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Archive for the ‘Governor’s Office’ Category

The former state budget director says little has changed in the Louisiana Legislature’s spending mentality in the decade since he retired.

Stephen R. Winham, who served as the state’s budget director from 1988 to 2000 and as a budget analyst for the Department of Corrections budget, is also a vocal critic of the proliferation of professional service contracts.

“Back when the State Budget Office actually had some clout, budget analysts did a common sense review of professional services contracts,” he said. “But then Governor (Dave) Treen decided that the budget office had too much power and that no one should be questioning things his cabinet appointees did.”

Winham said after that, central oversight of state agency expenditures began to decline “and now nobody routinely second-guesses the need for professional services contracts above the agency level.”

The State of Louisiana Annual Report for 2008-2009, the latest report available, shows that the state issued more than $5 billion in contracts, fully 20 percent of the state budget. That figure is somewhat misleading because 1,083 contracts for $2.9 billion, nearly 60 percent, were in the form of cooperative endeavor agreements with other public agencies; $213.4 million was for interagency contracts, and $79.4 million was for intergovernmental contracts.

Still, the report showed there were 1,275 consulting contracts in the amount of $1.4 billion; 1,292 professional contracts totaled $178 million, 160 personal contracts came to another $7.4 million, and 1,531 contracts for social services came to $288.9 million.

Winham said during his tenure, his office presented an annual budget to the Legislature that cut funding to programs “below the line” of available funds. He said that list was a best effort at a fair representation of what people want and need from state government. “Every year the program ranked dead last on our list was funded,” he said. The program consistently ranked last by his office was an appropriation of about $3,000 for CODOSPAN (the Council for the Development of Spanish). It was the Spanish equivalent of CODOFIL (the Council for the Development of French in Louisiana),” he said. “Always last on our priority list and always funded.”

He said there were other local subsidies (now called Non Governmental Organizations, or NGOs) that were always funded, like basketball tournaments and festivals.

He said his worst experience was coming to realization that “when it comes down to a choice of politics and what makes the most sense, politics always wins. In a political environment, you can’t avoid that but when politics always supersedes everything else, it’s always frustrating.” His best accomplishment, he said, was getting the budgetary process automated and available on line. “We made the budget more accessible to the citizens.”

Given a choice, he said he would make a different career choice. “I felt I was spinning my wheels,” he said. “I would not do it over. I felt I was accomplishing things early on but I became less and less effective. The Joint Legislative Committee on Appropriations just started ignoring my presentations. Everything was just a formality,” he said.

“They say all politics are local, and they’re right,” he said. “That’s why (Gov. Bobby) Jindal goes all over the state handing out those little checks to local governments. It’s the same reason legislators want to protect their turf with those local appropriations and it’s also the reason Jindal won’t veto any of those appropriations.

“Jindal is always thinking about the next thing,” Winham said. “We need a governor who will think about the now.”

He said government is not a business. “When a candidate says he is going to make government operate like business, it’s just rhetoric. Government and business do not exist for the same purpose; government exists to serve the people and business exists to make a profit.”

Still, he expressed concerned about the Legislature’s apparent inability to rein in pork spending. He said he agrees with State Treasurer John Kennedy’s assessment that until individual legislators, working together in large numbers, begin to take their responsibility seriously, funding decisions will remain irrational, irresponsible, and reckless.

Winham said former Gov. Buddy Roemer was a strong fiscal conservative but where he cut in some areas, he added in others, so he never got credit for any cuts.

“I was surprised once when I did an analysis and found the least budget growth occurred during one of Edwin Edwards’s terms, his third term, I believe,” he said.

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State Rep. James R. “Jim” Fannin (D-Jonesboro) says he is opposed to Gov. Bobby Jindal’s proposal to sell state buildings as a means of raising needed one-time revenue in an attempt to offset a projected $1.6 billion state budget deficit this year.

At the same time, Fannin, chairman of the House Appropriations Committee said he is not averse to some other plans floated by Jindal, among them the sale of two state prison facilities in Winn and Allen parishes. Both facilities are state-owned but are privately managed by Corrections Corp. of America (CCA) of Nashville, TN., and the GEO Group of Boca Raton, Florida, respectively.

