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Archive for the ‘Public Records’ Category

LSPC Director has legal right to open discussion of her fate; meanwhile, when Doss talks, you can’t see Edmonson’s hand

Posted in Audit Reports, Commissions, Contract, Contracts, Corruption, Ethics, Governor's Office, Politicians, Public Records, State Police, Transparency on January 11, 2017| 4 Comments »

The Louisiana State Police Commission may have placed on its agenda for Thursday’s meeting an item to go into “executive session for discussion of professional competence” of commission Director Cathy Derbonne but an option that rests with Derbonne could put commission Chairman T.J. Doss behind the proverbial eight ball.

Doss is the State Police member on the commission. The remaining six members are appointed by the governor from each of the state’s Congressional districts.

Besides the item to enter into executive session, a separate item calls for “consideration of whether employment of the Director of State Police Commission should be continued or terminated.”

The entire proceeding, however could blow up in the faces of commissioners should Derbonne exercise her option to insist that all discussion be held in open session. Legally, she is entitled to make that call and if she does, there could be egg on the faces of Doss, Jared J Caruso-Riecke, et al.

In something of a plot twist, the web page of the State Police Commission was down briefly Wednesday night. Efforts to go onto the PAGE resulted in a message that the web address could not be accessed. The page was back online, however, after about 20 minutes.

Interestingly, the funneling of more than $40,000 in campaign contributions by the Louisiana State Troopers’ Association (LSTA) through its executive director produced only a sham of an investigation by a political ally of Gov. John Bel Edwards.

Natchitoches attorney and former State Sen. Taylor Townsend was hired under a $75,000 contract to “investigate” the contributions which were approved by the LSTA board of directors, comprised of state troopers, and laundered through LSTA Executive Director David Young. Young made the contributions, including $10,000 each to Bobby Jindal and Edwards, by writing checks on his personal account and then submitting expense invoices to the association.

Townsend, obviously taking his marching orders from up the food chain, declined to include as part of the evidence an audio recording of a meeting of troopers concerned about the contributions at which it was acknowledged that the LSTA violated the restrictions against state troopers becoming active in political campaigns, including making contributions. Townsend also failed to follow protocol in submitting a written report of his findings and instead, made only a verbal recommendation that “no action be taken.”

Townsend likewise has been silent on the issue of the manner in which commission members were appointed. When there is a vacancy, the commission chairman is required to notify the university president in that congressional district to solicit names for nominations from which list the governor makes his appointment.

Derbonne’s major transgression appears to be that she did her job, including notifying the governor’s office of the requirements for member appointments and of commission members who, like the LSTA, violated ethics rules by making political contributions while sitting on the board. Three members ultimately resigned because of that issue.

So, bottom line, what we have here is a failure to communicate (apologies to the late Strother Martin of Cool Hand Luke). An attorney who is a crony of the governor shirks his duty to the job for which he was contracted but still collects his fees and stands in good stead with the commission while Derbonne followed the dictates of her job and finds her job is on the line.

Way to go, guys. You should really feel good about yourselves. Eulis Simien, I really thought you had more integrity than to let yourself be manipulated by Doss and Edmonson.

Every time I hear Doss talk, I wonder how it feels to have Edmonson’s hand up his backside.

Calvin Braxton, you’ve already seen what can happen when you cross Mike Edmonson, but you’re going along with this fiasco anyway?

Monica J. Manzella, I’m really not that surprised; after all, you negotiate contracts with the State Police on behalf of the City of New Orleans. No conflict there.

Jared J Caruso-Riecke, Mike Edmonson obviously owns you.

Donald Breaux, we know where your loyalty lies with your special LSTA-1 license plate on your car.

You’re all a real piece of work.

How can Simien and Caruso-Riecke (appointed June 6) and Manzella (Oct. 11), who between them, have barely a year’s experience on the board, make any kind of intelligent judgment call as to the competence of Derbonne? The answer is, they can’t; they can only rely on the manipulations of Edmonson and Doss.

And that $75,000 investigation by Taylor Townsend only to get a verbal “I recommend no action.” It’s a damn good thing you weren’t heading up the investigation of the previous commission executive director DEBRA JOHNSON. Even the Office of Inspector General nailed her for felony theft, fraud, and malfeasance in office.

