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π-yush sued over constitutionality of contingency revenue in state budget, use of one-time funds for recurring expenses

Posted in Budget, Governor's Office, House, Senate, Legislature, Legislators, Revenue on January 15, 2013| 12 Comments »

Attorney General James “Buddy” Caldwell punted, Gov. Piyush Jindal wouldn’t listen and State Treasurer John Kennedy…well, he is, after all the state treasurer.

The three statewide Republican officeholders were named defendants in a lawsuit filed by two Republican state representatives on Tuesday. One of those was Cameron Henry of Metairie who Jindal had bounced from his vice-chairmanship of the powerful House Appropriations Committee in November after Henry voted for a motion by Rep. Katrina Jackson (D-Monroe) that the administration opposed.

Rep. Joe Harrison also was removed from the Appropriations Committee in the showdown vote in which the administration came perilously close to losing its move to award the third party administration contract for the Office of Group Benefits.

The other plaintiff in Tuesday’s lawsuit was Rep. Kirk Talbot of River Ridge.

Reached for comment, Talbot said the suit simply seeks a declaratory judgment on three major issues with which he, Henry and other legislators disagree with Piyush.

“We are not seeking an injunction,” he said. “We’re not trying to shut state government down. We are simply seeking a ruling on the constitutionality of the governor’s submitting an executive budget with contingency revenue and the spending of one-time money on recurring expenses.”

He said last year’s budget contained contingency expenditures. “That would be, for example, the inclusion of anticipated revenue for the sale of prisons or state hospitals. If the sales don’t materialize (they didn’t in the 2011 session), then we have a problem, a financial shortfall.”

Likewise, he said the suit is also seeking a decision on the requirement under state law that the governor’s executive budget “shall not exceed the official of the Revenue Estimating Conference (REC)” estimates and also per state law, appropriations from the state general fund and dedicated funds in the final, enacted bills comprising the state budget “shall not exceed the official forecast in effect at the time the appropriations are made.”

The official revenue forecast for fiscal year 2012-2013 at the time House Bill 1 was passed, as issued by the REC on April 24, 2012, reflected just over $8.1 billion in state general fund revenue available for appropriation.

Instead, the amount actually appropriated in HB1 was $8.34 billion, thus exceeding the REC estimate and the constitutionally-mandated appropriation limit by $240 million, the suit says.

The REC is required by law to meet at least four times per year—by Oct. 15, Jan. 1, the third Monday in March and Aug. 15 subsequent to final adjournment of the regular session. State law requires the REC to establish, by Oct. 15 of each year, an official revenue forecast for the ensuing fiscal year, that runs from July 1 to the following June 30.

State law requires that legislative enactment of the state budget must conform with a subsequent revised forecast issued by the REC by the third Monday in March.

“The REC did not meet by Oct. 15, 2011, by the third Monday of 2012, by Aug. 15, 2012 after adjournment of the 2012 regular session, or by Oct. 15, 2012, as required by law,” the petition says.

The Jindal budget also included $35 million in contingency revenue from the anticipated sale of New Orleans Adolescent Hospital and HB 822 directed State Treasurer John Kennedy to transfer $35 million of the proceeds from the sale or lease of the facility to the Overcollections Fund.

After numerous delays, the Jindal administration finally released the appraisals on the hospital property in November. That appraisal showed the property worth, at most, $20.9 million.

Rep. Neil Abramson (D-New Orleans) has questioned how the Jindal administration arrived at a $35 million estimate. “I was surprised to see the money in the budget at all because that property’s in my district and no one had ever said anything to me,” he said.

Welcome to the real world, Mr. Abramson. That the way the Jindalistas do business.

“…There is no reasonable basis for expecting the New Orleans Adolescent Hospital to, in fact, sell or lease for $35 million during the 2012-2013 fiscal year,” the lawsuit said. “As such, appropriations of those funds are, in fact, prohibited contingent appropriations.”

Henry, reminded that Piyush had already demoted him once, jokingly feigned innocence at first. “This is all Talbot’s fault,” he said. “I thought I was signing up to buy Girl Scout cookies. Next thing I know, I’m a plaintiff in a lawsuit.”

He quickly turned serious, however.

“We first sought a legal opinion from the attorney general and he told us he would not render an opinion on the constitutionality because that was a matter for the courts.

