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Archive for the ‘Legislature, Legislators’ Category

With the Thompsons, it’s a family affair

Posted in Ethics, House, Senate, Jobs, Legislature, Legislators, Transparency on August 20, 2010| 1 Comment »

With the elevation of Brant Thompson to interim commissioner of the Louisiana Office of Alcohol and Tobacco Control, the question becomes how many of State Sen. Francis C. Thompson’s family members will end up in high-ranking positions in Louisiana state government?

Brant Thompson, one of Francis Thompson’s two sons who are employed by state agencies, served for a number of years as ATC deputy commissioner. He was promoted to interim commissioner after his boss, Commissioner Murphy J. Painter, resigned last week. Thompson’s salary before his promotion was listed at $84,864 per year. Painter, meanwhile, is under investigation by state police and the state inspector general’s office.

Among other things, Painter is being investigated for hacking into personnel files of employees and strangers alike, of sexual harassment, discrimination, and stalking.

Thompson’s other son, Todd Thompson, works for the Louisiana Department of Agriculture. Sen. Francis Thompson (D-Delhi) served for four years as chairman of the House Agriculture Committee before being term limited for his House seat and subsequently was elected to the Senate seat formerly held by similarly term-limited Charles Jones of Monroe. He now serves as chairman of the Senate Agriculture, Forestry, Aquaculture, and Rural Development Committee.

Francis Thompson’s first cousin, J.S. “Bud” Thompson, is director of the Louisiana Office of Risk Management, which is being privatized over a five-year period. Bud Thompson’s wife recently retired from her position with the Louisiana Bond Commission.

An older brother, Clyde “Weasel” Thompson (as he was known when he coached P.E. at Louisiana Tech University in Ruston in the 60s and ’70s) served for a time as second in command to Department of Transportation and Development Secretary Paul Hardy during the administration of former Gov. Dave Treen and more recently has been serving as Executive Director of the Madison Port Commission at a salary of $49,207 even though he reportedly rarely leaves home and even more rarely shows up at his office.

Finally, the senator’s younger brother, Mike Thompson, was formerly mayor of Delhi and later served as director of the Poverty Point Reservoir District.

Controversy seems to follow members of the Thompson family in their capacities as public employees. Besides Brant, who received his promotion at ATC by default, his brother Todd was ticketed six years ago for driving while intoxicated in Baton Rouge after being involved in an auto accident at 10:15 p.m. on July 7, 2004 while driving a Department of Agriculture vehicle.

The Baton Rouge city police accident report said that while the accident was not the fault of Todd Thompson, he was nevertheless cited for DWI after refusing a field sobriety test at the scene of the accident. Todd Thompson, despite his driving while intoxicated in a state vehicle at 10:15 p.m., remained in his job.

Francis Thompson has been the subject of considerable controversy with his proposed ground water reservoir feasibility studies around the state, including Poverty Point in Richland Parish, as well as Washington Parish, Lincoln Parish, and others. Poverty Point received appropriations totaling more than $3.1 million in this year’s appropriations and capital outlay bills.

Bud Thompson was the catalyst in the privatization of the Office of Risk Management which was facilitated by what some employees felt was tweaking the evaluations of companies that bid on the contract so that an area private claims adjusting firm might win the contract. The outsourcing of the agency will either force employees into working for the private firm or taking early retirement. Those who move into the private sector will have their retirement seniority interrupted in some cases decades before employees are eligible for retirement though Bud Thompson, in his own words, will still have his job.

Mike Thompson was indicted and subsequently convicted in federal court for using Poverty Point Reservoir District employees to perform work on his private property.

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Earl’s big blunder (no thanks to Leander Perez)

Posted in Budget, Contract, Contracts, Earl Long, Huey Long, Economy, Ethics, Exemptions, Incentives, Legislature, Legislators, Lobbyist, Revenue, Taxes, Transparency, tagged , , , , , , , , , on August 11, 2010| 7 Comments »

            The fiscal news from Baton Rouge continues to be bad. Besides a projected $319 million deficit for the current fiscal year that ends in seven weeks, there have been moves to privatize state services, a sell-off of state assets, layoffs, and now a massive oil spill that threatens the state’s seafood industry.

            There are those who insist it didn’t have to be that way but 60 years ago, on June 5, 1950, everything changed. That’s the day that the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that all of the submerged land from the shores of coastal states belonged not to the states, but to the federal government.

