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AG Landry, Champion of Justice: nabs low-hanging fruit, turns a blind eye to actions of politically well-connected

Posted in Attorney General, Corruption, Ethics, Finances, Fraud, Governor's Office, Politicians, State Police on September 1, 2016| 17 Comments »

An interesting news release appeared in our email inbox on Thursday (Sept. 1).

The headline beneath the official portrait of Attorney General Jeff Landry proclaimed:

Attorney General Jeff Landry Makes Louisiana Public Corruption Arrest

As if the inference that Landry made the collar all by himself were not enough, the sub-headline said:

 AG Stresses Commitment to Holding Government Officials Accountable

Here is the news release in its entirety:

Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry today announced an arrest made in Jonesville on charges related to violating the public’s trust.

 “In order to make our state an even better place, we must end Louisiana’s checkered past of public corruption and abuse of government offices,” said Attorney General Jeff Landry (how many times can you get the name Jeff Landry in a single news release?). “This arrest highlights our commitment to investigate, apprehend, and prosecute those who defraud our State and its people (remember that statement: it comes up again later in this post). And our office will keep working with local, state, and federal partners to hold government officials accountable.”

 Leigh Ann Ingram, a former utility clerk for the Town of Jonesville, was arrested on charges of theft (over $25,000), malfeasance in office, and computer fraud. Ingram is accused of diverting over $25,000 worth of utility payments and falsifying computer records to avoid getting caught. She allegedly received cash from customers paying their electric bills and diverted the funds foe personal use.

Based on the comparison of witness statements, cash receipts, time sheets, computer log reports, and other evidence, investigators from General Landry’s Louisiana Bureau of Investigation and the Louisiana Legislative Auditor’s Office determined that Ingram altered computer records on times and dates in which she was the only clerk in attendance.

Ingram, 47, of Jena, was arrested on August 31, 2016, and booked at the Catahoula Parish Sheriff’s Office.

That should give us a warm fuzzy just as the announcement in February by Inspector General Stephen Street should help us all sleep better at night.

In that announcement, Street informed us that Department of Children and Family Services (DCFS) Kimberly Deann Lee, 49, surrendered to authorities and was booked into the East Baton Rouge Parish Prison after being charged with falsifying reports and time sheets and for malfeasance in office.

 

After Bobby Jindal cut funding for DCFS, case workers were laid off and those remaining found themselves with impossible caseloads and no transportation for field work after repairs went undone. https://louisianavoice.com/2016/03/13/dcfs-funding-slashed-necessitating-driveway-visits-but-overworked-caseworker-is-arrested-for-falsifying-records/

At the risk of sounding like a broken record, LouisianaVoice continues to ask the unanswered question:

How is that the Attorney General and the Inspector General can be so vigilant in pursuing low-level employees while turning a blind eye to those with political clout who are equally guilty of abusing their office for financial gain?

Quite frankly, we have little patience for and even less confidence in those who are in a position to accomplish meaningful reform but choose to pick low-hanging fruit, i.e. rank and file employees with neither the financial means nor the political pull to mount an aggressive defense.

Take the lingering—and obviously ignored—case of Jill Boudreaux.

https://louisianavoice.com/2014/08/24/edmonson-not-the-first-in-dps-to-try-state-ripoff-subterfuge-undersecretary-retiresre-hires-keeps-46k-incentive-payout/

In April of 2010, the Jindal administration, in an offer to implement across the board savings, made a one-time incentive package offer to various state agencies as a means to encourage state employees to take early retirement.

Handled properly, it appeared at the time—and still does appear—to have been an economical and compassionate way to nudge employees who wanted out but who could not afford to retire, into making the decision to walk away, thus reducing the number of state employees which in turn translated to long-term savings in salaries and benefits paid by the state.

On April 23 of that year, DPS Deputy Undersecretary Jill Boudreaux sent an email to all personnel informing them that the Department of Civil Service and the Louisiana State Police Commission had approved the retirement incentive as a “Layoff Avoidance Plan.”

In legal-speak, under the incentive eligible applicants would receive a payment of 50 percent of the savings realized by DPS for one year from the effective date of the employee’s retirement.

Boudreaux, by what many in DPS feel was more than mere happenstance, managed to be the first person to sign up on the date the internet link opened up for applications.

In Boudreaux’s case, her incentive payment was based on an annual salary of about $92,000 so her incentive payment was around $46,000. In addition, she was also entitled to payment of up to 300 hours of unused annual leave which came to another $13,000 or so for a total of about $59,000 in walk-around money.

