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Archive for the ‘ORM, Office of Risk Management’ Category

Romney loss is (he thinks) the perfect opportunity for Piyush presidential run so don’t look for him here for next 3 years

Posted in Campaign Contributions, Contract, Contracts, Governor's Office, Health Care, House, Senate, Legislature, Legislators, OGB, Office of Group Benefits, ORM, Office of Risk Management, Prison, Privatization on November 7, 2012| 7 Comments »

Mitt Romney’s loss to President Obama on Tuesday may have provided the perfect opportunity for Gov. Piyush Jindal and de facto governor Timmy Teepell (or so they must certainly be thinking right about now).

Sure, Jindal did the dutiful thing and ran around the country like the proverbial chicken with its head chopped off, talking to throngs of avid Romney supporters that sometimes numbered as many as a dozen or so.

And sure, he said all the right things at those massive gatherings.

But deep down, you have to know that Jindal and Teepell are smirking just a little right now and have already begun their drive to the White House for 2016.

Jindal is an impatient man as witnessed by his rush to push through a radical education agenda and his attempt to completely revamp the state retirement system even though his plan would have cut some state employees’ pensions by as much as 85 percent (and the vast majority of state employees do not qualify for social security because they have never worked in the private sector and state employees don’t pay into the system).

Nor will the vast majority of state employees qualify for Medicare for the same reason. But that fact did nothing to stop him from slashing Medicaid.

Jindal also rushed through his plan to privatize state government, beginning with the ill-fated takeover of the Office of Risk Management by F.A. Richard and Associates (FARA) of Mandeville at an initial contract cost of $68 million to the state. Eight months into its contract, FARA was requesting a $6.8 million amendment to its contract. That was precisely 10 percent of the original contract amount. There is an obscure regulation that allows a one-time amendment to contracts for up to—you guessed it—10 percent.

But wait! There’s more! Less than a month after the contract was bumped up to nearly $75 million, FARA upped and sold the contract to an Ohio company who kept it for about four months before selling it to a New York company.

There was a hitch in all those transactions but again, did it slow Jindal down? Not a bit. That hitch was a clause in the FARA contract that supposedly prohibited the transfer of the contract without prior written approval of the Division of Administration (DOA). When asked for a copy of that prior written approval, DOA responded without a shred of concern and even less of an explanation that no such document existed.

Jindal has plowed headlong into a policy of closing state hospitals with little or no concern of the effects it has to area residents who rely on the hospitals for treatment of injuries, disease and mental illness.

He has been similarly reckless in his closures of state prisons, throwing hundreds of state employees out of work. In both the hospital and prison closures, he has neglected to give area legislators a heads-up before taking the action to close the facilities, an oversight over which lawmakers continue to seethe.

He has attempted with equal urgency to enter into a contract with Blue Cross/Blue Shield (BCBS) as a third party administrator (TPA) for the Office of Group Benefits (OGB) Preferred Provider Organization (PPO) medical coverage for about 62,000 state employees, retirees and dependents.

Facing certain defeat of the proposed contract at the hands of the House Appropriations Committee last week, Jindal’s new Commissioner of Administration Kristy Nichols abruptly pulled the proposal from the agenda of the joint meeting between the Appropriations Committee and the Senate Finance Committee.

It was a less than auspicious coming out party for his new commissioner of administration. A smashing debut for Nichols it was not.

But the administration is back for another attempt this Friday at 8:30 a.m. The makeup of the Appropriations Committee will be slightly different, however, after last week’s Black Friday purge of the committee by Jindal.

And make no mistake, while it was House Speaker Chuck “Genuflecting Gelding” Kleckley (R-Lake Charles) who announced the removal of Reps. Cameron Henry of Metairie and Joseph Harrison of Gray, the word came from Jindal—or Teepell. Both Henry and Harrison are Republicans but both also violated the cardinal rule against questioning anything put before them by Pontiff Piyush.

Harrison said as much when he revealed that the administration historically provides questions to committee members that they are allowed to ask. At the same time, he said, they are instructed not to deviate from the list by asking any questions other than those on the list.

