Feeds:
Posts
Comments

Archive for the ‘Prison’ Category

Rule 1 in Politics: Follow the Money. Rule 2: See Rule 1

Posted in ALEC, American Legislative Exchange Council, Campaign Contributions, Education, Governor's Office, House, Senate, Legislature, Legislators, Prison, Privatization, Transparency on November 9, 2011| 2 Comments »

Follow the money.

It’s an axiom as old as politics itself and it is clearly evident in the examination of efforts to privatize various segments of state government in Louisiana.

Take state prisons and public education as two cases in point. The Jindal administration is pushing for both against stiff opposition. But outside influence is being brought to bear that would seem to tilt the scales heavily in the favor of the administration.

Take the organization once known as All Children Matter, headed up by one Elizabeth DeVos. The organization changed its name to the American Federation for Children after All Children Matter was fined $5.2 million for campaign money violations in 2006.

All Children Matter made 56 campaign contributions totaling more than $67,000 between November 2003 and January 2010. Those 56 contributions ranged from as little as $500 to as much as $2,000 to a host of Louisiana candidates, including $1,000 in 2007 to Lt. Gov. Jay Darden, then running for secretary of state; five donations totaling $6,500 to State Sen. Ann Duplessis. Duplessis was rejected in June of this year by the Louisiana Senate as Jindal’s nominee to serve on the LSU System Board of Supervisors.

While All Children Matter did not contribute directly to Jindal’s three gubernatorial campaigns, Elizabeth DeVos and husband Richard made six individual contributions to Jindal totaling $16,000 between June of 2003 and August of 2008.

Elizabeth DeVos’s brother Erik Prince heads up Xe Corp., formerly Blackwater, a firm that gained considerable notoriety for privatizing warfare as the largest supplier of mercenary soldiers in the world.

The Walton family, long a proponent of charter schools, also contributed $13,500 to Jindal from June of 2003 to September of 2007.

K12 contributed $5,000 to the Jindal campaign in September of 2007 and in October of 2011, gave $1,000 to the campaign of State Sen. Jean-Paul Morrell (D-New Orleans) and $500 to Board of Elementary and Secondary Education (BESE) candidate Holly Boffy (R-Lafayette).

K12, Inc., based in Reston, VA., is funded by the Milken Family Foundation and is run by Lowell Milken. It is the brainchild of Lowell Milken’s brother Michael Milken, the Wall Street “junk bond king,” who was jailed for violation of U.S. securities laws.

Students First of Baton Rouge contributed $5,000 to the campaign of BESE member Chas Roemer in September of this year. The founder and national CEO of Students First is Michelle Rhee, better known as the former chancellor of the Washington, D.C. public school system where suspiciously high test-score gains in 41 Washington schools while she was chancellor led to revelations of a high rate of erasures by teachers. In one class, 97 percent of erasures were from wrong answers to correct ones.

With prison privatization, things are pretty much the same.

A private operation of prisons is a high-dollar enterprise worth millions to the private owners. States and the federal government each pay private operators to house prisoners and private prison owners are clamoring for the business, thanks to legislation successfully pushed by the conservative American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC).

In addition to charging the state and federal governments on a per diem basis, private-run prisons also make money in other ways.

In Florida, minimum security inmates produce tons of beef, chicken and pork for Prison Rehabilitative Industries and Diversified Enterprises (PRIDE) at 20 cents per hour for re-sale to schools to feed students–at considerable mark-ups.

ALEC has worked diligently to pass state laws to benefit two of its major corporate sponsors, Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) and the GEO Group. One of those laws was SB 1070, Arizona’s notorious immigration law that helps keep CCA prisons filled to capacity with immigrant detainees.

The Prison Industries Enhancement (PIE) Certification Program has allowed the State of Florida to pay minimum wage to prisoners for PIE-certified work. But 40 percent is taken out of their accounts for room and board—the rent of cell space to offset the costs of incarceration, a requirement not too many would object to. They are, after, all prisoners serving time for crimes.

But the regulations specifically forbade the shipment of prisoner-made goods such as furniture, solar panels, and even guided missile parts across state lines.

The Prison Industries Act changed that by allowing a third-party company to set up a local address in a state that makes prison goods, buy the products from a prison factor, sell them locally or surreptitiously ship them across state lines.

Texas State Rep. and ALEC member Ray Allen drafted the Prison Industries Act in that state. Soon after, the PIE program was transferred from the Department of Justice’s Bureau of Justice Assistance to the National Correctional Industries Association (NICA).