Her retirement date was April 28 but the day before, on April 27, she double encumbered herself into the classified (Civil Service) Deputy Undersecretary position because another employee was promoted into her old position on April 26.

A double incumbency is when an employee is appointed to a position that is already occupied by an incumbent, in this case, Boudreaux’s successor. Double incumbencies are mostly used for smooth succession planning initiatives when the incumbent of a position (Boudreaux, in this case) is planning to retire, according to the Louisiana Department of Civil Service.

On April 30, under the little-known retire-rehire policy, Boudreaux was rehired two days after her “retirement,” but this time at the higher paying position of Undersecretary, an unclassified, or appointive position.

What’s more, though she “retired” as Deputy Undersecretary on April 28, her “retirement” was inexplicably calculated based on the higher Undersecretary position’s salary, a position she did not assume until April 30—two days after her “retirement,” sources inside DPS told LouisianaVoice.

Following her maneuver, then-Commissioner of Administration Angelé Davis apparently saw through the ruse and reportedly ordered Boudreaux to repay her incentive payment as well as the payment for her 300 hours of annual leave, according to those same DPS sources.

It was about this time, however, that Davis left Gov. Bobby Jindal’s administration to take a position in the private sector. Paul Rainwater, Jindal’s former Deputy Chief of Staff, was named to succeed Davis on June 24, 2010, and the matter of Boudreaux’s payment quickly slipped through the cracks and was never repaid.

Six years later, in February of this year, Boudreaux finally retired for real, reportedly at the insistence of Gov. John Bel Edwards, who considered Boudreaux and the duplicitous maneuver and her accompanying financial windfall as something of an embarrassment.

https://louisianavoice.com/2016/02/29/dps-undersecretary-jill-boudreaux-retiring-for-real-this-time-6-years-after-taking-incentive-buyout-at-governors-directive/

When considering how Boudreaux successfully milked the system for what would appear to be a less than legitimate financial gain, one has to wonder how she manages to escape the self-serving law and order diligence of Landry and Street.

Or are their efforts to rid the state of official corruption a case study in selective justice?

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Operator of 1990s Ponzi scheme outed by Ruston newspaper re-surfaces quarter-century later as major Trump fund-raiser

Posted in Campaign Contributions, Corruption, Courts, Crime, Elections, Ethics, Finances, Fraud, PACs, Politicians, Transparency on June 21, 2016| 14 Comments »

When it comes to financial shell games and political flim-flam, it seems that the two have a lot in common, oftentimes including the same personality mixes whose names keep cropping up. Sometimes those names can materialize like a deadly vapor in proceedings separated by a couple of decades. And somehow, those years and events mysteriously converge to affect the lives of thousands—or millions—of people.

It was in late 1990 that the late John Hays, the cantankerous publisher of the weekly Morning Paper in Ruston began writing stories that raised questions about Towers Financial Corp. and its chairman, one Steven Hoffenberg.

At first, his stories attracted little interest. On paper, as the sportswriters would say, it was a mismatch. Hays, described by NEW YORK TIMES in an April 1993 story as “a hard-drinking, chain-smoking, cowboy-booted newspaper publisher” was pitted against Hoffenberg, who briefly ran The New York Post, eventually taken over by Rupert Murdoch. Hoffenberg owned two jets, a yacht, limousines, mansions, and a Fifth Avenue office. Hays drove an old van well past its prime. It quickly shaped up as an epic battle between a small-town publisher operating on a shoestring and a sophisticated New Yorker who had, it seemed, more money than God.

But investors were getting nervous in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Some of them called Hays who had a penchant for taking on phony investment schemes. Hays, as was his wont, began making calls that piqued the interest of Securities and Exchange Commission investigators as well as state regulators. He had worked with these same regulators in other scams, so he had the credentials necessary to make them sit up and pay attention whenever he called.

Hays even managed to attract the attention of major newspapers like the WASHINGTON POST

Hoffenberg had all the right political connections. He was a business ally of former Texas Gov. John Connally and with a former co-chairman of the Republican National Committee. Other friends in high places included Victoria Reggie, daughter of powerful Crowley Judge Edmund Reggie and the future wife of Sen. Edward Kennedy, New York City Mayor Mario Cuomo, and Mickey Kantor, President Bill Clinton’s trade representative. Heavy hitters, one and all.