If anyone in this tragicomedy should be called to the carpet for misappropriation of funds, it should be Townsend. I could’ve done what he did for a measly five bucks and a beer from the bar run by LSTA over at the State Police training facility in Zachary.

We can only hope Derbonne will exercise her rights and make them do their dirty work out in the open for everyone to see.

And if you think firing a single employee—for no other reason that she insists on doing the right thing despite what Edmonson wants—will make your problems disappear, you’re so very wrong.

If you think LouisianaVoice has been a pain in the ass so far, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet.

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Partner in law firm defending OIG married to Supervisor of AG’s Civil Division; firm assigns three attorneys for defense

Posted in Attorney General, Contract, Contracts, Courts, Ethics, Governor's Office, Lawsuits, Public Records, Transparency on January 5, 2017| 14 Comments »

Despite Inspector General Stephen Street’s impassioned plea for a stay of proceedings in the Corey DelaHoussaye defamation lawsuit against the Street and the Office of Inspector General (OIG) “for the sake of conserving judicial resources and preventing the waste of valuable taxpayer dollars,” it has been brought to the attention of LouisianaVoice that one of the biggest and most expensive law firms in Baton Rouge has been retained to defend OIG.

And apparently it’s not enough that the firm Taylor Porter was retained but the firm has assigned not one, not two, but three of its attorneys to the DelaHoussaye matter.

As evidenced by OIG’s MOTION TO STAY PROCEEDINGS filed on Nov. 15, Taylor Porter attorneys Preston Castille, Jr., Katia Bowman and Ne’Shira Millender signed off as “Special Assistant Attorney General Counsel to OIG Defendants.”

Talking about using a baseball bat to swat a gnat…

Not that DelaHoussaye is a gnat by any means. He appears to have a pretty solid case against Street and OIG, given that his home was raided by Street on the basis of a search warrant the OIG has no authority to issue and based on the fact that Street initiated the prosecution of DelaHoussaye even though DelaHoussaye did not work for any state agency.

It’s also telling that by the attorneys signing off as “Special Assistant Attorney General” counsels for OIG it is implicit that the Taylor Porter contract was issued by the Office of the Attorney General.

You may remember how Attorney Jeff Landry got his drawers in a wad over Gov. John Bel Edwards’ appointment of attorneys to represent the state in litigation against oil companies for their contribution to the destruction of Louisiana’s coast. Landry just flat refused to sign off on the contracts and Edwards was forced to cancel their appointments.

That’s because State law gives the attorney general the final say-so in approving the appointment of all lawyers who represent the state.

So what’s wrong with that? Not much except that LIZ MURRILL is Chief of the Attorney General’s Civil Division and as such has direct supervision over Taylor Porter.

And her husband, JOHN MURRILL, just happens to be a PARTNER at Taylor Porter.

Now I’m not an attorney but I did stay at a Holiday Inn Express once and it appears to me that the Taylor Porter contract comes awfully close to a violation of the STATE ETHICS CODE which says, in part:

  • GENERAL PROHIBITIONS (R.S. 42:1111 – 1121): For public servants, other than legislators or appointed members of boards and commission, bidding on or entering into any contract, subcontract or other transaction under the supervision or jurisdiction of the public servant’s agency. This restriction also applies to the immediate family members of the public servant and to legal entities in which the public servant and/or his family members own an interest in excess of 25 percent. (Emphasis added)

Granted, John Murrill doesn’t “own” 25 percent of Taylor Porter but he is a partner in the firm.

And the State Ethics Law covers that little contingency when it goes on to say:

  • 1112 – Participation by a public servant in a transaction involving the governmental entity in which any of the following persons have a substantial economic interest: (1) the public servant; (2) any member of his immediate family; (3) any person in which he has an ownership interest that is greater than the interest of a general class; (4) any person of which he is an officer, director, trustee, partner, or employee; (5) any person with whom he is negotiating or has an arrangement concerning prospective employment; (6) any person who is indebted to him or is a party to an existing contract with him and by reason thereof is in a position to affect directly his economic interests. (Emphasis added)

Does Taylor Porter and thus John Murrill have an “economic interest” through contracts with the Attorney General’s Civil Division?

