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JBE comes back with paltry $500 pay raise for teachers; instead of insulting them, he should ‘go big, or go home’

Posted in Budget, Education, Elections, Finances, Governor's Office, Legislature, Legislators, Politicians, Revenue, State Police on February 21, 2020| 12 Comments »

You’d think Gov. John Bel Edwards would be a little better at reading the tea leaves.

After all, it was Louisiana’s teachers who first pushed him over the top to win the governor’s election over David Vitter in 2015.

And the teachers again provided needed support when he was challenged by businessman Eddie Rispone who had the backing of would-be kingmaker Lane Grigsby.

So, how did Edwards reward teachers for their support?

A raise of $1,000 per year in 2019. That’s $83 per month before taxes—and that was nearly four years into his first term before he got around to doing that much.

Yes, I know a lot of workers in Louisiana didn’t get raises of $83 per month but before jumping in with that argument, consider what teachers are expected to do (other than teach in a classroom) and how their salaries stack up with other states.

Last April, the NEA released FIGURES that showed Louisiana’s teachers (before that $1,000-per-year boost) still ranked 13th lowest in the nation.

And those same figures showed that the national average teacher salary, adjusted for inflation, had actually decreased 4.5 percent over the previous decade. Teachers were paid 21.4 percent less than similarly-education and experienced professionals, the NEA study revealed.

The national average teacher salary increased from $59,539 for the 2016-17 school year to $60,477 for 2017-18,

The average pay for teachers in Louisiana was $50,256.

So, what did Edwards to this year to try and bring teacher into alignment with other states when he submitted his proposed budget for next year?

Crickets chirping. Nothing. Nada. Nil. Zip.

And his wife was a teacher before he was elected governor. His daughter is a school counselor.

As might be expected, teachers took umbrage at the governor’s slight—as well they should have.

An acquaintance offered a defense of sorts for the governor’s omission. “The Republican legislature wouldn’t approve another teacher pay raise anyway, so he just didn’t brother.”

My response to that is, “So what? Put it in the budget and put the onus on the legislators. Let them explain why Louisiana cannot support its teachers. There are, by the way, part-time legislators who pull down more than starting teachers in this state.

Gov. Edwards did finally reverse himself, but only after teachers bristled publicly. But you’d never know he truly felt their wrath when he offered up a $500 per year raise. That’s $42 per month, a little more than a dollar a day. You can’t even go to McDonald’s with that.

If Edwards is considering a run at John Kennedy’s Senate seat, he’d do well to remember the teachers.

And don’t give me that worn-out B.S. about teachers only working nine months a year. That’s pure bunk. No sooner than the school year is over than teachers must turn their attention to the coming year by preparing lesson plans, cleaning out classrooms, re-stocking supplies and attending meetings.

Teachers endure problems we can only imagine in our jobs. As a news reporter, I would get irate calls from subjects of my stories but try sitting across the desk from an arrogant parent who won’t accept the explanation that their kid, who never received discipline or help with his homework at home, is disruptive, a problem student and deserved that poor grade or suspension.

Teachers must watch for signs their students are abused at home. Ever had to do that in your job? Ever had to look at a bruised child and asked him or her to tell you what happened? It’s a pretty depressing responsibility and can leave teachers sickened with nightmares.

Sometimes teachers are called on to stop a bullet to save a child—and they do it, Alex Jones’s claims to the contrary notwithstanding.

Test papers are taken home by teachers who, while the rest of the family is watching American Idol, must plod through 25 or 30 test papers for grading. They sacrifice time with their own families so they can devote time to their jobs.

Teachers dip into their own pocketbooks to purchase materials for their classrooms. And believe me, that isn’t cheap. I knew a teacher in Lincoln Parish who bought shoes for a child who had none.

They are saddled with tons of paperwork other than test grading and they are burdened with bureaucratic requirements in preparation for standardized testing and if the kids don’t do well, it’s the teacher who bears the brunt of evaluations by politicians who decide who is and who isn’t a good teacher—without ever meeting the teacher or sitting in her classroom.

