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We knew Piyush was doing it to us, but this is ridiculous! Here’s the latest, absolutely essential state bid purchase

Posted in Governor's Office on May 21, 2012| 11 Comments »

BATON ROUGE (CNS)—A cursory review of requests for proposals (RFP) and bid advertisements by the State of Louisiana occasionally turns up some interesting reading for those who are prone to such mundane literature. But it is rare that an advertisement or RFP is as curious as a recent posting for bids that were opened on May 9.

It seems that the Division of Administration recently solicited bids for the purchase of condoms. In retrospect, the word “solicited” in the previous sentence could understandably be misconstrued, considering the fact that there was no clear-cut explanation as to how the condoms would be distributed and to whom.

Normally, it might be said there was no explanation as to the proposed use of the merchandise, but that might elicit unnecessary snickers and giggles, if not chortles and guffaws.

Nor is the quantity exactly clear. The invitation to bid asked for “52MM” of lubricated latex, reservoir end, smooth surface, assorted colors and “52MM” of non-lubricated latex, reservoir end, smooth surface, transparent color condoms.

The term 52MM is normally considered to mean 52 thousand-thousand, or 52 million. Using that standard definition, that would mean the state solicited (there’s that word again) bids on 52 million condoms of assorted colors and another 52 million of transparent color. That’s 104 million condoms.

If the MM had been in lower case, that would have been a completely different definition. If the bid had been for 52mm, that would have meant 52 millimeters. At approximately 25.4 millimeters per inch, 52 millimeters would convert to a little more than two inches. But again, that prompts the question of length, diameter, or circumference.

A more likely definition would be 520,000 because of a paragraph in the bid specifications that said, “Condoms are to be shipped to various sites throughout Louisiana [approximately 250 (sites)]. Minimum order shipped to any single location shall be two cases of 1,000 condoms per site. That would be 2,000 condoms shipped to each of 250 sites, or 500,000 condoms total.

The contract for the purchase of the condoms is for one year but at the option of the state, “may be extended” [stop laughing] for two additional twelve month periods at the same price.

The unintended humor doesn’t end there, however.

“The bidder must submit samples of each of the products to be supplied under the contract along with product literature for each of the types of products bid,” the bid specs said. “Samples of successful bidder will be retained at the purchasing office of the using agency. Any part of merchandise received that does not meet the quality standards and construction of the sample will be rejected and returned at vendor’s expense.”

Finally, the crowning punch line: “Any other samples received, if not destroyed in testing, may be returned at the bidder’s expense.”

Destroyed in testing?

Who wants to open that package?

No word, by the way, on the identity of the winning bidder.

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Tin Man Piyush Jindal has no heart; Senate bill freezing COLAs for most rank and file retirees passes by 20-15 vote

Posted in Civil Service, Governor's Office, Legislature, Legislators on May 13, 2012| 6 Comments »

First of all, let’s debunk a vicious rumor that’s been floating around:

There appears to be no truth to the report that Gov. Piyush Jindal has plans to suspend the payment of salaries of state civil service works in all months containing a vowel.

He does, however, intend to retain the right to suspend cost of living increases for state retirees—unless you happen to be a retired schoolteacher or a hazardous duty employee.

Sen. Jody Amedee (R-Gonzales) even attempted to exempt judges from the COLA freeze but he was joined only by Sen. Richard Gallot (D-Ruston) in voting in favor of that amendment.

It must be heart-warming to the judges to know that Amedee and Gallot, attorneys both, were trying to protect their interests over those of rank and file retirees who, Sen. Karen Peterson (D-New Orleans) was quick to point out, don’t earn six-figure incomes.

Apparently Amedee and Gallot were so peeved at not being able to take care of their friends in the judiciary that they ultimately voted no on the bill.

Senate Bill 740 by Sen. Elbert Guillory (D-Opelousas) passed the full Senate last Thursday by a 20-15 vote and now goes to the House. All future cost of living increases for retirees would be suspended until the pension systems’ assets cover at least 80 percent of their long-term liabilities.

Given the past performance of the state’s failure to live up to its own mandate to pay down the $18.3 unfunded accrued liability (UAL) of the state’s four pension systems, rank and file retirees and those who work in higher education could be waiting a long time for any cost of living increases.

It was the state, after all, that reneged on its self-imposed obligation to pay down the UAL in the first place and thus put the pension funds in the box they find themselves in today so who’s to say they can’t try to sneak that curveball by us again?

