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House hits new low in not overriding Jindal’s tax renewal veto; even Louisiana Baptist Convention loses its backbone

Posted in Governor's Office, House, Senate, Legislature, Legislators, Taxes, Transparency on June 19, 2011| 5 Comments »

Is it possible that by letting his national aspirations get in the way of the public will Gov. Bobby Jindal has betrayed the citizens of the State of Louisiana?

Is it possible that he ignored his own words written 14 years ago because he was blinded by the lights of a bigger and more alluring playing field?

Is it possible that the siren song of higher office may have drowned out the governor’s ability to hear his own constituents?

Is it possible that Jindal’s rhetoric about no new taxes coupled with his obsession with privatizing state agencies in exchange for a financial quick fix could have caused him to turn his back on $48 million in revenue for the state treasury?

Sadly, yes, yes, yes, and yes.

Is it also possible that the 11 House members who switched their votes on the attempt to override the governor’s veto of the cigarette tax renewal represented politics as usual in Louisiana?

Add one more shameful yes.

On the vote to renew the tax, there were 70 yeas, 30 nays, and five no-shows.

On the vote to override the governor’s veto of the tax renewal, only 58 displayed sufficient courage to stand up to Jindal–12 votes short of the necessary two-thirds needed.

Let’s take a look at the voting on the veto override:

Of the five no-shows in the original vote, two voted in favor of the override. They were James Armes (D-Leesville), and Barbara Norton (D-Shreveport).

Billy Chandler (R-Dry Prong), George Cromer (R-Slidell), and Noble Ellington (R-Winnsboro) were also absent on the first vote but came back to vote against overriding Jindal’s veto.

For the most gutless act, we turn to Mickey Guillory (D-Eunice), Clifton Richardson (R-Baton Rouge), and Charmaine Sitaes (D-New Orleans). Each of the three voted to renew the tax but wilted under pressure, choosing to take a walk on the override vote when they were really needed. Can you say spineless?

Of the 11 members who originally voted to renew the tax but switched their votes to help kill the override two were Democrats: Robert Billiot of Westwego and Jim Fannin of Jonesboro. The others were all Republicans: Stephen Carter and Hunter Greene, both of Baton Rouge, Nancy Landry and Joel Robideaux, both of Lafayette, Charles Chaney of Rayville, Frank Hoffman of West Monroe, Kay Katz of Monroe, Tom McVea of Jackson, and Thomas Willmott of Kenner.

You think that’s bad? As the TV commercials say, “Wait. There’s more.”

Just where was the Louisiana Baptist Convention in the days leading up to the override vote?

Good question.

Apparently all those trips in the state helicopter to Protestant churches scattered across the north Louisiana landscape has paid huge political dividends for the governor.

Good move, Guv. Apparently it’s not enough that congregation members can set themselves up for future campaign solicitations by obligingly providing their names, phone numbers, and email and mailing addresses when you pass around your clipboard at those church services.

But now Jindal’s staff chooses to lobby the Louisiana Baptist Convention into submission only weeks after the organization joined with other faith leaders to call for tripling the state’s cigarette tax to 36 cents. The state’s cigarette tax currently is one of the lowest in the nation.

Jindal’s Chief of Staff Timmy Teepell claims he offered no tradeoffs and that his meeting with Rev. John Yeats, director of communications for the Louisiana Baptist Convention, was simply a “gentlemen’s meeting,” with no pressure applied. He said he just wanted to meet with officials of the organization so he could explain the administration’s anti-tax increase position.

Yeah, right. And Rep. Ernest Wooton (I-Belle Chasse) confided to his fellow House members prior to the vote that he hoped there was a Santa Claus.

So how would Teepell, or Rev. Yeats, for that matter, explain how the Louisiana Baptist Convention went from advocating that the state’s cigarette tax be tripled to going strangely quiet on the override vote—after the “Come to Jesus” meeting with Teepell?

Jindal insisted that the renewal of the 4-cent-per-pack tax, scheduled to expire in 2012, was a new tax. That took a huge leap of faith, bad pun intended. Moreover, the governor didn’t even attempt to reconcile his position to veto the renewal of an existing tax with his support of increased tuition at state colleges and universities.