Some of his connections, however, tended to hang back in the murky shadows of a darker side of society. https://porkinspolicyreview.com/tag/steven-hoffenberg/

http://gawker.com/501354/exposed-the-leon-black-jeffrey-epstein-connection

http://www.mediaite.com/online/vanity-fair-editor-reportedly-removed-underage-girls-allegations-about-jeffrey-epstein-from-2003-story/

When a Shreveport brokerage firm started peddling high-yielding notes for Towers in 1990, Hays said he immediately wondered “if some fellow up in New York has such a good deal, what would inspire him to come down here to northern Louisiana and make the local people rich?”

He started making calls and writing stories—stories that obviously did not sit well with Hoffenberg.

If Hays was suspicious of Hoffenberg, the feeling was more than mutual. “He’s not a credible person,” Hoffenberg said of Hays. “He runs a newspaper that is full of lies. I have never heard from anybody that John Hays was somebody we should take seriously. I mean, he gives his newspaper away; he throws it on people’s driveways.” Twenty-five years later, one could close his eyes and almost hear Donald Trump talking about another candidate or some reporter covering his campaign.

(Oh, just as a heads-up, keep that Trump comparison in mind. He’ll come up later in this story.)

Hoffenberg was correct in that last statement. Hays did indeed toss about 25,000 free copies a week in the driveways of Lincoln, Union, Bienville, and Jackson parishes.

But Hays also became a national clearinghouse for information between state regulatory agencies. He was credited by Arkansas authorities as providing information to them that allowed them to keep Hoffenberg and Towers Financial Corp. out of that state.

But not all states. Hays began making calls to regulators and learned that Towers was selling notes in states where it had failed to meet registration requirements. Enter the feds. More stories followed.

So, who won the war of words?

Well, Hoffenberg eventually entered a guilty plea to running a $475 million Ponzi scheme, the largest on record until Bernie Madoff dwarfed Hoffenberg’s financial chicanery. In 1997, Hoffenberg was sentenced to 20 years in federal prison for defrauding thousands of investors. http://www.nytimes.com/1997/03/08/business/hoffenberg-gets-20-year-sentence-in-fraud-case.html

His nemesis who he said “runs a newspaper that is full of lies” and a man he said he never heard “from anybody that John Hays was somebody we should take seriously,” was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize.

Someone once said never start a fight with someone who buys ink by the barrel and newsprint by the boxcar. Apparently Hoffenberg wasn’t listening.

The Hoffenberg/Towers Investment saga was the subject of a lengthy abstract by Gene Murray, Ph.D., assistant professor in the Department of Mass Communication at Grambling State University. http://list.msu.edu/cgi-bin/wa?A3=ind9710a&L=AEJMC&E=7BIT&P=1328897&B=–&T=TEXT%2FPLAIN;%20charset=US-ASCII

But let’s fast forward to 2016. John Hays has been dead for a year now, the Morning Paper stopped publication several months before his death when his cancer weakened him to the point he could no longer peddle his ads or chase down a good story.

Hoffenberg couldn’t get out of jail in 1996 because, he said, he was so broke he couldn’t post the $100,000 bail. http://www.nydailynews.com/archives/money/sec-hoffenberg-pay-stay-jail-article-1.730715

Twenty years later, however, he is back in the money—and he wanted everyone to know it. It’s almost enough to make you wonder if he may have had a few dollars stashed safely offshore all that time.

The man who couldn’t make $100,000 bail a couple of decades ago has recently pledged $50 million to his super PAC set up to coordinate a marketing campaign in support of Donald Trump. http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/ponzi-schemer-steven-hoffenberg-pledges-50-million-to-help-trump/article/2593931

Hoffenberg, who professes to be a born-again Christian (funny how prison can do that; just ask Chuck Colson), is also in the business of marketing something called the Christ Credit Card to more than 700,000 registered Christian churches through Towers Financial.

http://whaminc.us/investor-questions-wham-answers

In addition to pledging $50 million of his own money to his super PAC, he also says he intends for his PAC to raise more than $1 billion in support of Trump. http://www.politico.com/story/2016/06/convicted-ponzi-schemer-ill-conduct-50-million-marketing-campaign-for-trump-224350

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/trump-super-pac-predicts-raising-1-billion/article/2592210

So much for Trump’s claim that he is financing his own campaign—or for Hoffenberg’s earlier claims of poverty.

The announcement by Hoffenberg was the first time he has explained why he founded the Get Our Jobs Back, Inc. PAC back in April. He is listed as treasurer and custodian of records by the Federal Election Commission. http://docquery.fec.gov/cgi-bin/forms/C00616078/1070515/

Could this be déjà vu all over again? Can you imagine someone like Hoffenberg having the ear of a President Trump?