Sen. Francis Thompson (D-Delhi), one of 15 who voted against the bill, was quick to ask the most important question of the debate: when will the systems hit the 80 percent mark that would allow cost of living increases for retirees? “Would that be in the next five years, next two years or the next 30 years?” he asked.

Guillory, Jindal’s Senate lackey in the retirement overhaul fight, replied in typical lame fashion that it would be difficult to accurately calculate the timing.

Oh, that’s nice. Let’s approve an open-ended restrictive bill that will squeeze state retirees even more.

Thanks, anyway, Sen. Thompson. At least you tried to get an answer out of this administration. That’s proving more difficult than teaching a pit bull to like kittens.

Remember, if the state had the power and wherewithal to not live up to its requirement to pay down the UAL (as it surely did), it might well have the ability to actually inhibit the systems’ reaching the mandated 80 percent mark—indefinitely.

And since Jindal has proven himself a heartless overlord in his insistence that the UAL now be paid down by state employees who had no part in the politicians’ welshing on their legally-mandated promise, if he can require that the pension funds be balanced on the backs of civil servants, he and his equally heartless—and clueless—flunkies in the legislature can also place the onus on retirees.

Count on it.

For that reason, we thought you’d like the names of those who voted for this cold-blooded, unfeeling measure. Here they are:

• Robert Adley (R-Benton);

• John Alario (R-Westwego);

• Bret Allain (R-Franklin);

• Conrad Appel (R-Metairie);

• Norby Chabert (R-Houma);

• Dan Claitor (R-Baton Rouge);

• Page Cortez (R-Lafayette);

• A.G. Crowe (R-Pearl River);

• Jack Donahue (R-Mandeville);

• Guillory;

• Ronnie Johns (R-Lake Charles);

• Bob Kostelka (R-Monroe);

• Daniel Martiny (R-Metairie);

• Jean-Paul Morrell (D-New Orleans);

• Dan Morrish (R-Jennings);

• Ben Nevers (D-Bogalusa);

• Barrow Peacock (R-Bossier City);

• John Smith (R-Leesville);

• Mike Walsworth (R-West Monroe);

• Rick Ward (D-Port Allen).

Thanks, guys. Now just wait until you again try to give yourselves a pay raise. You think the backlash was bad two years ago? You ain’t seen nothin’ yet.

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Piyush, take heed: Pew Research Center doesn’t agree with your optimistic portrayal of Louisiana’s ‘robust economy’

Posted in Business, Economy, Governor's Office on May 10, 2012| Leave a Comment »

A Pew Research Center study released today indicates that Louisiana is the sixth-worst state in the nation in terms of chances of employees—any employees—getting a pay raise.

Pew Research Center, a nonpartisan think-tank conducted a study of economic mobility by examining the prime earnings period for residents in each state, specifically, the 10-year period between an individual’s late 30s and late 40s.

The survey employed three economic mobility measures to achieve its rankings: absolute mobility, which measures an individual’s wage increase over time, relative upward mobility and relative downward mobility. The latter two factors measure a person’s movement up and down the earnings ladder over time relative to his or her peers.

Of the nine states cited as exhibiting worse than average scores in at least two of the three parameters, seven have Republican administrations.

Nationwide, absolute mobility increased 17 percent but in many of the worse-off states, it was as low as 12 percent. Additionally, 34 percent of those studied ascended the earnings latter (upward mobility) while 28 percent fell in earnings (downward mobility).

While it may be a surprise to Gov. Bobby Jindal, who has been boasting to television hosts like Sean Hannity and anyone else who will listen to his banter that Louisiana’s business climate is among the best in the country, it is certainly no surprise to the working stiffs—particularly state employees—that Louisiana is one of only three states in which all three measures of economic mobility are significantly worse than the national averages.

The Pew report shows that Louisiana has a poverty rate of 17.8 percent and a median household income nearly $8,000 less than the national average and the state’s violent crime rate is among the country’s highest.

Here are the three factors used to determine Louisiana’s sixth-worst ranking:

• Absolute mobility change: 13 percent (national average: 17 percent);
• Percent with upward mobility: 28 percent (national average: 34 percent);
• Percent with downward mobility: 36 percent (national average: 28 percent).

With the state’s and nation’s upward and downward mobility figures almost exactly transposed, Louisiana citizens have to be wondering how Piyush can be so optimistic when extolling the virtues of the state outside our borders.

Jindal is likely to seize on the statement of Pew communications representative Liz Voyles who said, “Educational attainment is an extremely powerful driver of upward mobility from the bottom, and protects from downward mobility from the top and middle.” She said a college degree “quadruples a person’s chances of making it all the way to the top of the income ladder if they start at the bottom.”

