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Nero Jindal fiddles at San Antonio fundraiser even as Legislature crashes and burns, state employees smolder

Posted in BESE, Campaign Contributions, Governor's Office, House, Senate, Legislature, Legislators, OGB, Office of Group Benefits, Prison, Privatization, Transparency on April 8, 2011| 4 Comments »

Events in Baton Rouge appear to be spinning out of control these days with legislative efforts at mandated reapportionment appearing to crater coupled with growing discontent among state employees over the proposed privatization of the Office of Group Benefits and three state prisons.

Probably the most appropriate metaphor would be that Emperor Nero (Gov. Bobby Jindal) fiddled (attended yet another out-of-state fundraiser) while Rome (the Legislature) burned.

On Thursday, both houses of the Louisiana Legislature abruptly and simultaneously said to heck with it and adjourned until Monday as the deadline loomed for reapportioning the House, Senate, the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education, the Public Service Commission, and redrawing the state’s congressional districts from seven to six to accommodate the state’s loss of population from 2000 to 2010.

When they return, they will have only three days to agree on all of those issues, a virtual impossibility in the eyes of some observers. They’ve been in special session, after all, since March 20 and now must try to accomplish in three days what they haven’t been able to do in the past three weeks.

In all probability a second special session will have to be wedged in between Wednesday’s adjournment and the April 25 start of the 2011 regular session. If that occurs, the first order of business should be that the 39 Senators and the 105 House members pass by unanimous vote a resolution that will not accept one penny of per diem. Legislators currently are paid $159 per day for each day they are in Baton Rouge. That’s over and above their regular salary, so a second special session of, say 10 days would cost the state almost $230,000 for doing what it should accomplish in the current special session.

So at a time when a steady hand was desperately needed to steer the ship, when some semblance of leadership and guidance was sorely needed, where was Gov. Bobby Jindal?

Why in San Antonio trying to raise still more funds to get him re-elected to the job he wants, of course.

Jindal, who already has upwards of $12 million in his campaign coffers and no opposition in sight, appears focused on just two things (we know, the governor usually begins his responses to questions with, “Three things….): his re-election and his obsession with privatizing everything he possibly can in state government.

Edwin Edwards, his legal shenanigans notwithstanding, and despite his weakness for women and gambling, would never have let what happened on Thursday occur on his watch. You can take that to the bank.

Smooth Eddie would have taken Jim Tucker (R-Terrytown) and Joel Chaisson (D-Destrehan) to the woodshed that is the fourth floor of the Capitol and given them an attitude adjustment. He would have said something like, “If you want to remain Speaker of the House and President of the Senate, you better get back down to chambers and get this thing resolved.”

And Tucker and Chaisson would have left the governor’s office with their tails between their legs and would have proceeded to follow the governor’s directions to the letter. That’s real leadership.

And therein lies the rub, as ol’ Billy Wayne Shakespeare once said. There was, is no governor around who commanded that kind of respect. Heck, the governor wasn’t even around, respect or no respect. And the legislature wasn’t about to take its marching orders from Timmy Teepell.

The only thing one can find in abundance on the fourth floor is the abyss that is a gaping leadership void. The current situation makes the title of Jindal’s book, Leadership and Crisis, nothing more than a cruel, very unfunny joke.

On another front, Jindal appears oblivious to growing discontent among employees of three prisons, the Office of Group Benefits (OGB), and state retirees who have brought about a resurgence of the Gray Panthers of a few decades ago.

Reports surfaced Friday that at least two and perhaps three separate groups are considering class action lawsuits against Jindal, OGB, and the Legislature to halt the proposed sale of OGB. One of those groups is the Retired State Employees Association of Louisiana.

Meanwhile, Jindal is plunging ahead with his plans to privatize the two agencies despite the appearance at the House Appropriations Committee Thursday of more than 100 corrections employees from Avoyelles Parish, a former congressman, and a former commissioner of administration during the Edwards administration, all of whom were vehemently opposed to the sale of state prisons in Allen, Winn, and Avoyelles parishes.

As regards OGB, a letter has started making its rounds among state employees and retirees.

It is not known who authored the letter but whoever wrote it urges others to send copies to legislators to remind them that R.S. 42:854.5(A) says quite clearly that revenue under control of OGB “shall not be used, loaned, or borrowed by the state for cash flow purposes,” precisely the intent of Gov. Jindal.

