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Can Jindal be right and all those Fortune 500 corporation CEOs somehow be wrong on the benefits of self-insurance?

Posted in Campaign Contributions, Contract, Contracts, Governor's Office, Health Care, Privatization, Transparency on July 13, 2011| 4 Comments »

Most of what has been written here in recent months about the proposed privatization of the Louisiana Office of Group Benefits (OGB) has been in the nature of political discourse laced with emotional banter.

Such is the nature of the beast when people’s lives are being toyed with by elected and appointed officials insulated in their detached bubble of infallibility—even in the face of growing evidence that their grandiose plans are skewed with false data.

This time, though, Gov. Bobby Jindal may well have overplayed his hand. It’s one thing when the rank and file employees, helpless to fight back, are opposed to his proposed sale of OGB. It’s quite another when you raise the hackles of the state district judges who voted unanimously to approve a resolution in opposition to the sale.

Perhaps it’s time for the State Inspector General, the East Baton Rouge District Attorney, and the Legislative Auditor to begin investigating the very real possibility of the existence of two separate reports by Chaffe & Associates of New Orleans.

That’s the report, in case you don’t recall, that Commissioner of Administration Paul Rainwater and Division of Administration (DOA) attorney Paul Holmes both said on separate occasions was received by DOA on May 25. When Rainwater first balked on his promise to make the report available to legislators, it was subsequently “leaked” to the Baton Rouge Advocate. The only problem with that was the “leaked” report was signed by its authors on June 3—ten days after Rainwater and Holmes said it was received by DOA.

Lending even greater credence to the theory of the existence of two reports is the fact that all documents are date stamped when they are received at DOA. The “leaked” report contained not a single date stamp on any of its 42 pages.

Did the original report, received on May 25, not say what Jindal wanted to hear?

That’s a question for investigators to ask.

In the meantime, DOA and Jindal are moving forward—but oh, so quietly. A second request for proposals (RFP) was issued when the first one fell through after LouisianaVoice broke the story about the administration’s intent to sell the agency that presently carries a $500 million surplus.

That story said that Goldman Sachs was recruited in October of 2010 to help draft the RFP and then was the only company to submit a proposal to conduct a financial analysis of OGB and then market the agency to a private sector buyer. Goldman Sachs subsequently withdrew when negotiations over legal indemnification broke down.

Rainwater and Brady were called before the Senate Retirement and Senate and Governmental Affairs committees. It was before the Retirement Committee that Rainwater said the state would maintain control over OGB because it was not selling the agency despite the first RFP that clearly said otherwise.

Rainwater said the administration was seeking a third party administrator to run the PPO, thus necessitating a second RFP seeking a firm to conduct a financial analysis and find a buyer.

A strange sense of déjà vu set in when it was learned that Goldman Sachs again submitted a proposal, one of three firms to do so. DOA, in that second RFP, said a contractor likely would be named on June 15—nearly a month ago—but as yet, no one has been awarded a contract.

Meanwhile, LouisianaVoice has been doing a little research of its own since the Division of Administration has chosen to operate secretively, in violation of the state’s public records law by ignoring numerous inquiries from us.

Even as Jindal, Rainwater, and Deputy Commissioner of Administration Mark Brady plunge ahead with their privatization plans for the OGB Preferred Provider Organization (PPO), perhaps it is time to take a look at national trends in the health insurance industry, something this administration, like a spoiled child who prefers tantrums as a means of getting its way, has refused to do.

Self-funded health insurance plans continue to grow in popularity in the U.S., according to the Society for Human Resource Management which said that 64 percent of workers in PPOs are in a self-funded plan, compared to those in conventional “fully insured” plans in 2008. That compared to only 5 percent in 1974.

With major incentives that include exemption from state taxes on insurance premiums, the ability to design their own plans, and invest money previously paid as premiums until it is needed to pay health expenses, it’s no wonder that Fortune 500 corporations have long been self-insured.

“The largest insurer in America is not Blue Cross/Blue Shield, but the nation’s employers,” said Jon R. Gabel, associate director of research and statistics at the Health Insurance Association of America. Gabel called the self-insurance trend “a quiet revolution in health care.”

Just who are some of the Fortune 500—and other companies—that have opted for self-insured health plans? Well two dozen of those have contributed $224,000 to Jindal’s political campaign and two have nine contracts with the state totaling $46.4 million.