Gov. Jindal forced us to do this. He thinks he is right and we think we’re right. If we are ultimately found to be right, we can avoid a repeat of the practices that have put us in such a fiscal dilemma,” he said.

The lawsuit has been assigned to 19th Judicial District Court Judge Tim Kelley who is married to Jindal’s one-time commissioner of administration Angéle Davis.

Kelley, in another lawsuit, ruled in December that Jindal’s school voucher program unconstitutionally diverted public funds to private and parochial schools. That ruling is presently under appeal.

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π-yush Gump pens WSJ op-ed contraceptive piece advising National Republican Party that ‘Stupid is as stupid does’

Posted in ALEC, American Legislative Exchange Council, BESE, Campaign Contributions, Courts, Education, Governor's Office, Health Care, Higher Education, House, Senate, Legislature, Legislators, OGB, Office of Group Benefits, Recovery School District on December 14, 2012| 9 Comments »

It’s certainly refreshing and reassuring to know that the woes of running a state government laden with the ever-increasing burden of budgetary shortfalls has not distracted Gov. Piyush Jindal from his primary objective of tending to the more pressing needs of advising the national Republican Party on how not to be stupid.

Jindal, in his latest appearance on the national stage, has authored an op-ed piece in the Wall Street Journal in which he calls for over-the-counter sales of oral contraceptives.

This, by the way, is yet another in a series of instances in which Jindal makes himself available to the national media while ignoring requests for interviews from new media in Louisiana—a somewhat curious pattern of behavior for a man who insists he has the job he wants.

But back to that WSJ piece. Whether or not you agree with him—and on this issue, a case could certainly be made for such a policy—it is puzzling, to say the least, how a devout Catholic such as Jindal can endorse birth control in any form.

The Catholic Church, last time we checked, was unconditionally opposed to birth control and Piyush is such a good Catholic that he once claimed to have performed an exorcism during his student days at Brown University.

“As a conservative Republican,” he says in the piece, “I believe that we have been stupid to let the Democrats demagogue the contraceptive issue and pretend, during debates about health-care insurance, that Republicans are somehow against birth control.”

Well, that’s certainly seizing the high ground. Jindal arbitrarily hijacks the Rodney Dangerfield claim of “no respect” for the national Republican Party. Good move, there Swifty. My grandfather always told me that when I find myself in a hole, quit digging.

Piyush is looking more and more like a politician who was created by the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) but who now wants to put distance between himself and the right wing Tea Partiers who owe their very existence to ALEC. And he’s still digging.

Yep. Piyush is claiming the middle ground, apparently so as not to appear stupid.

The Boy Blunder has, in the wake of the Mitt Romney loss to President Obama, morphed into the Forrest Gump of political science. Maybe we should henceforth simply refer to him as Piyush Gump: stupid is as stupid does.

He implied that Romney ran a “stupid” campaign—but only after the election. Prior to Nov. 6, Piyush campaigned tirelessly for the Republican nominee with nary a hint of discomfort or embarrassment over any supposed GOP stupidity.

Neither Piyush nor any of his appointees, of course, could ever be accused of doing anything stupid.

After all, it would be stupid to repeatedly hide behind something called the “deliberative process” in an effort to avoid revealing information to the public.

It would be stupid to suggest to subordinates that they use private email accounts for communicating about Medicaid budget cuts.

It would be stupid for Jindal’s education superintendent to approve 315 vouchers for the New Living Word School in Ruston without first learning that the school had no instructors, no desks and no classrooms.

It would be stupid for the education superintendent to send an email to the governor’s office outlining his plans to lie to a legislative committee about New Living Word to “take some air out of the room.”

It would be stupid to attempt implementation of a funding method for school vouchers that is clearly unconstitutional.

It would be stupid to describe the judge who ruled that funding method as unconstitutional as “wrong-headed.”

It would be stupid to ignore a growing hole in Assumption that has swallowed up some eight acres of land while belching toxic gases because campaigning against a judge in Iowa is considered more important.

It would be stupid to close a state prison without at least extending the courtesy of a heads-up to legislators in the area.

It would be stupid to close a state hospital without at least extending the courtesy of a heads-up to legislators in that area.

It would be stupid not to fire—or at least punish—a Recovery School District Superintendent who wrecked a state vehicle on one of his three dozen trips to Chicago on private business, including appearing on a Chicago television station to announce his intention to run for mayor.