Under his plan, if OGB is sold, the state would get $150 million to $200 million of OGB’s $500 million surplus with the purchaser getting the balance.

The trick for Jindal would be to remove the $500 million surplus from OGB’s control. That would require cunning and guile, diabolical characteristics that should never be confused with leadership.

Here is the full text of that letter:

As a state retiree I would like to make it known in the strongest possible language my dissatisfaction with Governor Jindal’s plan to privatize the Office of Group Benefits. This includes any plan he has to “outsource” the PPO. Either of those actions will cost the state much more money than it now pays, not to mention the horrible financial hit it would mean for state retirees.

It is an open secret that he hopes to simply GIVE most of OGB’s $500 million surplus to whichever of his rich cronies end up buying OGB. Not all of it, of course. He hopes to confiscate a portion of the $500 million for budgetary reasons. This money is, by law*, for OGB’s use in properly administering the plan. GIVING away money obtained from the state’s employees and taxpayers is reprehensible and is entirely politically motivated. It is only in a love-the-rich and hate-the-poor universe that such a thing could be considered moral.

The sale of OGB, resulting in a one-time monetary benefit, or the outsourcing of the PPO, will not save the state one penny. Either action would, in fact, end up costing the state more money. The reason for this lies in the fact that OGB’s administrative costs (which includes all aspects of running the agency, including premium increases) is an incredibly low 4% (compare this to the for-profit industry average). If another company, of necessity a for-profit company, takes over the operation of the PPO, this cost will rise by a minimum of 10%. This translates into higher premiums for both the state (since it is the state’s responsibility to contribute up to 75% of the cost of the premiums for state retirees) and the state’s retirees. Would someone please tell me HOW increasing premiums will save either the state or its retirees any money? Whatever money is made (the figure bandied about is $125 million) by a one-time sale of OGB will quickly be lost in increased state expenditures. If the PPO is outsourced, the increase in premiums for the replacement plan will land the state in even more dire financial straits.

*Louisiana State Law La. R.S. 42:854.5(A)
C. Notwithstanding any other provision of law to the contrary, any money received by or under the control of the Office of Group Benefits shall not be used, loaned, or borrowed by the state for cash flow purposes or any other purpose inconsistent with the purposes of or the proper administration of the Office of Group Benefits. – Acts 2001, No. 1178,§ 5, eff. June 29, 2001.

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Before privatizing, consider the real motives–political and economic–and the financial repercussions

Posted in Governor's Office, OGB, Office of Group Benefits, ORM, Office of Risk Management, Prison, Privatization, Transparency on March 27, 2011| 3 Comments »

When considering the motives behind the sudden push by Gov. Bobby Jindal to privatize so many facets of state government, one must pause and ask one simple question: if private industry can accomplish what the state has been doing for decades and do it more efficiently and at less cost, why are so many for-profit companies falling all over themselves to win the contracts?

The answer is just as simple. They see ways to make enormous profits.

If the math doesn’t work for you, you’re not alone.

But a March 17 story in Bloomberg Businessweek (click here for story) may have helped to bring into the focus the reasoning behind private industry’s salivating over running such state agencies as Group Benefits, Risk Management, state prisons, and even the state’s public education system.

A story by Bob Sloan, (click here for article) posted on the web on March 26, also shed light on the machinations of private industry’s involvement in prison administration. Neither story paints a pretty picture.

But first, some background.

The argument could be made that only one company submitted a bid on the twofold contract to serve as a financial assessment expert to assess the value of the Office of Group Benefits (OGB) and to secure a private sector buyer for the agency that is presently sitting on a $500 million surplus, about $300 of which would go to the new purchaser with the remainder going to the state’s General Fund.

That’s true enough but then Wall Street banking firm Goldman Sachs helped to write the specifications for the state request for proposals (RFP) on the contract and was subsequently the only bidder on the $6 million project, it raised more than a few eyebrows.

That was enough to get the attention of the Legislative Auditor’s office, which promptly dispatched a team of auditors to OGB to look into that arrangement as well as the issuance of a $49,999.99 contract to Chaffe Associates of New Orleans to work up some preliminary assessment figures for Jindal in time for his presentation of his proposed budget for the coming fiscal year.