So now Jindal is making one final push to get his contract with BCBS approved.

It’s doubtful he will make a personal appearance; he almost always sends his flunkies to carry the water for him.

It’s also doubtful if Nichols will repeat last week’s faux pas of tell committee members she would “dumb down” her explanation of the proposed contract for the benefit of lawmakers. It’s one thing to close a hospital or prison without informing the legislators in the area. It’s quite another to sit before them and call them dumb to their faces.

The point of all this is this: don’t look for Piyush in Baton Rouge in the remaining three-plus years of his term of office. He’s not likely to be spending much time in his fourth floor office.

A quick drive through on Wednesday revealed that Teepell’s Jeep was parked—as always—in the back parking lot of the State Capitol. This is a former Jindal staff member who resigned more than a year ago to run the Southern office of OnMessage, a Maryland political consulting firm. OnMessage has been paid hundreds of thousands of dollars by Jindal’s campaign fund over recent years but more than a year after Teepell opened that Baton Rouge office, there still is no local address or telephone number for the firm.

If Teepell is doing anything at all for OnMessage, he is doing it—as a private citizen—from the State Capitol’s fourth floor governor’s office. We have mentioned this on at least two other occasions but still the attorney general and the inspector general’s offices have done nothing to bring the misuse of the public office for private purposes to an end.

But the boy wonder we know as Piyush is about to hit the road in a fundraising blitz that will, in all likelihood, dwarf that of his re-election fundraising efforts of a year ago.

He is going to be running full time for president and he is an impatient man. He did not want to wait eight years wasting his valuable time in some obscure federally appointed position in the Romney administration (though doubtless he would have taken a higher profile position if it could keep his name in the forefront). He will serve next year as head of the National Republican Governor’s Association. That will keep his name out there while he ramps up his fundraising efforts.

Now, though, he can hold to the office (in theory if not in reality) of governor of Louisiana for three years while keeping his travel itinerary full. His term will end in January, 2016—just in time for him to become a full time candidate.

Even as he does so, however, there is a significant lesson to be learned from Tuesday’s results—a lesson quite likely overlooked by JindalTeepell.

The Democrats learned from the Reagan landslides that it was going to have to move from the far left more towards the center in order to gain the acceptance and trust of the American electorate. It did and the result was Bill Clinton.

Likewise, to gain the trust of the American people, the Republican Party is going to have shed itself of the stigma it now carries as a refuge for the Tea Partiers. Simply put, the GOP is going to have to shift away from the right right, becoming less a haven for the extremists with more appeal to the centrists.

Unfortunately for Piyush (and perhaps fortunately for the rest of us), he seems incapable of making such a shift. He has shown himself to be stubborn, obstinate and convinced of his own infallability. He is simply unwilling to compromise and that, in the end, will be his undoing.

In the meantime, don’t look for him in Baton Rouge during the next three years.

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100 pay increases approved for state’s top earners following Gov. π-yush 2010 pay freeze order; hiring freeze also ignored

Posted in Attorney General, Budget, Civil Service, Commissions, Economy, Education, Exemptions, Incentives, Governor's Office, Higher Education, Jobs, LSU, ORM, Office of Risk Management, Public Records, RSD, State Agencies, Transparency on October 22, 2012| 10 Comments »

Editor’s note: The information contained in this story was received via printouts from the Louisiana Department of Civil Service of those earning $100,000 or more for the years 2009 through 2012. Each year was listed separately. Accordingly, when the name of Patti Gonzalez of the Office of Risk Management did not appear until the 2012 printout, the indication was she had received a pay increase. This was not the case and there was no explanation as to why she did not appear in prior years but Ms. Gonzalez says she has not received an increase since March of 2010.

Likewise, no state elected officials received pay increases as their salaries are set in statute. Civil Service printouts did indicate pay increases for all but two statewide elected officials but this apparently was in error.

Rank and file state civil service employees have gone without pay increases, merit or otherwise, since 2009 but at least 104 managers, directors, supervisors and five statewide elected officials already making in excess of $100,000 a year have received increases over the past three years.