NICA is a private trade organization that just happened to be represented by Ray Allen’s lobbying firm, Service House, Inc. In 2003, Allen was appointed Chairman of the Texas House Corrections Committee and began pushing the Prison Industries Act and other legislation beneficial to CCA and GEO Group, such as the Private Correctional Facilities Act, nationally. Soon after that, Allen became Chairman of ALEC’s Criminal Justice Task Force (now ALEC’s Public Safety and Elections Task Force). In 2006, Allen resigned from the state legislature while still under investigation for unethical lobbying practices.

He was hired soon after that as a lobbyist for the GEO Group.

Jindal tried this year and will likely repeat efforts to privatize at least three state prisons to placate campaign contributors.

Two of those prisons, in Allen and Winn parishes are already leased to private operations—GEO Group of Boca Raton, Florida (Allen) and Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) of Nashville, Tennessee (Winn).

Another local company, LaSalle Southwest Corrections of Ruston, would like a piece of that action. LaSalle already operates 12 facilities in Louisiana and Texas.

LaSalle contributed $12,000 to Jindal in four separate transactions between December of 2005 and November of 2008 and also contributed $1,500 to former Gov. Kathleen Blanco in November of 2004. LaSalle also contributed $500 to state senate candidate Rep. Richard Gallot of Ruston in July of this year.

In all, LaSalle gave $20,500 in 11 separate campaign contributions between December of 2006 and July of 2011. Others included:

• State Rep. Charles Chaney (R-Rayville), $1,000 in July of 2011;

• Jason Bullock (R-Ruston), who is in a runoff in House District 12;

• Ken Bailey, a Democrat who won the race for Claiborne Parish sheriff;

• James Paxton, district attorney for the Sixth Judicial District, $1,000 in June of 2008;

• Leah Sumrall, candidate for Ouachita Parish Clerk of Court who finished fourth, $2,500 in July of 2011.

Those contributions were dwarfed, however, by the political contributions of GEO and CCA.

CCA gave $5,000 in two separate contributions to Jindal in November of 2008 and in November of 2009. CCA also contributed $1,000 to Blanco in November of 2003.

Other CCA contributions included:

• Sen. Robert Kostelka (R-Monroe) in December 2009;

• State Sen. Lydia Jackson (D-Shreveport), $500 in November of 2010;

• State Sen. Robert Adley (R-Benton), $500 in January of 2010;

• State Rep. James Armes, III (D-Leesville), two contributions of $500 each in September 2010;

• State Rep. Billy R. Chandler (R-Dry Prong), three contributions of $500 each in January and September of 2010 and October of 2011;

• State Sen. Jack Donahue (R-Mandeville), $500 in January 2010;

• State Rep. Eddie Lambert (R-Gonzales), two contributions of $500 each in December 2009 and September 2010;

• Former State Sen. Kenneth M. (Mike) Smith (D-Winnfield), three separate contributions of $500 each in October of 2003, November of 2004, and April of 2005);

• House Speaker James W. “Jim” Tucker (R-Terrytown), $500 in December 2010.

GEO gave $10,000 in two separate $5,000 contributions to Jindal in June of 2007 and August of 2008 and $5,000 in September of 2004 and $1,000 in February 2007 to Blanco.

GEO, looking further into the political structure, also gave $1,000 to State Treasurer John Kennedy in November of 2005. Kennedy, as state treasurer, oversees the State Bond Commission which approves bonds to finance state construction projects, including prisons. The bond commission also could issue bonds to finance private construction as well.

GEO also made the following contributions:

• House Appropriations Committee Chairman James Fannin (D-Jonesboro), two separate contributions of $500 each in March of 2010 and March of 2011;

• Former Sen. James David Cain (R-Dry Creek), three separate contributions of $2,500 each in June of 2006 and November of 2007 (Cain was a candidate to return to his Senate seat this year and is in a runoff);

• Rep. Patrick Cortez (R-Lafayette), $500 in March of 2008;

• Sen. A.G. Crowe (R-Slidell), two contributions of $1,000 each, both in October of 2007;

• Former Sen. Ann D. Duplessis (D-New Orleans), $1,000 in October 2007;

• State Rep. and ALEC President Noble Ellington (R-Winnsboro), $500 in March of 2010;

• Sen Francis Heitmeier (D-New Orleans), $1,000 in August 2006;