“I am willing to discuss the selling of the two prisons because they have been operating of a cost of $8 million to $9 million less than what it would cost the state to run them,” Fannin said. He added that if similar cost savings could be duplicated, he would be willing to consider similar actions with other state prison facilities.

He said selling state buildings would amount to the state’s having to pay for them twice. “We would have to pay off the bonded indebtedness on the buildings and the tenants, state agencies, would have to continue paying rent to the new owners,” he said. “That would put the state in the position of paying for the buildings twice for the benefit of receiving one-time money.”

Jindal has estimated the sale of the buildings, all built during former Gov. Mike Foster’s administration, would bring the stat approximately $400 million in one-time revenue.

Fannin also serves as Chairman of the Joint Legislative Committee on the Budget and is a member of the House Executive Committee, the Joint Legislative Committee on Capital Outlay, the Legislative Budgetary Control Council, and the State Bond Commission.

A resident of Jonesboro, his district includes all or parts of the parishes of Jackson, Bienville, Winn, and Ouachita.

Other proposals that he said he is willing to consider include privatizing the state’s PPO health care plan and borrowing from future proceeds (securitization) of the state lottery. He said news accounts that quoted him as saying he would support the use of $100 million of one-time money to help plug the anticipated budget deficit were inaccurate. “I am willing to use as much one-time revenue as the Revenue Estimating Committee sees in growth for Fiscal Year 2012-13,” he said.

“The state is projected to have $400 million in growth this year,” he said. “Even with a budget deficit, there is projected growth but that’s a far cry from making up a $1.6 billion deficit. The state has just come through what we call in business a flat year. But in business, when you have a flat year, you don’t simply close the business, you adjust. I wish we didn’t have to be where we are but the process (economy) has brought us to this point. I hope there will continue to be future growth so that we won’t have to keep kicking this can down the road.”

Fannin said Louisiana has been compared to Alabama because of the similarity in population. “Alabama has far fewer state employees than Louisiana,” he said. While acknowledging that Louisiana has a state-run charity hospital system and Alabama does not and many of Louisiana’s state workers are employed by that system, he said, “Maybe Alabama has managed to address its health-care needs without the necessity of a charity hospital system.”

He said one of his biggest concerns is in the area of professional contracts awarded by the state, particularly by the Department of Education. “It’s absurd to have so many professional service contracts out there,” he said. “Kennedy (Treasury Secretary John Kennedy) has been raising this as an issue. Many agencies get around the requirement to obtain approval of contracts of $50,000 or more by awarding a lot of contracts for just under the required reporting level. There’s a tremendous amount of waste in those contracts. I understand (Sen. Ben) Nevers (D-Bogalusa) has been critical of state contracts, too,” he said.

The Department of Education, meanwhile, has responded to recent articles about contracts awarded by that agency.

Education Department spokesperson Rene’ Greer said the printout of department contracts provided by Kennedy was misleading because many of the contracts were multi-year contracts. One, for example was a five-year contract for $193,000 for a warehouse lease but when listed it appeared to be the amount for a single year instead of being spread over five years.

Moreover, she explained, many of the contracts were federal dollars and were contracts required by the federal government. Others were paid with moneys that went to local school districts and were not direct expenditures of the department. Still others, she said, were inter-agency transfers. “By the time you calculate salaries, expenditures for the Recovery School District, and other mandated expenditures, there was really very little left in the way of discretionary funds for the department to spend,” she said.

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The Alabama firm that threatened to fire its employees who provide security for 15 Baton Rouge state office buildings for complaining about their bounced or non-existent paychecks has itself been fired.

Former security provider, Inter Parish Security Corp. (IPSC) of nearby Hammond was brought back in to complete the remainder of the contract term of JAT Bureau of Protective Services.

JAT, of Montgomery, Alabama, said in a December 6 memorandum to employees that complaints “will not be tolerated.” It said that any employee “found to be in violation of this police will be given a written warning,” and that “further violations would result in termination.”

