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Archive for the ‘Layoffs’ Category

Greenstein eliminates internal audit function at DHH; two years later, $800K misappropriated (privatization at work)

Posted in Auditor, Health Care, Layoffs, Legislature, Legislators, Privatization on March 1, 2013| 7 Comments »

Two years after the Department of Health and Hospitals (DHH) eliminated its six internal audit positions, an employee of the Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals (DHH) has been placed on leave and is expected to be fired and prosecuted for the misappropriation of more than $800,000 in state funds, LouisianaVoice has learned.

The employee, a woman, is accused of depositing checks made payable to DHH into a non-DHH account. She would then withdraw the funds from that account for personal use, investigators said. The internal investigation was conducted by DHH’s Bureau of Health Care Integrity.

In addition to conducting its own investigation, DHH notified the Louisiana Legislative Auditor’s Office and the office of East Baton Rouge District Attorney Hillar Moore. The district attorney’s office will be asked to conduct an external investigation and to prosecute the employee. Restitution also will be sought by DHH.

“In January of 2011, DHH eliminated all but one internal audit position and the following month the one remaining auditor retired, leaving no internal audit function at all at the end of Fiscal Year 2011,” Wes Gooch of the Legislative Auditor’s office told a meeting of the Legislative Audit Advisory Council just over a week ago, on Feb. 21.

He said a recent audit showed for the second year, there was “no effective internal audit function” at DHH.

“In December of 2011, DHH contracted with one auditor to perform internal audit services from December 2011 through December of 2012,” he said. “In May of 2012, this contractor submitted a proposed updated internal audit charter and one internal audit report. No other internal audit activity occurred that year,” Gooch said.

“In June of 2012, this contractor exercised the contract termination clause, leaving no internal audit function in place at the end of 2012.

Gooch told the seven legislators in attendance that each year in the Appropriations Act, “the Legislature requires agencies with budgets in excess of $30 million to use existing positions for internal audit services.

“Considering that DHH has over $650 million in assets and over $7 billion in annual revenue, an effective internal audit function is critical to safeguard state assets and operations,” he said in his testimony.

For his part, DHH Secretary Bruce Greenstein was appropriately outraged over the latest findings. We know this because he said so. “I am outraged that a member our staff would allegedly willfully misuse public funds that were intended for health care services,” he said in a prepared statement.

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The Jindal paradox: he adores but would never work in the private sector (but he would make a splendid Sheldon sub)

Posted in ALEC, American Legislative Exchange Council, Campaign Contributions, Civil Service, Contract, Contracts, Education, Ethics, Governor's Office, Health Care, Higher Education, Layoffs, Legislature, Legislators, Privatization, State Agencies, Transparency on February 24, 2013| 12 Comments »

The burning paradox that is Gov. Bobby Jindal comes down to this: for someone who so obviously loves and embraces the private sector, it’s curious that he has never earned his livelihood in it.

Yes, we know that he “worked” for four whole months for McKinsey & Co. in 1994 but that could hardly be considered as the private sector since the firm primarily serves as a training ground for future bureaucrats and elected public servants.

To paraphrase a 1981 line from actor Burt Reynolds at his Friars Club roast, he’d probably like to thank the little people for putting him into office—but he’d never associate with them.

Of course, should he ever decide to re-enter the private sector and if Jim Parsons should decide to leave the CBS sitcom The Big Bang Theory, Jindal could step right into the role of Dr. Sheldon Cooper and never miss a beat.

Sheldon Cooper, in case you are not a regular viewer (you can catch the show on CBS at 7 p.m. Thursdays or reruns on Tuesdays at 7 p.m. on TBS), is the glue that holds the popular show together. He is academically brilliant (as most would concede Jindal to be) but completely unable to relate to mere mortals (as all would have to agree is a persona that fits Jindal like a glove).

Sheldon is a fount of book knowledge, possessed of an eidetic memory and able to spout figures, dates and statistics with the comparative ease of reciting one’s ABCs but is unable—or unwilling—to perform the simple task of driving a car.

Jindal is a fount of book knowledge, possessed of an eidetic memory and able to spout figures, dates and statistics with the comparative ease….well you get the picture.

Sheldon is completely and totally devoid of human emotion, is unfeeling and unable to communicate in a normal conversation because he has no empathy for his fellow human being. Even in casual conversation, it is impossible for him to avoid insulting the intelligence of those around him, be they peers or subordinates.

Jindal is similarly lacking in those same qualities and likewise cannot speak without offending—be it civil service employees, department heads or fellow Republicans whom he now publicly refers to as being stupid.

Sheldon, when playing board games or video games with his friends, is prone to make up his own rules as he goes along—much to the consternation of Leonard, Raj and Howard, his three friends on the show.

Jindal also is not above tweaking the rules to his advantage as in his exempting the governor’s office from the state’s public records laws—much to the consternation of the media.