Here is a partial list with contributions to Jindal in parenthesis:

• Johnson Controls—six contracts totaling $37.4 million;

• CH2M Hill ($8,500), plus three contracts with the state totaling $9 million;

• Pinnacle Entertainment ($8,000);

• Wal-Mart ($24,000);

• Delta Airlines ($1,000);

• Walgreen’s ($5,000);

• U.S. Marine, Inc. ($14,100);

• United Parcel Service ($15,000);

• Eli Lilly & Co. ($18,000);

• Citigroup ($15,000);

• McKesson Pharmaceuticals ($15,000);

• Georgia Pacific ($11,700);

• Hospital Corp. of America ($10,000);

• United Health Care ($10,000);

• Comcast ($3,500);

• Waste Management ($10,000);

• ExxonMobil ($6,330);

• Chevron ($5,000);

• Coca Cola ($5,000);

• Hewlett Packard ($5,000);

• Pepsico ($5,000);

• GMRI Food & Beverage ($2,500);

• Microsoft ($2,500);

• Amgen Pharmaceuticals ($2,000);

• Occidental Chemical ($2,000);

• Target;

• AT&T;

• Bank of America;

• Starbucks.

So, just what is that Jindal, Rainwater, and Brady know that the CEOs of these corporations are not smart enough to know–many of whom had sufficient wisdom to contribute to his campaign and two of whom are apparently intelligent enough to have multiple contracts with the state? That’s the question that the administration should answer, and soon.

Oh, we almost forgot. There was one more Fortune 500 corporation that has chosen to go the self-insured route as the most financially desirable method of providing health insurance for its employees.

The company?

Goldman Sachs.

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Jindal Orwell uses vetoes of legislative oversight to make strong case for his being more equal than 136 lawmakers

Posted in Governor's Office, Health Care, House, Senate, Legislature, Legislators, Privatization, Transparency, Veto on July 4, 2011| 7 Comments »

George Orwell, writing in Chapter 10 of his literary classic Animal Farm, said, “All animals are equal but some animals are more equal than others.”

Never was that well-worn quote more obvious than when, on July 1, 2011, Gov. Bobby Jindal cast aside the civics class principal of the three equal branches of government by exercising his veto power over legislative oversight of one of his pet projects—privatization.

The vote was 36-0 in the Senate and 100-0 in the House but Jindal still pulled rank on the Louisiana Legislature and vetoed SB-207 by Sen. Willie Mount (D-Lake Charles), as well as three provisions of HB-1 that would have given the legislature some say into the governor’s privatization of the state’s Medicaid program.

The vetoes left no doubt as to the determination of the governor to move forward with his sweeping privatization of several state government programs even though one report said that the proposed privatization of the Office of Group Benefits it dead—at least for this year.

Jindal has already privatized one agency a year ago, the Office of Risk Management, but failed in his efforts to sell three state prisons earlier this year.

He was less than specific in giving his reasons for the vetoes, saying only that the three provisions that he stripped from HB-1would delay implementation of one program while eliminating the flexibility of the Department of Health and Hospitals (DHH) to initiate changes in two other.

In one case, he said that legislative involvement could delay implementation of a program that provides care for youth who have behavioral health problems that put them at risk of being institutionalized.

Language in HB-1 would have required DHH to submit a report providing details of the programs structure, service delivery provisions, population served, and estimated costs for budget committee review at least 30 days prior to awarding a contract.

The administration is presently evaluating a dozen private companies that have submitted proposals to establish networks of health-care providers, including physicians and hospitals with which Medicaid recipients would enroll in an effort to cut costs and better coordinate health care. Ten of those companies are insurance companies.

Jindal’s “coordinated care networks” would use state revenue to pay private insurance companies and other private entities to provide the medical needs for two-thirds of the state’s 1.2 million Medicaid recipients.

Mount, chairperson of the Senate Health Committee, said she was disappointed in the governor’s veto.

“This (Jindal’s privatization) is a significant change in the way we are offering health care,” she said, adding that the legislature should be an “active and engaged” partner to ensure that health care outcomes are both improved and cost-effective.

Jindal also cited “contingencies” in vetoing the proposals but legislators earlier this year complained that Jindal himself included “contingencies,” in his original budget proposal, including the proposed sale of three state prisons that would have required legislative approval before the funds could be appropriated.