Nor did he distinguish that position from his advocacy of a 3 percent increase in state employee contributions to their retirement contributions—money not earmarked to pay down the unfunded liability of the retirement fund, but instead to help close a $1.6 billion state budget deficit.

When is a new tax not a new tax? Apparently when it’s a fee increase.

Here’s what some of Wooton’s colleagues had to say in support of the override in the hours leading up to the failed effort:

• Juan LaFonta (D-New Orleans)—“You cannot threaten or intimidate somebody who stands for what is right and stands up as a leader.”

• Eddie Lambert (R-Gonzales)—“I’m a Republican, a fiscal conservative, but this (override) is the right thing to do.”

• Sam Jones (D-Franklin)—“It seems we have no problem in taxing the dreams of our kids by raising tuition over and over.”

• Elton Aubert (D-Vacherie)—“I ask you today if nobody lobbied you on this bill and you had to make a conscious decision on what you know to be right, how would you vote?”

• Hollis Downs (R-Ruston)—“There’s a time for politics and a time for principle. This time, principle trumps politics.”

• H. Bernard LeBas (D-Ville Platte)—“Be the voice of the people back home and not the voice of the people in the back of the chamber.” (Teepell and other members of the governor’s staff observed the vote from the rear of the chamber.)

• Barbara Norton (D-Shreveport)—“We have an opportunity to let our light shine throughout the state. Let’s stand as a full body.”

• Thomas Carmody, Jr. (R-Shreveport)—“My seatmate has said repeatedly, ‘Is no one going to go down and defend the governor on this?’ Damn, y’all, I can’t! Why? Because this does not make common sense.”

• Jerome Richard (I-Thibodaux)—“I’m not voting for a tax increase, but this is not an increase. I voted for a renewal and I’m gonna stick by it.”

• House Speaker Jim Tucker (R-Terrytown)—“I don’t like objecting to a position my governor has taken. When two men agree on everything, only one man is thinking. That’s the case today. I have to vote to override to maintain my integrity. I urge all of you to maintain your integrity today so you’ll sleep well tonight.”

• HB 591 author Harold Richie (D-Bogalusa)—“There’s nothing I can take away from you, nothing that I can give you except the opportunity to vote your convictions and vote for your people back home.”

• Walt Leger (D-New Orleans)—“ If you vote against (the override) you will be initiating a tax. You will be creating a $50 million hole in the budget. Think about what was said to you when you were asked not to override the veto.”

• John Bel Edwards (D-Amite)—“ It takes a lot of courage to take on the governor, especially when he is demonstratively and egregiously wrong.”

• Joe Harrison (R-Gray)—“There’s one way to avoid the tax: stop smoking.”

• Wooton—“Man up.”

• Jeffery Arnold (D-New Orleans)—“I told my mother this morning that I didn’t know if we had the votes to override. Her response was, ‘That’s stupid.’”

• Ricky Hardy (D-Lafayette)—“Our governor raised the price of education and lowered the price of cigarettes. What’s wrong with this picture?”

But for the best, most revealing quotes of all, we need only go directly to the source of all the controversy—Gov. Jindal himself.

It was 14 years ago, 1997, when the Secretary of the Louisiana Department of Health and Hospital, a 26-year whiz-kid named Bobby Jindal authored a 10-page paper entitled “Choice-Sensitive Health Costs.”

Here, then, are excerpts of that paper, in the governor’s own words:

• “Smoking is blamed for more deaths than all cancers not caused by tobacco combined.”

• “….Smoking causes 7.3 percent of the nation’s health care costs. Inflated to $21.2 billion in 1983 dollars, this corresponds to $87 per American or $393 per adult smoker.”

• “It is unfair to others without these habits to take resources away from them to cover the health care expenses of risk-takers.”

• “The enormous health care costs generated by unhealthy lifestyle choices cannot be ignored as society attempts to frame a health care system which is both just and efficient.”