The Chaffe contract was exactly one penny less than the amount that would have required approval of the Office of Contractual Review. To date, Chaffe has not presented any studies nor has it billed the state for any services.

The Office of Risk Management was privatized effective last July 1 when F.A. Richard and Associates (FARA) of Mandeville began a five-year phase-in takeover at a “maximum cost of $68 million.” Now, barley nine months into its contract, FARA has already requested a $7 million amendment to a cost “not to exceed” $75 million.

And while considerable attention has been given the proposed privatization of state prisons, the privatization of public schools has managed to fly under the radar of the state’s citizenry—with the notable exception of public educators.

In the wake of 2005’s Hurricane Katrina, the number of public schools in New Orleans has shrunk from 123 to four while the number of charter schools has gone from seven to 31, according to author Naomi Klein in her controversial book, The Shock Doctrine, The American Enterprise Institute virtually crowed, “Katrina accomplished in a day…what Louisiana school reformers couldn’t do after years of trying.”

Jindal’s more immediate concern at the moment, at least publicly, appears to be the auctioning off of state prison facilities. A Request for Information (RFI, not to be confused with an RFP) by the Department of Corrections to determine interest in attracting bidders on an RFP to be issued later for the sale of prisons in Winn and Allen parishes drew responses from six bidders, including Winn Parish Sheriff A.D. “Bodie” Little, LaSalle Management Co., dba LaSalle Corrections, of Ruston, Emerald Correctional Management of Shreveport, Corrections Corp. of America (CCA) of Nashville, TN, GEO Group of Boca Raton, FL, and Management & Training Corp. of Centerville, UT.

The Ruston-based LaSalle Management already operates prison facilities in Homer in Claiborne Parish, Richwood (Ouachita), Harrisonburg (Catahoula), Jonesboro (Jackson), Urania (LaSalle), Ruston (Lincoln), and Ferriday (Concordia) in Louisiana and four others in Texas.

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

CCA is the largest private prison contractor in the U.S. and currently has contracts with the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and other federal clients, and 19 state prison systems.

CCA and GEO, the second-largest private prison contractor, together account for more than $3 billion in gross revenue annually, according to the Bloomberg Businessweek article.

The state currently pays local sheriffs in every parish $31.51 per day for each state prisoner housed in local jails. ICE, on the other hand, pays CCA $90 per day per person to house illegal immigrants.

Given the difference of nearly three to one, why would CCA, GEO and the others be so eager to offer bids in the range of $40 per day for state prisoners?

One answer is that they are in the business of making a profit and in all probability they have their eyes on federal detainees. The question must be asked: how long before the private companies, with federal dollars shining in their eyes, tell the state to take a hike?

Another possible answer is that CCA and companies like it go to great lengths to lobby federal and state governments to adopt ever-stricter punishment for non-violent criminals in an effort to maintain—and increase—America’s already high rate of detention. At $90 per day, it’s to the best interest of the private companies to keep as many prisoners as possible.

A third alternative is to cut staff, reduce the salaries of guards, terminate rehabilitation and vocational programs designed to move prisoners back into society.

The second and third alternatives would be in direct conflict with Jindal’s stated goal of rehabilitating and training prisoners in order to release non-violent offenders and thus, reduce Louisiana’s prison population rate, which right now is the highest in the nation which in turn, has the highest detention rate in the world.

The Bloomberg Businessweek article quoted CCA critic Bob Libal, Texas coordinator for Grassroots Leadership, an anti-private prison coalition as saying the company manages to skim better-behaved (read: cheaper to control) inmates from the general population, leaving government facilities to deal with the more violent prisoners.

Another factor that is never mentioned in any RFP or contract is the fact that no matter how many state prisoners a private company may take into its care, the cost of providing medical care for the prisoners remains the responsibility of the state.

CCA, according to the article, operates facilities throughout the southern part of the U.S., from California to Georgia. Low labor costs are a major factor in that clustering, the article said.

Judy Greene, a criminal justice expert at the Brooklyn-based nonprofit research group Justice Strategies, said the private companies save money at the expense of labor. “Labor is cheap, wages are lower, and benefits are few,” she said.

GEO is not without its critics, either.