Rep. Eddie Lambert (R-Prairieville) said Jindal apparently had a different perspective on contingencies when considering vetoes as opposed to drafting his budget.

“I’m somewhat surprised he would veto those things because the more oversight you have in government, the better taxpayer interests are going to be served,” said Lambert, vice chairman of the House Appropriations Committee.

“The governor is not too keen on legislative oversight,” said Sen. Lydia Jackson (D-Shreveport), who said she has long been a proponent of the idea that the Legislature should exercise more independence in budgeting. She is vice chairperson of the Senate Finance Committee. “Maybe these vetoes will be the kick in the pants for us to exert ourselves a little more,” she said.

Not only did SB-207 receive unanimous support in both the Senate and House, it also was endorsed by the Louisiana Hospital Association, the Louisiana State Medical society, and the New Orleans Metropolitan Hospital Council.

Jindal, in his veto message, said Mount’s bill “terminates Louisiana’s Medicaid reform initiative, Coordinated Care Networks, as well as the Community Care Program on Dec. 31, 2014.

“Coordinated Care Networks will provide a medical home for 800,000 Medicaid recipients, providing better access to primary and preventative care, improved health outcomes, with an anticipated savings of $24 million in the upcoming fiscal year and $135.9 million in state fiscal year 2013.

“Inserting a termination date for this important reform and preventing Louisiana from improving the performance of outcomes in our current Medicaid system sends the wrong message, that we are incapable of providing better care to our people, and we can do no better than our ranking of 49th in the nation for health outcomes. I am not content with the outcomes of our current Medicaid program and am committed to reforming our Louisiana health care system.”

Now that’s making a case for being more equal than others.

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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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Senators receive Chaffe report, but can’t release contents; looks like Déjà vu all over again for LouisianaVoice efforts

Posted in Health Care, House, Senate, Legislature, Legislators, OGB, Office of Group Benefits, Privatization, Transparency on June 9, 2011| 1 Comment »

Members of the Senate and Governmental Affairs Committee received copies of the report of Chaffe & Associates of New Orleans that the Division of Administration, through Commissioner of Administration Paul Rainwater, has attempted to withhold from release.

It was only a partial victory for the committee, particularly Sen. Ed Murray who had moved successfully on Wednesday for the committee to subpoena the report on the financial assets of the Office of Group Benefits (OGB).

Conflicting reports said Rainwater reportedly was served with the subpoena late Wednesday but still refused to turn the report over to the committee, maintaining that the subpoena was not signed by a judge. Another source said Rainwater gave the report to senators before actually being served with the subpoena.

One report said the report was provided by the Legislative Auditor’s office which had, after several attempts of its own, been provided with a copy of the report but that could not be confirmed. That same report said that because the report came from the auditor’s office which is conducting an investigation, senators were required to sign a confidentiality agreement not to divulge the contents of the report.

Rainwater, when turning over the report, reportedly asked that senators not to divulge the contents because of sensitive information contained in the report.

Another source said the report was released to the members of the committee for investigative purposes relative to committee confirmation hearings only.

Confirmation hearings for Rainwater and Deputy Commissioner of Administration Mark Brady were held by the committee last week.

Apparently, the only thing know for certain is that senators have the report in hand but won’t release it themselves.

LouisianaVoice has tried unsuccessfully on five separate occasions to get DOA to release the report but DOA first said the report had not been received, then said the report was not final but on May 29, said it had received the report on the 25th but because it was part of the “deliberative process,” was not public record.

DOA attorney Paul Holmes further cited two court cases in which the Public Service Commission and the Louisiana Department of Insurance each prevailed in efforts to keep records from being made public. Those cases, however, in no way pertained to LouisianaVoice’s request for the report.

Chaffe had been retained to produce the report by the March 19 deadline for Gov. Bobby Jindal to submit his executive budget but nothing from such report was included in the budget. That led to speculation—and actual reports—that Chaffe reported that the only advantage to privatizing OGB would be for the purchaser to retain the agency’s $500 million surplus.

The Senate and Governmental Affairs Committee elicited a promise from Rainwater during last week’s confirmation hearing that he would make the report available to Sen. Karen Peterson (D-New Orleans) vice-chairperson of the committee.