• “….Studies cited document billions of dollars in health care costs and millions of years lost to premature deaths caused by smoking.”

• “Some non-smokers are beginning to question why they should subsidize the health expenditures of others.”

• “Though cigarette prices have been rising 6 percent to 19 percent every year since 1980, federal excise taxes stayed constant at 16 cents a pack from 1983 until the 1990 budget crisis.”

• “Reducing cigarette consumption would dramatically improve Americans’ health status and lower expenditures.”

• “Currently, the 24-cent-per-pack federal tax raises $5.2 billion annually.”

• “Raising the tax would also reduce the incidence of smoking; every 10 percent increase in cigarette prices reduces adult demand by 4 percent and teenage demand by 12 percent to 14 percent.”

Wait. What? Did he really say that increasing taxes on cigarettes would reduce the incidence of smoking?

Yep.

Anyone see a potential TV ad for a Democratic opponent?

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Administration uses semantics to deny public information

Posted in Governor's Office, House, Senate, Legislature, Legislators, Taxes, Transparency, Veto on June 18, 2011| 9 Comments »

The administration of Gov. Bobby Jindal continues to cloak itself in a veil of secrecy despite the governor’s spurious boasts of having the most transparent administration in America.

His actions fly in the face of his bogus claims of accountability and openness.

After his ridiculous and shameless exhibition of releasing his birth certificate—as if it mattered or more significantly, as if anyone cared—one would think he’d be eager to comply with a simple request to divulge his federal income tax returns.

One would think wrong.

One would think that after the public relations disaster that occurred at the confirmation hearings of his secretary of the Department of Health and Hospitals, he would be equally eager to comply with a public records request as to the identity of the financial analyst selected to conduct an assessment of the Office of Group Benefits.

Again, one would think wrong.

LouisianaVoice made both requests—in vain, it turns out….again.

Not that we’re surprised; this administration doesn’t even respond to legislative committees. Why should we be any different?

We thought it would great to let all those north Louisiana Protestant churches that Jindal loves to visit know how well the governor backs up the talk with the walk. In other words, does he back his professed belief with support of his church? That information would be contained in his federal tax return, so we made the request.

It wasn’t an original idea. The San Antonio Express recently published an interesting story about Texas Gov. Rick Perry and his religious commitment. Perry, the story said, earned almost $2.7 million from 2000, when he became governor, through 2009.

Any good Baptist will tell you that you should to tithe 10 percent. Perry’s donations to churches and religious organizations totaled $14,243—one-half of one percent, or one-twentieth of the minimum recommended dosage.

Surely Jindal would not be so crass. Certainly, he would reveal what a generous giver he is. After all, he appears to like nothing better than jumping in a state police helicopter and hopping up north to visit a church in say, Shongaloo, Haughton, or Mansfield.

So, we asked.

The response, from Elizabeth B. Murrill, deputy executive counsel to the governor, was short and sweet:

“We are in receipt of your public records request for copies of Governor Jindal’s federal income tax returns for the years 2003 through 2010. These documents are not public record.”

We’ve been writing for some time now about Jindal’s efforts to privatize the Office of Group Benefits (OGB). After negotiations with Goldman Sachs fell through pursuant to a request for proposals (RFP) for a financial analyst to conduct an assessment of OGB, the Division of Administration (DOA) promptly issued a second RFP.

The deadline for the submission of proposals on the second RFP was June 6 with the “probable” date for naming of the financial analyst being June 15.

LouisianaVoice learned that on June 6, a representative or representatives of DOA appeared at OGB and retrieved the proposals, reportedly from three companies, including Goldman Sachs.

June 15 came and went, so we called DOA Chief of Staff Dirk Thibodeaux and his answer was decidedly curt. “If you read the RFP, you saw that June 15 was a tentative date,” he said.

“Well, since today is June 15, has there been a tentative decision?” we asked.

“No.”

So, we waited a few more days and asked again—this time as a formal public records request.