Well, consider this: Taylor Porter, from August 2015 through November 2016, was approved for 13 contracts totaling more than $2 million, about $160,000 per contract on average.

And that didn’t even include Taylor Porter’s contract to defend OIG. That contract has yet to be entered on the state’s online LaTrac program, which lists contracts with every state agency.

Perhaps there is a perfectly logical explanation for all of this. If so, we’d love to hear it.

Otherwise, we’ll just refer to the immortal words of the late C.B. Forgotston:

“You can’t make this stuff up.”

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Bobby, you got $34.6 million lying around? That’s what your mismanagement of Northrop Grumman refund cost the state

Posted in Budget, Contract, Contracts, Corruption, DOA, Ethics, Finances, Fraud, Governor's Office, Incentives, Jobs, Legislature, Legislators, Office of Group Benefits, Office of Risk Management, Public Records, State Agencies on January 3, 2017| 10 Comments »

Bobby Jindal, the Rhode Scholar who rode into town on the crest of a billion-dollar surplus nine years ago this month, rode out 12 months ago leaving the state wallowing in red ink and now it is learned that he inflicted even more fiscal carnage on his way out the door.

And knowing the way in which he and his final Commissioner of Administration, Kristy Nichols, juggled the books, it’s not at all unreasonable to think that Jindal’s final example of fiscal irresponsibility may well have been an intentional act of political chicanery carried out to buy him time so that his successor would be left with the mess to clean up. (Of course, Kristy didn’t become commissioner until Paul Rainwater left in 2012, but that does not change the fact that a lot of dollars were moved around—swept—before and after she was promoted.)

Hey! It’s not that far-fetched. He did it with the Office of Group Benefits. He did it with higher education. He did it with the LSU Hospital System. Boy, did he do it with the hospital system—with a contract containing 50 blank pages, yet!

By the time Jindal left office, virtually the only state agency left with a shred of credibility and integrity was the office of the Legislative Auditor—and that’s largely because the office has complete autonomy and is independent from outside political pressure, particularly from the governor’s office.

And now, coincidentally, it is that same Legislative Auditor who has issued a damning AUDIT REPORT that reveals a major SNAFU (if that’s truly what it was) in which the Jindal administration “misclassified” a $34.6 million default payment made by Northrop Grumman Ship Systems made in 2011.

The payment was made to Louisiana Economic Development after the shipyard failed to meet required hiring quotas but instead of using the money to pay off equipment the state had financed for Northrop Grumman, the audit says the Division of Administration “swept” the money when it was balancing the budget. As a result, the state has already paid some $2 million in interest and administrative costs on the equipment, and is potentially on the hook for some $6.2 million more.

Bobby and Kristy loved the process of “sweeping” agencies of excess funds lying around in order to try and plug gaping holes in the state budget that dogged Jindal every single year he was governor. “Sweeping” for funds is something like picking up crumbs off the floor in an attempt to gather enough to make a bundt cake.

“Since the debt could not be immediately defeased (a provision that voids a bond or loan) because of the limited prepayment options, the funds should have been segregated into a sinking account for defeasement of the debt, not a statutorily dedicated fund account that could be swept by legislative action,” the audit report says.

But the Louisiana Office of Economic Development (LED), then headed by $300,000-a-year Director Stephen Moret, failed to do that and, presto! The funds got swept by the Jindal Housecleaning Service and as a result, the state “will continue to incur additional interest and administrative costs until the debt (on the equipment) is defeased,” the audit reads. “If not defeased before the Oct. 2022 … the state will incur more than $6.2 million in additional interest and administrative costs.”

LED entered into a Cooperative Endeavor Agreement with Northrop Grumman in the early 2000s. The company had acquired Avondale Shipyard in Jefferson Parish and Northrop Grumman, under the terms of the deal, agreed to maintain employment levels of some 3,500 jobs a year with an economic impact of $1 billion. In return, the state agreed, among other things, to issue bonds to finance more than $34 million worth of cranes and equipment that would modernize the shipyard.