            It was a devastating decision that affected coastal states from Texas to Florida. An earlier decision, in 1947, had a similar affect on California. The ultimate cost to the states estimated as high as $300 billion, according to the late Mike Mansfield, former senator from Montana. Mansfield, writing in the May 4, 1953 Congressional Record, was critical of the decision by the Eisenhower administration to returned title of the submerged land back to the states.

            Eisenhower’s action, which was approved by the House on April and by the Senate on May 5, reversed a proclamation by President Truman in 1945.

Truman, in his Continental Shelf Proclamation, said that federal government had jurisdiction over all the mineral resources in the lands beneath the oceans out to the end of the U.S. Continental Shelf. Immediately after he issued the proclamation, the federal government initiated litigation against the states, claiming sovereignty over all offshore resources. Truman reasserted that position on Jan. 16, 1953, just before leaving office when he issued an executive order that set aside the submerged lands of the Continental Shelf as a naval petroleum reserve.

The issue of tidelands mineral rights didn’t appear of major importance to either Louisiana or the federal governments other than shrimpers and oystermen, until technology progressed sufficiently to drill in offshore waters. In November of 1947, the first such well was completed in 16 feet of water in the Ship Shoal area in the Gulf of Mexico, about 12 miles south of Terrebonne Parish. After that, all bets were off.

            Just as with California, litigation soon followed as the federal government filed suit against both Texas and Louisiana over control of more than four million acres of submerged land. Then, in the early fall of 1948 came one of the biggest negotiating blunders in the history of Louisiana politics that ultimately led to the landmark Supreme Court decision that will in all probability go unnoticed by most on its 60th anniversary on June 5.

            The players included President Truman, Speaker of the U.S. House Sam Rayburn, Gov. Earl K. Long, Lt. Gov. Bill Dodd, and Plaquemines Parish boss Leander Perez. Lurking in the shadows was the man who would emerge central to the decision by Long to refuse a generous offer from Truman that would cost Louisiana upwards of $100 billion, according to Dodd. That man was 29-year-old Russell Long, Earl’s nephew and the son of Huey P. Long.

            Dodd, in his book Peapatch Politics, laid out the details of a deal gone bad as a result of Russell Long’s political ambitions and Perez’s determination to protect his questionable control of mineral-rich Plaquemines Parish with Earl Long and Dodd caught in the tug-of-war between the federal government and Louisiana.

            In 1948, Russell Long was a candidate for the U.S. Senate. Perez, who was also head of the Democratic State Central Committee, ran his own less sophisticated but equally prosperous version of Huey’s old Win or Lose Oil Company in Plaquemines and, according to Dodd, was not above a little blackmail and extortion to protect his fiefdom. Rayburn was Truman’s emissary who was instructed by the president to make what in hindsight was a more than generous offer to Louisiana to settle the federal lawsuit against the state.

            In that fateful autumn of 1948, Rayburn called Dodd and Louisiana Attorney General Bolivar Kemp to a Washington meeting. Also in attendance in Rayburn’s office were Perez, Texas Attorney General Price Daniel, several representatives of the Department of Interior, as well as others.

            Rayburn, without fanfare or ceremony, offered to settle the Tidelands dispute with Louisiana by offering the state two-thirds of all revenues accruing from mineral bonuses, leases, and royalties in the two-thirds of a three-mile band extended from the Louisiana coastline outward into the Gulf of Mexico. Rayburn also offered the state 37.5 percent of all revenues in the Tidelands outside the three-mile band. In addition, Rayburn said the federal government would drop its lawsuit against the state. It was a much better offer than the state had anticipated and everyone present except Perez was ready to jump at the offer.

            Perez told Rayburn that he would recommend to Gov. Long that the offer be rejected, prompting Rayburn to explode. “This ain’t no compromise,” he said. “It’s a gift, and you better take it while the president is in the mood to give it to you.”

            Perez, who as attorney for Plaquemines Parish’s various levee boards, was in a position to dictate how and to whom the levee boards leased their lands. Many of those leases went to corporations he and his family controlled, reaping him millions in much the same manner in which Huey Long had structured his Win or Lose Oil Co. With no intention of losing any of his power, he got to Earl Long first and convinced the governor that the state was being sold a bill of goods by Truman and Rayburn. He insisted, moreover, that the state would prevail in the federal litigation against the state even though California three years earlier had lost an identical lawsuit.

