scenario if a proposed $51 million cut was imposed on the LSU Med School. They predicted that some of LSU’s 10 public hospitals, which provide healthcare to the state’s indigent and which also train physicians, might have to shut down.

Now, however, since Jindal has rebuked Obama’s health care plan, the $859.2 million cut to the state’s Medicaid program is “doable,” they say, again in unison. Greenstein even called the cuts “an opportunity to reform and modernize.”

Greenstein and Rainwater, who foresaw widespread closures with a $51 million proposed cut, now say LSU can cut $300 million and still maintain health care for the poor and uninsured.

Now who’s out of touch?

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Administration’s new transparency determination: DOE says vouchers in ‘Pre-Discisional Status,’ and they are not public

Posted in BESE, Education, Ethics, Governor's Office, Transparency on July 9, 2012| 7 Comments »

Apparently, the “transparent and accountable” administration of Gov. Piyush Jindal is becoming increasingly less so—if that’s even possible.

Hammond attorney and political blogger/junkie C.B. Forgotston, who has probably forgotten more about Louisiana politics than any of us wannabe peers or anyone in the Jindal administration will ever know, including Piyush himself, has been cut off—as an apparent act of retribution by Jindal Communications Director Kyle Plotkin.

Conservative Kool-Aid drinker Jeff Sadow, a conservative blogger/political science professor at LSU-Shreveport, apparently is still in the loop.

LouisianaVoice, on the other hand, can appreciate neither extreme as we never were in the loop to be cut off (a point in which we take considerable pride), so we have no way of know whether we’re being punished or not. Ignored would seem to be a better term with this clique.

And as of Monday, July 9, 2012, a new standard has been arbitrarily applied by the administration to R.S. 44:1, otherwise known as the Louisiana Public Records Law: the heretofore non-existent exception to the law now known as the “pre-decisional status.”

Forgotston this past week informed his readers that he had been removed from the governor’s office’s email distribution list for press releases.

The releases are considered public documents, he noted.

“While the information in the releases is not necessarily earthshaking, it is of interest to those of us who like to be informed about state government.”

He said he contacted Plotkin about being reinstated on the list but never heard from him, a move Forgotston appropriately—and most probably, accurately—labeled as a childish move and an example of Plotkin’s “pettiness.”

“Apparently, this childish move by Plotkin is payback for my blowing the whistle on a Jindal adviser,” Forgotston wrote.

“Stafford Palmieri, Jindal’s Policy Director, has been living in Louisiana and driving her daddy’s car with New York plates on it for months, if not years. This is illegal and avoided the payment of state taxes.

“Interestingly, none of the state police officers regularly stationed at the Capitol noticed the New York plates on her vehicle parked in a space reserved for Louisiana public officials.

“Shortly after making an issue of Palmieri’s violations, she was forced to not only get a valid Louisiana plate, but a valid Louisiana driver’s license as well.

“Unless Palmieri received special treatment by the Office of Motor Vehicles, it must have cost her quite a few bucks, especially considering fines and penalties (that might apply). Obviously, she was upset about having to comply with the laws of our state that she helps make.

“This is not the type of treatment that a citizen of our state would expect from a person traveling around the country telling everyone how he ‘reformed’ Louisiana.

“It is, however, the treatment one received during the reign of Huey P. Long and his henchmen.

“The primary difference between Long and Jindal is that Long, despite his tyrannical rule, actually helped a few people in Louisiana.”

(Forgotston informed us after this was was posted that he had been reinstated to Jindal’s press release mailouts.)

A second blogger recently complained to LouisianaVoice that Sadow appeared to have an inside track on all pronouncements emanating from the Capitol’s fourth floor. “He gets information not available to the rest of us,” the second blogger said. “They have to be spoon-feeding him information.”

That’s not unexpected, considering Sadow’s unique ability to regurgitate the administration’s party line on any issue almost word for nauseating word.

LouisianaVoice, on the other hand, has begun encountering more and more obstacles in efforts to obtain what is clearly public information.

Case in point: On Tuesday, July 3, we sent a request to the Department of Education (DOE) for what we considered innocuous information. Our request opened with the usual, “Pursuant to the Public Records Act of Louisiana, R.S. 44:1 et seq., I respectfully request the following information:

“Please provide me with a complete list of all schools that have been approved for or have requested vouchers/scholarships.”

The request was pursuant to the recent passage of House Bill 976, signed into law by Gov. Jindal as Act 2 of 2012.

Our request continued:

“Also, (we) would like to examine copies of all applications and letters of approval of vouchers/scholarships at the Department of Education offices. Please give (us) a time and date within the next three working days (no later than 10:30 a.m., Tuesday, July 10, 2012) that (we) might be able to review the records.”

Two days later, on July 5 (the Fourth being a state holiday), DOE Public Information Officer Sarah Mulhearn sent the following response:

“…Is there a day/time early next week when you would be able to come to our office to review the applications? Please me know.”