But dreams and schemes are made of fragile things. Northrop Grumman fell short of its job requirements and LED notified the company in early 2011 that it wasn’t living up to its employment obligations. Northrop Grumman agreed to settle with the state for $34.6 million, which represented the acquisition cost of the equipment. It wired the money to LED in March 2011, the report says.

But the state didn’t use the money to pay off the debt on the equipment, nor did it set the funds aside in an escrow account to pay it off in the future. Instead, it “swept” the money into the Louisiana Medical Assistance Trust Fund, was enacted during the 2011 session to help supplement the state’s Medicaid program.

But don’t worry, folks. It’s just another example of the superb financial management of the state’s resources about which Jindal would boast—in Iowa, certainly not Louisiana—during his comical quest for the Republican presidential nomination in 2015, his final year I office.

And now the state finds itself hanging out to dry while trying to come up with that long gone $34.6 million, plus about $2 million in interest and administrative costs.

In a written response to the audit’s findings, Commissioner of Administration Jay Dardenne pointed out that Jindal’s actions, while ill-advised, were nonetheless legal. “The (Jindal) administration’s decision to use the funds for other purposes was not prohibited by the terms of the (agreement) with Northrop Grumman,” he says, noting that the Legislature approved of the financial maneuver.

Perhaps, but we all know the definitions of the legal thing and the right thing are sometimes poles apart. In this case, those responsible knew what that $34.6 million was for and they chose to do what was legal but not what was right.

The question now is does the Office of Risk Management carry excess coverage that would allow the State to make a claim for recovery of the money on the basis of stupidity? Should Jindal, Nichols, and Moret be asked to dig deep into their pockets to come up with the money?

Nah. It’ll never happen.

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Terrebonne sheriff, parish president, businessman named defendants in federal lawsuit over unconstitutional search

Posted in Corruption, Ethics, Judges, Lawsuits, Politicians, Public Records on January 3, 2017| 5 Comments »

What’s the difference between Evangeline and Terrebonne parishes?

Apparently only about 120 miles, judging from the manner in which the respective sheriffs’ offices ignore and abuse the constitutional rights of their citizens.

Where the U.S. Justice Department recently issued a report highly critical of the practice of “investigative arrests” in Evangeline, the First Circuit Court of Appeal has ruled unconstitutional a raid carried out by the Terrebonne Parish sheriff last summer because he didn’t like what a blogger said about him.

And, LouisianaVoice has learned, the Terrebonne sheriff and others are targets of a federal investigation over other business dealings of the sheriff’s office.

Following the filing a federal lawsuit filed against Sheriff Jerry Larpenter last August, the anticipated second shoe has now fallen on several other leading business and political leaders of Terrebonne Parish.

The fallout stems from an ill-advised—and unconstitutional—warrant and RAID executed against a Houma police officer on Aug. 2 over no greater offense than criticism of the sheriff’s department on a local Internet blog.

It now has spilled over to a general indictment of Gordon Dove and the parish government’s relationship with a local insurance agency.

Wayne Anderson, a former deputy sheriff and currently a Houma police officer, and his wife, Jennifer, filed suit on Aug. 10 against Larpenter over the raid carried out on their home by sheriff’s deputies and now have amended Parish President Dove and others into the lawsuit.

The latest AMENDED PETITION adds as defendants:

  • Dove, individually, and in his official capacity as President of the Terrebonne Parish Consolidated Government;
  • Anthony J. Alford, individually, and in his official capacity as President of the Terrebonne Levee and Conservation District Board of Commissioners;
  • The Terrebonne Parish Sheriff’s Office;
  • The Terrebonne Parish Consolidated Government, and
  • The Terrebonne Levee and Conservation District.

The blog, ExposeDat, began posting critical stories of Dove and Larpenter in early July, prompting the illegal raid on the Andersons’ home. While unconstitutional, the raid did have the apparent effect of successfully causing the blog to be taken down, thus infringing on the First Amendment that protects free speech.