Teachers must step in to stop fights and God help her if she’s a little too physical with the kids. Might as well go ahead and retain legal counsel.

And sometimes a teacher spots potential in a kid no one else has seen. They take the student under their wing, nurture his/her talents, and develop a kid everyone thought had no future into a productive citizen. On that point, I speak from experience. Thank you, Mrs. Garrett, Miss Lewis, Miss Hinton, Mr. Peoples and Mr. Ryland. Thank you from the bottom of my heart.

Teachers deserve better, Gov. Edwards. As a friend suggested, “Go big or go home.”

You gave state police enormous pay raises. You gave your cabinet members substantial increases.

Teachers, cafeteria workers and other school employees deserve nothing less than the same consideration you’ve given state troopers and cabinet members.

You’re beginning to look a lot like Bobby Jindal.

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Bernhard does it again: wins consulting contract for Miss. River bridge in B.R. despite submitting third-best proposal

Posted in Contract, Contracts, Corruption, Finances, Governor's Office, Media, Politicians, Privatization on February 10, 2020| 3 Comments »

A lot of people, the media included, expressed surprised that a company owned by Bernhard Capital Partners was awarded a multi-million-dollar consulting contract by the Louisiana Department of Transportation and Development (DOTD) to plan the construction of a new bridge over the Mississippi River in Baton Rouge.

They shouldn’t have been—surprised, that is.

ATLAS TECHNICAL CONSULTANTS of Austin, Texas, was awarded the two-phase contract despite finishing well behind two other firms in evaluations by the state’s technical selection committee. The selection committee’s evaluation notwithstanding, the final selection was made by DOTD Secretary Shawn Wilson, an appointee of Gov. John Bel Edwards.

Atlas received 61.98 points from the committee while Baker International had 72.59 and AECOM had 74.01 points, more than 12 points higher than Atlas.

AECOM appealed Wilson’s decision but in Louisiana, such appeals to fairness and even playing fields generally fall on deaf ears and this was no exception as Wilson UPHELD his decision.

The entire process got Louisiana Congressman GARRET GRAVES in a tizzy, saying DOTD “better have good reasons” for doing a deal with Bernhard.

But as we said, no one should be surprised at Bernhard’s clout. He was, after all, once the state Democratic Chairman and was even rumored once as a potential candidate for governor.

As an illustration of his influence, in May 2017, LouisianaVoice did a story about how first Jindal and then Edwards pushed for a state water PRIVATIZATION CONTRACT with Bernhard Energy of Baton Rouge after a second company’s proposal was rejected in favor of seeking an oral presentation from Bernhard. Even then, another evaluation committee rejected Bernhard’s proposal, saying it was not in the state’s best interest to enter into the partnership with Bernhard because of the exceptionally high costs.

That was in 2015, in the last year of Jindal’s administration and despite the committee’s recommendations, he entered into a $25,000 contract with a Baton Rouge consulting firm to another “Evaluation and Feasibility Study” of Bernhard’s proposal. Even then, Bill Wilson of the Office of State Buildings rejected the proposal, saying it “would not be advantageous for the State of Louisiana in its current form.”

But in April 2017, well into the Edwards administration, Commissioner of Administration Jay Dardenne, in an email to Mark Moses, assistant commissioner for Facility Planning & Control, and Paula Tregre, director of the Office of State Procurement in which he said Edwards said the state “will have the RFP (Request for Proposals) on the street no later than May 31,” adding that the proposal “needs to be a top priority.”

So, of course it happened.

Again, no one should be surprised.

On Aug. 12, 2019, the Baton Rouge Advocate had a story announcing the deal whereby Bernhard will lease chiller systems at the state-owned Shaw Center for the Arts from the state for $3 million over 20 years and the state will buy back the chilled water—used to cool the building—for $6 million. Bernhard will also modernize energy systems at 31 state buildings, including the State Capitol, the Governor’s Mansion and state Supreme Court building in New Orleans, at a cost of $54 million to the state.