• Rep. Dorothy Sue Hill (D-Dry Creek), four separate contributions of $1,000, all on October 21, 2011, and two separate contributions of $500, both on Feb. 16, 2009;

• Sen. Eric LaFleur (D-Ville Platte), $1,000 in April of 2009;

• Sen. Gerald Long (R-Winnfield), two contributions of $1,000 each, both in October 2007;

• Sen. Daniel Martiny (R-Metairie), five contributions of $1,000 each, two on Oct. 19, 2007 and one each in April 2008, April 2009, and February of 2011, and one $500 contribution in March 2010;

• Sen. Mike Michot (R-Lafayette), $1,000 in November of 2007;

• Sen. Ed Murray (D-New Orleans), nine separate contributions, including two of $1,000 each on Oct. 20, 2007, and seven of $1,000 each on Nov. 5, 2007. (The cumulative $9,000 contributed to Murray over a 16-day period would appear to violate the $5,000 contribution limitation.);

• Rep. Joel Robideaux (R-Lafayette), $500 in March 2008;

• Rep. Ernest Wooton (I-Belle Chase), two contributions of $500 in March 2008 and March 2010;

• Congressman Steve Scalise (R-Jefferson Parish), two $1,000 contributions, both on Oct. 18, 2007;

• V.J. St. Pierre, parish present of St. Charles Parish, $500 in March 2010.

GEO hedged its bets by two contributions of $5,000 each to the Republican Party of Louisiana in March and May of 2009, another $1,000 in September 2009 and $2,500 in December 2010 ($13,500 total), and then had one contribution of $2,500 in May 2006 to the Senate Democratic Campaign Committee of Louisiana and three more of $3,000 each in May 2009, June 2010, and May 2011. In addition, Geo contributed $3,000 in June 2011 to the House Democratic Campaign Committee of Louisiana, bringing the total contributed to the Democratic Party to $14,500.

Interestingly, 13 of the legislators receiving contributions from LaSalle, GEO and CCA are members of the Joint Legislative Committee on the Budget–the body which must approve any contracts between the Department of Corrections and these companies.

Those committee members include Chairman Fannin, Vice Chairman Michot, Chaney, Lydia Jackson, Armes, Donahue, Lambert, Tucker, Cortez, Ellington, LaFleur, Long and Murray.

Follow the money.

Read Full Post »

You can call him governor, you can call him Bobby, you can call him Piyush…..but don’t you ever call him inconsistent

Posted in Governor's Office, Health Care, Legislature, Legislators, OGB, Office of Group Benefits, Prison, Privatization, Teague, Transparency on June 16, 2011| 3 Comments »

Consistent: Unchanging in achievement or effect over a period of time; showing steady conformity to character, profession, belief, or custom; dependable, unswerving.

It’s an adjective that’s not been used very frequently in describing Gov. Bobby Jindal. It should be. The governor has been a veritable model of consistency. As ol’ Casey Stengel would say, you can look it up.

Jindal has consistently tried to unemploy state civil service workers in his repeated attempts to privatize their agencies from under them. He started with the Office of Risk Management, a relative small agency ($100 million budget) in the overall scheme of things.

Flushed at the ease with which that was accomplished, he next turned his eyes on state prisons, the Office of Group Benefits (OGB), and Medicaid.

Those weren’t as easy. The prison plan fell through, at least for this year. OGB has met with considerable resistance from judges, state employees, retirees, and legislators. And the Medicaid plan ran into an unexpected hurdle during confirmation hearings for the secretary of the Department of Health and Hospitals.

He consistently has been out-of-state on fundraisers, book promotion tours, or campaign appearances on behalf of other Republican candidates when he should have been home minding the store that was fast going broke.

He consistently visits Protestant churches, mainly in north Louisiana, to pass around clipboards with forms for church members to fill out, giving their names, phone numbers, mailing and email addresses for future fundraising solicitation efforts.

The only reason his out-of-state trips and church visits have stopped in recent weeks is because of a law that prohibits fundraising activities during the legislative session.

Jindal also has been consistent in withholding information from legislators, reporters, and even the state auditor. His Office of Economic Development refused to provide records requested by auditors who were attempting to perform a routine state audit of the agency. And the Division of Administration (DOA) simply refuses to disclose anything more than the time of day and more often than not, even that’s a half-hour late.

Then there was the infamous Chaffe Report. Without rehashing old news, Jindal hired Chaffe & Associates of New Orleans to perform a financial overview of OGB with the idea in mind to plug the data into his executive budget. When the budget contained nothing relative to the report, it soon became evident that the report’s analysis indicated privatization of OGB was not a good idea.