We have only a few random observations to make about this latest development, this unholy alliance between two high-rolling carnival hucksters of dubious trustworthiness:

  • Watch closely how he raises that much campaign cash.
  • Does his credit card scheme figure in the mix?
  • Old habits sometimes can be hard to break.
  • Where is John Hays when we really need him?

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State’s Tuition Donation Rebate Program redefines term ‘poor’ in underwriting the costs of private school tuition

Posted in BESE, Boards, Charters, Education, Ethics, Finances, Guest Columnist, Lawsuits, Politicians, Privatization, Public Records, Transparency, Vouchers on June 11, 2016| 9 Comments »

By James C. Finney, Ph.D.

Guest Columnist

(Editor’s Note: James Finney is one of two Louisiana citizens (Mike Deshotels is the other) who was named as a defendant in a lawsuit by State Education Superintendent John White in an effort to thwart efforts by the pair to obtain public records from the Department of Education. White has defended his action by pointing out he is not seeking monetary damages from Finney or Deshotel. He failed to mention, however, that it will cost them money from their personal funds to defend the lawsuit while White has the financial resources of the State of Louisiana at his disposal.)

 

Much has been written about the Student Scholarships for Educational Excellence Program, otherwise known as the Louisiana Scholarship Program, or the voucher program. To summarize: The Department of Education allows vouchers for almost any private school that wants them (or so it seems) and then performs minimal oversight.

The students are tested, but the Department works hard to make sure taxpayers don’t get to see any useful data. The program is based on a premise that it helps poor kids access private schools. But “poor” is 2.5 times the poverty level which, for a family of four, means an annual income of $59,625 is low enough to put a kid in a private school at taxpayer expense. And, of course, the state refuses to release any data about how many children are at which ends of that range of income. And the point is, allegedly, to allow kids to escape failing public schools.

Never mind that the students may have never attended a public school. Ever.

But this post isn’t about that voucher program. It’s about the sneaky alternative that funds private schools by way of tax rebates. The Tuition Donation Rebate Program allows donors to fund private school tuition and recoup most of that donation as a tax rebate.

As might be expected, there are middlemen taking their cut of the money. At the beginning of the program, there was only one such organization—Arete Scholars Louisiana. The registered agent, Gene Mills, he of the Family Forum, has apparently neglected the paperwork required to keep charter 41200779N active with the Louisiana Secretary of State.

Mills, founder of Louisiana Family Forum, was the centerpiece of an extraordinary post by Jason France on his Crazy Crawfish blog in October 2012. https://thecrazycrawfish.com/tag/louisiana-family-fourm/

Founded in 1998, Louisiana Family Forum included as its “Independent Political Consultant” and “Grassroots Coordinator,” former State Sen. Dan Richey. http://www.lafamilyforum.org/about/

As an example of the family values for which Family Forum supposedly stands, Richey, while serving as a state senator from Ferriday in the 1980s, gave his allotted Tulane scholarship to a Caddo Parish legislator’s daughter in exchange for that legislator’s awarding of his scholarship to Richey’s brother as a means of circumventing the informal prohibition against giving the scholarships to immediate family members.

Superintendent John White’s Department of Education, with the approval of the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education (BESE), thought it was critical that there be multiple organizations available to help people support private education rather than pay taxes. So they gave grants of up to $499,750 to ACE Scholarships Louisiana (charter 41590796K) and up to$500,000 for New Schools for Baton Rouge Excellence Scholarship Fund (charter41726088K) so that these limited-liability corporations could each set up their business of accepting donations, funneling them to private schools, and providing the documentation required for the donors to get tax rebates from the Louisiana Department of Revenue.

According to the Louisiana Nonpublic School Choice 2015 Annual Report, which was submitted to BESE but not accepted, the tuition donation rebate program started in 2013-14 with Arete.

Arete’s 2013-14 Arete’s 2014 Annual Report indicates that the organization disbursed 14 scholarships, worth a total of $60,975.02, and all funded by the Atlanta Falcons.

No, that’s not a typo: Those Atlanta Falcons. That amount was confirmed by the Louisiana Department of Revenue: One unnamed taxpayer was issued a rebate in the amount of $60,975.02 in tax year 2014.

According to the state’s 2015 annual report cited above, there were two Student Tuition Organizations active in 2014-15: Arete and ACE. Arete’s 2015 Annual Report confirms the number of scholarships reported by the state, 50, at 24 schools, with a total value of $180,381, while ACE Scholarships Louisiana LLC’s 2015 Annual Report reports 13 scholarships, three schools, and a total of $40,780.67.