Not included in the tabulation were doctors, nurses, pharmacists, higher education professors or, with one exception, those who were promoted from one job to another and got raises.

Altogether, more than 3,200 state employees earning more than $100,000 per year accounted for an annual payroll of approximately $432 million—an average of about $135,000 each.

The average pay of a state civil service employee is approximately $39,600.

In most cases—but not all—the pay increases were 4 percent increases. A 4 percent increase for one making $100,000 would be $4,000. That would fund four such increases for workers earning only $25,000 a year.

There were those, however, who did better. Much better.

Michael Diresto went from $103,792 in 2011 to $118,792 this year, a $15,000 (14.5 percent) bump. He was listed by the Department of Civil Service as a “director” in the Division of Administration (DOA) for both years. On the DOA web page, he is identified as an assistant commissioner for policy and communications.

Bruce Unangst, executive director of the Real Estate Commission, also saw his annual salary balloon from $109,000 in 2011 to $125,000 this year, a 14.7 percent increase.

In the governor’s office itself, Executive Counsel Elizabeth Murrill did extremely well for herself. Her 2011 salary of $110,000 grew to $165,000 this year—before her transfer to DOA where presumably, it will remain the same. Her one-year pay hike was a whopping 50 percent, according to Civil Service records.

In the Department of Insurance, 14 employees earning $100,000 or more received 4 percent increases from 2011 to 2012 while four others, including an attorney supervisor, did not. Insurance Commissioner James Donelon this year also hired former state legislator Noble Ellington, who had no experience in insurance, as deputy commissioner at a salary of $149,900.

Five of 14 employees of the Port of New Orleans Port Commission who earn $100,000 or more were awarded pay raises ranging from 5.5 percent to 7.5 percent.

At the Department of Health and Hospitals (DHH), several employees received pay increases from 2011 to 2012 despite the pay freeze. They included Executive Director Robert Marier, who went from $196,102 to $205,899 (5 percent); Associate Director Cecilia Mouton, from $185,640 to $194m916 (5.1 percent); Executive Director John Liggio, from $119,044 to $125,068 (5 percent), and Executive Director Lisa Schilling, from $107,702 to $134,638 (25 percent).

None of the four changed job classifications, according to the Civil Service report. One who did change classifications got a 14.8 percent increase, a lower percentage than Schilling. Courtney Phillips was promoted from a Medicaid Program Manager 4 at $102,814 per year to Chief of Staff at $118,019.

One other executive director, six DHH attorneys, a deputy director, a deputy secretary, a budget administrator, an economist and a program director received no salary increases from 2011 to 2012.

Debra Schum, listed as an executive officer in the Department of Education (DOE), got a 20 percent pay raise, from $110,000 in 2011 to $132,000 this year while Kerry Lester, also an executive officer with DOE, got a $5,000 increase, from $150,000 to $155,000 during the same time frame.

But what is particularly interesting about the DOE payroll is the seemingly inordinate number of new hires of people at six-figure salaries, especially in the Recovery School District.

State Superintendent of Education John White has brought in no fewer than 10 new employees at salaries in excess of $100,000 this year alone—and that’s not even counting Deirdre Finn, a part time contract employee who will be paid $144,000 a year to work as communications manager for the department—from her home in Florida.

The idea of hiring a commuting employee, apparently borrowed from DHH and Carol Steckel, who is being paid $148,500 a year as a “confidential assistant” to DHH Secretary Bruce Greenstein to commute back and forth from her home in Alabama, seems to be catching on.

David “Lefty” Lefkowith is being paid $146,000 to commute back and forth from Los Angeles to work at DOE as a “director,” according to Civil Service records. He describes himself in a DOE video, however, as a “deputy superintendent.”