The public, press, auditors, and even legislators would never have known that, however, had Rep. Jim Fannin and Sens. Ed Murray, Karen Peterson, and Butch Gautreaux not pressed for the report. Even then, DOA attempted to withhold the document.

Jindal has been consistent in that he brooks no dissenting opinion.

During public hearings on governmental streamlining in October of 2009, Melody Teague, a contract grants reviewer for the Department of Social Services, testified against the administration’s streamlining proposals and was fired the next day. She appealed, but it took about six months for her to get her job back.

Then, on April 15 of this year, her husband, Tommy Teague, was fired as CEO of OGB—and he had not even publicly opposed privatization of his agency. He did, however, take OGB from a $50 million deficit to a $520 million surplus in a period of only five years.

His successor, Scott Kipper, had the temerity to tell the Senate Retirement Committee that if nothing changed at OGB, if there was no sale, no privatization, no third party administrator, there was not a single employee he would lay off at the agency. In fact, he told the committee, he had inherited a staff of excellent, dedicated employees. From that moment forward, his days were numbered.

His boss, Commissioner of Administration Paul Rainwater, had only a few minutes earlier testified that OGB staff needed to be reduced by 149 persons.

Finally, there are the confirmation hearings for Jindal appointees which thus far have been an unqualified—but consistent—disaster for the governor.

First, Rainwater sat at the witness table texting as Kipper was grilled by Murray and Peterson, never offering to come to his rescue by clarifying an answer or volunteering to rescue Kipper who twisted slowly in the wind.

Then, when Rainwater reversed himself on his promise to the Senate and Governmental Affairs (S&GA) Committee, made during that same hearing, to make copies of the Chaffe report available to them, Kipper was caught in the middle. His fate sealed, he resigned, effective June 24. At his final board meeting on Wednesday of this week, he received extended laudatory praise from the board.

The confirmation hearings have been the number one entertainment attraction this session.

That’s because of Jindal’s consistent persistence in trotting out nominees with baggage and expecting them to slip by Murray and Peterson. Invariably, the senators ambush the unsuspecting appointees with pointed questions about conflicts of interest or a lack of that now overused word, transparency.

With Rainwater and Deputy Commissioner of Administration Mark Brady, it was the refusal to come forward with the Chaffe report. With Bruce Greenstein, things took a little nastier turn when he refused to reveal the name of the winner of a 10-year, $34 million-per-year contract for DHH.

As secretary of the agency, he assured S&GA Committee members that he took a decidedly hands-off approach in the selection process for the contractor to install and operate the Medicaid Management Information System for DHH.

Despite that, he refused for more than an hour under withering demands to reveal the name of the contractor. When he finally relented, he revealed that the contractor was CNSI of Gaithersburg, MD., a company for whom he once worked.

Then, on Wednesday of this week, Ed Antie of Carencro, a Jindal appointee to the Board of Regents for Higher Education, took his seat in the witness chair to begin his confirmation process before the S&GA Committee.

Things got ugly early.

Murray started the carnage by asking an apparently innocuous question: “Do you have any outstanding contracts with the State of Louisiana?”

“No,” Antie assured Murray.

“Do you know of a company called Sun America?”

Antie shifted uncomfortably before answering. “I own a company, a holding company that’s dormant, that owns a company that owns a company that owns maybe 10 percent of Sun America. I’m inactive.”

“Have you ever heard of LONI?” Murray asked. LONI is an acronym for the Louisiana Optical Network Initiative, a state-of-the-art fiber optics network that connects eight major research universities—LSU, Louisiana Tech, LSU Health Sciences Centers in New Orleans and Shreveport, Southern University, Tulane University, the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, and the University of New Orleans.

“I politicked Sun America to give them a discounted rate for our fiber optics,” Antie said.

“I thought you said you were inactive,” Murray said. “Does Sun America have a contract with the Board of Regents?”

“They may. I was not involved in the negotiations and I have no idea what the contract value is,” Antie said.

“You were given a questionnaire and that question was left blank,” Murray said.

Antie, who heads up Central Telephone, replied, “I didn’t realize that a company from which I was so far removed was relevant.”

“Sun America has a contract with the Board of Regents in the amount of $531,000,” Murray said. “You first said there was no contractual relationship and now there is. Don’t you think that’s relevant?”

