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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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Another day in the Piyush Jindal administration and another prevarication; is anyone here capable of telling the truth?

Posted in BESE, Education, Exemptions, Incentives, Governor's Office, Public Records, Revenue, Taxes, Vouchers on July 6, 2012| 1 Comment »

Another day in the administration of Gov. Piyush Jindal and another prevarication.

And another.

It seems these days anything that comes out of the present administration in Baton Rouge is subject to instant skepticism and ridicule.

There’s Emailgate, the now infamous emails that State Superintendent of Education sent to members of the governor’s staff in which he outlined a deliberate plan to obfuscate the growing discontent over the approval of 315 vouchers to a school in Ruston that had no facilities, books or teachers to accommodate the additional students.

Now Emailgate has been expanded to the Department of Natural Resources (DNR) which somehow has become embroiled in the controversy over that alternative fuel tax rebate that shortened former Revenue Secretary Cynthia Bridges’s career with the state.

A ruling by Bridges on House Bill 110 of 2009 was signed into law by Jindal as Act 469 to give tax credits to purchasers of vehicles which used alternative fuels such as propane, butane and electricity.

At the time, the tax credit was projected to cost the state about $900,000 over five years but when flex fuel vehicles began hitting the market and Bridges issued her ruling as required by the act, that five-year cost suddenly mushroomed to $100 million.

Administration officials said the governor did not know about the ramifications of the credit until mid-June when he rescinded the rule that he had signed into law three years earlier.

Emails obtained by the Associated Press through a public records request, however, indicate that DNR Secretary Scott Angelle and chief legislative lobbyist for the Jindal administration was told about Bridges’s ruling on May 1, the day after she issued it.

Bridges resigned almost immediately after Jindal rescinded the ruling and was replaced by Jane Smith, leading to speculation that she was pressured to resign to make room for Smith. Smith, it might be remembered, originally authored HB 110 and when she lost her bid to move up to the Senate last October, she was recruited by the administration to take the second-in-command post at Revenue even though, in her own words, she “didn’t know nothing about revenue.”

Adding to the growing lack of credibility in utterances by this administration was an indication that the actual cost of the alternative fuel credits had not been determined, according to the internal emails.

Or instead of a lack of credibility on the part of Piyush and his minions, perhaps it was simply a lack of competence.

Apparently the administration did not bother to ask the right people the right questions.

We did.

A routine public records request to the Department of Revenue by LouisianaVoice revealed that 5,456 returns had been received by the department claiming total tax credits of $18,046,454.

That’s 5,456 returns filed and total tax credits of $18 million, Governor, just in case you still haven’t been told.

Those credits were retroactive to the date that Jindal signed the bill into law in 2009—just in case he forgot.

Or in case he wants Communications Director Kyle Plotkin to put his spin on what he says he didn’t know.

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Timmy Teepell neglected to close out his state email account when he left the governor’s office 11 months ago–or did he?

Posted in BESE, Charters, Education, Governor's Office, Public Records, Transparency, tagged , on July 6, 2012| 1 Comment »

State Education Superintendent John White has Emailgate, that embarrassing communication with the governor’s office in which he laid out his plot to shroud legislators and the public with a cloud of B.S.

Plaquemines Parish President Billy Nungesser apparently accesses parish emails kept for use only in emergencies like hurricanes, floods and tornadoes but used by him to solicit contributions to his political fundraiser—to be attended by Piyush Jindal, no less.

And Rep. Joe Harrison (R-Gray) uses state letterhead to solicit contributions to the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) so his pals in the House and Senate can get expense-paid trips to ALEC’s Salt Lake City conference later this month.

Things just can’t get any better.

Or can they?

Timmy Teepell ostensibly departed his $165,000-per-year position as Gov. Piyush Jindal Chief of Staff last October to head up the Baton Rouge Southern office of OnMessage, Inc., a political consulting firm out of Virginia—but he apparently forgot to close out his state email account.