Another Bernhard company, Louisiana Energy Partners, will also sell extra chilled water to other companies in downtown Baton Rouge and the deal leaves open the possibility that Louisiana Energy Partners may enter into agreements with Louisiana colleges and universities to privatize their energy systems.

And, of course, who could ever forget the Blue Tarp Debacle following Hurricane Katrina in 2005—the first real indication of the stroke Bernhard has in this state.

The Shaw Group (since sold to Chicago Brick & Iron and Bernhard then started a series of new companies cited earlier in this post) was contracted to place tarpaulins over damaged roofs at a rate of $175 per square (one hundred square feet per square). That’s $175 for draping a ten-foot-by-ten-foot square blue tarpaulin over a damaged roof. Shaw in turn sub-contracted the work to a company called A-1 Construction at a cost of $75 a square. A-1 in turn subbed the work to Westcon Construction at $30 a square. Westcon eventually lined up the actual workers who placed the tarps at a cost of $2 a square.

Thus, the Shaw Group realized a net profit of $100 a square, A-1 made $45 dollars per square, and Westcon netted $28 dollars a square – all without ever placing the first sheet of tarpaulin. Between them, the three companies reaped profits of $173 per square after paying a paltry $2 per square. The real irony in the entire scenario was that the first three contractors – Shaw, A-1, and Westcon – didn’t even own the equipment necessary to perform tarping or debris hauling. By the time public outrage, spurred by media revelations of the fiasco, forced public bidding on tarping, forcing tarping prices down from the $3,000-plus range to $1,000, Shaw and friends had already pocketed some $300 million dollars.

The state threatened prosecution of those who it felt overcharged for a gallon of gasoline in Katrina’s aftermath but apparently looked the other way for more influential profiteers.

And no one was surprised.

 

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Metropolitan Crime Commission takes giant step in judicial accountability with new financial disclosure search engine

Posted in Campaign Contributions, Corruption, Courts, Ethics, Exemptions, Finances, Legislators, Public Records on January 28, 2020| 2 Comments »

Regular readers of this site know of my often expressed frustration with the lack of transparency of our elected officials, particularly after Bobby Jindal so shamelessly gutted the enforcement powers of the Louisiana Board of Ethics back in 2008, just days after taking office—a move, by the way, that conveniently accommodated a couple of his supporters in the legislature who were experiencing ethics problems that suddenly went away with Jindal’s “reforms.”

Regulars also are familiar with my general angst regarding the judges of the 4th Judicial District (Ouachita and Morehouse parishes) and judges in the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeal in particular.

Financial statements of elected officials—except judges—is relatively easily accessible on the Board of Ethics web page for those willing to do a minimal amount of digging. That’s how I learned of the questionable motives of one LEGISLATOR for voting in favor of a contract for a company whose stock he had only recently purchased and subsequently made a killing from.

As noted above, judges have somehow managed to hold themselves exempt from disclosure of any possible conflicts via their financial dealings—conflicts that can, and do, create an aura of distrust in our system of justice. (Financial disclosure reports are not to be confused with campaign finance reports, which even judges are required to disclose.)

So, I was more than a little thrilled today when I saw in my email inbox a press release from the Metropolitan Crime Commission in New Orleans.

The MCC, to fill void of accountability and transparency, has taken it upon itself to make financial disclosure statements available on nearly 300 judges, from district court levels all the way up to the Louisiana Supreme Court.

Rather than write my own summary, I have opted to re-print the MCC press release in its entirety:

Today, the Metropolitan Crime Commission (MCC) launched a new search engine on our website that enables the public to access the financial disclosure statements of all 289 Louisiana District Court Judges, Appellate Court Judges, and Supreme Court Justices for the past five years.