“I asked Sexton Gray (Gray Sexton, a Baton Rouge attorney who once headed up the State Ethics Board) and he said to recuse myself from any votes,” Antie said. “I’m not trying to hide anything. I took retirement from the telecommunications industry to serve on this board.”

“Which one of those companies that you mentioned owns Sun America?” asked Murray.

“Central Telephone is my company. It’s just a holding company. Central Telephone owns Network USA, about 30 percent, and Network USA owns Delta Media which owns 10 or 15 percent of Sun America.”

He said Charles Chatelain is the registered agent for Network USA, Delta Media, and Sun America.

“First you said you had no contractual relationship with the state and now we find that your company has a $531,000 contract with the Board of Regents,” Murray said. “You said you didn’t know, but you said you approached Gray Sexton for advice on your apparent conflict.

“In terms of ethics, you may be breaking the law,” Murray said.

Sen. Lynda Jackson (D-Shreveport) observed that Antie claimed that Central Telephone was dormant. “Yet, when you check corporate records with the Secretary of State’s web page, it shows that Central Telephone is in good standing, which means it has filed annual reports,” she said. “Its last report was November of 2010 and it shows that you are the registered agent.”

She said that ethics and conflicts of interest have become a recurring problem of the Jindal administration.

A check by LouisianaVoice also revealed that Antie made three contributions to Jindal’s campaign totaling $5,000. The contributions were made in August of 2007 and in August and September of 2010. His associate, Charles Chatelain gave $5,000 to the Jindal campaign in December of 2009; Network USA gave $5,000 in separate $2,500 contributions in August of 2009 and March of 2010, and Sun America contributed $3,500 to the governor’s campaign in november of 2010.

Jindal appointed Antie to the Board of Regents in January of this year.

At least that’s consistent with Jindal’s legacy of consistency.

Read Full Post »

The best political disinfectant is still a little sunshine

Posted in Civil Service, Education, Governor's Office, House, Senate, Legislature, Legislators, OGB, Office of Group Benefits, ORM, Office of Risk Management, Prison, Privatization, Taxes, Transparency on June 12, 2011| 9 Comments »

At the risk of being accused of being a one-trick pony because of all or our posts about attempts to privatize the Office of Group Benefits (OGB), we thought we would offer a quick overview of Gov. Bobby Jindal’s policies, of which OGB is but one facet.

Besides OGB, Jindal has already sold off one state agency, the Office of Risk Management. That privatization left many ORM employees years short of retirement age, thus jeopardizing not only their livelihoods, but medical benefits as well.

The sale agreement stipulated that the buyer was required to hire ORM employees for a “minimum” of 12 months. Of course the ORM director was sure to remind his employees who had just had their job security unceremoniously yanked away that he still had his job and, what’s more, would be eligible for retirement in 2012. That must have given everyone there a warm fuzzy.

Jindal tried unsuccessfully to sell several state prisons but was resisted by the legislature. But odds are he will be back next year with another attempt.

A campaign brochure published by candidate Jindal in 2007 touted his love for state employees and his dedication to hard-working civil servants of which, he reminded us, he was one. Maybe so, if you consider Secretary of the Department of Health and Hospitals and head of the University of Louisiana System as fitting the description of civil servant.

Nevertheless, in 2010, he tried unsuccessfully to push through legislation to abolish the Department of Civil Service and to dissolve the Civil Service Board, the only protection, such as it is, available to civil service employees.

He was successful in freezing classified (civil service) pay that same year and extended that freeze in 2011. The reasoning was the opposition to the myth of something referred to as “automatic” pay increases. No one bothered to mention that once an employee maxes out at a particular pay level, there are no more raises unless he or she is promoted. Nothing automatic there.

Many of those civil service workers have college-age children and didn’t help when Jindal endorsed an $84 million college tuition increase. Fortunately for them—and for the rest of parents with college kids—that measure died in the legislature.

This year, Jindal, who has taken the ridiculously entrenched position of no new taxes (not even a routine renewal of cigarette taxes, already one of the lowest rates in the nation), nevertheless tried to push a bill down the throats of those civil servants he so loves that would require that they pony up an additional 3 percent of their frozen paychecks to their retirement contributions.

That idea might actually have had some merit if the extra 3 percent would have been dedicated to paying down the state retirement system’s unfunded liability, but it wasn’t. Instead, the money would have gone directly into the State General Fund to help Jindal look like a financial wizard in using the money to close the $1.6 billion gap in the state budget, a situation civil service employees had no part in creating.