            Perez, who was backing States’ Rights presidential candidate Strom Thurmond for president, controlled the state Democratic ticket and threatened to take Russell off the States’ Rights ticket, which would, in effect, hand the U.S. Senate seat to Shreveport Republican Clem Clarke. Earl wanted his nephew to win the election and eventually capitulated to Perez’s demands to reject Truman’s offer, prompting Baton Rouge Morning Advocate Editor Maggie Dixon, a close friend of the governor, to remark, “Earl is gonna trade our chances to be a tax-free state in order to elect that little tongue-tied nephew of his to the U.S. Senate.”

            Dodd, in his book, speculated that the immediate loss to the state was $66.5 billion, not including billions more paid in bonuses and leases, plus the severance taxes that would have amounted to about a fourth of the total value of production. Dodd said the cost as of 1986, when he wrote his book, was “$100 billion plus,” with future losses as much as $10 billion a year.

            Still, given the track record of the legislature to fritter away past “embarrassments of riches,” one would have to wonder how such an influx of revenue might have taken legislators from embarrassment to humiliation in emptying the state coffers.

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Enough Already!

Posted in Budget, Ethics, House, Senate, Legislature, Legislators, Lobbyist, Revenue, Transparency on July 31, 2010| Leave a Comment »

            Apparently oblivious to the state’s spiraling financial plight, 22 Louisiana legislators accounted for the expenditure of more than $47,000 in state funds attending legislative conferences in Kentucky, South Carolina and California—with each receiving $159 per day in per diem payments over and above travel, lodging, and registration fees.

            The travel comes at a time of shrinking state budgets and on the heels of state employee layoffs, program eliminations, and deep budget cuts to higher education and health care, coupled with runaway pork barrel spending during the recently completed regular legislative session.

Most of the expenses—registration fees, lodging, and travel—purportedly came from legislators’ $1,500 per month supplemental expense accounts which is part of the pay package for lawmakers. But with registration fees accounting for nearly half of that amount, the addition of travel and lodging expenses almost certainly pushed costs well beyond the $1,500 allocated per lawmaker.

Should all 22 legislators attend each day of the respective conferences, per diem payments would add another $16,854 to the cost paid by Louisiana taxpayers.

            State Rep. Joe Harrison (R-Napoleonville) and Baton Rouge Sen. Yvonne Dorsey, in fact, registered to attend two conferences with Dorsey scheduled for back-to-back conferences. She was signed up for the Southern Legislative Conference (SLC) in Charleston, S.C., scheduled for July 31-Aug. 4 and for the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) in San Diego Aug. 5-8.

            Harrison attended the National Conference of State Legislators (NCSL) in Louisville, Ky. July 25-28 and the ALEC conference in San Diego.        Besides Harrison, those attending the NCSL event in Louisville included Reps. Jonathan Perry (R-Abbeville) and Patricia Smith (D-Baton Rouge).

            Those attending the ALEC conference in San Diego besides Harrison and Dorsey included Reps. Robert Johnson (D-Marksville), Austin Badon (D-New Orleans), Bernard LeBas (D-Ville Platte), Tim Burns (R-Mandeville), Thomas Carmody (R-Shreveport), John LaBruzzo (R-Metairie), Kirk Talbot (R-River Ridge), Thomas Wilmont (R-Kenner), and Sen. Bob Kostelka (R-Monroe).

            Joining Dorsey in Charleston were Reps. Jim Fannin (D-Jonesboro), Jeff Arnold (D-New Orleans), Walker Hines (D-New Orleans), and Sens. Francis Thompson (D-Delhi), Butch Gautreaux (D-Morgan City), Gerald Long (R-Winnfield), Ed Murray (D-New Orleans), Buddy Shaw (R-Shreveport), and John Smith (D-Leesville).

            In Charleston, delegates, when not attending business meetings, attended a beach party and participated in a golf tournament at the Dunes West Golf & River Club sponsored by Reynolds American, the parent company of R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co.

            One has to wonder just how arrogant and fiscally irresponsible our elected officials in Baton Rouge must become before the state’s citizenry draws the proverbial line in the dust and cries out in unison: “ENOUGH ALREADY!”

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An old story worth remembering

Posted in Civil Service, Ethics, Governor's Office, House, Senate, Layoffs, Legislature, Legislators, Transparency on July 28, 2010| Leave a Comment »

            Legislators have been working themselves into an emotional lather over the past several months in efforts to abolish what they mistakenly refer to as “automatic” 4 percent merit increases for state civil service employees. Lost in all the rhetoric, however, was another “automatic” increase that quietly kicked in last October 1—legislators’ per diem payments.