The MCC’s Louisiana judicial financial disclosure statement search engine is accessible here: https://metrocrime.org/judicial-financial-disclosure-statements/

Financial disclosures are required of all Louisiana elected officials and contain information regarding income, property and business ownership, non-profit affiliations, and major financial transactions.

Prior to today, there was no online access to financial disclosures filed by Louisiana judges. Rather, the only way to access judicial financial disclosures was by filing a public records request with the Louisiana Supreme Court’s Judicial Administrator.

“The Louisiana Supreme Court’s fails to recognize that judges are just as accountable to the public as any other elected official,” said MCC President Rafael Goyeneche. “The cumbersome process that the Supreme Court has devised for the public to obtain judicial financial disclosures needlessly restricts citizens’ access to these records and undermines public confidence in the judiciary. Going forward, judicial financial disclosures will be accessible to the public in the same manner as all other Louisiana elected officials.”

The Louisiana Board of Ethics provides online access to all financial disclosures required of elected officials and public servants serving on boards and commissions, with the exception of the judiciary. Providing these records online brings financial transparency of the judicial branch of government in line with that of the legislative and executive branches.

Campaign finance reports for all elected officials, including judges, are already publicly available on the Louisiana Board of Ethics website via the following link:
http://ethics.la.gov/EthicsViewReports.aspx?Reports=CampaignFinance

The MCC obtained these records by making a public records request to the Supreme Court’s Judicial Administrator and asking for financial disclosures of state judges from the past five years. The Judicial Administrator promptly furnished these digital records, and the MCC found all judges had appropriately submitted the financial disclosures according to requirements of Supreme Court rules. The MCC notified the Louisiana Supreme Court that we are launching the judicial financial disclosure search engine in a letter accessible through the following link:
https://metrocrime.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/1.10.20-MCC-Letter-to-LASC.pdf

“By not making these records readily available as other elected officials, the Supreme Court does a disservice to the Appellate and District Court judges who are doing a good job,” Goyeneche stated. “Openly sharing judicial financial disclosures should provide confidence to the public that their cases are being considered without conflicts of interest.”

…To which LouisianaVoice can only add: Amen!

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Teetering towns tumbling down: Legislative Auditor lists 18 towns in 15 separate parishes experiencing financial distress

Posted in Audit Reports, Auditor, Finances on November 20, 2019| 2 Comments »

Eight Louisiana towns, each in a separate parish, may be on the brink of having to shut down basic operations because of significant debt, insufficient utility rates and/or loss of a major industrial taxpayer, according to the Legislative Auditor’s Office.

Additionally, four municipalities, are facing serious concerns of operation of their rural water infrastructure systems. One of those is facing the double whammy of concerns about both ongoing operations and about its rural water system.

The 11 are among 18 considered by the state auditor’s office as being “fiscally distressed municipalities, including three whose latest financial statements indicate a negative fund balance.

Those over which the auditor’s office issued a concern for ongoing operations and their parishes include:

  • Grambling (Lincoln);
  • Tallulah (Madison);
  • Baldwin (St. Mary);
  • Basile (Evangeline);
  • Lake Providence (East Carroll);
  • Newellton (Tensas);
  • Washington (St. Landry), and
  • Epps (West Carroll).

Baldwin was also among four municipalities about which concerns were raised over rural water infrastructure committees. Others with rural water infrastructure concerns were:

  • Melville (St. Landry);
  • Tullos (LaSalle), and
  • Powhatan (Natchitoches).

Vidalia in Concordia, Winnsboro in Franklin, and Waterproof in Tensas were also flagged over concerns that their latest financial statements indicate a negative fund balance, or deficit.

Additionally, auditors could not issue an opinion for the most recent year for LeCompte in Rapides Parish and a fiscal review committee is monitoring the town of Clinton in East Feliciana Parish.

The auditor’s office was unable to issue an opinion for the most recent year for the towns of Ball in Rapides Parish and Jonesboro in Jackson Parish.