But keep in mind the proposals to increase tuition and civil service employees’ retirement contributions weren’t taxes: they were simply fee increases. But when you’re writing the check, the distinction could be difficult to make.

Bear in mind, too, that Jindal did all this while advocating more and more corporate tax incentives (read: exemptions) for well-heeled campaign contributors.

The governor also laments the loss of our best and brightest college and university graduates to other states but when it comes to his own appointees, he doesn’t seem quite as committed to the concept of hiring Louisiana first.

His first Recovery School District Superintendent was Paul Vallas. Vallas came here from Chicago by way of Philadelphia. His replacement, John White, is from New York. [And who could think it was coincidence that two weeks after White was brought in to replace the departing Vallas as head of RSD, State Superintendent of Education Paul Pastorek resigned and Jindal immediately endorsed White for Pastorek’s job? Who could possibly believe the entire sequence of events was not orchestrated from Jindal’s fourth-floor State Capitol office?]

But we digress. Jindal’s Secretary of the Department of Health and Hospitals (DHH) is Bruce Greenstein of Washington State by way of Maryland.

His Deputy Commissioner of Administration is Mark Brady of New Hampshire and his own press secretary is Kyle Plotkin of New Jersey.

Certainly, there must have been a sufficient pool of Louisiana talent from which to hire for these positions.

But that should come as no surprise, considering his campaign expenses. Of 670 campaign expenditures in 2008, only 219 were paid to Louisiana companies. It seems the governor prefers companies from Virginia, Texas, Maryland, and elsewhere.

And contracts issued to out of state firms throughout the administration number in the hundreds, many of which were issued to campaign contributors. But that’s another story for another day later this week. We promise.

While boasting at every opportunity of his dedication to transparency, openness, and accountability, he saw to it that ethics legislation passed early in his administration would exempt the governor’s office.

When a legislator introduced a bill that would have forced elected officials to publicly report the names of campaign contributors whom officials subsequently hire or appoint, it appeared to have Jindal’s endorsement.

Key administration officials worked the legislator over a period of five months and helped draft the language of the bill, which easily passed both houses.

Jindal promptly vetoed the bill.

Could that have been because Jindal appointed more than 200 contributors to some of the state’s most influential boards and commissions? Those appointees contributed more than $784,000 to his campaign in 2007 and 2008.

While no governor could be expected to appoint political opponents to these positions, the campaign contributions do tend to raise eyebrows. “Appointments to boards and commissions are based strictly on an individual’s experience, recommendations, and suitability for the position,” sniffed Jersey Boy Plotkin.

Jindal’s “transparency and accountability” mantra takes on something of a hollow ring when official actions are examined more closely.

When DHH selected a winner for a 10-year, $34 million-per-year technology contract, DHH Secretary Greenstein did everything possible to resist divulging the name of that contractor to the Senate and Governmental Affairs Committee that was considering his confirmation as secretary of the agency. Only after 90 minutes of back and forth bantering, did Greenstein finally admit that the winner was CNSI of Gaithersburg, Maryland, a firm for whom he once worked and one that outsources much of its work to its Technology Development Center—in India.

During his repeated refusals to name the contract, he was asked by senators who his boss was, to whom does he answer.

His answer: “The governor.”

Jindal’s Secretary of the Louisiana Office of Economic Development flatly refused to provide documents to the Legislative Auditor’s office during a routine state audit. This, even though state law clearly directs all agencies to provide all requested materials to state auditors so as not to restrict them in their duties.

Commissioner of Administration Paul Rainwater also attempted to deny auditors access to a report by Chaffe & Associates of New Orleans on the financial assets of OGB.

Rainwater went even further in first approving release of the report to the Senate and Governmental Affairs Committee member Karen Peterson and then doing an about-face and to instruct OGB CEO Scott Kipper to not release the report to anyone.

Kipper subsequently resigned, effective, June 24, which will give him tenure of a little more than two months after replacing former CEO Tommy Teague, who was fired on April 15.

Rainwater has repeatedly made the claim of “deliberative process” in denying access to the report. The deliberative process term emanates from that same State Capitol fourth floor.

Only one question needs to be asked about the Chaffe report that should put everything in perspective as regards Jindal’s efforts to privatize OGB:

If Chaffe & Associates said in that report things that the governor wanted to hear, that supported his unrelenting efforts to sell an agency with a $500 million surplus, is it even remotely possible that the administration would be attempting to withhold the document?