In Mississippi, a state audit in 2005 noted that GEO has reduced staffing at Walnut Grove, a juvenile detention center that houses 1,200 inmates, to a guard-to-inmate ratio of 1 to 60, compared to the national norm of 1 to 10 or 12.

And while state prison employees erect yard signs in opposition to the prison sales and protest in Baton Rouge, the bottom line is they are going up against an industry with almost $5 billion a year in gross revenue and an administration that wants very badly to accommodate them in the interest of getting a few million dollars in up-front money to help plug a gaping hole in the state budget.

A betting person wouldn’t give very good odds on the administration’s suddenly developing a conscience and changing its mind on this issue. The alliances run too deep, there’s too much money at stake, and like it or not, money is the fuel that runs the political machinery.

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Jindal administration in lock-step with national GOP privatization addiction

Posted in Boards, Campaign Contributions, Commissions, Governor's Office, House, Senate, Legislature, Legislators, OGB, Office of Group Benefits, ORM, Office of Risk Management, Prison, Privatization, RFP, Request for Proposals, Taxes, Transparency on March 1, 2011| 3 Comments »

Could it be mere coincidence that the word privatize sounds a lot like privateer?

Remember the clamor to privatize Social Security? Advocates wanted Americans to be allowed to control their own retirement money by investing it in the stock market. To many, it seemed like a good idea at the time.

Fortunately, calmer heads prevailed and all the privatization rhetoric quieted, its disappearance pretty much coinciding with the collapse of several Wall Street investment banking firms and the subsequent trillion-dollar congressional bailout. Millions of Americans saw their 401k funds evaporate. Suddenly, social security privatization didn’t seem like such a hot idea.

Despite that, Gov. Bobby Jindal espouses what he considers a panacea to the state’s fiscal woes: privatization. Even if state property must be sold and the fate of thousands of state workers, along with their retirement and health benefits, are thrown into jeopardy, privatize. In that regard, he is in lock-step with Republican governors all over the U.S.

The answer to every fiscal ill that beleaguers the state is privatization, according to Jindal. Sometimes privatization can even extend into the already private sector, especially if state help for private enterprise through Jindal’s economic development air program happens to benefit campaign contributors.

LaShip, owned by Gary Chouest, was the direct beneficiary of Jindal’s $10 million investment in state funds for expansions to the Port of Terrebonne in 2008. Chouest, his businesses, which also include Chouest Offshore and C-Logistics, and his family members made a minimum of 18 campaign contributions to Jindal totaling $85,000. The funds came from a $1.1 billion state surplus. Ironic, given that the state today is faced with a $1.6 billion deficit.

Then, of course, there is the infamous chicken plant in Union Parish.

When Pilgrim’s Pride decided to close its plant in Farmerville, Jindal scurried to find a buyer for Pilgrim founder Lonnie “Bo” Pilgrim. California-based Foster Farms eventually purchased the plant after the state put up $50 million. Lonnie Pilgrim and Foster Farms both contributed generously to Jindal’s campaign.

Anyone who has followed Jindal should not be surprised. More than 200 key Jindal appointees combined to contribute more than $784,000 to his campaign.

Coincidence, says Jindal Press Secretary Kyle Plotkin who added that those contributors supported Jindal’s plans for reforming Louisiana and for improving the state’s image.

Nor does Jindal consider his repeal of the Stelly Plan in 2008 to be detrimental to the state’s financial well-being even though experts said the action would create a $350 million revenue loss in the first year, 2009. The Stelly Plan was approved by a majority of Louisiana voters but Jindal repealed it, saying his action would save single income tax filers as much as $500 a year and joint filers $1,000. That sounded great until one peeled back the layers and found that the $500 savings would be realized only by single filers making as much as $90,000 a year and to save $1,000, joint filers would have to make more than $150,000 per year.

Louisiana’s median household income was $43,635 in 2010.

It was little more than a year ago, in January 2010, that then-Commissioner of Administration Angelé Davis released the highlights of the administration’s “streamlining measures implementation plan.” Among those highlights were a 10 percent reduction in the numbers of cars in the state’s automobile fleet, sale of unneeded state property, better contractor oversight, and the establishment of a “Privatization and Outsourcing Unit” within the Division of Administration (DOA) “to serve as a resource for all departments and agencies for identifying and implementing appropriate privatization and outsourcing initiatives.”