Other new, six-figure employees added by DOE this year include:

• Gary Jones, Executive Officer, $145,000;

• Melissa Stilley, Liaison Officer, $135,000;

• Michael Rounds, Deputy Superintendent, $170,000;

• Hannah Dietsch, Assistant Superintendent, $130,000;

• Francis Touchet, Liaison Officer, $130,000;

• Stephen Osborn, Assistant Superintendent, $125,000;

• Sandy Michelet, Executive Director, $120,000;

• Kenneth Bradford, Director, $110,000;

• Heather Cope, Executive Director of the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education, $125,000.

For the Recovery School District (RSD), both the high turnover and six-figure salaries are significant. That’s because there is substantial turnover despite the high salaries and that turnover has stymied any progress the already troubled RSD might have realized.

No fewer than 20 employees earning six figures have left the RSD since 2009, records show.

For the three years from 2010 to 2012, there was a turnover rate among those earning $100,000 or more ranging from 29 to 44 percent from the previous year Civil Service records indicate.

Of 24 RSD employees earning six figures for the current year, 15, or 62.5 percent, are new hires, records show. These include:

• Stacy Green, School Nurse, $145,000;

• James D. Ford, Administrative Superintendent, $145,000;

• Dana Peterson, Administrative Superintendent, $125,000;

• Adam Hawf, Administrator, $120,000;

• Mark Comanducci, Executive Director, $115,000;

• Helen Molpus, Administrative Chief, Officers, $115,000;

• Kizzy Payton, Administrative, Business Office, $110,000;

• Hua Liang, Administrative Chief, Officers, $110,000;

• Nicole Diamantes, Administrative, Other Special Programs, $105,000;

• Isaac Pollack, Administrative, Principal, $105,000;

• Desmond Moore, Administrative, Principal, $105,000;

• Betty Robertson, Other Business Services, $105,000;

• Robert Webb, Administrator, Other Special Programs, $105,000;

• Sametta Brown, Administrator, Regular Programs, $100,800;

• Ericka Jones, Administrative, Principal, $100,000;

• Eric Richard, Administrative, Principal, $100,000.

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π-yush takes a powder, ducks the issues…again but Vitter’s cowardice eclipses D.C. Madam scandal in pure sleaziness

Posted in Contract, Contracts, Education, Ethics, Governor's Office, Health Care, Higher Education, OGB, Office of Group Benefits, ORM, Office of Risk Management, Politicians, Privatization, Revenue, Taxes, Transparency, Vitter, Vouchers on September 21, 2012| 11 Comments »

This is about arrogance. More specifically, it is about the arrogance of two men, both from Louisiana and each elected to represent his constituents to the best of his ability.

And to that end, each has failed miserably while taking his individual insolence to new levels—in very different ways. One we have written about extensively in the past. The other, not so much, though perhaps he may well warrant closer attention in the future.

We are talking about Gov. Piyush Jindal and U.S. Sen. David Vitter.

The first, Jindal, has repeatedly displayed his cowardice, his spinelessness, by taking actions to close state facilities without bothering to notify affected legislators of his plans in advance. He has consistently ignored the plight of hundreds of state employees he forced into unemployment by cutting services and corporate taxes, further exacerbating the state’s budgetary crisis.

Vitter’s vote on a Senate bill last week can only described as despicable and hypocritical.

We will get to him presently.

It was not enough that Jindal announced the closure of Southeast Louisiana Hospital in Mandeville and C. Paul Phelps Correctional Center in Dequincy without extending the courtesy of a heads up to the legislative delegation in southeast and southwest Louisiana, the two areas affected.

But in doing so, he appeared to give little regard to or concern for the hundreds of employees at the two facilities who will be adversely impacted by layoffs or, in a few cases, transfers.

Then, on the heels of the announcement of the C. Paul Phelps closure The Baton Rouge League of Women Voters held a panel discussion to discuss Jindal’s continued privatization of state agencies, including the Office of Risk Management, the Office of Group Benefits, charter schools, educational vouchers, state hospital privatization and Medicaid cutbacks.

Invited to attend were representatives of the Jindal administration and proponents of privatization as well as four opponents, including an education coalition representative and Dr. Fred Cerise, former head of the LSU Health Care System.