Instead, JAT has been terminated and replaced by the company it replaced on Oct. 1 when it was awarded a million dollar contract after bid openings last August. JAT’s contract was to have run through June 30 of this year with unarmed guards receiving a minimum of $8.50 per hour and armed guards getting a dollar more per hour. Supervisors were to have received a minimum of $12 per hour under JAT’s contract.

JAT employed 74 guards in 15 Baton Rouge state office buildings, plus employees in other state buildings scattered across the state.

IPSC held the state contract for three years before being underbid by JAT.

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When attempting to ferret out the hidden costs of state government, one can quickly become board, as in more than 500 boards and commissions—complete with more than 6,000 members.

Alabama, which has 250,000 more people than Louisiana, according to the 2010 Census, has only 25 boards and commissions. Texas, with five times Louisiana’s population, makes do with 110 though it, too, has a glut of education boards with 11.

But back to Louisiana where individual board and commission membership ranges from as few as two to as many as 164.

Sheer logistics makes compiling even a rough cost estimate for office space, utilities, member per diem and mileage payments, or staff salaries virtually impossible. There is, however, sufficient evidence of overlap and duplication to warrant scrutiny, especially in the face of budgetary shortfalls predicted to be as much as $1.6 billion for the coming fiscal year.

There are the usual suspects: the education and retirement boards.

Louisiana somehow has always seen fit to have several education boards:

The Board of Elementary and Secondary Education (BESE), the LSU Board of Supervisors; the Board of Regents for Higher Education; the University of Louisiana Board of Supervisors; the Southern University Board of Supervisors, and more recently, the Community and Technical Colleges Board of Supervisors.

So, why do LSU and Southern warrant their own separate boards? Why is there a need for both a University of Louisiana board (formerly the Board of Trustees for State Colleges and Universities) and a Board of Regents? No one has ever answered that question but each has its very own office space, board members, and staff.

But wait. While much has said about those boards, Louisiana also has the Academic Advisory Council; the Adult Learning Task Force; the Education Estimating Conference (how does one estimate education?); the Louisiana High School Redesign Commission; the Local Education Governance and Administration Task Force, and the Home Instruction Program for Preschool Youngsters (HIPPY) Advisory Board.

Or, how about the Municipal Employees’ Retirement System Board of Trustees; the Municipal Police Employees’ Retirement System Board of Trustees; the School Employees’ Retirement System Board of Trustees; the Louisiana State Employees’ Retirement System Board of Trustees; the State Police Retirement Fund, and the Public Retirement Systems’ Actuarial Committee? And just what is the difference between the Louisiana Retirement Development Commission and the Commission on Public Retirement?

The legalization of gambling in Louisiana produced another whole line of boards. We have the Louisiana Gaming Control Board; the Louisiana State Lottery Corporation Board of Directors; the Louisiana State Racing Commission; the Bossier Parish Pari-Mutuel Live Racing Facility Economic Redevelopment and Gaming Control Board; the Calcasieu Parish Pari-Mutuel Live Racing Facility Economic Redevelopment and Gaming Control Board, and the St. Landry Parish Pari-Mutuel Live Racing Facility Economic Redevelopment and Gaming Control Board.

Then we have the Louisiana Children’s Cabinet; the Children’s Cabinet Advisory Board; the Children’s Cabinet Research Council; The Louisiana Children’s Trust Fund; the Child Care and Development Block Grant Advisory Council; the Louisiana Advisory Committee on Licensing of Child Care Facilities and Child Placing Agencies; the Child Death Review Panel; the Commission on Peri-natal Care and Prevention of Infant Mortality; the Governor’s Advisory Council on Safe and Drug-Free Schools and Communities, and the Select Committee on Women and Children.