But most striking of all the similarities between the two: Sheldon is stubborn and steadfastly refuses to admit to the prospect that he could ever be wrong—about anything.

Jindal, too, is mulishly stubborn and just as steadfastly refuses to entertain the thought that he might be wrong about anything—a trait that goes at least as far back as middle school, according to a former teacher who described him as unwilling to accept correction even then.

But back to Jindal’s undying devotion to the private sector:

His is a strange relationship indeed.

Visit the home a professor, and you’re likely to find shelves upon shelves of books. Visit a hunter and you will find hunting rifles and mounted deer, elk and moose heads. Same with fishermen and the mounted bass that adorn their den walls.

Visit an aficionado of the private sector like, say, the governor of Louisiana and you’re likely to find…photos of smiling campaign contributors.

But you would never find him putting in a typical 8 to 5 day in a cubicle or toiling away in the workaday world like the rest of us. That is so far beneath him as to be comical to even consider.

No, he would never stoop to such a low level. That is for people who can be manipulated, used and even fired at will—by people like him.

Instead, Jindal chooses to reciprocate the private sector’s political campaign contribution largesse by selling off the state, piece by piece, agency by agency to his corporate benefactors while at the same time, selling out hard-working, dedicated state workers without so much as a second thought or a thank you.

The private sector is Jindal’s benefactor, not his employer. Accordingly, he must pander to the corporate suits like Rupert Murdoch, K12, Dell Computers, Marathon Oil, Wireless Generation, Altria, Hospital Corp. of America, Magellan Health Services, Meridian, CNSI, Information Management Consultants, Innovative Emergency Management, Anheuser-Busch, Corrections Corp. of America, AT&T, Koch Industries, the entire membership of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), and most of his appointees to prestigious boards and commissions.

No, Bobby Jindal would never earn—has never earned—his living from the private sector.

But make no mistake about it: he owes his political existence to corporate America and the private sector.

And he believes with equal conviction that he owes nothing to state employees or the public sector.

Yes, he could step right in and fill Jim Parsons’ role as Sheldon and the difference would be negligible—except for the obvious cultural imbalance that would create.

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π-yush has more Christmas cheer: Revenue plans shutdown of all state satellite offices except Benson…er, New Orleans

Posted in Budget, Campaign Contributions, Economy, Governor's Office, Jobs, Layoffs, Revenue, State Agencies on December 19, 2012| 6 Comments »

Get ready, Louisiana taxpayers. If you encounter a need for a one-on-one meeting with a Louisiana Department of Revenue spokesperson to discuss your state taxes in the near future, you soon will be out of luck. You’ll need to juke on down to Baton Rouge or New Orleans to get face time.

Though no announcement has yet been made of a target date, LouisianaVoice has learned that all other state revenue satellite offices are being shuttered.

The closures, of course, will not affect New Orleans where the state is locked into that overpriced lease agreement with Tom Benson as part of the notorious state giveaway to keep the Saints in Louisiana. That’s the deal whereby Benson purchased the old Dominion Tower across from the Superdome with the understanding that the state would move all its New Orleans offices there and pay about twice was it was paying for its former office space.

It was not immediately known how many state employees would be affected, but suffice it to say the timing of the decision, coming as it does a week before Christmas, couldn’t be worse for Revenue staffers in Shreveport, Monroe, Alexandria, Lake Charles and Lafayette.

Having already gone for more than three years without a raise, they now face the prospects of unemployment.

Of course, certain employees have nothing to worry about. The cutbacks will only apply to the grunts, the ones who actually do the day-to-day work, the ones who have to suffer indignities from supervisors and flak from unhappy taxpayers.

This is the same agency, by the way, that hired former State Rep. Jane Smith first as Assistant Secretary at $124,446 despite her professed lack of knowledge about revenue. Upon the firing of Secretary Cynthia Bridges over that alternative fuel tax (a bill authored by smith, no less, and signed into law by Jindal), Smith was briefly promoted to secretary by Piyush.

Jindal later hired former executive counsel Tim Barfield as secretary but circumvented the state law which limited the secretary’s salary to $124,000 by also giving him the title of Executive Counsel of Revenue and bumping his salary up to a cool $250,000.

Of course, it didn’t hurt that Barfield and his wife contributed $15,000 to Jindal’s campaigns in 2006 and 2010 and that one of his former employers, Amedisys, chipped in another $11,000 to the Piyush cause.

And apparently oblivious to the current state hiring freeze, the new secretary promptly went out and bought himself a chief staff in the person of Jarrod Coniglio, who “will take the lead for all of our day-to-day work and be a great help to us as we work to coordinate and execute with the highest efficiency, accuracy and customer service,” according to Barfield.

The price for his new aide that Bridges apparently never saw the need for? $115,003.

While on his shopping spree, Barfield also picked up a new press secretary: Douglas Baker at an annual salary of $105,997.

