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Archive for the ‘Public Records’ Category

$70,000 job monitoring state boards & commissions went to a director of Bobby Jindal’s re-election campaign committee; an example of the fox serving as gatekeeper to the henhouse?

Posted in Boards, Commissions, Governor's Office, Jobs, Public Records, Transparency on July 7, 2013| 12 Comments »

For eight months, from Oct. 16, 2012, until June 28, Gov. Bobby Jindal had a director of his re-election committee on the state payroll overseeing state boards and commissions, according to state records.

The duties of Kendal Melvin, director of the Department of Boards and Commissions, was reassigned to Kyle Plotkin, communications director for the governor’s office, according to an announcement by Jindal on Friday, June 28. Plotkin was promoted by Jindal to Assistant Chief of Staff at that time and was given the supervision of state boards and commissions.

Plotkin was given a pay increase, from $90,000 to $110,000 to assume the additional duties, according to Jindal press secretary Sean Lansing.

Melvin, a Vermont native, was initially hired as Director of the Department of Boards and Commissions on Oct. 16, 2012, at a salary of $70,000 per year.

But records provided by the Secretary of State show that she was simultaneously serving as a director of the Committee to Re-elect Bobby Jindal.

Before becoming a state employee, she was on Jindal’s campaign payroll at annual salary of $44,578, according to Jindal’s campaign expenditure report. Her last paycheck from the campaign was for $1,711.86 on Oct. 15, 2012, the day before she went onto the state payroll, records show.

Each of her 46 checks from Jindal’s campaign between Jan. 14, 2011 and Oct. 15, 2012 was issued to her home address in Barre, Vermont, records show, a possible indication that she never moved her legal address to Louisiana even though she was working here.

Her hiring would again raise the question of why, if Jindal really wants to keep Louisiana’s best and brightest in the state as he says, does he continue to go out of state to hire many of his top appointees? Plotkin, for example, is from New Jersey and Jindal policy director Stafford Palmieri is from New York.

Jindal was re-elected in October of 2011 but his committee has continued to function, even filing an annual report on Jan. 10 of this year that showed Melvin was still a committee director.

All campaign expenditures however, are listed in the State Ethics Commission’s campaign finance records in Jindal’s name but no expenditures are listed for either the Committee to Re-elect Bobby Jindal or Friends of Bobby Jindal, the committee’s original name when it was first incorporated in January of 2004.

Jindal entered the 2011 election with nearly $9 million in his campaign treasury and facing only token opposition, so it naturally generates questions as to why his campaign committee remains active, even to the point of filing an annual report in January, instead of disbanding.

Since his re-election, Jindal has continued to collect more than $1.6 million in campaign contributions, leading to renewed speculation about his intentions to seek national office. He is presently 18 months into his second term and is constitutionally prohibited from seeking re-election.

What other reason could explain the need to continue fund raising, especially the $35,000 he raised in New York on a single day—Oct. 25, 2012? His 2012 inauguration, for example, only cost his campaign $156,000.

But an even bigger question is why an active director of Jindal’s campaign committee would be allowed to simultaneously draw a state paycheck for eight months.

State Civil Service rules generally prohibit state classified employees from engaging in political activity. Unclassified employees, however, may participate in political activities so long as such activity is carried out on the employee’s own time. (emphasis ours.)

Melvin was an unclassified, or appointed, employee.

A second question would be how Plotkin could assume assistant chief of staff duties and the directorship of Melvin’s department at an additional salary of only $20,000 compared to the $70,000 paid Melvin for a single function.

Put another way, how is it that Melvin required $70,000 to perform her job and Plotkin was able to absorb that and the assistant chief of staff’s duties for $50,000 less than her former salary for her one job?

Those questions were submitted via email to Plotkin but an automated response said he was out of the office until Monday, July 8. The automated response directed all questions to Sean Lansing of the governor’s office.

Accordingly, the questions were then directed to Lansing, who never responded.

What exactly is the Department of Boards and Commissions anyway, other than an obscure agency tucked away within the Executive Branch?

Basically, it is charged with the responsibility of processing and retaining records of all appointments made by the governor. The St. Peter of Louisiana boards and commissions, if you will.

So the department director is essentially the gatekeeper for all the boards and commissions (and there are many of them) to which the governor may appoint favored campaign contributors—which may go a long way in answering the second question because the job’s duties otherwise appear to be quite mundane.

Who better then to head up the department than a director of his re-election campaign? Such an individual theoretically would know who to reach out and touch for contributions and to not-so-subtly remind them to whom they owe their appointments to prestigious state boards and commissions.

During her tenure at the department, which began a full year after Jindal’s re-election, Jindal received more than $585,000 in campaign contributions, at least $42,000 of that from nine of his appointees to state boards and commissions. Those include:

• Tony Clayton, Southern University Board of Supervisors: $5,000;

• Charlotte Bollinger, State Board of Regents: $5,000;

• Carl Shetler, University of Louisiana Board of Supervisors: $5,000;

• William J. Dore, Sr., Southern States Energy Board: $5,000;

• Dave Roberts, Louisiana Stadium and Exposition District (Super Dome) Board: $5,000;

• Hank Danos, LSU Board of Supervisors: $5,000;

• Lee Mallett, LSU Board of Supervisors: $5,000;

• Blake Chatelain, LSU Board of Supervisors: two contributions totaling $2,000;

• Moore Investments (James Moore), LSU Board of Supervisors: $5,000.