            With no debate and no vote, and even as the speechifying over state classified employee pay raises was ongoing, all 144 legislators’ daily allowance jumped $14 a day, from $145 to $159 for each day they meet in the Capitol. That’s because legislators several years ago passed a bill that ties their per diem rate to rates paid federal employees, making the legislators’ per diem increases truly automatic.  And that includes days they don’t even meet—37 days for each of the 144 House members and 39 Senate members—during this year’s 85-day session. That obscure law, however, could end if Rep. Jerome Richard (I-Thibodaux) has his way.

            With the administration anticipating a deficit of $319 million this year, House members showed no qualms about accepting the per diem payments for 12 Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays, plus Memorial Day—days during which both chambers are empty. For House members, that’s $611,832 in per diem payments for days that members are gone and for the Senate, the tab comes to $229,437 for a total payment of $841,269 for all 144 legislators for 37 days in absentia—43 percent of the 85-day session. Factoring in lower per diem rates for prior years and shorter, 60-day sessions in odd-numbered years, that still comes to about $6.5 million in payments over the last 15 years for days during which only the laughter of children and the sounds of tourists reverberate in the otherwise empty Capitol rotunda.

            The classic quotation by Everett Dirksen, the late U.S. Senator from Illinois, somehow seems appropriate for the Louisiana Legislature today: “A billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon you’re talking about real money.” And we’re not even talking about special sessions.

            Legislators bemoan the fact that they are paid only $16,800 per year. But $159 per diem for an 85-day session adds another $22,896. Each legislator also receives an un-vouchered $6,000 per year expense allowance, up to $1,500 per month in other vouchered expenses (that’s $63,696 for a part time job, which is more than the average state civil service employee makes in his or her full time job). Add to that perks that include a laptop computer for the Capitol, a desktop computer for his or her district office, high-speed internet service, up to three telephones for each legislator’s district office, and up to $3,000 per month for the salary of a legislative aide. Additionally, Legislators serving on or before Jan. 1, 1997, or who were already participating in a public retirement system at that time, also are eligible for retirement benefits of 3.5 percent of the member’s annual salary for each year of service. State civil service employees receive 2.5 percent of their annual salaries.

            Richard, who represents Lafourche Parish, introduced HB 1390 on Tuesday that would divorce legislators’ per diem from the federal rate by freezing the daily payments at $159 in light of the anticipated fiscal shortfall facing the state. As of Tuesday, his bill had not been received a committee referral.

            Civil service employees will have their salaries frozen, effective July 1 after lawmakers railed against what some perceived as automatic 4 percent merit increases for state classified employees. The term automatic, however, is somewhat misleading. Merit, or step, increases are given based on job performance. If an employee fails to attain certain goals, there is no merit increase. Moreover, once a classified employee maxes out on his or her step increases, there are no more increases available under civil service unless that employee receives a promotion or changes jobs. There have been no cost of living (COL) increases for state workers since 2007. The last COL prior to that was during the Edwards administration.

            That hasn’t stopped lawmakers like District 77 Rep. John M. Schroder, Sr. (R-Covington) who has led a vendetta-like campaign against state classified employees. He has authored no less than six separate bills dealing with state civil service, none of which would appear to be favorable to state workers. All six of his bills were referred to the House and Governmental Affairs Committee.

            HB 752 would grant the legislature sole authority to provide for pay increases for state employees and state elected officials. The bill would include employees of joint state and parochial agency or joint state and municipal agency, “regardless of the source of the funds used to pay for such employment.”

            HB 753 would abolish the State Civil Service Commission and the Department of State Civil Service, effective Jan. 9, 2012. Though Schroder is proposing the abolishment of civil service, his bill offers no alternative that would protect state government from returning to the spoils system of political patronage. Civil service currently protects employees from being required to campaign for or contribute to political candidates as a condition of keeping their jobs. Without civil service, some fear a return of the “deduct box” of the Huey Long era.

            HB 754 would prohibit pay increases to state employees when there is a budget deficit, subject to a fine of up to $500 or imprisonment for up to six month, or both.

            HB 755 would require the legislature to determine prior to each fiscal year if pay increases may be granted to state employees and if so, the manner and amount of the increase. This bill would be a radical departure from allowing supervisors and managers to evaluate employees’ work performance and to make decisions on merit increases. Schroder’s bill does not explain how the legislature would be qualified to evaluate job performance of 60,000 individual state employees.

            House bills 752, 753, 754, and 755 are all proposed constitutional amendments and would have to be voted on in the Nov. 2 statewide election.