It would be stupid to attempt a total takeover of the state’s flagship university by loading up its governing board with campaign contributors—and to coerce that board into firing the president, the university’s legal counsel, and the head of the university’s health care system.

It would be stupid to fire or demote scores of other state employees and elected members of the state legislature whose only sin was to disagree with Pontiff Piyush.

It would be stupid for his commissioner of administration to refuse to release a copy of a consultant’s report on the privatization of the Office of Group Benefits.

It would be stupid for his secretary of the Department of Health and Hospitals (DHH) to refuse to divulge to the senate committee considering his confirmation the identity of the winner of a 10-year, $300 million contract—when it was later learned that the winner was a company for whom the secretary had once worked.

It would be stupid for that same DHH secretary to swear under oath to that same committee that he had established a fire wall between him and his former company and that he had had no communication with the company during the selection process—when in fact, as was subsequently learned, he had been in constant communication with the company during the entire selection process.

It would be stupid for a governor to refuse to return $55,000 in campaign contributions after learning it had been laundered through a bank into his campaign.

And it would be oh, so very stupid to insist on no new taxes or tax increases in the wake of a budget deficit hole rivaling the one in Assumption Parish.

Piyush is not stupid. That’s why he is offering advice to his fellow Republicans.

That’s why he is writing op-ed pieces for the WSJ about the need to sell contraceptives over the counter.

And if that doesn’t work, he can always reprise his Brown experience and perform an exorcism on Republican stupidity in much the same manner he performed his exorcism on the collective courage of certain legislators.

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Private email caper is just the latest in 5-year campaign of duplicity, deceit and outright lies by π-yush administration

Posted in Education, Governor's Office, Health Care, House, Senate, Legislature, Legislators, Prison, Public Records, Retirement, Transparency on December 10, 2012| 13 Comments »

Sneaky. Duplicitous. Underhanded. Deceitful. Devious. Dishonest. Fraudulent. Mendacious. Untruthful. Despicable.

Those are just a few words to describe the latest tactic employed by Jindal-Teepell & Co. in the administration’s ongoing almost five-year campaign of deliberate misinformation, distortion and obfuscation in an effort to conceal the state’s business from the public.

We normally attempt to mix in a little humor, sarcasm and snarky comments when we write about Piyush, but his act is beginning to wear a little thin.

Between his flitting about the entire country while ignoring pressing problems at home, lying to the public, making himself inaccessible to state media (while courting Fox Network, CNN, and other national media) and running roughshod over state employees, legislators, and anyone else who appears even slightly hessitant to drink his Kool-Aid, he simply is no longer funny.

His coy response to inquiries about national political aspirations that he “has the job he wants” no longer sells.

His insistence that he has “the most transparent, open and accountable” administration in Louisiana history is nothing more than a blatant lie. And like Joseph Goebbels, he apparently believes that if he tells a lie, makes it big enough and repeats it often enough, people will believe it.

Some do. Many of his adoring followers appear to reside north of Alexandria. But those numbers are growing smaller as more and more the citizens of this state are beginning to peel away the layers of pseudo purity, honesty and sincerity with which he has camouflaged himself so as to hide the real Piyush.

This squeaky clean governor refused to return $55,000 in campaign funds illegally laundered through a bank in St. Tammany Parish. His (or Timmy Teepell’s) explanation was that the money was accepted in good faith, so it is Jindal’s to keep. We suppose if he deposited a campaign check that subsequently bounced, Teepell would also suggest that the bank should not look to the campaign for reimbursement because it was “accepted in good faith.”

The long and short of it is this guy cannot be trusted. He will say or do whatever is politically expedient which makes him no different than any other snake oil salesman. He has, it turns out, no moral compass, no conscience and no soul.

But when a governor—or any of his minions—touting his openness and transparency instructs his staff to use private email accounts when discussing state business so as to avoid disclosure under the state’s public records laws, something is terribly lacking in the overall character makeup of the man with whom we have entrusted the state’s leadership.

That’s the story broken by enterprising AP reporter Melinda Deslatte on Monday.

For those of you who still believe Piyush is straightforward and honest with the voters of this state, let’s recap Deslatte’s story.

The Associated Press, she wrote, received copies of emails not provided in response to public records requests that revealed non-state government email addresses were used literally dozens of times by state officials last summer.