One end of the head table was fully represented. On the other end, not a single person appeared on behalf of the administration. Cowardice. If an administration cannot publicly defend its actions—and make no mistake, Jindal never does—then that can only be described as cowardly.

Oh, they all had excuses. Commissioner of Administration Paul Rainwater said he had to attend a State Bond Commission meeting. But that meeting was over before the panel forum began across town. Bottom line, no one from the administration could—or would—find the time to defend the governor’s program.

Of course, Jindal had plenty time to attend a Republican unity breakfast in New Hampshire a week before and agreed to participate in a Sept. 26 Leaders of Iowans for Freedom “No Wiggins” bus tour—a rally in opposition to the re-election of Iowa Supreme Court Justice David Wiggins who voted with the majority to rule the state’s one-man, one-woman marriage law unconstitutional.

We have to wonder how our governor, who, metaphorically speaking, has more snakes than he can kill right here at home, can find time to involve himself in a supreme court race in Iowa. Does the state Medicaid budget’s gaping budget hole not keep him sufficiently occupied without his having to traipse off to Iowa? Isn’t the fiscal plight of the state’s colleges and universities of enough concern to deter him from having breakfast in New Hampshire?

Or could it be more than mere coincidence that the first presidential primary and party caucus will be in New Hampshire and Iowa, respectively, in about three years? Could Jindal be that brazen, that disturbingly obvious? Well, yes. Could he really be that delusional, fooling himself into thinking he has a prayer? Yes again.

Piyush would be wise to awaken to the realization that Timmy Teepell is no Karl Rove.

LouisianaVoice has submitted a public records request to determine the cost of Jindal’s two trips including costs not only for Jindal, but for his security detail and any staff members who went along, including travel, lodging, meals and salaries—and including Jindal’s pro-rated salary for the days he is out of state.

Just for argument’s sake, let us say he made each trip in a single day. Giving his annual salary of $130,000, that would mean he should rebate the state a minimum $712 in salary while he was out of state attending to non-governor-type business—plus all the other expenses incurred on the trip for him and his entourage.

Now let’s talk about Vitter.

There was a bill up for a vote in the Senate last week. The Veterans Jobs Corps Act of 2012 would have made it easier for veterans in the future to transition to civilian life.

With veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars experiencing unemployment rates 3 percent higher than the general population, the bill would have put a lot of those veterans to work.

A majority (58-40) voted for the bill but that was two votes short of the three-fifths majority needed to overcome a budgetary point of order thrown up by Republicans.

Republicans said the bill violated the Budget Control Act by adding a program that would increase the deficit. Only five Republicans voted for the bill.

Vitter was one of 40 Republicans who voted no.

That’s correct. U.S. Sen. David Vitter (R-Louisiana), given a chance to vote up or down on a measure to help veterans, chose to vote down.

We’re talking about a $16 trillion deficit and the Republicans were quibbling over a budget item of $200 million per year over five years.

Given the propensity of Republicans to consistently vote for larger and larger appropriations for the Pentagon and military contractors and given Republicans’ support of two wars that have cost this country more than $4 trillion, a $1 billion appropriation to help our veterans re-enter the work force should not seem so unreasonable.

Given that most of these Republican chicken hawks have never experienced military service, it certainly is curious that they are so reluctant to lend a hand once these military personnel have sacrificed so much to defend the rhetoric of the pompous congressmen who while beating their collective breasts, are so quick, yea eager, to send them off to war.

It is heartless enough that military personnel with traumatic head injuries are unable to obtain adequate or timely medical treatment once they are no longer useful as fighters and as unwitting enablers of military contractors who milk the Pentagon budget of untold billions of dollars in unchecked cost overruns and outright fraud.

But when it came time to put his money where his patriotic, flag-waving mouth is, Vitter, rather than reaching out to the veterans, turns his back on them. What a coward.

And we thought his frequenting New Orleans prostitutes and cavorting with the D.C. Madam after all of his preaching about family values was hypocritical. That was child’s play, a victimless crime, as they say. His vote on the Veterans Jobs Corps Act dwarfed that transgression. There were thousands of victims of that callous action.