True to form in the Piyush administration, efforts to contact the newly-appointed Revenue press secretary for more detailed information about the office shut-downs and accompanying layoffs were unsuccessful.

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New round of budget cuts to be announced Friday as π-yush administration grapples with declining state tax revenues

Posted in Charters, Governor's Office, Health Care, Higher Education, Jobs, Layoffs, Legislature, Legislators, Privatization, Revenue, State Agencies, Taxes, Vouchers on December 12, 2012| 12 Comments »

Fiscal Year 2012-13 is just half over but more deep budget cuts will be announced on Friday and, in the words of one state official, “It ain’t gonna be pretty.”

And the latest fiscal problems haven’t even encountered a looming tax rebate program being offered to encourage financial viability of state charter schools, a centerpiece of the Jindal administration.

With health care and higher education already devastated by previous cuts, it’s anyone’s guess who will suffer in the new round of belt tightening.

Higher education has already been hit with more than $426 million in cuts since 2009—$25 million since June—and Gov. Piyush Jindal has been conducting a fire sale to unload state hospitals and prisons, so it’s difficult to pinpoint where other cuts can be implemented.

The Revenue Estimating Conference will meet on Thursday and the Joint Committee on the Budget will meet on Friday to officially hear the bad news.

Without specifics (because they weren’t available when this was written), that bad news is:

• Personal income tax revenue is below projections;

• Corporate income tax revenue is below projections;

• Severance tax revenue is below projections (because of an unexpected drop in the price of natural gas);

• Sales tax revenue is below projections.

With the bulk of state revenue coming from income taxes and sales taxes, the news, it seems, couldn’t be much worse.

But it might.

Remember the alternative fuel tax credit?

That’s the bill authored by former Rep. Jane Smith (R-Bossier City) that promised a tax credit of up to $3,000 for vehicles that burn “alternative fuel. It was estimated at the time that the tax credit would cost the state $907,000 over five years.

After losing her bid to move up to the Senate in 2011, Jindal rewarded her loyalty (read: dedication to tax breaks) by appointing her as deputy secretary of the Department of Revenue.

The intent of the bill was to encourage the conversion of vehicles to propane but between the passage of Smith’s tax rebate bill and its implementation, flex-fuel vehicles that run on a blend of up to 85 percent ethanol hit the market.

These vehicles immediately qualified for the rebate and the real cost turned out to be more like $200 million, an increase of almost 1,900 percent after then-Revenue Secretary Cynthia Bridges got around to creating rules for the program.

Caught in a potential fiscal crisis over the tax credits, Jindal promptly fired Bridges, promoted Smith (who authored the bill in the first place) to interim secretary and rescinded the tax credits.

Now, a similar scenario may have arisen in the form of last session’s House Bill 969.

HB 969, by Rep. Kirk Talbot (R-Baton Rouge), which was subsequently signed into law by Piyush as Act 25, offers tax rebates to those making contributions to charter schools.

Piyush vetoed a similar bill by Rep. Katrina Jackson (D-Monroe) that would have given tax rebates of up to $10 million to those making contributions to public schools because, he said, there was no provision in the state budget for the rebates.

The only problem is, the provisions of Act 25 contain no dollar cap which, like the alternative fuel tax, could blow a gaping hole in the state’s budget should a sufficient number of people make contributions to the private scholarship program.

It’ll be interesting to see how the Boy Blunder handles the latest financial crisis since the state is running out of one-time money with which to plug budget holes, thousands of state jobs have already been eliminated, there are few remaining assets that can be sold off, and health care and higher education have already been cut just about as much as they can stand and still function.

Perhaps Piyush might actually see the need to jettison a few six-figure appointive positions handed out to former legislators like Smith, Noble Ellington, Troy Hebert, Lane Carson and numerous others.

That would be a start—a show of good faith, at least.

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Notable Quotables (in their own words)

Posted in Education, Governor's Office, Health Care, Layoffs, Notable Quotables, OGB, Office of Group Benefits, Politicians, State Agencies, Transparency on November 2, 2012| 3 Comments »

“A lack of planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on my part.”

—Louisiana Federation of Teachers legislative director Mary Patricia Wray, quoting one of her high school teachers in her testimony Thursday before two legislative committees, in describing the lack of planning and accountability on the part of the Piyush Jindal administration’s proposal to contract with Blue Cross/Blue Shield for the administration of the Office of Group Benefits’ Preferred Provider Organization.

“A policy must not be to identify an emergency which government has either created or failed to prevent and then find a public servant to blame and punish while we promote so-called reform.”

—Mary Patricia Wray, during that same testimony.

“Policy makers keep finding more and more creative ways and more and more sorry excuses to support corporate tax avoidance over public good, privatizing over restoraton and feel-good initiatives over real solutions for our very, very valuable public insititutions.”

—Mary Patricia Wray, on a roll as she ripped into the Piyush administration during her testimony.

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