But in the interim, Larpenter, who was quoted as saying, “If you’re gonna lie about me and make it under a fictitious name, I’m gonna come after you.”  did just that. Executing a warrant signed by State District Judge Randy Bethancourt instead of the “Duty Judge,” who the latest legal filing says should have reviewed and considered the warrant.

Sheriff’s Detective Lt. Glynn Prestenbach Jr., who took the warrant application to Bethancourt for his signature, since said he “just did what (Terrebonne Parish District Attorney) and Jerry (Larpenter) told him to do,” the Andersons’ amended petition says.

Following the raid, law enforcement personnel arrived at the Plaintiffs’ residence, the petition says. Anderson was informed he was being placed on administrative leave indefinitely and was the subject of an internal affairs investigation for failing to uphold the law and for engaging in conduct unbecoming of a law enforcement officer. Anderson was stripped of his badge, his duty weapon, his law enforcement commission card and his marked patrol unit—all in full view of the Andersons’ neighbors, action that they say has caused embarrassment and harm to their reputations.

Bethancourt denied the Plaintiffs’ Motion to Quash, finding the defamation statute to be sufficiently broad to allow him a “look-see” to determine if the evidence wrongfully seized contained defamatory statements. Writs were taken to the Louisiana First Circuit Court of Appeals which quashed the search warrant on August 25 and ruled that the search and seizure (were) unconstitutional.

The amended petition accuses the defendants of conspiring together “to initiate unjustified and factually and legally baseless criminal proceedings against the plaintiffs. The Defendants lacked probable cause and/or any viable legal justification to initiate the said proceedings. The Defendants acted maliciously and as a consequence of these actions, the Plaintiffs suffered deprivation of their liberties and have sustained damages,” the petition says.

“Defendants Gordon Dove, Jerry Larpenter and Anthony Alford all met and/or discussed a jointly accepted and agreed upon the illegal plan discussed hereinabove,” it says. “Sometime immediately after a July 11, 2016, article entitled ‘You Scratch Mine & I’ll Scratch Yours’ was published on the website that detailed the business dealings between the Defendants, Defendant Dove allegedly announced to the entire Synergy Bank4 Board of Directors that he was going to shut the Exposedat website down and that he was having subpoenas issued. Defendant Anthony Alford lodged his criminal complaint within three days of the article’s publication.”

Once Alford filed his complaint, Larpenter wasted no time in initiating an investigation by his office by instructing Prestenbach to immediately conduct an investigation, the Andersons claim. “Prestenbach did as instructed and immediately met with and interviewed Alford. Prestenbach also sought by subpoena records from Facebook relating to John Turner (an alias used by Anderson), and within a period of five days obtained information relating to various IP addresses. Prestenbach searched the IP addresses and noticed that they were assigned to a corresponding AT&T account. Prestenbach then subpoenaed records from AT&T to identify the IP addresses that corresponded to the Facebook posts of John Turner.”

On or about August 1, 2016, Prestenbach received and reviewed the documents which had been subpoenaed from AT&T. These records revealed that the computer used to send the various posts was located at the Plaintiffs’ home address. Prestenbach immediately contacted Larpenter and advised him of the results of his investigation including the fact that the address obtained was the residence of Wayne Anderson, who was a police officer for the Houma Police Department. Larpenter allegedly told Prestenbach to stand by for further action. Later,

TPSO Detective Kody Voisin called Prestenbach and advised him that he had spoken to Defendant Larpenter who wanted a search warrant issued, and that he [Larpenter] had spoken to Terrebonne District Attorney Joe Waitz who also agreed to continue the investigation and obtain a search warrant. HERE is Prestenbach’s report as well as threads from Facebook postings.

The question that must be asked and the issue that must be determined at this point is by what authority did Larpenter obtain the Facebook and AT&T records? Who issued the subpoena for that information? If the search warrant was unconstitutional, it would seem that the subpoena seeking the private records would be as well.

The amended petition is seeking actual and punitive damages, court costs and attorney fees.

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Trump wants tort reform…except in libel cases & Ariz. Sen. wants to shield records from public; can it get any weirder?