“Monday morning (July 9) around 10:30 a.m. would be fine,” we replied.

“OK, fifth floor of the Claiborne Building downtown Baton Rouge,” Mulhearn answered in return. “You will most likely have to call up to me from the guard station on the first floor. You can call 342-3600.”

But on Monday, about 8:30 a.m., we received a call from Ms. Mulhearn.

“I’m sorry, but our legal department has determined the documents are in the “pre-decisional status” and we won’t be able to show them to you.”

Pre-decisional?

R.S. 44:1(A)(1) says, “To be ‘public,’ the record must have been used, prepared, possessed, or retained for use in connection with a function performed under authority of the Louisiana Constitution, a state law, or an ordinance, regulation, mandate, or order of a public body. This definition covers virtually every kind of record kept by a state or local governmental body. In Louisiana, a ‘public record’ includes books, records, writings, letters, memos, microfilm, and photographs, including copies and other reproductions.”

The statute says further: “In Louisiana, any person at least 18 years of age may inspect, copy, reproduce or obtain a copy of any public record. The purpose for the document is immaterial and an agency or record custodian may not inquire as to the reason, except to justify a fee waiver.

“…The custodian may prevent any alteration of the record being examined, but the custodian cannot review anything in the requesting person’s possession (including notes).”

Nowhere in R.S. 44:1 will one find any reference to the term “pre-decisional.” It is referred to obliquely in R.S. 44:5(B)(2) in the section on “deliberative process,” a phrase that has been invoked several times by the administration as a means of hiding information from the public. It’s a sham, to be sure, one behind which the administration has no compunctions about hiding.

To throw that out as a reason for preventing an inspection of a public record is not only a bit creative, but downright deceptive and certainly un-transparent and non-accountable. Any blatant violation of the public records law is illegal and subject to fines, court costs, requestor’s attorney fees and, if a judge should deem the violation of such magnitude to warrant it, jail time.

We asked (by telephone and followed up with an email) Mulhearn to provide the department’s reasons for refusing to comply with our request in writing. She promised she would do so, but thus far, she has failed to respond. DOE may be hunkering down for our promised legal action.

We should not be the least bit surprised by this, though. The governor’s office has for months ignored our request for Gov. Jindal’s travel status on a list of dates we provided in another formal request.

A year ago, Secretary of the Department of Health and Hospitals Bruce Greenstein attempted to defy a legislative committee that was convened to consider, of all things, his confirmation as DHH secretary. The committee was attempting to determine the identity of the winner of a $300 million DHH contract to administer Medicaid claims for the state.

Greenstein had a reason for not wishing to divulge the information, but it hardly justified his attempt to hide the identity of the winning bidder considering it was a firm for which he had once worked. Even his subsequent denials of any contact with CNSI Corp. during the selection process proved false when emails subpoenaed by the committee revealed extensive contact between Greenstein and his former company.

It was a scenario similar to the one in which Commissioner of Administration Paul Rainwater refused to release a copy of the so-called Chaffe Report to a legislative committee meeting to discuss the proposed privatization of the Office of Group Benefits.

When the committee threatened to likewise subpoena that report, which was commissioned by Jindal in an effort to gain support of his proposed sale of the agency, it was quietly leaked to the Baton Rouge Advocate—or was it?

The date that Rainwater and DOA attorney David Boggs said Division of Administration (DOA) attorney David Boggs said the Chaffe report was received and the date that Chaffe officials signed off on the report were different (the Chaffe representative’s signature was on a later date, indicating the report was not issued until later than the date Boggs and Rainwater said they received it) and none of the pages of the report were date-stamped—in direct violation of standing DOA policy.

And of course, State Superintendent of Education John White and his now-infamous Emailgate in which he emailed Plotkin and Palmieri (Whoop! There she is!) that he intended to throw up a smokescreen about the “next phase” in the approval process for school vouchers and that he’d “like to create a news story…before Murray (Sen. Ed Murray, D-New Orleans) creates an additional story for us tomorrow.

White’s plans for the deliberate ploy of duplicity, his premeditated attempt to mislead a legislative committee that, again, was meeting to consider his confirmation, “would allow us to talk through the process with the media, muddying up a narrative they’re trying to keep black and white,” he said.

Strangely enough, the governor’s office, upon receiving White’s email, did nothing to rein him in and to ensure that the administration would continue to be “transparent, accountable and the most ethical administration in Louisiana’s history.”

In Palmieri’s case, though, that’s understandable. She was busy transferring the registration of her vehicle from New York to Louisiana and obtaining a new driver’s license and new plates for her car.

These things take time—especially with all the personnel cutbacks instituted by her boss.

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Notable Quotables (in their own words)

Posted in ALEC, American Legislative Exchange Council, Ethics, Legislature, Legislators, Notable Quotables, Public Records, Transparency on July 5, 2012| Leave a Comment »

“I, along with other members of the Louisiana Legislature, greatly appreciate your contribution to the scholarship funds. Your $1,000 check…can be sent directly to me…”

–Exerpt from solicitation letter by State Rep. Joe Harrison (R-Gray) seeking contributions to the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) Louisiana Scholarship Fund. The scholarship fund pays the expenses of state legislators to attend ALEC conferences.