To that end, the report said a Request for Proposals (RFP) had already been issued by the Office of Risk Management (ORM) “to evaluate the potential cost savings and/or service improvements with outsourcing the claims management and loss prevention services for all lines of coverage to a private company.”

The privatization of ORM was, in fact, accomplished when Mandeville-based F.A. Richard and Associates (FARA) was awarded the contract to take over operations of the agency, beginning with its Workers Compensation unit. The phased-in takeover is scheduled to be complete in 2013 at a cost of $68 million under terms of FARA’s contract with the state.

Proposals were taken on the privatization of at least one other agency but none of the proposals were attractive enough to gain administration approval.

No matter. Even without waiting to see if the privatization of ORM proves to be a wise move, Jindal is plunging ahead in his efforts to privatize other agencies, including state prison facilities, the Office of Group Benefits (OGB), and, if you watch what’s been going on with charter schools, public education.

As was the case of ORM, the privatization of any state agency would require the concurrence of the State Legislature. With recent party switches by several legislatures, Jindal now enjoys a Republican majority in both the House and Senate.

Privatization has already been tried once with less than satisfactory results.

OGB, beginning on July 1, 2003 offered state employees the option of selecting a Managed Care Option (MCO) administered by FARA, the same firm that is in the process of taking over ORM. A state audit later revealed that FARA was paid $8.6 million more than its $20 million limit, a 43 percent cost overrun.

OGB has since terminated its contract with FARA.

State Sen. Butch Gautreaux (D-Morgan City) has gone on record as opposing the privatization of OGB.

“I am very concerned about the governor’s efforts to sell off OGB,” Gautreaux said in an email. “I sit on the (OGB) board and attend the meetings. We’ve developed a reserve of over $500 million and again the governor is looking at raiding those funds for short term and recurring expenses. This will be a catastrophic move,” he said.

The privatization of state prisons also is also a matter of concern.

DOA recently published a request for information on the privatization of state correctional facilities in Allen and Winn parishes. Both facilities, while state-owned, are presently managed by private firms from Nashville, TN., and Boca Raton, FL.

Figures obtained from DOA show that it presently costs the state about $17.5 million per year to pay the two firms to operate the facilities in Allen and Winn. Avoyelles Correctional Center, which was built from the same architectural plans as those in Winn and Allen and which is state-operated, presently costs about $26 million per year.

The obvious questions then become how can a private company in business to make a profit do so without charging a higher per diem and how can the private companies operate Winn and Allen at one-third less cost than the state spends to run Avoyelles?

Simply put, the private firms pay their employees much less than the state pays its corrections officers. That alone is a major cause for concern among employees of facilities run by the state that might be privatized sometime down the road.

Private firms also offer less in the way of rehabilitation and educational programs. Basically, they operate on the concept of lock and feed. Moreover, because the prisoners will still be the state’s responsibility, the state would continue to bear the cost of prisoners’ medical care. Tough-on-crime types might question the need of rehabilitation and educational programs, being of the “lock-‘em-up-and-throw-away-the-key mindset but medical care can’t be denied.

That might be good for the hard-liners but that philosophy wouldn’t seem to do much to discourage repeat offenders and that flies in the face of Jindal’s highly-touted press release a couple of weeks ago when he boasted that the state’s recidivism rate for first- and second-year prisoners dropped by 33 percent under his administration. It’s the moral equivalent of Jindal’s having his cake and eating it, too.
Privatization necessarily goes against the grain of his stated objective of assimilating prisoners back into society through education and occupational training. He can’t privatize and expect lower recidivism rates, too.

Projecting the current rate of $31.51 per-day per-prisoner now paid parish sheriffs to house state prisoners over the 20-year contract sought by the Department of Public Safety and Corrections, the state would pay a private firm upwards of $700 million. Jindal appears ready to trade that obligation for $66 million in up-front cash sought from the sale of the Allen and Winn facilities.

That $700 million is roughly the same amount the state would pay if it continued to pay the two private firms to operate the facilities. But at least the state would still own the facilities.

But there remains one other factor to toss into the equation that no one has talked about.