To demonstrate the Republican stance on American exceptionalism and righteous wars, one need look no further than to a statement made by Andrew Card, President George W. Bush’s chief of staff who, when asked about the timing of the March 2003 Iraqi invasion, dubbed Operation Iraqi Freedom, said, “From a marketing point of view, you don’t introduce new products in August.”

There you have it. A half-century ago President Eisenhower said, “We must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex.”

Despite that admonition, war—and the influence of that military-industrial complex—has become a marketing concept, a product to be introduced with the appropriately hyped mixture of patriotism, mom and apple pie, along with the oft-repeated need to defeat the newest threat to the American Way of Life, whatever that is.

And Vitter is right there with his fellow Republicans—until it’s time to help those who supported that policy—the men and women in uniform.

In 2003, he voted in favor of HR 1559, the Emergency Wartime Supplemental Appropriations Act. In 2008, he voted in favor of HR 2642 to approve funding for the Iraq and Afghanistan War—funding that has now exceeded the $4 trillion mark.

But in 2012, he and 39 other Republicans just could not bring themselves to waste a five-year, billion dollar expenditure to help military veterans return to the workforce.

We should be so very proud of our junior senator.

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Legislators’ answers to questions are less than satisfactory; apparently some think constituents’ concerns don’t matter

Posted in BESE, Governor's Office, Health Care, Higher Education, House, Senate, Legislature, Legislators, LSU, OGB, Office of Group Benefits, ORM, Office of Risk Management, Privatization, State Agencies, Transparency on September 19, 2012| 3 Comments »

Remember when we recently suggested that you contact your legislator with a specific list of questions relative to Gov. Piyush Jindal’s efforts to:

Destroy public education by allowing private concerns to open charter schools and offer online courses with no accountability;

Destroy higher education in general with massive budgetary cutbacks and LSU in particular by loading the state’s flagship university board of supervisors with political hacks and campaign contributors;

Dismantle the state’s public health system through closures, cutbacks and by, as in the case of the LSU Board of Supervisors, packing the University Medical Center Management Corp. Board with political cronies, and

Usurping the powers and responsibilities that rightfully belong to the legislature?

We provided the internet web page addresses for both the House and Senate and suggested that you contact your legislators with these specific questions with specific answers and promised that as the results came in, we would publicize them.
Rep. Alan Seabaugh (R-Shreveport), knowing that state employees might be reluctant to divulge their names for fear of being teagued and thus might feel the need to use a pseudonym, issued the following snarky reply to one such person:

“You make some substantive and good points. However, I do not send substantive responses to people who hide behind fake names.”

Rep. Stephen Carter (R-Baton Rouge) fell back on the standard tactic of “baffle ’em with B.S. with his non-response to a constituent:

Thank you for your email. I understand your concerns and appreciate you taking the time to contact me. Upon review, most of the items you listed are proposals and have not been implemented yet. When the time comes, I will be charged with giving the up or down approval through legislation. I will carefully consider each item individually that is up for a vote. The Governor’s job is to propose initiatives, try to get the approval of the legislature, and then implement. The a governor has not sought my advice on the items you listed, but I will consider his proposals when and if they become proposed legislation. I cannot usurp his authority including his appointive power to various boards and commissions.

I do want to be sure I make decisions in the best interest of the state, whether privatization is the answer or not. Until we have the opportunity to see proposals to privatize, it is difficult to evaluate the pros and cons. I can’t make a blanket judgement about privatization because I believe it is an issue that warrants case-by-case evaluation.

To provide information on some of your specific concerns, William Jenkins is the interem President of the University. He has appointed, and the Board of Supervisors has approved, Dr. Frank Opelka to serve as the Executive Vice President for Health Care and Medical Education Redesign. The Board has approved Dr. Opelka issuing a Request for Proposal (RFP) to seek the interest of private partners who are interested in a collaboration with LSU to run the hospitals. Again, thank you for your interest and rest assured that all of us in the legislature are trying to make decisions that will improve the quality of life of all of our citizens. Please don’t hesitate to contact us if you have any more questions or if we can be of any assistance to you.