Legislative Auditor Daryl Purpera said the purpose of the list was to provide the public and elected officials at the state and local levels notice of the municipalities’ financial plights so that remedial measures could be undertaken.

“Our goal is to work with each municipality’s elected officials and to provide recommendations to place the municipality on a path to fiscal stability,” the Baton Rouge Business Report quoted Purpera as saying.

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Follow the money: it’s true yesterday, today and tomorrow when determining who is backing our political candidates

Posted in Campaign Contributions, Education, Elections, Ethics, Finances, Legislature, Legislators, PACs, Politicians, Senate, Uncategorized on October 6, 2019| 3 Comments »

Some weeks ago, I stopped counting political brochures arriving in my mailbox by sheer numbers, choosing instead to measure them by the pound.

Republic Services has probably had to put another truck or two into service just to cart away the political mail-outs cluttering the mailboxes on my street alone. They’re too slick to use for the bottoms of bird cages, so they serve no real purpose other than to attest to the fact we are needlessly killing far too many trees.

It wouldn’t be so bad if they actually offered anything new but, to paraphrase a line uttered by Frasier on the sitcom Cheers, they’re redundant, they repeat themselves, they say the same things over and over—and still they don’t tell us a thing about the candidate except perhaps in the case of one Edith Carlin, who insists she’s the male version of Donald Trump, a rather dubious self-accolade, if there ever was one.

Carlin describes herself in her fliers as “an outsider like President Trump.” (And yes, she does underscore the word outsider.) She goes on to say, “Just like President Trump, Edith Carlin is a self-made person…”

Really? Did she begin drawing millions from her father while still a child? Did her father purchase her way into the Wharton School of Business? Did she hire undocumented workers, not pay them, and default on billions of dollars of loans from banks into order to become “self-made”? Did she become “self-made” by declaring bankruptcy half-a-dozen times? Is she “self-made” from cheating thousands of students in a fraudulent “university” that was under investigation until making a big campaign contribution to the attorney general who was investigating the school? Is that what she means by “self-made”?

She should be so proud.

She says she “will hold the government accountable in a way politicians can’t.” Really? How does she plan to do that? That promise has been made thousands upon thousands of times by thousands upon thousands of candidates but nothing seems to change. But she’s different, I suppose. She’s proposing to waltz into a 39-member body and single-handedly convince her fellow senators and 105 House members that they’ve been wrong all along and they will obligingly repent of their evil ways.

That’s about as absurd as every four years, the candidates for mayor-president of East Baton Rouge Parish vow to make public education better when in reality, the mayor’s office has zero to do with the school board. Zero.

Well, one of the things Carlin says she’ll do is “fix I-12 issues without raising the gas tax.” Well, Ms. Carlin, it would be most interesting to hear just how you plan to go about doing that.

“After billions of dollars in tax increases,” she says, “the government now admits taking too much from us.” I suppose she’s referring to the $300 million – $500 million surplus of Gov. John Bel Edwards’ administration. But personally, I much prefer a surplus of $500 million to the eight years of $1 billion deficits of the best-forgotten Jindal administration.

She is running against State Rep. J. Rogers Pope, a fellow Republican, who is term-limited and who is running for the seat of former State Sen. Dale Erdy, also term-limited. Pope is a former Livingston Parish school superintendent who brought our school system up to among the best in the state. Pope’s big sin is he doesn’t always vote the party line, choosing instead to vote his conscience, an attribute many claim as their voting philosophy but which few can back up. But when you cross party lines, you cross the party and the party is the party is the party and the party doesn’t forget.

Carlin claims politicians “haven’t fixed our drainage problems,” that “80 percent of our district flooded.” True. I flooded, as did thousands of others. And of course, Carlin’s hero, Trump, dragged his feet in getting the requirements for assistance approved by HUD. It’s been three years and many still have received nothing from FEMA. As for fixing our drainage problems, she says we need an engineer to fix those problems. She is an engineer.