When Rainwater backed out on that promise and instructed OGB CEO Scott Kipper not to produce the report, Kipper tendered his resignation, effective June 24. It was the second time within six weeks that OGB had lost a CEO.

Last week’s confirmation hearing also included Kipper, who was named to replace former CEO Tommy Teague on April 15, the same day Teague was fired just six months short of his qualifying for retirement.

The committee peppered Kipper with a withering barrage of questions about his disavowal of any knowledge of the contents of the Chaffe report. That led to Murray’s motion on Wednesday to subpoena the report.

Brady received and read the latest request by LouisianaVoice for the public record on Thursday but did not respond.

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Jindal’s appointees: bumbling bureaucrats or merely misguided, misunderstood, misbehaving miscreants? (apologies to WKRP’s great newsman, Les Nessman)

Posted in Governor's Office, Health Care, House, Senate, Legislature, Legislators, Transparency on June 9, 2011| 6 Comments »

The Department of Health and Hospitals, after more than an hour and a half of back and forth bickering with the Senate and Governmental Affairs Committee, on Wednesday finally relented and admitted that the winning contractor on a 10-year, $34 million-per-year contract was CNSI the same company that formerly employed the DHH Secretary.

[LouisianaVoice missed the call on that one. Everyone in the know said it would be CNSI but we thought the contract would go to ACS, a subsidary of Xerox which already has six contracts totaling $148.3 million and which contributed $10,000 to the Jindal campaign. We didn’t think that even this administration was brazen enough to give the contract to the department secretary’s old employer. Guess we underestimated the stones of this administration.]

The committee was meeting to conduct confirmation hearings on DHH Secretary Bruce Greenstein who has been serving as secretary since his appointment last July. All cabinet members must be confirmed first through the committee hearing process and then by majority vote of the Senate.

Similar hearings were held last week for Commissioner of Administration Paul Rainwater, Deputy Commissioner Mark Brady and Office of Group Benefits CEO Scott Kipper. Kipper has since tendered his resignation, effective June 24, and his nomination withdrawn.

Just as last week with Kipper and to a lesser extent with Rainwater and Brady, Wednesday’s hearings quickly became contentious when Greenstein and Undersecretary Jerry Phillips became embroiled in a standoff with the committee over release of the name of the winning contractor pending formal approval by the joint House and Senate Health and Welfare Committees.

At stake is the contract to replace the 23-year-old computer system that adjudicates health care claims and case providers, Greenstein said. He said a state statute that requires the official awarding of the contract to be done by the joint health committees prevented him from divulging the name of the winning contractor.

Sen. Rob Marionneaux (D-Livonia) reminded Greenstein that the committee had run into refusals to release information by the Division of Administration (DOA) in the case of a report prepared by Chaffe & Associates of New Orleans on the financial assessment of the Office of Group Benefits (OGB).

Rainwater, at last week’s hearing, promised to make the report available but later backtracked and instructed Kipper to release the report to no one. Kipper subsequently resigned over that issue.

One of the first orders of business of the committee on Wednesday was to unanimously adopt a motion by Sen. Ed Murray (D-New Orleans) to subpoena the Chaffe report.

“On Monday, we picked up the paper and see where DHH refuses to release the name of the successful contractor,” Marionneaux said. “You cited a statute but the statute you cited does not say you shall not divulge, just that you shall not award the contract. We’re not here to award the contract, we just want to know who the contractor is. So, who is going to receive the contract?”

Greenstein answered that DHH had requested a joint committee meeting to hear its recommendation but Marionneaux interrupted him in mid-sentence. “One of the questions is about the company you used to work for (CNSI). Who is the company who is going to receive the contract?”

Again Greenstein tried to invoke the statute governing the awarding of the contract but was again interrupted by Marionneaux. “You said the administration of DHH, and that’s you as we stand here today. So you’ve made that decision not to divulge. Are you telling me right now, today, that you’re refusing to tell this committee who’s going to receive that $34 million contract?”

“We believe that the law states that we should call on the (joint) committee and then make the announcement to that committee,” Greenstein replied.

“I read the statute,” Marionneaux said, his patience beginning to wear thin. “Are you refusing to tell this committee who is going to be recommended by DHH to receive the award? Yes or no?”

“I’m not going to be able to say today.”