Yet, more than eight months after his announced departure and 11 months after he officially terminated his employment, Teepell not only continues to maintain a high-profile presence in and around the State Capitol and the governor’s mansion (his Jeep Wrangler remains a fixture in both locations and he was seen on almost a daily basis on the floors of the House and Senate during the recently completed legislative session), but he also retains an active state email account in the governor’s office.

Moreover, there is no physical addressed listed for a Baton Rouge office of OnMessage, nor is there a local telephone listing. Nor is OnMessage, Inc. registered in Louisiana, according to corporate records on file with the Louisiana Secretary of State.

Last Oct. 24, OnMessage posted a news release on its web page announcing that Teepell had joined the firm “as a partner and head of our new Southern office.”

The news release went on to say that Teepell “will open and manage our new OnMessage Southern office in Baton Rouge and will work on campaigns throughout the country.”

When Jindal announced that Teepell was leaving to join OnMessage, he said the move was “effective immediately,” even though the last official date of employment with the governor’s office was July 1.

Yet, when Teepell left the state payroll on July 1, 2011, he was quickly placed on the payroll of Jindal’s campaign which paid him more than $91,300 between July 15 and Dec. 30.

In the months immediately following the October announcement of Teepell’s departure, Jindal’s campaign was also making payments to OnMessage of $46,000 in November and another $55,000 in December—time during which Teepell was supposed to have been employed by OnMessage, leaving unexplained why the governor’s campaign would be making simultaneous payments to both Teepell and OnMessage for those two months.

Jindal’s ties to OnMessage go back at least to the 2007 governor’s race. OnMessage was used extensively in that race by Jindal’s campaign which shelled out approximately $1.3 million for consulting work by the firm. Additionally, Curt Anderson, another OnMessage partner, ghost-wrote Jindal’s book Leadership and Crisis.

In February, it was announced that Teepell’s OnMessage office in Baton Rouge had signed on to work for Republican Congressman Bill Cassidy’s 2012 re-election campaign. A check of Cassidy’s campaign expenditures, however, revealed no payments to either Teepell or OnMessage through the end of June.

An email to Teepell at Timmy.Teepell@la.gov from Capitol News Service was not answered. Likewise, emails to Jindal Executive Counsel Elizabeth Murrill and Communications Director Kyle Plotkin asking why Teepell still had an active state government email address did not receive responses.

Perhaps that was because OnMessage’s Baton Rouge Southern office took a long weekend for the July 4th holiday.

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White shifts into Emailgate damage control mode; ‘Nothing inappropriate,’ and Loch Ness monster proves Creationism

Posted in BESE, Charters, Education, Ethics, Governor's Office, Legislature, Legislators, Public Records on July 4, 2012| 6 Comments »

As State Education Superintendent John White shifts into a damage control mode, his explanations of Emailgate have taken on a bizarre tone reminiscent of the man, who when his wife catches him cheating with another woman, asks, “Are you going to believe your eyes or what I tell you?”

Or perhaps the attorney who is sued because his dog, allowed to run loose, bites a neighbor: “He must have been provoked because my dog doesn’t bite. Besides, he is never allowed out of my fenced yard. Anyway, I don’t own a dog.”

White’s explanations are about that plausible.

White, in emails to the obviously complicit strategists for Gov. Piyush Jindal on the eve of his confirmation hearing in the final days of the recently completed legislative session, laid out his plan to diffuse criticism of his department’s lack of oversight in awarding voucher/scholarships. No one in Jindal’s office attempted to rein him in.

At the center of the controversy was the approval of 315 vouchers for New Living Word in Ruston, a facility lacking in classrooms, textbooks and teaching staff.

School principal, the Rev. Jerry Baldwin, said the school teaches primarily by DVDs and even though he lacked accommodations for the 315 students, he was moving ahead “on faith.”