The donors of note on Arete’s annual report include the Atlanta Falcons, Chik-fil-A, James Garvey and several other individuals. ACE’s donors were David George and Edward Rispone. According to the Louisiana Department of Revenue, the total of rebates awarded in 2015 was $101,659.85, and they ranged in size from $950 to $47,105.

The numbers exploded in 2015-16, though, especially for ACE.  The state’s voucher report indicates that Arete awarded (as of March 2016) 205 scholarships at 50 schools, ACE awarded 558 scholarships at 77 schools, and New Schools awarded 13 scholarships at four schools. The names of the schools, donors and dollar amounts likely won’t be available for several months, however.

The targets for total scholarship awards (remember those half-million dollar contracts a few paragraphs above) were 1,000 for this year and 1,250 for 2016-17 (ACE) and 75 and 125, respectively for New Schools. So apparently New Schools aimed low and shot lower. Perhaps that’s a good thing, in that taxpayers will see less revenue diverted away from the state’s coffers. On the other hand, this spreadsheet indicates that, as of the end of 2015, New Schools had already collected $300,000 on its contract, and ACE had already collected $249,874.98.

It’s interesting what a person can learn from availing themselves of their rights under Louisiana’s public records law (Title 44).

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Starnes promotion pulled by Edmonson after complaint; Gov. fails to approve LSP pay, plan is rescinded by LSPC

Posted in Commissions, Ethics, Finances, Governor's Office, Legislature, Legislators, Public Records, State Police, Transparency, Uncategorized on June 6, 2016| 6 Comments »

An official complaint over the appointment of Louisiana State Police (LSP) Maj. Jason Starnes as Interim Undersecretary of Management and Finance has produced another LSP major: a major CYA maneuver at State Police headquarters to backtrack and act as though the “promotion” never occurred.

At the same time, the Louisiana State Police Commission has rescinded last November’s action by the commission to approve a last-minute longevity pay increase plan for state police who last year received two separate pay increases totaling about 30 percent.

http://www.nola.com/politics/index.ssf/2015/07/state_troopers_get_hefty_back-.html

The longevity pay plan would have locked troopers into automatic pay raises based on years of service and was part of Bobby Jindal’s exit strategy as he headed out the door of the governor’s office near the end of his term.

But on June 1, Cathy Derbonne, LSPC Executive Director, published TRANSMITTAL SHEET NO. 58  on the LSPC Web page that pointed out that Article X, Section 48(C) of the Louisiana Constitution mandates that “any rule determination affecting wages or hours shall have the effect of law and become effective only after approval by the governor and subject to appropriation of sufficient funds by the Legislature (emphasis Derbonne’s).

“As of June 1, 2016, an approval by the Governor has not been received and there is currently insufficient funding to implement the revisions,” she wrote.

“The Revision of State Police Commission Rule Chapter 6 Uniform Pay and Classification Plan is hereby rescinded in its entirety,” she wrote (emphasis Derbonne’s). The pay plan approved by the LSPC last November is contained in GENERAL CIRCULAR 180

Starnes, a classified member of LSP, was recently transferred by State Police Superintendent Mike Edmonson to an unclassified non-state police service position as Interim Undersecretary, Custodian of Records of the Office of Management and Finance within the Louisiana Department of Public Safety and Corrections (DPS).

That move, the complaint says, was in violation of Rule 14.3(G), which says:

  • No classified member of the State Police shall be appointed, promoted, transferred or any way employed in or to any position that is not within the State Police Service.

In addition to the points cited in the official complaint, LouisianaVoice pointed out last month that the promotion of Starnes placed him in direct supervision of his estranged wife, Tammy, Audit Manager for LSP. https://louisianavoice.com/2016/05/16/mike-edmonsons-appointment-not-official-yet-senate-committee-set-to-consider-his-confirmation-on-tuesday/

LouisianaVoice also revealed that since his separation from his wife, Starnes had been residing in the LSP Training Academy’s VIP quarters. The VIP quarters at the academy is also known as the “Charlie Dupuy Suite,” so named because Edmonson’s Chief of Staff Charlie Dupuy also resided there during his own divorce from his first wife.