While the state is paying $31.51 per day to house its prisoners in the local jails, the federal government is paying upwards of $50 per day to house illegal immigrants.

Given the choice of earning an extra $18.49 per day, a 58.7 percent bump, a lot of sheriffs will opt for the economic consideration of tossing out the state prisoners in favor of dealing with the feds. Where would that leave the state if it has no facilities of its own?

There’s no reason to think that a private firm, once it purchases the state facilities, would not do the same thing when its contract with the state comes up for renewal and the state would have no choice but to acquiesce.

Jindal has also mentioned the possibility of selling several state buildings—buildings that, ironically, were constructed less than a decade ago in an effort to get state offices out of paying rent on privately-owned office space—and of drawing on future State Lottery proceeds.

That would put the state in the position of paying for the buildings twice—all for the sake of obtaining one-time revenue for recurring expenses, according to House Appropriations Committee Chairman Jim Fannin (D-Jonesboro). “We would still have to pay off the mortgage on the buildings while we paid rent to the new owners,” he said.

Privatization has become Jindal’s addiction and he is acting like a desperate street junkie willing to do just about anything to get a quick fix.

And as with the case of all addicts, that can be a dead-end street.

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Rhodes Scholar governor’s road to jail deal forked

Posted in Governor's Office, House, Senate, Legislature, Legislators, Prison, Privatization, Transparency on February 24, 2011| 4 Comments »

A funny thing happened on the way to Gov. Bobby Jindal’s anticipated 11 a.m. press conference on Wednesday to announce his plans for the privatization of several state prisons: it never happened. And what did occur quickly morphed into damage control in the governor’s office.

Instead of a real live press conference, the media received only a four-page press release that said, in essence, that the state was transferring Dabadie Correction Center in Pineville and Avoyelles Correctional Center in Cottonport to the sheriffs of the two parishes.

The press release even contained extensive laudatory quotes by the sheriffs of the two parishes as well as by the executive director of the Louisiana Sheriffs’ Association and James LeBlanc, secretary of the Department of Public Safety and Corrections. To a man, they praised the agreement, claiming the move would be beneficial to the state and to both communities.

But when the Alexandria Town Talk hit the streets on Thursday morning, readers learned that both sheriffs had, almost in unison, disavowed any such agreement. Both Rapides Sheriff Charles Wagner, Jr. and Avoyelles Sheriff Doug Anderson indicated they had no inclination—or intention—to take over the facilities.

The governor’s press release quoted Wagner thusly: “Our intention is to save the jobs at Dabadie for our community and to continue to sustain Camp Beauregard. Working with the Louisiana Department of Corrections, we have developed a partnership that has proven beneficial to both of us.”

By Thursday morning, however, Wagner was singing a different tune—that is, if he did in fact utter the statement attributed to him by the governor’s press office in the first place. He quickly notified LeBlanc to reiterate his opposition to the plan.

Anderson was quoted as saying Avoyelles Correctional Center “represents an opportunity for this sheriff’s office to provide a basis for continued employment of those correctional officers in Avoyelles Parish.” Later, like Wagner, he would deny ever having agreed to take over the 1,564-bed prison.

Where were Sheriffs’ Association Executive Director Hal Turner and LeBlanc when the dust had settled on Thursday? Well, Turner didn’t have much to say. He apparently said enough on Wednesday through the governor’s press handout. “Today’s announcement is further evidence of the strong partnership Louisiana sheriffs have with the Department of Correction,” he gushed.

LeBlanc, however, was not so reticent, sniffing “In the event the Avoyelles and Rapides Parish sheriffs do not want to take over these prisons, the department will begin to seek private sector bids on the facilities to move forward with their sale/operations.”

Jindal, meanwhile, has had little to say. Of course, it’s hard to speak with egg all over your face and with your credibility having taken a hit broadside.

So, what, exactly, happened? How did such a monumental misunderstanding of such epic proportions occur?

Simple.

Either somebody (read: Jindal) jumped the gun with an announcement that turned out to be embarrassingly premature, ill-advised, and inaccurate, or

Somebody (read: two sheriffs) lied after receiving a groundswell of protests from local residents.