“We’re sitting here trying to decide if you, the leader of DHH, are going to be confirmed and we have a headline in Monday’s paper that you want to keep a secret and a direct question is being asked and you refuse to answer,” Marionneaux said.

“I just don’t understand why this administration does this,” said Murray. “You are, I suppose, just following directions. I just don’t understand it.”

It was Sen. Jody Amedee (R-Gonzales), however, who really laid the issue at the feet of Gov. Bobby Jindal when he asked Greenstein who made the decision “not to tell us this information under oath?”

“This was from my department….”

“You are the department,” Amedee interrupted. “Who is the person above you? Who is your boss?”

“The governor,” said Greenstein.

“Can you tell me if this company you used to work for….whether or not they got the contract?” Amedee asked.
“I can’t discuss the matter.”

“You can, you just choose not to,” Amedee said. “It’s not against the law. Can you tell me they didn’t get it (the contract)? That’s what everyone here wants to know. We want to know if the former employer of the Secretary of DHH got the contract for $34 million. If they didn’t get it, this will probably all go away. The more that this goes on, the more we think they got it.”

Greenstein did say that he erected a firewall between himself and the bidding process once the request for proposals (RFP) was issued so that he would not be involved in the selection process. He admitted that he not only had worked for CNSI, but also had past professional relationships with the other three bidders.

At one point after Greenstein and Phillips repeatedly alluded to the “process and procedure” employed by DHH in awarding contracts, Amedee, in apparent frustration, tossed his pencil over his shoulder and turned away from the witnesses.

Committee Vice-Chair Karen Carter Peterson said, “You don’t want me to know, but you know. Is this what we call transparency?”

Phillips said once the contractor’s name is made public, “it’s the equivalent of an announcement.”

“Do you make the law?” Peterson shot back.

“I interpret the law,” said Phillips, who is an attorney.

“Then you’re not doing a good job. Mr. Secretary (Greenstein), I hope you’re paying attention. How many lawyers do we have on this committee? We make law and yet you choose to follow this gentleman (Phillips).”

“It’s all part of the process,” Phillips said. “It’s (the selection process) done in conjunction with consultation and direction from the procurement folks.”

“In conjunction with whom?” asked Peterson.

“They’re part of the Division of Administration,” he said for the first time, implicating DOA in the controversy.

Committee Chairman Robert “Bob” Kostelka (R-Monroe) finally broke in to say, “I don’t know the difference between firewalling and stonewalling but this committee’s concern is whether or not to recommend to the full Senate that these people should be confirmed for the jobs for which they’ve been nominated.

“The much larger issue here is the integrity of the entire DHH. We don’t care about your procedures. We’ve got to determine if we trust the integrity of the people before us. We’re asking you to put aside your procedures and protocol and answer our questions. Knowing that, I don’t see why you cannot make this committee aware if a former employer of this man is going to win a multi-million dollar contract from the state.”

When Phillips again attempted to invoke “respect for the statute,” Kostelka interrupted. “Again, sir, this has nothing to do with making the award. We’re asking who got the contract. It’s pretty obvious to us that they’re (CNSI) the one getting the contract.”

At that point, Phillips asked if he could confer with Greenstein. The two left the room for 16 minutes and upon their return, Greenstein, after a few more questions, said, “It is CNSI.”

Marionneaux then asked about communications between Greenstein and CNSI. Greenstein admitted meeting with CNSI representatives as well as lobbyists for the other bidders and to speaking on the phone and exchanging emails with all four bidders but insisted all communications occurred prior to issuance of the RFP.

Marionneaux then offered a motion that was approved unanimously that the committee issue a subpoena for all written and oral communication records between Greenstein and the four bidders “as they relate to the contract for services with CNSI.”

As the committee wound down its questioning, Peterson said, “I hope the governor is listening because what has been happening is not in the best interest of the people nor is it consistent with his purported policy of transparency.

“This gives the appearance of your wanting to hide something, particularly since we now know the contractor is your former employer and you wanted to keep that from us. The behavior of you and Mr. Kipper (in last week’s confirmation hearing) is unacceptable. We need to do better.

“Do not let anyone or this administration do anything to taint you as a person or your integrity,” she said to Greenstein, whom she said she respected. “There are those who will attempt to do that to people. They’ll serve ‘em up and throw ‘em under the bus. Don’t let that happen to you.”

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