Starnes has since denied he is staying at the LSP Training Academy and more significantly, he has said he is not acting in the capacity of Undersecretary of Management and Finance despite this February memorandum from Edmonson announcing his appointment:

EDMONSON NAMED

(CLICK ON IMAGE TO ENLARGE)

Starnes’ name has since been quietly removed from the DPS Management and Finance Web page and replaced by that of Edmonson who is listed as Deputy Secretary and Custodian of Records. http://mfn.dps.louisiana.gov/

The Office of Management and Finance page contains a link to the undersecretary but when readers click on the link, a “Message from Undersecretary” heading pops up. Beneath that are only the words “Coming Soon.”

That has to be one of the more obvious moves by Edmonson to obscure a major departmental administrative blunder on his part.

The effort to promote someone in his inner circle illegally, Taken with his clumsy but almost successful effort to steer a bill amendment through the Legislature in the waning hours of the 2014 session that would have given him a retirement pay hike of some $30,000 and the documented cases of inconsistent and inadequate investigations and punishment (or outright ignoring) of wrongdoing within his agency, should give pause to the Senate and Governmental Affairs Committee which is scheduled to vote on his confirmation today (Monday, June 6).

 

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OGB contract actuary cites need for premium increase; conflicts with earlier testimony of OGB Director West

Posted in Budget, Finances, Governor's Office, Legislature, Legislators, OGB, Office of Group Benefits on June 5, 2016| 13 Comments »

It was only last Nov. 20 that a joint meeting of the House Committee on Appropriations and the Senate Committee on Finance was told that the Office of Group Benefits (OGB) was in improved financial condition.

By April 21 of this year, however, serious discussion had begun about a premium increase for state employees and retirees even as state workers have been told they will not get merit pay raises for the sixth straight year.

OGB Executive Director testified before the joint committee last November that the agency’s fund balance, nearly depleted by the reckless fiscal policies of Bobby Jindal, had recovered to $122 million at the end of the 2015 fiscal year (June 30, 2015) and was projected to be $146 million by the end of the current fiscal year. http://house.louisiana.gov/H_Video/VideoArchivePlayer.aspx?v=house/2015/Nov/1120_15_AP_SenFinance

Neither amount, of course, is anywhere close to the $500 million fund balance accrued by former OGB Executive Director Tommy Teague before he was teagued in April 2011. (for those who may have forgotten, the term coined by a reader for those who dared disagree with Jindal who were quickly fired or demoted).

It is, however, a significant increase from the low balance that came perilously close to double digits in 2014.

Jim Fannin (R-Jonesboro), at the time a member of the House and chairman of the House Appropriations Committee though he had already been elected to the Senate, asked West what the OGB “burn rate” (the amount paid out monthly in benefits in excess of premiums) was.

“It was $16.3 million,” West replied. “It’s now $7 million. Changes that were made have had a positive impact on the fund balance.”

She said OGB has held no public hearings “because there are no planned benefit changes for 2016.”

But wait. Her testimony does not quite jibe with the April presentation of OGB consulting actuary Arthur J. Gallagher & Co. in that OGB ESTIMATING CONFERENCE

At that estimating conference, Gallagher said a 7 percent rate increase would increase the fund balance to $156.9 million by the end of fiscal year 2017 (June 30, 2017), which it said was “within the target range” of $130 million to $240 million.

Gallagher recommended that the new rate increase go into effect in January 2017 “for ease of communication and administration due to annual enrollment timing.”

Gov. John Bel Edwards, then a state representative, openly opposed the 2014 OGB rate increase plan proposed by West and then Commissioner of Administration Kristy Nichols.

https://louisianavoice.com/2014/08/25/louisianavoice-learns-of-jindal-plan-to-force-state-retirees-out-of-ogb-by-raising-members-premiums-cutting-benefits/

Edwards even went so far as to request an attorney general’s opinion on the method by which Nichols and West were attempting to implement the new premium increase and when the Jindal administration learned in advance that the AG’s opinion would be detrimental to its premium increase plan, Nichols quickly shifted gears in saying that the state would go through the required rule-making process spelled out in the Administrative Procedure Act (APA).

That move only served to further invoke Edwards’ ire because, he said, the changes had already been implemented without the required public hearing. https://louisianavoice.com/2014/09/23/smackdown-attorney-general-opinion-on-ogb-proposals-hands-jindal-administration-another-stinging-legal-setback/

Now Edwards finds himself in the ticklish position of having to either uphold his original position of opposing a rate increase, which originally brought him to the attention of state employees as their White Knight, or backing his OGB Executive Director.

As our late friend C.B. Forgotston was so fond of saying: You can’t make this stuff up.

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