The response was clear indication that DOA has dug in its heels:

“In accordance with R.S. 44:1, et seq., this letter acknowledges our receipt of your correspondence dated June 15, 2011, where you have requested information regarding ‘the selection of the financial analyst chosen pursuant to the RFP…on behalf of the Office of Group Benefits.’

“Having reviewed your request, we are able to inform you that the Division does not possess the requested records. Furthermore, no such record exists.”

By now, it’s clear that DOA is determined to conceal public information, even to the point of lying, so we fired off another email:

“We are getting quite weary of the Division of Administration’s policy of dodging legitimate questions to which the public has a full and complete right to know the answers. Now you are beginning to play with semantics. You have taken the word ‘records’ and used it as the basis on which to deny our requests.

“So, now we will try a different approach.

“We are aware that on the day the proposals were due at the Office of Group Benefits by close of business on June 6, 2011. We are also aware that on that date, a representative or representatives of the Division of Administration appeared at OGB and took possession of the proposals. Further, we are aware that the ‘probable’ date for the naming of the financial analyst was June 15, 2011.

“You have chosen to split hairs by seizing on the terminology of ‘public records,’ denying there were any ‘records’ that would be responsive to my request. Accordingly, we are now making the same request but applying that request to ‘public business’ as defined in the applicable section of the law below.”

“The Louisiana Open Meeting Law under R.S. 42:4.1 through 10 provides the methods by which public meetings are conducted. The statement of purpose of the Open Meetings Act states, ‘it is essential to the maintenance of a democratic society that public business be performed in an open and public manner and that the citizens be advised of and aware of the performance of public officials and the deliberations and decisions that go into the making of public policy.”

“We are all aware that you (a) have the proposals and that you are (b) withholding information on ‘the performance of public officials and the deliberations and decisions that go into the making of public policy.’ The citizens of Louisiana are legally and morally entitled to know what our government is doing. Gov. Jindal has repeatedly boasted of his ‘open and accountable’ and ‘transparent’ administration.

“We have played games long enough. We want this information and we want it in a timely fashion.”

We’re betting that this “open, transparent, and accountable” administration will ignore our request and continue to withhold information that you, the voting public, are legally and morally entitled to know.

We’re pretty sure of this because when the administration did comply with a routine request for innocuous records recently, we were instructed to make an appointment with one Kara Allen of DOA to arrange to pick up the documents. We did and she was kind enough to give us an appointment for 1:00 p.m. the next day.

When we showed up at the guard desk of the Claiborne Building, the guard called up to the seventh floor. Instead of allowing us into the DOA offices, a student worker was sent downstairs to the guard station with the documents.

We first thought that perhaps we must be carriers of some dreaded disease. But now we know that the disease exists in the administration itself and that its victims fear that a little sunshine may be lethal.

Whether the administration is responsive or not, we will have made our point.

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Notable Quotables (in their own words)

Posted in Governor's Office, House, Senate, Legislature, Legislators, Notable Quotables, Taxes, Transparency, Veto on June 16, 2011| 4 Comments »

“I want to hope that no threats were made…..I also want to hope there’s a Santa Claus.”

—Rep. Ernest D. Wooton (I-Belle Chasse), on the failure of the House to override Gov. Bobby Jindal’s veto of the renewal of a 4-cent cigarette tax.

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You can call him governor, you can call him Bobby, you can call him Piyush…..but don’t you ever call him inconsistent

Posted in Governor's Office, Health Care, Legislature, Legislators, OGB, Office of Group Benefits, Prison, Privatization, Teague, Transparency on June 16, 2011| 3 Comments »

Consistent: Unchanging in achievement or effect over a period of time; showing steady conformity to character, profession, belief, or custom; dependable, unswerving.

It’s an adjective that’s not been used very frequently in describing Gov. Bobby Jindal. It should be. The governor has been a veritable model of consistency. As ol’ Casey Stengel would say, you can look it up.

Jindal has consistently tried to unemploy state civil service workers in his repeated attempts to privatize their agencies from under them. He started with the Office of Risk Management, a relative small agency ($100 million budget) in the overall scheme of things.