Put another way, if the report supported Jindal’s desire to sell OGB, what possible reason would he have to keep the report secret?

Put still another way, who among you believes Gov. Bobby Jindal has the best interest of state employees at heart? Indeed, who even believes he has the best interest of Louisiana at heart?

Who believes that all those out-of-state trips to support congressional and gubernatorial candidates in Florida, Missouri, Wisconsin, and other states were for the benefit of Louisiana? Why would he support a Florida gubernatorial candidate who headed a company hit with the largest Medicare fraud fine in history?

That candidate, Rick Scott, incidentally, won election.

Who can stretch credulity to the point of believing his frequent trips to other states to promote his book was for the benefit of Louisiana and its citizens?

Who can believe all those out-of-state campaign fundraising trips were for the overall benefit of Louisiana?

All these, the campaigning, the book tours, the fundraisers, occurred during a time of unprecedented financial crisis at home. And security details and aides who travel with him must be fed and housed on those trips—all on the state dime.

If you are a Louisiana public employee or simply a Louisiana citizen and you don’t stand up right now and defend this state from the encroachments and abuses of this governor, then you are part of the problem.

It should be clear by now that Gov. Jindal is oblivious to the plight of this state’s citizenry. This is your future. This is your government. This is your state. It does not belong to the Jindals, the Pastoreks, the Rainwaters.

It certainly does not belong to those who have been brought in from other states like Mark Brady, Bruce Greenstein, Kyle Plotkin, and Goldman Sachs.

Our governor has no right to operate behind a curtain of secrecy, to push his agenda with no input from the governed. He is answerable to the Legislature and he is certainly answerable to the citizens of this state.

His first responsibility is not to the big dollar contributors.

That distinction rightly belongs to you.

Read Full Post »

Notable Quotables (in their own words)

Posted in Budget, Governor's Office, House, Senate, Legislature, Legislators, Notable Quotables, Prison, Privatization, Transparency on May 18, 2011| 4 Comments »

“It seems to me like we’re selling prisons to cover a hole this year but we haven’t addressed covering the hole next year.”

—Rep. Page Cortez (R-Lafayette) on Gov. Bobby Jindal’s proposal to sell state prisons.

“Until the day I was arrested, I never knew there were ‘for-profit’ prisons.”

—Unidentified writer commenting on nola.com story on prison privatization.

“If the sheriffs don’t want to participate, we’ll go back to the original plan, go back to the private sector.”

—Gov. Bobby Jindal, reacting to Avoyelles and Rapides sheriffs Doug Anderson and Charles Wagner, Jr. who denied Jindal’s announcement that they had agreed to purchase state prisons in their parishes.

Read Full Post »

Follow the money….and you usually find political motive

Posted in Campaign Contributions, Jobs, Prison, Privatization, Transparency, Vitter on May 18, 2011| 4 Comments »

Deep Throat , during the cloak and dagger pursuit of the Watergate story by Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, at one point advised Woodward to “follow the money.”

Nearly four decades later, that’s still good advice for any reporter attempting to develop a cause and effect angle to any political story.

That’s what LouisianaVoice has been doing for some time now with Gov. Bobby Jindal’s campaign finance reports and it’s a long, convoluted path with numerous twists and unexpected changes of direction. But a pattern does appear to be emerging from this work in progress.

Take for example Jindal’s oft-repeated stand on gay rights.

He has consistently opposed expanded adoption rights for gays and way back in 2003 he made it clear he had no time to meet with a gay rights group.

As governor, he even created the Louisiana Commission on Marriage and Family which was designed to “propose programs, policies, incentives, and curriculum regarding marriage and family by collecting and analyzing data on the social and personal effects of marriage and child-bearing within the state of Louisiana.” One of his first appointees to the commission was Tony Perkins of Baton Rouge, president of the anti-gay advocacy group known as the Family Research Council.

But there’s that $5,000 campaign contribution in August of 2008 from Paul E. Singer of New York.

Singer is an enormously wealthy New York City hedge fund manager and prominent Republican donor.

Together, he and two other right-wing Republican donors from the financial district contributed nearly $1 million to a new coalition of gay rights organizations in New York.

Politics, it seems, does indeed make for strange bedfellows. Okay, that was too easy but you knew someone was going to say it.

In last fall’s congressional elections, Jindal campaigned vigorously for Republicans in other states but avoided U.S. Sen. David Vitter like the plague.