Posted in ALEC, American Legislative Exchange Council, Corruption, DOA, Ethics, Legislature, Legislators, Media, Politicians, Public Records, State Police on December 27, 2016| 22 Comments »

Two seemingly unrelated news stories appeared in my laptop emails on Monday, one noteworthy for nothing more than its abject absurdity and the other even more so for the ominous threat it poses to the ability to hold elected officials accountable.

And while LouisianaVoice rarely delves into national politics because, well, truth be told, it’s admittedly way beyond my pay grade (and I was always taught to “write what you know”), both these stories have potential trickle down repercussions if any legislator is dumb enough to take his (or her) cue from the Man with the Golden Hair.

In the first story, Trump campaign manager Kellyanne Conway issued a dire warning, heavy with legal overtones, to “be careful” BE CAREFUL what we say about her boss. Her remarks, of course, were directed to retiring Senate Minority Leader, Nevada Democrat Harry Reid.

Reid last week said the election of Trump “has emboldened the forces of hate and bigotry in America” And that, in the minds of Conway—and presumably Trump—borders on libel (and, of course, “crooked Hillary” is simply campaign rhetoric).

It’s no secret that Trump, on the one hand, champions tort reform whereby corporations can be better protected from lawsuits over such trivial oversights as exploding batteries, toxic dumping, sexual harassment, etc. On the other hand, however, Trump has made it equally well know that he favors more liberal libel laws which would make it easier for public officials to sue.

Well, Trumper, you can’t have it both ways. The landmark case Sullivan v. New York Times makes it quite clear there must be a “reckless disregard for the truth” for a public official to recover damages.

Were that not the case, there might well have never been a Watergate scandal, the White House plumbers, Bebe Rebozo Iran-Contra revelations, Sen. John Edwards, the all-too-cozy relationship between Wall Street and The Clintons, Bushes, and even Obama or any number of other investigative pieces about public corruption. And to quote an old Baton Rouge State-Times editor responding to a reader who was irate over the treatment the paper was according Richard Nixon: “Exactly what is it about Watergate you would rather not have known?”

And out in Arizona, we have a bill pending BILL PENDING before the state legislature that appears to be right out of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) playbook and if it is, you can look for clones of this bill to pop up across the landscape, including, in all likelihood, Louisiana.

State Sen. John Kavanagh, R-Fountain Hills (wouldn’t you just know it would be a Republican who wants to put the kibosh on the public’s right to know?) has introduced a bill that would make it more difficult to obtain public records if public officials feel the requests are “unduly burdensome or harassing.”

That’s pretty open-ended and a decided advantage to any public servant who feels my request might be “unduly burdensome.” Wouldn’t Kristy Nichols have loved that? No, wait. It wouldn’t have mattered with her; she simply ignored my requests until she was damned good and ready to comply—if she even decided to comply. Okay, Mike Edmonson. He’d feast on a law like that.

Lest you think such a bill would never pass, consider this: this is Kavanagh’s second attempt at passing the bill and last it passed the Senate by a 22-7 vote, but lost in the House by a 40-19 vote.

LouisianaVoice will be watching closely to see if any similar such legislation is introduced in the 2017 session. If it is, then we will know without a doubt that this is an ALEC-sponsored bill.

ALEC, you may recall, meets at retreats, mini-conventions and conferences to draft “model bills” for members to introduce in their respective legislatures back home.

More recently, it has launched a sister organization, American City Council Exchange (ACCE) that has the same goals as ALEC, only on a municipal as opposed to state level. One of ACCE’s objectives, outlined in an Indianapolis conference last July, is to have its members become familiar with public records laws and to “be on the lookout for frivolous or abusive requests.”

Sen. Kavanagh couldn’t have said it better himself.

But what he conveniently overlooks is this: In any company, be it a mom and pop hardware or one of those mega box stores, management has the unchallenged right to know what its employees are doing when representing the company, be it processing orders, reducing errors, or one-on-one contact with the customer.

The President, Congress, 50 governors, Kavanagh, his fellow legislators and other elected officials throughout the land are chosen by the people. They in turn hire subordinates to carry out the day-to-day functions of government. So Kavanagh and every other elected or appointed public official in this country works for…the people.

And we, the people, have a right to examine the work they’re doing on our behalf.

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