Flushed at the ease with which that was accomplished, he next turned his eyes on state prisons, the Office of Group Benefits (OGB), and Medicaid.

Those weren’t as easy. The prison plan fell through, at least for this year. OGB has met with considerable resistance from judges, state employees, retirees, and legislators. And the Medicaid plan ran into an unexpected hurdle during confirmation hearings for the secretary of the Department of Health and Hospitals.

He consistently has been out-of-state on fundraisers, book promotion tours, or campaign appearances on behalf of other Republican candidates when he should have been home minding the store that was fast going broke.

He consistently visits Protestant churches, mainly in north Louisiana, to pass around clipboards with forms for church members to fill out, giving their names, phone numbers, mailing and email addresses for future fundraising solicitation efforts.

The only reason his out-of-state trips and church visits have stopped in recent weeks is because of a law that prohibits fundraising activities during the legislative session.

Jindal also has been consistent in withholding information from legislators, reporters, and even the state auditor. His Office of Economic Development refused to provide records requested by auditors who were attempting to perform a routine state audit of the agency. And the Division of Administration (DOA) simply refuses to disclose anything more than the time of day and more often than not, even that’s a half-hour late.

Then there was the infamous Chaffe Report. Without rehashing old news, Jindal hired Chaffe & Associates of New Orleans to perform a financial overview of OGB with the idea in mind to plug the data into his executive budget. When the budget contained nothing relative to the report, it soon became evident that the report’s analysis indicated privatization of OGB was not a good idea.

The public, press, auditors, and even legislators would never have known that, however, had Rep. Jim Fannin and Sens. Ed Murray, Karen Peterson, and Butch Gautreaux not pressed for the report. Even then, DOA attempted to withhold the document.

Jindal has been consistent in that he brooks no dissenting opinion.

During public hearings on governmental streamlining in October of 2009, Melody Teague, a contract grants reviewer for the Department of Social Services, testified against the administration’s streamlining proposals and was fired the next day. She appealed, but it took about six months for her to get her job back.

Then, on April 15 of this year, her husband, Tommy Teague, was fired as CEO of OGB—and he had not even publicly opposed privatization of his agency. He did, however, take OGB from a $50 million deficit to a $520 million surplus in a period of only five years.

His successor, Scott Kipper, had the temerity to tell the Senate Retirement Committee that if nothing changed at OGB, if there was no sale, no privatization, no third party administrator, there was not a single employee he would lay off at the agency. In fact, he told the committee, he had inherited a staff of excellent, dedicated employees. From that moment forward, his days were numbered.

His boss, Commissioner of Administration Paul Rainwater, had only a few minutes earlier testified that OGB staff needed to be reduced by 149 persons.

Finally, there are the confirmation hearings for Jindal appointees which thus far have been an unqualified—but consistent—disaster for the governor.

First, Rainwater sat at the witness table texting as Kipper was grilled by Murray and Peterson, never offering to come to his rescue by clarifying an answer or volunteering to rescue Kipper who twisted slowly in the wind.

Then, when Rainwater reversed himself on his promise to the Senate and Governmental Affairs (S&GA) Committee, made during that same hearing, to make copies of the Chaffe report available to them, Kipper was caught in the middle. His fate sealed, he resigned, effective June 24. At his final board meeting on Wednesday of this week, he received extended laudatory praise from the board.

The confirmation hearings have been the number one entertainment attraction this session.

That’s because of Jindal’s consistent persistence in trotting out nominees with baggage and expecting them to slip by Murray and Peterson. Invariably, the senators ambush the unsuspecting appointees with pointed questions about conflicts of interest or a lack of that now overused word, transparency.

With Rainwater and Deputy Commissioner of Administration Mark Brady, it was the refusal to come forward with the Chaffe report. With Bruce Greenstein, things took a little nastier turn when he refused to reveal the name of the winner of a 10-year, $34 million-per-year contract for DHH.

As secretary of the agency, he assured S&GA Committee members that he took a decidedly hands-off approach in the selection process for the contractor to install and operate the Medicaid Management Information System for DHH.