Best regards,
Steve Carter

Our favorite, however, came from Sen. Neil Riser (R-Columbia):

“Thank you for your correspondence to Senator Riser regarding state cuts. Please know that Senator Riser appreciates hearing from you and will keep your thoughts and concerns in mind as they go thru the legislative process.”

There you have it. A canned response and not even from Riser himself, but from a legislative assistant. The man could not even take the five minutes out of his busy schedule to write specific responses to specific questions. Apparently the affairs of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), of which Riser is a member, are of greater precedence that those of a lowly constituent.

For those of you who may have missed it, here are the questions and the web addresses again;

I want to know where you stand on of allowing the governor to ignore the medical needs of the state’s indigent population as well as to ignore the need to maintain teaching hospitals for medical students at the LSU and Tulane schools of medicine;
Moreover:

When are you, as my (representative/senator) going to stand up to Gov. Jindal and his runaway efforts to:

• Disembowel higher education;

• Destroy public education to the financial benefit of private contractors/campaign supporters;

• Dismantle the state’s flagship university by appointing political hacks to the LSU Board of Supervisors, firing capable administrators and closing/privatizing state hospitals;

• Allow voucher and online courses to take the place of public education without even a smidgen of accountability or standards to which public education is held;

• Continually allow our governor to usurp the powers and responsibilities that rightfully belong to the legislative branch, including the choosing of House Speaker and Senate President?

I want and expect a public and publicized answer by you on the entirety of this subject. You’ve been silent long enough.

Click here for a list of House members: http://house.louisiana.gov/H_Reps/H_Reps_ByName.asp

Click here for a list of Senate members: http://senate.legis.louisiana.gov/Senators/
Scroll down the list until you find your representative/senator and click on the name. The legislator’s email address will on the page that will appear. For representatives, you need only click on the email address but you will have to type the senators’ email addresses.

It helps if you are able to provide your real name but if you are a state employee, do not use your real name.

Also, send only the questions; do NOT send the entire content of this blog. It’s not that we are concerned about legislators knowing where the questions originate because most of them will; it’s just not necessary to send this entire text.

One final note:

We are getting comments back today that certain legislators were sent the original questions and have not responded.

Our suggestion would be to re-send them each and every day until they do respond. Bombard them and do not let up.

One of Winston Churchill’s greatest speeches included this classic line: “Never give in. Never give in. Never, never, never never.”

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Guest columnist explains why he feels ‘sense of urgency’ in legislative defeat of the punitive π-yush privatization push

Posted in BESE, Campaign Contributions, Charters, Ethics, Governor's Office, Higher Education, House, Senate, Layoffs, Legislature, Legislators, LSU, OGB, Office of Group Benefits, ORM, Office of Risk Management, Privatization, State Agencies, Transparency on September 18, 2012| 2 Comments »

By JOHN SACHS

Periodically I am asked why I’m screaming about what is taking place in our state government. It is suggested that I speak with more deference and respect to and about elected and appointed officials. I am reminded of the adage that one catches more flies with sugar than with salt. I listen to that advice and then I counter with the following explanation for my approach and call to action:

When you as an individual or through your business or when a government entity wants to make a change in service providers such as a pest control service, a janitorial service, or a building maintenance and repair service, it does not involve the lives and livelihood of employees or the ownership of the entity’s physical assets such as buildings. One simply contacts several competing service providers and after evaluating them, makes a decision as to which vendor will provide the specific service for a specific time period.

Now take the case of lease and rentals of buildings and equipment. This is a more complex transaction and generally extends over a longer period of time than a service contract. Except in the case of a rent/lease-to-own transaction, ownership of the assets remains unchanged. Thus, at the end of the lease the parties can agree to terminate the agreement and go their separate ways or to enter into a new contract. Ownership of the asset being rented or leased, however, remains with the original owner.