Under the Louisiana Department of Agriculture and Forestry, there are a multitude of boards and commissions. These include:

The Agriculture Finance Authority; the Agricultural Commodities Commission; the State Market Commission; the Louisiana Feed Commission; the Louisiana Fertilizer Commission; the Louisiana Forestry Commission; the Livestock Sanitary Board; the Livestock Brand Commission; The Dairy Industry Promotion Board; the Dairy Stabilization Board; the Aquaculture Coordinating Council; the Aquatic Chelonian (turtle) Research and Promotion Board; Oyster Task Force; the Oyster Lease Damage Evaluation Board; the Fur and Alligator Advisory Council; the Identity Task Force of Seafood Standards; the Catfish Promotion Board; the Louisiana Pork Promotion Board; the Sweet Potato Advertising and Development Commission; the Louisiana Egg Commission; the Rice Promotion Board, and, of course, the Rice Research Board.

And how could we ever forget the Boll Weevil Eradication Commission?

In sheer numbers, however, none can top the various levee, port, and sundry water boards and commissions. How could we ever function without them?

Check ’em out:

The Bayou DeSiard Lake Restoration Commission; the Bayou Lafourche Fresh Water District; the Lafourche Basin Levee District Board of Commissioners; the Capital Area Groundwater Conservation District Board of Commissioners; the Cane Waterway Commission; the Ground Water Resources Commission; the Ground Water Management Conservation District Board of Directors; the Groundwater Management Advisory Task Force; the Morehouse Parish Lake Commission; the Poverty Point Reservoir District Board of Commissioners; the West Ouachita Parish Reservoir Commission; the Allen Parish Reservoir District Board of Commissioners; the Washington Parish Reservoir Commission; the White Lake Property Advisory Board; the Bayou D’arbonne Watershed District Commission; the Sparta Groundwater Conservation District; the Amite River Basin Drainage and Water Conservation District Board of Commissioners; the Waterways Infrastructure Bank Board of Directors; the Southern Louisiana Drinking Water Study Commission; the Lake Charles Harbor and Terminal District Board of Commissioners; the Morgan City Harbor and Terminal District Board of Commissioners; the Millennium Port Authority; the South Tangipahoa Parish Port Commission; the Greater Ouachita Port Commission; the Krotz Springs Port Commission; the Port of Greater Baton Rouge; the Port of New Orleans Board of Commissioners; the Red River Port Commission; the Red River Compact Commission; the Red River Development Council; the Red River Waterway Commission; the Red River; Atchafalaya and Bayou Boeuf Levee District Board of Commissioners; the Red River Levee Drainage District Board of Commissioners; the Sabine River Authority Board of Commissioners; the Sabine River Compact Administration; the Southeast Louisiana Flood Protection Authority East; the Southeast Louisiana Flood Protection Authority West; the Morgan City; Berwick Port Pilot Commissioners and Examiners; the River Port Review and Oversight Board; the River Port Pilot Commissioners and Examiners for Port Fouchon Board; the River Port Pilot Commissioners and Examiners Board (Calcasieu); the River Port Pilots for the Calcasieu Bar; Pass; and Main Ship Channel to Lake Charles Orange; Texas Board; the River Port Pilot Commissioners for the Port of New Orleans Board; the River Port Pilots for the Intracoastal Canal; the New Orleans and Baton Rouge Steamship Pilots Association; the New Orleans-Baton Rouge Steamship Pilots Examiners for the Mississippi River Board; the Lafourche Basin Levee District Board of Commissioners; the North Lafourche Conservation Levee and Drainage District; the South Lafourche Levee District Board of Commissioners; the Lafitte Area Independent Levee District; the Lake Borgne Basin Levee District Board of Commissioners; the Bossier Levee District Board of Commissioners; the North Bossier Levee District Board the Caddo Levee District Board of Commissioners; the East Jefferson Levee District Board of Commissioners; the Fifth Louisiana Levee District Board of Commissioners; the Pontchartrain Levee Board; the Board of Levee Commissioners of the Orleans Levee District; the Nineteenth Louisiana Levee District Board of Commissioners; the St. Mary Levee District Board of Commissioners; the Natchitoches Levee and Drainage District Board of Commissioners; and the Terrebonne Levee and Conservation District Board of Commissioners.

Thank goodness the state took steps to merge redundant levee boards after Hurricane Katrina.