“Relative to the attached letter which you mailed out (on state letterhead) soliciting contributions to the ALEC Louisiana Scholarship Fund, please provide me with a complete list of those to whom these solicitations were sent.”

–Public records request submitted on July 5, 2012, to State Rep. Joe Harrison by LouisianaVoice.

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State Rep. Joe Harrison uses state stationery to solicit $1,000 contributions in order to support ALEC agenda

Posted in ALEC, American Legislative Exchange Council, Ethics, House, Senate, Legislature, Legislators, Lobbyist, Politicians, Prison, Privatization, Public Records, Retirement, Taxes, Transparency, Vouchers on July 5, 2012| 11 Comments »

It’s been awhile since we’ve written about the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), but State Rep. Joseph Harrison (R-Gray) has proven himself a more than capable successor to former Rep. Noble Ellington (R-Winnsboro).

ALEC is a national organization comprised of hundreds of state legislators from around the country as well as corporations which fund the bulk of the organization’s expenses. Heading the list of those corporations is Koch Industries.

ALEC’s corporate members write “model legislation” for lawmakers to take back to their states for passage into law. Foremost among those are education reform, prison privatization, Medicaid reform, state employee pension reform and reductions of public services.

Ellington is the former state representative who served as national president of ALEC in 2011 and hosted ALEC’s national meeting in New Orleans last August. Ellington, after 24 years in the legislature, did not seek re-election last fall and upon leaving office in January, was hired as Chief Deputy Commissioner for the Louisiana Department of Insurance at $150,000 per year.

Now, not to be outdone, Harrison, the state ALEC chairman, has sent out a form letter on state letterhead soliciting contributions of $1,000 each to finance the travel of Louisiana legislative ALEC members to an ALEC conference in Salt Lake City July 25-28. The identities of the recipients of his requests for money were unknown.

The letter opens by saying, “As State Chair and National Board Member of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), I would like to solicit your financial support to our ALEC Louisiana Scholarship Fund.”

But this letter wasn’t for college scholarships.

“Why does the scholarship fund need your support?” Harrison asked, perhaps rhetorically, in his letter of Monray, July 2. “With over thirty Louisiana Legislators serving on ALEC Task Forces, your support will allow the opportunity (for legislators) to attend conferences funded by the ALEC Scholarship Fund.

“These conferences are packed with educational speakers and presenters, and gives (sic) the legislators a chance to interact with legislators from other states, including forums on Medicaid reform, sub-prime lending, only privacy, environmental education, pharmaceutical litigation, the crisis in state spending, global warming, and financial services and information exchange. All of these issues are import (sic) to the entire lobbying community (note the reference to “lobbying community”).

“I, along with other members of the Louisiana Legislature, greatly appreciate your contribution to the scholarship fund. Your $1,000 check made payable to the ALEC Louisiana Scholarship Fund and can be sent directly to me at 5058 West Main Street, Houma, Louisiana 70360. ALEC is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit educational organization as designated by the IRS.”

It is no surprise that ALEC would be concerned about pharmaceutical litigation, environmental education, Medicaid reform and sub-prime lending since many of its corporate members comprise pharmaceutical companies, oil and chemical companies, medical providers and mortgage lenders.

Even though ALEC picks up the tab for legislators to attend conferences all over the nation, at least 16 Louisiana legislators filed expense reports with the House and Senate for reimbursement of more than $20,750 in expenses related to their attendance at last August’s annual meeting in New Orleans. Additionally, ALEC reimbursed many of those same legislators, plus 19 other members and former House and Senate members an additional $56,200 for other ALEC conferences in such locales as San Antonio, Chicago, San Diego and Washington, D.C.

It is not known if Harrison received any “scholarship” money to attend ALEC conferences, but records obtained from the Louisiana House of Representatives by LouisianaVoice show that he received $9,295.78 in expense reimbursements from the state to attend six conferences in New Orleans, San Diego and Washington, D.C. over a four-year period, from December 2008 to August 2011.

Those included:

• December 2008: Washington, D.C. ($1,896.43);
• September 2009: New Orleans “Out of the Storm Conference ($496);
• December 2009: Washington, D.C. ($1,981.24);
• August 2010: San Diego, California ($970.50);
• November 2010: Washington, D.C. ($2,031.14);
• August 2011: New Orleans ($1,920.97).

LouisianaVoice has submitted two public records requests to Harrison. The first asks for the names of the “over thirty” legislators who are members of ALEC and the second requests, since the contribution solicitation was made on state letterhead, that Harrison provide the identities of every person to whom the solicitation was sent.

It would also be of more than passing interest to know how much in state postage was spent on soliciting funds for a lobbying organization that denies it’s a lobbying organization.

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