The subject of those emails dealt with a public relations campaign for slashing $523 million from the state Medicaid budget.

Piyush can’t even be original with that practice; former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin had initiated the practice during her administration before her 2008 campaign for vice president. So did former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney. Both got busted.

And now, Mr. Clean is caught with dirty fingers. It is nothing more than a sneaky effort to circumvent state law and Piyush should be held accountable for it.

For 144 state legislators who have shrunk from confronting Piyush, this should serve as a wakeup call; after all, they were also being kept in the dark on this.

One would think closing state prisons without giving area legislators a heads-up would have stirred legislative grumbling.

One would presume that closing hospitals without informing legislators would create some type of legislative backlash.

One would assume that demoting four legislators from committee assignments would bring lawmakers together in a united front.

One would think that firing a university president, agency heads, rank and file employees, and physicians would provoke a public outcry.

One would be wrong on all counts; this, apparently, is a state of sheeple who either have their heads where only their proctologists can find them or just don’t give a damn.

Apparently the only ones who bother to keep informed and who care about what is happening are those directly affected: teachers who are constantly denigrated by an absentee governor who chose as his chief of staff/right-hand man one Timmy Teepell, a man who was home schooled and knows not one whit about what public school teachers go through in dealing with discipline problems, apathetic parents or inadequate classroom resources (that have to be made up out of the teachers’ pockets). Nor do Jindal-Teepell realize—or care—that many teachers remain at school long after the last student has gone home and who work far into the night on lesson plans and grading papers. In short, they don’t have a clue.

There also are college administrators and professors who see their budgets being chopped in half and students who see their tuition costs rising by 40 percent against already prohibitive student loans. And to think, this governor chose as his campaign manager/right-hand man one Timmy Teepell who never set foot in a college classroom and who names to the board of supervisors of the state’s flagship university a man who has one semester of college.

And there are those state employees who have been privatized out of their careers and who faced the very real possibility earlier this year of seeing their retirement benefits slashed by as much as 85 percent (and remember, state employees are not eligible for social security benefits).

And to think, this governor announced that Teepell was leaving his administration in November of 2011 to head up the Baton Rouge office of OnMessage, a Virginia political consulting firm. Only problem is, OnMessage, a year later still has no local address or local telephone number and Teepell’s vehicle is parked on practically a daily basis in the rear parking lot of the State Capitol. Could he be running his private Baton Rouge OnMessage office out of the governor’s office? Hard to say because no one in the governor’s office is talking. But Jindal’s non-profit propaganda organization, Believe in Louisiana, has paid Teepell, through OnMessage, hundreds of thousands of dollars since Teepell supposedly left the governor’s office.

The emails were provided to AP by an administration official who, for obvious reasons, asked not to be identified. That makes us wonder if it could have been the same administration official who once told LouisianaVoice that Jindal was “dysfunctional.”

Commissioner of Administration Kristy Nichols, apparently backed into a transparent corner said, “Certainly we believe that conducting public business, even when using personal means of communication, is subject to public records law.”

How disingenuous can one be, given the fact that this administration has hidden behind something called the “deliberative process” since Day One?

The emails obtained by AP, however, were not included in the 3,800 documents and emails provided by the Department of Health and Hospitals (DHH) in response to a request for information on discussions surrounding the health care cuts. So where was the public records law on that occasion, Kristy?

In one email exchange, Calder Lynch, a health policy adviser to DHH Secretary Bruce Greenstein, instructed a communications employee to send certain types of items to Lynch’s personal Gmail account instead of his state government email address.

That should come as no surprise to anyone. It was Greenstein, after all, who at his Senate confirmation hearing in June of 2011 refused to divulge the name of the winner of a 10-year, $300 million state Medicaid contract.

It turned out that the winner was a company called CNSI, a company for whom Greenstein had previously been employed. Once the name of the company was released—and then only after senators all but threatened Greenstein with thumbscrews—Greenstein insisted that he had built a “firewall” between him and the selection process and that he had had no contact with the company during that process.

Emails—state emails, no less—however, revealed that Greenstein had been in constant communication with his former employer prior to and during the selection of the contract winner.

Such is the definition of transparency and accountability in this administration.

The question that remains now is just how much longer will the state’s citizens—and a mostly compliant legislature, complete with a lapdog House Speaker (neutered, of course) and equally ambitious Senate President—continue to let Piyush Jindal make a laughingstock of the state and a cruel joke of the strictly theoretical definition of the separation of powers, checks and balances and three branches of government?