But just for good measure, we have the:

• Aviation and Military Museum of Louisiana Board of Directors;
• Military Hall of Fame and Museum Governing Board of Directors;
• Military Museum Governing Board;
• Kenner Naval Museum Commission;
• Governor’s Military Advisory Board;
• Military Advisory Commission;
• Military Family Assistance Board;
• Veterans Affairs Commission;
• Louisiana Diabetes Advisory Council;
• Louisiana Diabetes Initiative Council;
• Joint Legislative Juvenile Justice Commission;
• Governor’s Advisory Board of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention;
• Juvenile Justice Reform Act Implementation Commission;
• Florida Parishes Juvenile Justice Commission;
• Task Force on Legal Representation in Child Protection Cases;
• Integrated Criminal Justice Information System Policy Board;
• Life Safety and Property Protection Advisory Board;
• Louisiana Commission on Law Enforcement and Administration of Criminal Justice;
• Law Enforcement Executive Management Institute Board;
• Louisiana State Police Commission;
• Louisiana Sentencing Commission
• Pardon Board;
• Parole Board;
• Louisiana Commission on Uniform State Laws;
• Forensic Strategic Task Force;
• Domestic Violence Law Enforcement Training Task Force;
• Governor’s Task Force on DWI-Vehicular Homicide;
• Homeland Security Advisory Council;
• State Council for Interstate Adult Offender Supervision;
• Louisiana Law Institute;
• National Consortium for Justice Information and Statistics;
• Council on Peace Officer Standards and Training;
• Interagency Council on Prevention of Sex Offenses;
• Sexual Assault Task Force;
• Eastern New Orleans Interstate Oversight Commission;
• Greater New Orleans Expressway Commission;
• Senate Select Committee for Oversight of Greater New Orleans Expressway Commission;
• Louisiana Byways Commission;
• Manchac Parkway Commission;
• Mississippi River Parkway Commission;
• Mississippi River Road Commission;
• Mississippi River Bridge Authority;
• Crescent City Connection Oversight Commission;
• Highway 1 Task Force;
• I-49 North Extension Feasibility and Funding Task Force;
• I-49 South Project Task Force;
• Ouachita Expressway Authority;
• River Parishes Transit Authority;
• Southern Rapid Rail Transit Commission;
• Incentives for New Ventures and Economic Stimulation (INVEST) Commission;
• Louisiana Investment in Infrastructure for Economic Prosperity Commission;
• Louisiana Economic Development Corporation;
• Economic Estimating Conference;
• North Louisiana Economic Development Board;
• Louisiana Prosper Commission;
• Small Business Entrepreneurship Commission;
• Louisiana Workforce Commission;
• Louisiana Workforce Investment Council;
• Occupational Forecasting Conference;
• Greater New Orleans Biosciences Economic Development District Board of Commissioners;
• Legislative Budget Control Council
• Revenue Estimating Conference;
• Small Business Task Force;
• Small Business Compliance Advisory Panel;
• Solution to Poverty Network Council;
• Southern Growth Policies Board;
• Workforce Competitiveness Task Force;
• Louisiana Commission on Marriage and Family;
• Life Management and Marriage and Relationship Skills Course Study Task Force;
• Marriage/Family Therapy Advisory Committee

All this has given me a migraine so if you will excuse me, I think I’ll go lie down now. There’s probably a board or commission or a study task force for that.

Got a news lead for Louisiana Voice to investigate? Have a suggestion for a story? Your identity will never be revealed. Just send an email to louisianavoice@cox.net

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When Buddy Roemer was elected governor in 1987, one message that he seemingly never tired of repeating was that if elected, he would board up the top three floors of the Louisiana Department of Education.

Had he made good on that one promise, he might still be governor.

The Department of Education has long been criticized by lawmakers as being far too top-heavy in administrative personnel while short-changing students in the classroom. And while the number of administrators and bureaucrats in the department may indeed be high, when it comes to creative ways in which to spend taxpayer dollars—federal or state—there doesn’t appear to be any agency in state government that can match Education in pure gooneybabble spending.

In Fiscal Year 2008-2009, the last year for which figures were made available, the department handed out 1,009 contracts totaling nearly $130.1 million. The previous year was even worse. In the year ending June 30, 2008, it issued 1,395 contracts totaling $162.2 million. That comes to more than 2.400 contracts worth over $292 million in just two years.