            HB 757 would require that certain employee reports be sent to the Department of State Civil Service, the Speaker of the House and President of the Senate. The reports would include employees’ names, addresses, positions, dates and place of employment, hours of work, and salaries.

            Perhaps the most ominous bill, however, is HB 1296, which would require employees to use annual, compensatory, or unpaid leave for official holidays. Official state holidays include New Year’s Day, Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday, Mardi Gras, Good Friday, Independence Day, Labor Day, Veterans’ Day, Thanksgiving Day, Christmas Day, Inauguration Day once every four years in the city of Baton Rouge, and General Election Day every two years.

            Particularly galling to state employees are the 9 percent per diem increase for legislators and the $159 per diem paid lawmakers for three days per week that the House and Senate do not meet during the 85-day session while at the same time halting 4 percent merit increases and also considering a bill to take paid holidays away from workers.

            It was Schroder who initially raised the issue of “automatic” merit increases for state employees last year with House Speaker Jim Tucker quickly joining in the effort to thwart the increases. Many felt that Schroder and Tucker were simply doing Gov. Bobby Jindal’s bidding in attacking the civil service merit increases. The governor has mostly remained above the fray even while allowing six legislators sitting on his Commission on Streamlining Government to collect more than $17,000 in per diem payments during their consideration of ways to reduce government spending. Four private sector members of the commission received no payments though Barry Erwin, president of the Council for a Better Louisiana, did say, “We did get certificates to hang on the wall.”

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Return of the ‘Deduct Box?’

Posted in Civil Service, Ethics, Governor's Office, House, Senate, Legislature, Legislators, Public Records, Transparency on July 28, 2010| Leave a Comment »

            Give State Rep. John Schroder (R-Abita Springs) credit: once he got the idea that picking on state employees was popular with the general public, he has stopped at nothing to offer up State Civil Service as a sacrifice at the Altar of Bobby Jindal.

            Schroder was successful at obtaining committee approval of HB-1478 (originally HB-1296) which would mandate that state employees not be paid for up to 11 legal holidays. Legislators, however, will not be required to forfeit their pay for 37 days of the regular 85-day legislative session during which they do not meet.

            In its original wording, HB-1296 stipulated that state employees would simply be required to take annual or accrued leave time for legal holidays. Somewhere along the way, however, someone must have realized that scenario presented no savings to the state since employees would receive pay whether they worked or took annual leave. Accordingly, the bill was amended to force employees to take legal holidays without pay.

            The bill, which was changed to HB-1478, was approved without objection by the House and Governmental Affairs Committee and now goes to the House floor for approval.

            Schroder was subjected to a flurry of emails from outraged state employees after his original bill calling for employees to take leave for holidays became public. He repeatedly refused to answer specific questions, saying things like, “(I’m) not sure what games you are playing, but I don’t have the time. You have no idea what’s going on and it’s clear you have an agenda slanted to the unproductive side. Keep spewing your anger across the state. In the end, I am working to solve problems and those willing to learn and listen can contribute right along as we work to make La. a better state.”

            On another occasion, when a writer asked why he did not address questions directed to him, Schroder responded simply, “God bless you.”

            One of those questions asked if Schroder had accepted a $14 increase in per diem payments (from $145 to $159) that went into effect on Oct. 1, 2009, a 9 percent increase at a time when Schroder was leading the efforts to abolish what he called “automatic” 4 percent merit increases for state workers. Merit increases for state employees are not automatic and in fact, once an employee receives all the step increases allowed for that pay grade, there are no more increases unless the employee takes another job or is promoted to a higher pay grade.

            Another question which Schroder refused to answer was whether or not he had accepted the $159 per diem for the 37 days (12 Fridays, 12 Saturdays, 12 Sundays, and Memorial Day) during which neither the House nor the Senate convenes. The per diem for those 37 days comes to $5,883 per legislator, or $847,152 for all 144 members. Memorial Day is one of the holidays for which state employees would receive no pay next year if HB-1478 becomes law.

            Schroder was also asked, but again refused to answer, if he was the primary author of HB-753, which would abolish the State Civil Service Commission and the Department of State Civil Service, effective Jan. 9, 2012. That bill, which calls for a constitutional amendment to be decided at the Nov. 2 statewide election, would dissolve the only avenue available to state employees to address grievances. State Civil Service prohibits state classified employees from contributing to or participating in political campaigns on behalf of any candidate. One of the reasons for the existence of civil service is for the protection of state employees. In the days of the old spoils system, employees were beholden to those elected officials and it spawned what is known as the “deduct box” more commonly associated with the administration of Huey Long.

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