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Michigan latest to attempt implementation of ALEC-inspired school reform identical to Louisiana’s–even cloning the RSD

Posted in ALEC, American Legislative Exchange Council, BESE, Charters, Education, Governor's Office, House, Senate, Legislature, Legislators, Privatization, Recovery School District, RSD, Vouchers on November 29, 2012| 3 Comments »

At the risk of sounding like one of those freaky conspiracists who wear tinfoil hats and insist we never really landed on the moon, recent events in the state of Michigan have a familiar—and ominous—ring.

The creation of the Education Achievement Authority (EAA) in that state is eerily akin to Louisiana’s Recovery School District (RSD) and certainly lends support to the theory that the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) is behind a national move to turn public schools into for-profit corporate entities with little or no public accountability.

We will return to the Michigan developments presently but first, some background.

The combination of vouchers, charters and computer courses are being promoted by the administration at the expense of public education funding—again, with no accountability built into the so-called “reforms.”

The RSD, which pre-dates the voucher and online courses, for a time was under the leadership void of Paul Vallas, then under equally inept State Superintendent John White and most recently under Patrick Dobard. No matter who heads it up, the RSD has proved a smashing failure and a gaping dark hole into which state revenues seem to vanish.

Vallas, during his tenure, took a state vehicle on personal business to Chicago on more than 30 occasions. On one of those trips, he appeared on a Chicago television station where he announced that he would run for mayor. He never became a candidate and the personal use of the state vehicle for the out-of-state trips was not discovered until he wrecked the vehicle in Chicago.

He also hired cronies from his previous tenures at education departments in Chicago and Philadelphia.

State audits of the RSD have turned up numerous irregularities and there were problems with a private transportation company receiving payment for busing students for the district. The RSD received still another black eye over reports of sexual activity between students at the school, prolonged teacher absences from classrooms (classes reported went unsupervised for weeks at a time) and chargers of attempted bribery. The LDOE official who reported the incidents and his supervisor were summarily fired.

And now comes a report by an outfit called Research on Reforms that reveals that each of the 12 RSD-New Orleans direct-run schools and 38 (79 percent) of the 48 RSD-New Orleans charter schools received 2012 school performance scores (SPS) of “D” or “F.”

The precise definition of a “failing school,” however, has remained in a state of flux since 2005, says the report, entitled Recovery School District in New Orleans: National Model for Reform or District in Academic Crisis.

“The Louisiana Department of Education (LDOE) has continuously revised its definition and labels of ‘failing’ schools to the extent that it is difficult to follow the real progress of any school historically,” it said. “It is imperative that the reader visit the historical state legislative actions that resulted in the creation of the RSD-NO and the disenfranchisement of the citizens in New Orleans in order to determine whether or not the RSD has failed in its commitment to public school students in New Orleans.”

And now Jindal’s education reform packages are tied up in state and federal courts.

In Tangipahoa Parish, a federal judge has already ruled against the state in a lawsuit that could be a precursor to legal problems for the entire Jindal education package passed earlier this year by the legislature.

U.S. District Judge Ivan Lemelle ruled that Acts 1 and 2 of the 2012 legislative session were in violation of a desegregation consent decree currently in effect in Tangipahoa and could have implications for other districts in the state under similar orders.

Lemelle said the acts would “impair or impede” the parish’s ability to comply with federal desegregation laws and that more than 40 other school districts across the state that are under similar agreements could also be affected.

Education Department officials indicated the ruling will be appealed.

On Wednesday of this week, trial kicked off in 19th District Court in Baton Rouge in a lawsuit brought against LDOE by the state’s two largest teacher unions and dozens of local school boards.

The plaintiffs are claiming that Act 2, which created the school voucher system and Senate Concurrent Resolution 99, which is the state’s Minimum Foundation Program (MFP) for funding public education, were unconstitutional.

The argue that the voucher system diverts local funds for purposes for which they were never approved by taxpayers and that the MFP resolution, approved on June 4, the last day of the session, failed to obtained the constitutionally-mandated two-thirds vote because the resolution resulted in a “fiscal impact,” which requires a two-thirds vote.