Some felt that Vitter’s admitted trysts with prostitutes did not square with Jindal’s family value core beliefs. How then, does he explain the $19,000 he accepted from former Congressman Bob Livingston between April 2003 and February of this year?

Perhaps he calculated that Livingston was flying well below reporters’ radar. But remember, Livingston admitted his own dalliance with another woman just prior to the impeachment proceedings of President Bill Clinton.

At the time Livingston was poised to become House Speaker but resigned from Congress instead.

Not that Jindal goes to any great lengths to vet his contributors.

We’ve already seen that he accepted $11,000 from the Louisiana Horsemen’s Benevolent and Protective Association (LHBPA) in apparent violation of state and federal prohibitions against political contributions by non-profit taxpayer-supported bodies.

Actually, that $11,000 figure is from the Legislative Auditor’s office but CNS has documented $22,000 in LHBPA donations from November of 2003 through March of 2009. Apparently, the state auditor only more recent contributions.

The top two administrators of the association at the time are now awaiting trial on 29-count federal indictments of fraud, election rigging, and other charges.

Then there is the $2500 donation made to Jindal in December of 2008 by HCA of Nashville.

In 1997, eleven years prior to that donation, HCA became embroiled in the largest Medicare fraud investigation in history. HCA ultimately paid a record $1.7 billion in criminal and civil fines.

The CEO of HCA at the time was a man by the name of Rick Scott.

Rick Scott is now the Republican governor of Florida for whom Jindal campaigned extensively last fall.

Just last Saturday, the Florida legislature passed a $69.7 billion budget that included Scott’s sweeping program to privatize at least 16 prisons, numerous annexes, juvenile correction facilities, road camps, and work-release centers in 18 counties.

The Florida privatization plan will result in the loss of 1700 jobs in the state prison system as well as reduced benefits for those lucky enough to keep their jobs—all for a promise by the private companies of an annual savings of $40 million, a promise State Sen. Mike Fasano finds vague and unconvincing.

State Rep. Paige Kreegel said the core mission of government is to protect good people from bad ones. “When we shirk our core mission, we lost our legitimacy to govern,” he said.

Both Kreegel and Fasano are Republicans.

Scott had his reasons for wanting to privatize, of course: 25,000 reasons, to be precise. GEO Group, a Boca Raton-based company, contributed $25,000 to Scott’s campaign in January, about the same time he took office.

GEO is the nation’s second-largest private prison operator is currently contracted to run the Allen Correctional Center in Kinder in Allen Parish.

The company contributed $10,000 to the Jindal campaign in separate $5,000 payments in 2007 and 2008.

Other private prison firms contributing to Jindal’s campaign include:

• Corrections Corp. of America (CCA) of Nashville, TN., the nation’s largest private prison firm–$13,000;

• Wackenhut Corrections of Palm Beach Gardens, FL.,–$10,000;

• LaSalle Management, formerly of Rayville but now headquartered in Ruston–$10,000;

• Emerald Correctional Management of Shreveport–$10,000;

• Waterproof Correctional of Shreveport–$2500;

• LCS Corrections Service of Baton Rouge–$2500;

• Richwood Correctional Center of Ruston–$2500, and

• Joseph Russell of Nashville, a member of the CCA board of directors–$2500.

CCA presently operates the state’s Winn Parish facility on a contractual basis while LaSalle runs state lockups in Claiborne Parish (Homer), Ouachita (Richwood), Catahoula (Harrisonburg), Jackson (Jonesboro), LaSalle (Urania), Lincoln (Ruston), and Concordia (Ferriday).

Emerald operates the West Carroll Detention Center in Epps and also operates facilities in Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona.

Wackenhut once ran the state juvenile detention facility in Jena but subsequently returned the facility to the state following claims of brutality by guards.

Abuse of juveniles by private prison concerns is not limited to Louisiana, of course.

Pennsylvania has been rocked by a scandal in which two judges funneled juveniles with only minor offenses into privately-run detention centers in exchange for monetary kickbacks from the companies.

All the controversy swirling around the private companies is of little apparent concern to Jindal, Scott, and Republicans in general, who appear determined to privatize state agencies.

If a little campaign money helps grease the skids, so much the better.

Prison privatization appears dead for this year’s legislative session but it’s pretty much a certainty that it will remain a high priority on Jindal’s agenda.

As we have observed before, he is half-right about his administration’s being the most transparent and ethical in state history.

He is certainly transparent enough but we’re still looking for the ethics.

And we’re continuing to follow the money.

Read Full Post »

« Newer Posts - Older Posts »