White’s misdirection ploy began with the emails to Jindal Communications Director Kyle Plotkin and the governor’s policy adviser Stafford Palmieri and continued several weeks later with a Department of Education (DOE) response to a public records request from LouisianaVoice. That response was sent by DOE public information officer Sarah Mulhearn:

“In your email dated June 25, 2012, you asked, ‘Do you have a date when the Department of Education originally approved New Living Word in Ruston for 315 vouchers?’ The specific information you requested is not available, because final seat numbers have not yet been decided. No school, including New Living Word, has been approved for any definite number of vouchers/scholarships. The 315 is only the number requested by the school.”

A form letter sent out by the department to schools dated May 18 (well before White’s confirmation hearing and his email to Plotkin and Palmieri), however, would seem to suggest otherwise:

“Congratulations on being accepted into the Louisiana State Scholarship Program!” the letter began. “We hope that you are excited to be part of this program, and we look forward to working closely with you in service to the students of Louisiana. Now that you are officially (emphasis added) part of the Scholarship program, we’d like to take a few moments to introduce the next steps in this process.

“Before May 22, you may immediately begin to market yourself to potential students! Feel free to get creative and help spread the word about the available scholarship seats at your school. Also, please note that the Department will contact you soon to detail which fees administered by your school will be covered by the scholarship allocation. As a participating school, you will be the primary ‘on the ground’ point of contact for interested students and their families.

“In addition, we would like to post information about your school on our website for interested students and families.

“Starting on May 22, student applications will be made available to you and posted on the Louisiana Department of Education website. Students will have until June 29 to submit an application. We ask that you make physical copies available at your school or in your community for students and families interested in submitting an application to your school.

“On May 21 and 22, the Department of Education will host webinars that will walk you through the process of accepting an application, verifying student eligibility and entering the application into the Department of Education online data system.

“…The Department of Education will run the lottery process for all students in mid-July. We will provide your school with a list of all of the students who will receive an offer to your school, along with their contact information. At that point, we’re requesting that you reach out to these students, confirm their eligibility once again, and enroll them as soon as possible.”

None of this lends evidence to White’s contention during his confirmation hearing that the department was approving only “preliminary” acceptances in its letters to the schools.

Yet, White said in his email to the governor’s office that he planned to “take some air out of the room on the floor tomorrow…” and that he would “like to create (emphasis added) a news story about ‘the next phase’ of determining seats in schools…” He also said his planned strategy “would allow us to talk through the process with the media, muddying up a narrative they’re trying to keep black and white.”

The emails revealed White’s plans for deliberate duplicity, a concerted effort to mislead a legislative committee poised to determine whether or not he would be confirmed for his position, as well as the media and the public. Yet, after news of the email message broke in the Monroe News-Star, he attempted to defend them by saying there was “nothing inappropriate” about the emails.

He insisted that DOE has planned all along to take a closer look at private schools accepting large numbers of voucher students. He said his note to Plotkin and Palmieri referred only to the timing of making public the next step in the process.

The letter, however, which makes no mention of any additional steps in the approval process, went out to 115 schools, most of them church affiliated, that have been approved for nearly 5,000 vouchers.

Besides the New Living Word School in Ruston, there also is the BeauVer Christian School in Beauregard Parish whose owner was sentenced to four years probation and ordered not to conduct any financial transactions on behalf of the school. That school was approved for 119 vouchers.

Then there is Eternity Christian Academy in Westlake in Calcasieu Parish, approved for 135 vouchers. That school, to support its teaching that the earth is only 6,000 years old, uses textbooks that portray the fictional Loch Ness monster as a real, modern-day dinosaur as some sort of convoluted means of debunking evolution.

Such is the nature of Piyush Jindal’s education reform in the only state in the U.S. where florists must be licensed but there are no accountability standards for charter schools and no certification requirements for charter school teachers.

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Did Nungesser use Plaquemines Parish 911 email list to hawk Piyush host at his January fundraiser? Did he get anything?