Despite that, he refused for more than an hour under withering demands to reveal the name of the contractor. When he finally relented, he revealed that the contractor was CNSI of Gaithersburg, MD., a company for whom he once worked.

Then, on Wednesday of this week, Ed Antie of Carencro, a Jindal appointee to the Board of Regents for Higher Education, took his seat in the witness chair to begin his confirmation process before the S&GA Committee.

Things got ugly early.

Murray started the carnage by asking an apparently innocuous question: “Do you have any outstanding contracts with the State of Louisiana?”

“No,” Antie assured Murray.

“Do you know of a company called Sun America?”

Antie shifted uncomfortably before answering. “I own a company, a holding company that’s dormant, that owns a company that owns a company that owns maybe 10 percent of Sun America. I’m inactive.”

“Have you ever heard of LONI?” Murray asked. LONI is an acronym for the Louisiana Optical Network Initiative, a state-of-the-art fiber optics network that connects eight major research universities—LSU, Louisiana Tech, LSU Health Sciences Centers in New Orleans and Shreveport, Southern University, Tulane University, the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, and the University of New Orleans.

“I politicked Sun America to give them a discounted rate for our fiber optics,” Antie said.

“I thought you said you were inactive,” Murray said. “Does Sun America have a contract with the Board of Regents?”

“They may. I was not involved in the negotiations and I have no idea what the contract value is,” Antie said.

“You were given a questionnaire and that question was left blank,” Murray said.

Antie, who heads up Central Telephone, replied, “I didn’t realize that a company from which I was so far removed was relevant.”

“Sun America has a contract with the Board of Regents in the amount of $531,000,” Murray said. “You first said there was no contractual relationship and now there is. Don’t you think that’s relevant?”

“I asked Sexton Gray (Gray Sexton, a Baton Rouge attorney who once headed up the State Ethics Board) and he said to recuse myself from any votes,” Antie said. “I’m not trying to hide anything. I took retirement from the telecommunications industry to serve on this board.”

“Which one of those companies that you mentioned owns Sun America?” asked Murray.

“Central Telephone is my company. It’s just a holding company. Central Telephone owns Network USA, about 30 percent, and Network USA owns Delta Media which owns 10 or 15 percent of Sun America.”

He said Charles Chatelain is the registered agent for Network USA, Delta Media, and Sun America.

“First you said you had no contractual relationship with the state and now we find that your company has a $531,000 contract with the Board of Regents,” Murray said. “You said you didn’t know, but you said you approached Gray Sexton for advice on your apparent conflict.

“In terms of ethics, you may be breaking the law,” Murray said.

Sen. Lynda Jackson (D-Shreveport) observed that Antie claimed that Central Telephone was dormant. “Yet, when you check corporate records with the Secretary of State’s web page, it shows that Central Telephone is in good standing, which means it has filed annual reports,” she said. “Its last report was November of 2010 and it shows that you are the registered agent.”

She said that ethics and conflicts of interest have become a recurring problem of the Jindal administration.

A check by LouisianaVoice also revealed that Antie made three contributions to Jindal’s campaign totaling $5,000. The contributions were made in August of 2007 and in August and September of 2010. His associate, Charles Chatelain gave $5,000 to the Jindal campaign in December of 2009; Network USA gave $5,000 in separate $2,500 contributions in August of 2009 and March of 2010, and Sun America contributed $3,500 to the governor’s campaign in november of 2010.

Jindal appointed Antie to the Board of Regents in January of this year.

At least that’s consistent with Jindal’s legacy of consistency.

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Notable Quotables (in their own words)

Posted in Governor's Office, Notable Quotables, OGB, Office of Group Benefits, Transparency on June 15, 2011| 1 Comment »

“The governor turned 40 last Friday. I thought as he got older, he’d get wiser. Apparently not.”

—Office of Group Benefits (OGB) board member Kenneth Krefft of Shreveport, on Gov. Bobby Jindal’s determination to privatize OGB despite recommendations to the contrary contained in a report by Chaffe & Associates—the company hired by Jindal to prepare the report.

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