This much is known: State Reps Robert Johnson (D-Marksville) and Chris Roy (D-Alexandria) and State Sen. Joe McPherson (D-Woodworth) got an earful from their constituents. The main complaints were that they (the citizenry) were not informed about the planned transfers, had seen nothing to convince them that the state would save money or that employees would not have their salaries cut or worse, lose their jobs.

But we digress. Back to what happened.

An administration official close to the situation says flatly that the sheriffs are lying. “They knew about this and they agreed to it,” he said. “The real screw-up was that there was nothing in writing. Nobody in the governor’s office had them sign off on something as simple as an agreement in principle and it gave the sheriffs deniability. It gave them the chance they needed to weasel out of the deal.”

So why in the name of everything neat and binding didn’t Jindal’s boys get the sheriffs’ signatures on a document of some sort? No one but Jindal’s boys can answer that one.

It also brings into question his ability to act like a governor. The state pays local sheriffs in every parish $31.51 per day for each state prisoner housed in local jails and the sheriffs love the arrangement. With the 1,564-beds in Avoyelles and another 580 in Dabadie, that’s potentially a combined income of more than $24.6 million per year for the two sheriffs’ offices. What’s not to love about a sweet deal like that?

Practically any governor dating all the way back to Huey Long would have had buses waiting at the gates of both facilities come dawn Thursday morning to remove all state prisoners from the facilities in retaliation for the sheriffs’ having the temerity to show him up in such a brazen manner.

It would have been one of the better—and one of the more effective—shows of force by a governor since Huey Long coerced 15 state senators to sign his infamous “Round Robin” statement, pledging to vote “not guilty” in his 1929 impeachment trial, though maybe not as clever as brother Earl’s firing the head of state hospitals in 1959 and replacing him with a crony who subsequently ordered Earl’s release from a state mental hospital in Mandeville. Such muscle-flexing sends a clear message as to exactly who is in charge.

Instead, Rhode Scholar Jindal, Louisiana’s Ivy League governor, let two first term sheriffs make him look silly.

And even though he insists he has the job he wants, this latest debacle begs the question: What will happen if he is elected president and participates in an economic summit with Vladimir Putin? Or Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao?

It could get ugly.

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Jindal prison recidivism rates flawed

Posted in Governor's Office, Prison, Transparency on February 9, 2011| 2 Comments »

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BATON ROUGE (CNS)—Our Rhodes Scholar governor may have employed some rather unique mathematical machinations to arrive at what the Baton Rouge Advocate called a “stunning statistic.” Jindal, amending an earlier figure, now says the state’s first- and second-year prisoner recidivism rate has dropped by 33 percent.

Jindal used the figure to bolster his program to ease the release of some nonviolent prisoners as a cost-savings measure and to reduce recidivism (repeat offenders who are returned to prison).

The only problem is he used what he referred to as “first- and second-year recidivism” to arrive at his figure. Truth be told, there is no such thing as first- and second-year recidivism. Recidivism rate, by definition, means the ratio of the number of recidivists to the number of felons who return to incarceration “during the specified period,” usually five years, according to the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.

Even Department of Corrections Secretary Jimmy LeBlanc said Louisiana normally uses a five-year comparison because it offers a more accurate picture. At a Jan. 20 new conference, for example, Jindal cited a five-year recidivism rate for the state of 48 percent, a figure he now considers too high.

LeBlanc did say that some states measure recidivism rates on a three-year basis. He said, however that five years “is a better reflection” of the true recidivism rate.

Corrections Department spokesperson Pam LaBorde said using a fewer number of years, as was done by Jindal, generally produces a lower recidivism rate.

For example, if 100 prisoners were released and 20 were back in prison the next year, that would be a recidivism rate of 20 percent. But if another 20 of the original 100 recidivated in year three, the recidivism rate of the original 100 would be 40 percent. Likewise if another 20 were recidivated the fourth year, the rate would be 60 percent.

Jindal press secretary Kyle Plotkin said Jindal used the first- and second-year rates because he has only been in office for three years. He said the 33 percent rate proves that some of the “reentry programs” begun by Jindal are working.

But, LeBlanc, appearing to refute his boss, said, “Some who do not come back after the first year may come back after the fourth year.” That being said, the “stunning statistic” to which the Advocate alluded may turn out to be “stunning” only in the clever use of smoke and mirrors employed to arrive at the figure.

As Mark Twain once observed, “There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.”

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