Finally, there are the types of transactions that are of a permanent nature with lasting consequences, and the ones that the Jindal administration is entering into that will for all intent and purposes change our system of government, alter the delivery of essential services, and transfer ownership of state physical assets forever. What Gov. Bobby Jindal is doing now will be felt for decades to come if not forever. And forever is a mighty long time for the state to suffer after Jindal leaves office for greener pastures (which I find myself occasionally hoping will have a name such as “Serenity Gardens.”)

The first of these “Forever” changes involves privatizing essential government services. When these services are privatized, the state employees almost to a man/woman lose their jobs, their retirement and their benefits. Moreover, their years of experience and expertise are lost to the state almost always forever. The state’s records generally become those of a private company accessible only by the state agency responsible for their administration.

And even that access can become iffy. Take the Office of Risk Management, for example. In less than a year after being privatized at a cost of $75 million to the state, the contract was transferred to a second and then a third company—in open defiance of the state contract requiring written authority for the contract to be transferred. Today, two years after the privatization, nothing has been done about the contract violation.

Records that should be open and public disappear behind a cloak of protection from prying eyes not afforded public agencies. Consequently, monitoring by state and even federal investigators charged with oversight of the function becomes difficult. And to the press, the fourth estate charged with keeping everyone honest and accountable, access to once public records becomes all but impossible. When one adds in the profit motive of a private enterprise and tax liabilities that are not a cost factor to a state operating department, the cost to administer an essential and rightfully state service escalates significantly to the detriment of the state.

The second “Forever” change is the most troublesome and is the one that makes me scream the loudest. That is when physical assets owned by the state and its citizens are sold to private individuals, companies, and corporations. When assets such as hospitals, prisons, schools, etc., are sold, ownership of those assets by the state is lost FOREVER. Let me say that again. When physical assets of the state are sold, ownership of them by the state is lost FOREVER.

We will never again own them. If we need those physical assets to deliver essential state services and programs, we have to enter into negotiations with the new owners to rent or lease those same facilities that we previously owned. And since we in almost every case have no alternative site from which to provide the service, we are held captive by the private owner of the former state facility paid for with taxpayer dollars.

If the new owner knows that he has no competition, is it reasonable to expect him to give us a fair, reasonable, competitive rent/lease term? Chances of that happening are so slight as to be incalculable. The only protection is the initial agreement. After that, it’s every man for himself.

And remember, these new owners will most likely be the contributors to Jindal’s political campaigns, his political slush fund, Believe in Louisiana, or his wife’s “charitable” foundation. They will be the ALEC-supported “One-Percenters” who feel that they are, by divine right, entitled to the spoils of political patronage. It is the finality of the “FOREVER” consequences of the sale of physical assets that makes me scream the loudest and that must be stopped before it ever happens.

Jindal has three years left to do his dastardly deeds. Everyone knows he has higher political aspirations (goals that he will never attain) and that he is a pathological liar who will say anything to portray himself as a caring and responsible keeper of the sacred trust placed in him by the Louisiana electorate. And our generally brain-dead media will drink his poisoned Kool-Aid, ask no intelligent and probing questions, and print verbatim his press releases.

Meanwhile, the Super Pacs will reward him for his unconscionable acts of greed on behalf of the One-Percenters.

So how can Jindal be stopped? There is only one way. Our legislators must muster the required two-thirds (2/3) vote to take back powers to act that in the past have been ceded to the governor and his appointees. That is the only way. And that must happen within the next year and certainly before the end of his term in office. Otherwise, Jindal will have sold ALL of the most marketable physical assets that the state must have in order to deliver essential services mandated by state and federal law and the state will be forced to contract with the new owners for these assets use at exorbitant rates and for terms favorable to the new owners.

That is why I’m screaming and you’d better scream too. Legislators, you’d better muster whatever it takes to act as a body politic united to preserve our state’s assets or your term in office will be forever tainted as a do-nothing, hear, see and speak no evil hand-maiden to the most corrupt governor in our state’s history. That’s a legacy that I would not want to bear.

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