House Speaker Chuck “the Eunuch” Kleckley (R-Lake Charles) and state attorney Jimmy Faircloth maintain there was no fiscal impact, thus allowing for passage by a simple majority of members present and voting. For the full 105-member House, 53 votes are required for a simple majority. A two-thirds majority would require 70 of 105 votes.

The Legislative Fiscal Office, which is charged with reviewing legislative bills for fiscal impact, disagreed, saying there was a fiscal impact, which reinforced plaintiffs’ arguments.

The resolution passed 51-49, a simple majority of the 100 members present and voting. Sixty-seven votes would have been needed for a two-thirds vote.

There are a couple of interesting twists in the voucher lawsuit in state district court. Faircloth, who is representing the state, contributed $1,000 on Oct. 24 to Judge Kelley’s unsuccessful campaign for the State Supreme Court.

Kelley, meanwhile, is married to Angele Davis, who served as Jindal’s commissioner of administration for the first two and one-half years of his administration.

All of which brings us back to our conspiracy involving the state of Michigan specifically and any number of states in general that either have implemented or are attempting to implement similar programs.

Rob Glass, Superintendent of Bloomfield Hills Schools, it not waiting for the axe to fall; he has issued a call to action to fight pending legislation that would put into place programs strikingly similar to those currently the subject of litigation here in Louisiana.

The legislative proposals in Michigan have prompted critics to ask if that state’s EAA is establishing “a statewide school reform district on the fast track?” That same question is now being raised in Louisiana but unlike Michigan, it is being asked here in hindsight.

The observation Glass made to LouisianaVoice on Thursday is even more to the point: “There is no question in my mind that this is all part of the ALEC game plan. What we’re seeing in Michigan either has been played out or is being played out in other states and the proposals in all the states are identical,” he said.

The demographic profile of Bloomfield Hills is in stark contrast to that of New Orleans and most of Louisiana.

Bloomfield Hills is a city located in the heart of metro Detroit’s affluent northern suburbs in Oakland County. Located 20 miles northwest of downtown Detroit, the city, with a population of less than 4,000, has consistently ranked as one of the five wealthiest cities in the U.S. with comparable populations. Its median family income in excess of $200,000 per year is the highest of any city outside California, Florida or Virginia.

“If we do not take immediate action, I believe great damage will be done to public education, including our school system,” Glass said in his Nov. 28 call to action. “We have just three weeks to take action before it’s too late,” he said of four bills pending in the current legislative session in Michigan.

The bills are:

• House Bill 6004 and Senate Bill 1358 would expand the EAA, presently consisting of 15 Detroit schools, to a statewide system overseen by a chancellor appointed by the governor and which would function outside the authority of the State Board of Education of state school superintendent. “These schools are exempt from the same laws and quality measures of community-governed public schools,” Glass said. “The EAA can seize unused school buildings (built and financed by local taxpayers) and force sale or lease to charter, non-public or EAA schools.”

• House Bill 5923 would create several new forms of charter and online schools with no limit on the number, many of which would be created by EAA. “Public schools are not allowed to create these new schools unless they charter them,” Glass said. “Selective enrollment/dis-enrollment policies will likely lead to greater segregation in our public schools. This bill creates new schools without changing the overall funding available, further diluting resources for community-governed public schools.”

• Senate Bill 620 known as the “Parent Trigger” bill, this would allow the lowest-achieving 5 percent of schools to be converted to a charter school while allowing parents or teachers to petition for the desired reform model. “This bill…disenfranchises voters, ends their local control and unconstitutionally hands taxpayer-owned property over to for-profit companies,” he said. “Characterized as parent-empowerment, this bill does little to develop deep, community-wide parent engagement and organization.”

Glass said he has never considered himself a conspiracy theorist—until now. “This package of bills is the latest in a year-long barrage of ideologically-driven bills designed to weaken and defund locally-controlled public education, handing scarce taxpayer dollars over to for-profit entities operating under a different set of rules,” he said. “I believe this is fundamentally wrong.”

He said that he, State School Superintendent Mike Flanagan and State Board of Education President John Austin, along with the Detroit Free Press, have expressed various concerns about the bills.

“This is not a laissez faire plea to defend the status quo (a favorite accusation leveled at educators by Jindal). This is about making sure this tidal wave of untested legislation does not sweep away the valued programs our local community has proudly built into its cherished school system,” Glass said.