The report’s findings that Louisiana also has one of the lowest high school graduation rates in the country might seem to dovetail nicely with Jindal’s proposed education reform measures were it not for Voyles’s caveat:

Poverty, particularly childhood poverty, has a major effect on a person’s mobility throughout life on a national level. “Growing up in a high-poverty neighborhood…increases a person’s chances of downward mobility by 52 percent,” she said.

The Pew report seems to reflect her words. Data show that all nine of the states with the worst economic mobility were in the top third for poverty and six of those were in the top 10.

Jindal, in all his euphoric pontification about the utopian paradise of quality education that lies just beyond the horizon of the passage of his education reforms, lays 100 percent of the blame for poor grades on teachers.

He has yet to give so much as a nod in the direction of the real root of the problem: poverty. Until he addresses the real problem, there is likely to be no real solution to Louisiana’s education morass.

Having said that, here are the Pew rankings of the nine worst states in terms of pay raise prospects, beginning with ninth worst and moving to the worst (giving, in order, the percentage of absolute mobility change, percent with upward mobility and percent with downward mobility):

• Alabama—12%, 27%, 32%;

• Florida—15%, 32%, 31%;

• Kentucky—13%, 34%, 35%;

• Louisiana—13%, 28%, 36%;

• Mississippi—17%, 26%, 36%;

• North Carolina—14%, 26%, 28%;

• Oklahoma—15%, 30%, 33%;

• South Carolina—12%, 26%, 34%;

• Texas—15%, 31%, 30%.

Which brings us to our suggestion for a new Louisiana State Motto: At least we ain’t Mississippi.

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Sen. Walsworth not above a little deceit to pull Piyush’s bill out of the fire; such is the Jindal brand of ‘good government’

Posted in Governor's Office, House, Senate, Legislature, Legislators, Retirement on May 10, 2012| 5 Comments »

It seems that Sen. Mike Walsworth (R-West Monroe) is not above a little chicanery and outright misrepresentation when it comes to salvaging a losing vote on behalf of Piyush Jindal.

When the Senate voted Wednesday on SB 47, which would change the computation of pension system benefits from an average of three years of compensation to a five-year average, the tally was 19-16, or one vote shy of the 20 votes needed.

Walsworth whined that he had been “pounding” on his computer during the vote and would like to have a re-vote. The Baton Rouge Advocate said he claimed that his voting machine malfunctioned. Either way, the Senate agreed, and approved the amended bill by a 23-13 vote.

But spectators in the Senate gallery clearly heard Walsworth tell Kristy Nichols, Gov. Piyush Jindal’s Deputy Chief of Staff, not to worry, that he would recall the bill.

Bottom line: there was no “pounding on the computer” and no “machine malfunction.”

But there was deception and outright lying on the part of Walsworth.

That’s the Piyush Jindal version of accountability, ethics and good government.

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Could loss of that $80.6 million broadband internet federal grant last fall have been deliberately orchestrated by ALEC?

Posted in Broadband, Internet, Governor's Office, Grant, Grants, Higher Education, House, Senate, Legislature, Legislators, Regents, Revenue on May 9, 2012| 6 Comments »

That $80.6 million Broadband Technology Opportunities Program (BTOP) grant to provide high speed broadband internet to rural areas of Louisiana keeps rearing its ugly head.

That’s the grant—the second grant—that Gov. Bobby Jindal eschewed and eventually lost when the U.S. Department of Commerce issued a three-page letter of revocation last October. Jindal had earlier declined to apply for a $60 million grant for early childhood education.

LouisianaVoice has obtained information that indicates the forfeiting of the broadband grant now appears to have been the brainchild of none other than the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), which last August bestowed its highest honor, the Thomas Jefferson Freedom Award, on Jindal at ALEC’s national conference in New Orleans.

The project would have created 900 miles of cable over 21 rural parishes in Louisiana and would have supported several Louisiana universities with expanded optical fiber networking capacity that could have complimented the Board of Regents’ $20 million Louisiana Optical Network Initiative (LONI) project, designed to extend high-speed networking capabilities in the state.

But Jindal, whose wife’s charitable foundation received funding from AT&T, preferred that the project be carried out by private companies—such as AT&T. He refused to re-apply for the grant because of what he called a “heavy-handed approach from the federal government that would have undermined and taken over private business.”

U.S. Sen. Mary Landrieu called Jindal’s reasoning “hogwash.” She said the grant would not have interfered with private enterprise and in fact, just the opposite was true. “We weren’t trying to create a government broadband system; it’s granting money for private companies to lay the cable,” she said.