The contracts, issued to individuals, state and federal agencies, non-profit groups, churches, and corporations, ranged from as little as $500 to more than $8 million.

Granted, much of the money was federal dollars and some of the contracts were inter-agency pacts, meaning money was simply transferred from one state entity to another.

But a $94,000 contract to Sports 4 Kids that ran from Aug. 18, 2008 to June 15, 2009 that calls for the contractor to provide a program to help students learn “valuable social skills through organized play on their recess and lunch periods” has to raise a few eyebrows. How did we ever learn to play without Sports 4 Kids?

Or how about the back-to-back contracts issued to Joy Corporation of Zachary? One nine-month contract from Jan. 1 through Aug. 31, 2007, for $220,000 and paid with 100 percent federal funds called on Joy to provide students in grades K-12 with “high quality youth development services that support student learning, including tutoring and recreation.”

The next year Joy, founded by Ron Jackson, a former state employee who was recently fired as interim Superintendent of Schools for the City of Baker after only 17 days on the job, did even better, receiving a 10-month contract running from Oct. 1, 2007 through Aug. 31, 2008, that was for the same services but the amount was increased to $263,295.

Some of the contracts were with individuals. One such 11-month contract for $48,800, called for the contractor to provide consulting services to the New Orleans Recovery School District Central Office “to assist with the creation of sustainable relationships with professional unions.”

The $341,465.48 contract to Peter A. Mayer Advertising was simply for a six-month public relations campaign “to establish a positive image of high school redesign.”

CN Resource, LLC, received a contract for $850,000 that ran from May 1, 2006 through April 30, 2007 “to assist the state in ensuring program integrity and assessing compliance of specified participating agencies with USDA Child Nutrition Program.” That, however, apparently was not sufficient because a contract for $32,900 was then awarded an individual from Oct. 1, 2007 through September 30, 2008, “to review program records and (to) conduct nutrient analysis of one week of menus to report on compliance with state and federal dietary program.”

Nine contracts of $76,000 each ($684,000 total) were awarded to three separate non-profit organizations. Seven of those were to various chapters of Families Helping Families. The other two were awarded to Bayou Land Families and Northshore Families and each of the nine contract descriptions called for providing resources, direct support, materials, and training to families, educators and service providers of students with disabilities.

Sixty-eight contracts of $11,644 each ($791,792 total) were awarded to various churches in locations that were virtually impossible to determine to operate community-based tutorial programs from September 2008 through June 2009.

Others were simply eye-popping in their size and the description of services:

• $3.2 million to Catapult Learning, LLC to “provide high quality research-based professional development opportunities, materials, and services” that support schools, families, and students;

• $$558,000 to an architect for an environmental assessment for demolition of multiple schools in the New Orleans Recovery School District (RSD);

• $1 million for architectural services for construction of new schools and repair of existing schools;

• $1.5 million for demolition of an elementary school;

• $2.18 million for an architect to design bid documents for demolition of a school;

• $2.1 million for architectural services for school construction;

• $2.33 million for architectural services for school construction;

• $2.5 million for architectural services for school construction;

• $4.1 million for architectural services for school construction;

• $8.1 million for architectural services for construction of modular school sites for New Orleans RSD.

There were others, of course–hundreds and hundreds. Whether it is for workshops, presentations, keynote addresses, leadership training, meeting planners, redesign, enhancements, mentoring, if it can be imagined and justified, it would appear to be a candidate for funding of some description. With all the rhetoric about deficits and cutbacks to higher education and public health, the money still seems to flow freely through the labyrinth that is the Louisiana Department of Education.

And no one appears to be minding the store.

When the Louisiana Legislature convenes on April, lawmakers may wish to ask State School Superintendent Paul Pastorek some uncomfortable questions that go beyond the mere approval of RSD Superintendent Paul Vallas’s use of a state vehicle for a few dozen personal trips to Chicago.

Gov. Bobby Jindal, meanwhile, may wish to reprise Roemer’s plans for the Department of Education way back in ’87. Those plans, after all, were never implemented.

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