A familiar and ominous ring indeed…

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π-yush keeps communication lines open with talking points and voting instructions via text messages to legislators even during committee meetings and floor debates on key bills

Posted in Ethics, Governor's Office, House, Senate, Legislature, Legislators, OGB, Office of Group Benefits, Politicians, Transparency on November 28, 2012| 10 Comments »

When State Rep. Joe Harrison (R-Gray) was removed from his seat on the House Appropriations Committee earlier this month by Piyush Jindal through his surrogate, House Speaker Chuck “The Eunuch” Kleckley (R-Lake Charles), he offered an interesting revelation about the way the administration micromanages the legislative process.

“Everything they (legislative committees) do is scripted,” Harrison said in an interview with LouisianaVoice hours after his demotion. “I’ve seen the scripts. They hand out a list of questions we are allowed to ask and they tell us not to deviate from the list and not to ask questions that are not in the best interest of the administration.”

Harrison’s comments were made in the heat of the aftermath of his smack down by Piyush for having the temerity to vote against The-Man-Who-Would-Be-Vice-President (or at least a Romney cabinet member) on the proposed contract that called for Blue Cross/Blue Shield to become the third party administrator for the Office of Group Benefit’s (OGB) Preferred Provider Organization (PPO).

Strong words to be sure, but now they have been corroborated by yet another legislator who shall remain nameless for the time being though we will go so far as to acknowledge that the lawmaker is not a member of Jindal’s political party.

Not that that seems to matter, given the events that occurred in the wake of the surprising defeat of Republican president candidate Mitt Romney on Nov. 6.

Jindal turned on Romney like the self-serving hypocrite he is. (Well, after all, he never got his 30 pieces of silver—read: a cabinet appointment in the anticipated Romney administration—so why not?)

When we asked our legislator friend (we’ll just call him Kyle) if Harrison was accurate in claiming that committee members are given questions by administrative officials in advance of committee hearings, he responded with a quick, “Absolutely.”

But then he continued. “Not only that but they text committee members during committee meetings and even send text messages to legislators during floor debates on bills in the House and Senate telling them how to vote on certain bills.

“They’ll also send text messages to legislators instructing them to speak for or against a bill and even tell him or her on what to say and they’ll pop up out of their chair and immediately rush to the floor microphone,” Kyle said.

He said he occasionally speaks to school groups about how the legislative process is designed to work. “I always leave laughing at myself for trying to tell the kids that we have three branches of government—the executive, the legislative and the judiciary.

“We no longer have a legislative branch of government in Louisiana; we’re (the legislature) just an extension of the executive branch.

“The sad part is we have only ourselves to blame. When I say we, I mean the legislature as a body, not as individuals because there are some members who will stand up to Jindal when they feel he is wrong. But the legislature—the House and the Senate—have capitulated to the fourth floor and I lay the fault at the feet of our leadership, the Speaker Kleckley and Senate President John Alario (R-Westwego).

“They are both likeable men, very personable, but Alario’s looking out for Alario. If you don’t believe that, take a look at the Capital Outlay Bill and see how many projects are in it for Jefferson Parish. It’s loaded down with Jefferson projects and Alario wants to keep it that way,” he said.

He said he also did not understand the motivations of Sen. Jack Donahue (R-Mandeville). “Here is a state senator who had a state mental hospital in his district (Southeast Louisiana Hospital in Mandeville) closed by the governor who gave him no advance warning of his intentions and yet, as chairman of the Joint Legislative Committee on the Budget, he did exactly what Jindal told him to do and steamrolled the Blue Cross/Blue Shield contract with OGB down everyone’s throat.”

Harrison and our friend Kyle weren’t the only ones to reveal the ongoing instructions to legislators. Yet another source (not a member of the legislature) said he witnessed a legislator receiving text messages from the governor’s office even as he testified not before a legislative committee, but before the New Orleans City Council. “They were letting him know they didn’t like what he was saying in his testimony,” the second unnamed source said.

LouisianaVoice sent separate emails to Piyush Press Pontificator Kyle (no relation) Plotkin and to Chief of Staff Paul Rainwater asking just two simple questions:

• Does the administration think it is appropriate to micromanage the legislative process in this manner?

• Would this (practice) not blur the lines between the executive and legislative branches of government?

We never receive an acknowledgement of either email.

Ah, transparency and accountability. Where would we be without ‘em?

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