Even more ominous, that revocation letter from Arlene Simpson Porter, director of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Division (NOAA), informed the Jindal administration, “Consideration of this adverse action may be used in future funding decisions for your organization.”

That could mean that Jindal’s decision could be used against the state in any future grant applications.

The problems started March 17, 2011, when BTOP staff informed the Board of Regents that the project was nine months behind schedule. A formal response was requested by May 13, 2011, but on May 17, there still was no formal response and a corrective action plan (CAP) letter was sent to the Board of Regents.

That was followed on May 26 by a conference call between BTOP staff, the Board of Regents and the Division of Administration (DOA) to discuss the CAP response. On June 14, the Board of Regents and DOA issued a response letter in which it was noted that the DOA Office of Information Technology (OIT) would provide project oversight to ensure that implementation of the BTOP grant would not be in direct competition with private providers.

The state was notified on July 6 that it was even further behind on the project and additional problems were encountered on July 12. On July 27, the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) requested that NOAA suspend Louisiana’s U.S. Treasury Automated System Application for Payment (ASAP) account pending corrective actions, including delivery of project benefits and compliance with award terms and conditions.

The Board of Regents on Aug. 8 provided BTOP staff with a chart outlining the planning process and goals. A month later, the Regents proposed an alternative design that included a new plan, new project schedule with new structure and milestones and a survey of service providers that would provide unspecified indefeasible right of use (IRU). An IRU is a contractual agreement between operators of communications systems, including fiber optics.

The Regents’ proposal was rejected by NOAA, which on Sept. 20 issued a 30-day notice of termination of award. That was followed by Simpson-Porter’s Oct. 26 termination letter.

Could the loss of the grant have been orchestrated by ALEC? Could the administration have deliberately stalled until the grant was pulled in order to comply with ALEC’s national agenda?

Perhaps we will never know the answer to that, but consider this:

As far back as August of 2010, at ALEC’s annual meeting in San Diego, its Telecommunications & Information Technology Task Force passed the following resolution:

• Whereas, it is the mission of the American Legislative Exchange Council to advance the Jeffersonian principles of the free markets, limited government, federalism and individual liberty, and

• Whereas, broadband information services sector is critical to growing the nation’s economy, enhancing quality of life through new and innovative applications, and enabling greater job creation, and

• Whereas, the rise of private investment in broadband technologies has dramatically transformed the way consumers work, live, learn, and conduct their daily lives, and

• Whereas, ALEC believes that innovation, private investment, and market competition, not additional regulations, should drive the continued deployment and adoption of broadband information services, and

• Whereas, the FCC has moved forward with a plan that would impose its authority on the internet and regulate the provision of broadband information services, and

• Therefore, be it resolved that ALEC voices its support of lawmakers and regulators avoiding the unnecessary, burdensome and economically harmful regulation of broadband internet service companies, including the providers of the infrastructure that supports and enables internet services, and further

• Be it resolved that ALEC urges that the FCC, Congress, and state regulatory and legislative bodies refocus their efforts on specific and limited initiatives targeted at ensuring that broadband service is made universally available and affordable to consumers, rejecting overly prescriptive regulation that would harm innovation, investment, and job growth, and further

• Be it resolved that ALEC’s opposition to the sweeping redefinition of broadband services be communicated to all ALEC members, and further

• Be it resolved that ALEC shall convey its support to the members of the United States Congress and Executive Branch.

The resolution was offered by Intuit, Inc., following a presentation by Eagle Communications on “concerns over federal grants being used to fund businesses to compete head-to-head with broadband service providers in areas that are already being served.” Intuit was one of the corporate members that recently pulled out from ALEC after the controversy over Florida’s “Stand Your Ground” law, a law strongly supported by ALEC, and the subsequent shooting death of a black youth by a neighborhood watch volunteer.

AT&T and Cox Communications, both major investors in cable TV and internet services, are also members of ALEC. AT&T even serves on ALEC’s corporate board.

Louisiana legislators attending that San Diego conference – at state expense – included:

• Former Rep. John LaBruzzo (R-Metairie);

• Rep. Robert Johnson (D-Marksville);

• Rep. Thomas Carmody (R-Shreveport);

• Rep. Tim Burns (R-Mandeville);

• Rep. Joe Harrison (R-Gray);

• Rep. Bernard LeBas (D-Ville Platte);

• Sen. Yvonne Dorsey (D-Baton Rouge).

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