But guess what? Rogers Pope was an educator. Do you think they assigned him to the House Education Committee? Nope. That would make far too much sense. They tucked him away where he wouldn’t be a nuisance to Jindal and John White. Does Carlin think she’ll fare any better? Maybe, maybe not. Regardless, she says she’ll work to improve drainage problems but she’s against taxes. It’s going to be interesting to see her just snap her fingers and make our problems vanish.

But to really understand the candidate Carlin, it’s always best to follow the money to see who is the power behind the politician (and she is now officially a politician, her denials notwithstanding).

So, I went onto the campaign finance records to see who her backers are.

The results were eye-opening, to say the least.

To narrow the field, I looked only at contributions of $500 or more. I found 65 contributions totaling $68,500 since January 1, 2019, including a couple of multiple contributions by the same donor, namely Republican power broker Lane Grigsby, who also backed Jindal and who is backing Eddie Rispone for governor.

I also noted a $2,500 contribution from Koch Industries.

But the real story is that of those 65 contributions, is that exactly 11 were from Livingston Parish while 32 were from East Baton Rouge Parish, 14 from other parts of the state and eight were from out of state. That’s 11 from Livingston and 54 from elsewhere.

Those 11 Livingston Parish contributors (actually, only 10 because one person contributed on two different occasions) accounted for $14,500 (including $4,500 from just three persons) while the 32 East Baton Rouge Parish donors ponied up $37,500. The 14 from other areas of the state gave $17,500 and out-of-state contributors chipped in $13,500.

So, Livingston Parish contributors gave just 21 percent of Carlin’s total while backers in Baton Rouge put up 54.7 percent of her total.

Livingston Parish voters may wish to ask themselves why so many people in Baton Rouge are involving themselves in a race in Livingston Parish. Well, let’s see who they are:

  • EastPac, NorthPac, WestPac, and SouthPac, all arms of the Louisiana Association of Business and Industry (LABI), combined to give $19,267. Since there are limits as to how much a political action committee may give, LABI simply bent the rules by creating not one, not two, not three, but four PACs.
  • Lane Grigsby: $2,500.
  • Todd Grigsby: $1,000.
  • ABC (Associated Builders and Contractors) Pelican PAC: $2,500.
  • The Louisiana Homebuilders Association PAC: $2,500.
  • TransPac (a trucking industry PAC): $1,500.
  • Investment portfolio manager Meagan Shields: $3,000 (two $1,500 contributions).
  • Louisiana Student Financial Aid Association (LASFAA) PAC: $1,000.

Besides Koch Industries of Wichita, Kansas, out-of-state contributors included:

  • Republican State Leadership Committee, Washington, D.C.: $2,500.
  • Chevron, San Ramon, California: $2,500.
  • Stand for Children PAC, Portland, Oregon: $2,000.
  • Weyerhaeuser, Seattle, Washington: $1,500.
  • Marathon Petroleum, Findlay, Ohio: $1,500.
  • Tanner Barrow, Worthing, South Dakota: $1,000.
  • Micham Roofing, Sparta, Missouri: $500.

Louisiana contributors not from Livingston or East Baton Rouge Parish who contributed were from Bossier City, Slidell, New Orleans (2), Shreveport (2), Raceland, Jennings, Mandeville, Alexandria, Prairieville, Covington, Ponchatoula, and Gray.

So, those who haven’t already voted early may wish to ask themselves why the Republican party has turned on one of its own in such a vicious manner—but mostly why so much outside money is being poured into Edith Carlin’s campaign.

You may also wish to ask yourself whether she will be beholden to the people of Livingston Parish or to the faceless PACs of Baton Rouge, Washington, and elsewhere.

She may call herself a political outsider, but from here, she looks more like a puppet with the potential to be controlled by political insiders from outside Livingston Parish.

 

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