Posted in Campaign Contributions, Ethics, Governor's Office, Politicians, Public Records on July 3, 2012| Leave a Comment »

Did Plaquemines Parish President Billy Nungesser access parish computer emails to solicit attendance (read: contributions) at a January fundraiser following his unsuccessful challenge to Jay Dardenne for the state’s second-highest office last October?

A better question might well be did he receive any contributions at the Jan. 17 fundraiser at the Grand Oaks Mansion in New Orleans’ Mardi Gras World, co-hosted by Gov. Piyush Jindal?

LouisianaVoice has received a complaint that Nungesser may have solicited attendance (and contributions) via email addresses accessible only through the parish 9-1-1 call line for a fundraiser to pay off debts from his 2011 lieutenant governor’s race.

“The only way that I believe that Billy Nungesser could have accessed my email address would be through the 9-1-1 parish call line,” one Plaquemines Parish resident wrote. “Citizens can register to receive alerts if there’s a hurricane, an evacuation, a hazardous spill, ferry’s out, etc., but it should be off-limits to political fundraisers,” the writer said, adding, “but this IS Bobby Jindal’s Louisiana.”

That was in apparent reference to Jindal’s endorsement of Nungesser in last October’s race against Dardenne, won by Darden with 53.1 percent of the vote.

The emailed invitation said, “You’re invited to join Governor Bobby Jindal at a fundraiser for bill Nungesser Tuesday, Jan. 17, 2012 from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. (at) Grand Oaks Mansion in Mardi Gras World, 1380 Port of New Orleans Place, New Orleans.”

The invitation also said a “private patron party” would be held from 6 p.m. to 7 p.m.

The bottom of the invitation offered potential donors the options of being a “Patron,” with four tickets as a member of the $5,000 “Host Committee” and attendance at the “private patron party,” a “Sponsor,” with two tickets for a $2,500 contribution, and an “Attendee” with one ticket in exchange for a $1,000 contribution.

Potential attendees were given the option of making their contributions (in advance) via American Express, Discover or Visa, with spaces provided for cardholders’ names, card numbers, expiration dates, security codes and cardholders’ signatures.

Even though the deadline on the invitation was given as Jan. 10, Nungesser’s email was sent three days later, on the 13th, an indication that advance reservations might not have been coming in as hoped, despite the attraction of the governor.

Before Nungesser’s email, the Plaquemines Parish resident who complained to LouisianaVoice said, “I got similar things promoting David Vitter (YUK), Bill Bubrig (who lost the race for Plaquemines Parish sheriff by 12.5 percentage points last November) and Jindal stuff, too. I am a registered Democrat. My email was not on any church list (that would be illegal, too, but we know that is going on) or any other community or political list likely to be accessed by Nungesser.”

The reference to church lists brings to mind Jindal’s visits to protestant churches in north Louisiana last year. An observer at one of those churches recalled seeing a clipboard being circulated during church services at a time when Jindal was giving his testimonial for church members to provide their names, telephone numbers and mailing and email addresses.

Not only was there an indication of slow RSVPs for the bash last January, there is also an even stronger indication that the event was a complete flop.

A check of Nungesser’s campaign finance reports shows that he received no contributions in all of 2012 and in fact, also received none in December of 2011, the month before the event.

In fact, the campaign finance report shows that he received only seven contributions of $500 or more in November, from Nov. 2 to Nov. 17, totaling only $16,500.

If he did receive any contributions as a result of his Jindal party in January, he neglected to file the legally-required campaign finance reports.

It wouldn’t be his first brush with authority—and ethics, however. In June of 2010, it was reported by Legislative Auditor Daryl Purpera that Nungesser may have violated the parish charter and local law when he independently entered into two hurricane recovery contracts in 2007 without obtaining the parish council’s approval.

Nungesser was also cited in 2010 as owning an interest in a marina being expanded by BP to support its cleanup efforts from the Deepwater Horizon oil spill.

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