Between Jindal’s re-election in October of 2011 and Melvin’s appointment to her state position in October of 2012, Jindal raked in a little more than $1 million, including $76,500 from eight appointees to boards and commissions. The bulk of that $76,500 came from $50,000 in 10 separate contributions from Board of Commerce and Industry member Bryan Bossier of Alexandria, family members and assorted businesses run by him.

The web page for the department features a question and answer section about the procedure for applying for appointment to a board or commission. Call us cynical, but we have taken the liberty of adding our own tongue-in-cheek answers (in parentheses and italics) to those provided by the department:

• (Q): How do I apply for a position on a board of commission?

• (A): Submit an official application, along with a letter stating why you are qualified or experienced in the area of the board’s activity. (read: Submit an official application, along with a letter stating your net worth and how much, in terms of contributions, you are willing to give);

• (Q): What happens after I submit an application to the Governor’s office?

• (A): When it is time for the Governor to make an appointment, an analysis is presented that includes the statutory restrictions and information on professional or personal experience either necessary or preferable to the board’s function. The analysis is reviewed and applicants screened. The Governor then makes his selections. (read: When it is time for the Governor to make an appointment, all political contributions are taken into consideration along with those of other applicants. The comparisons are reviewed and the Governor makes his selection based on the amount contributed by each applicant);

• (Q): How do I know if I am eligible to be appointed?

• (A): Most of the seats on the boards and commissions are restricted by statutes. You can research boards and commissions and the laws that govern them on the Internet. You may apply for any boards or commissions that interest you. Please specify your first and second choices. (read: Most of the seats on the boards and commissions are doled out on the basis of the applicant’s financial stability and willingness to contribute to the Governor’s campaign and on the applicant’s willingness to vote in the manner dictated by the Governor, with no questions asked or by asking only those questions approved in advanced and passed on to the member by the Governor’s staff).

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Notable Quotables (in their own words)

Posted in BESE, Contract, Contracts, Education, Notable Quotables, Public Records, Transparency on June 24, 2013| 2 Comments »

“…the Department is not in possession of any public record(s) responsive to the above-written request.”

—May 9 Reply from the Department of Education’s legal department in response to LouisianaVoice public records request of April 22 in which we asked for “the official letter or email that you (Superintendent of Education John White) sent to inBloom to cancel the data storage agreement” as quoted in the Monroe News-Star report.

“White said he’ll send the certified letter to inBloom, but he said he’s sent several letters already notifying the organization that Louisiana’s data-sharing had ended.”

—Excerpt from Melinda Deslatte’s Associated Press story of June 20 in which White told the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education (BESE) that he had terminated the Jan. 13 contract with inBloom.

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John White could take lessons from Mark Twain on telling the truth vs. trying to remember what lie was told to whom

Posted in BESE, Contract, Contracts, Education, Public Records, Transparency on June 24, 2013| 13 Comments »

Mark Twain is generally credited with saying, “If you tell the truth, you don’t have to remember anything.”

State Superintendent of Education John White could take a lesson from that great writer because he appears to have trouble remembering what he said to whom these days.

Take, for instance, the AP story by reporter Melinda Deslatte that ran last Thursday (June 20).

The story was an account of a meeting of the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education (BESE) which focused on the controversial attempt by White to enter into a contract to provide sensitive student information to a non-profit data-storage company called inBloom.

inBloom, the brainchild of News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch and controversial New York education executive Joel Klein, is funded primarily by a grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and seeks to create a national database of student information.

The Department of Education (DOE) entered into a memorandum of understand (MOU) on Jan. 15 for the state to provide personal student data ranging from addresses and test scores to medical history and information about learning disabilities. White has assured BESE that the information was protected in secure servers and behind computer firewalls.

inBloom, however, said that while it would do its best to protect the data there was no guarantee that the information would not be compromised by hackers.

But buried deep in Deslatte’s story, White apparently becomes confused about what he has told various people.

In response to former DOE employee Jason France who said the contract was still in force, White said he would send a certified letter to inBloom. But then he added that he had already sent several letters notifying the organization that Louisiana’s data-sharing agreement was terminated.

But wait.

On April 22, LouisianaVoice sent the following public records request to White and DOE legal counsel Joan Hunt:

• “Please provide me with the opportunity to review the official letter or email that you sent to inBloom to cancel the data storage agreement as per the lead paragraph from the Monroe News-Star.”

A copy of the News-Star story was attached to our request.

On May 9, we received a response in the form of a letter from DOE attorney Troy Humphrey which said:

• “Our public information office has requested that I inform you that the Department is not in possession of any public record(s) responsive to the above-written request.”

Wait. What?

Is White really trying to make us believe that between May 10 and June 20, he sent “several letters” of cancellation to inBloom but as of May 9, there was no such letter?

Quite frankly, we have a lot of trouble accepting that scenario.

You may remember we were forced to sue White and DOE a couple of months ago over his refusal to provide public records in a timely manner. We settled for $100 per day per request that DOE was late providing. The final tab was $3,500, plus court costs and attorney fees.

Well, as of today (Monday, June 24), it’s been 45 working days since our request for the letter(s) of cancellation.

The state public records law says that any request for public records must be honored immediately unless the record is in use and unavailable. In such case, the custodian of the record(s) must immediately respond in writing to the requestor as to when the record(s) will be ready for inspection within the next three working days.

At $100 per day, White has already run up a $4,500 tab on just that one request—and the meter’s running.

But there are others that also are pending.

For example, on May 20, we made a follow-up request:

• “…In the public records you provided my attorney, J. Arthur Smith, you included photocopies of several checks to the Louisiana Department of Education from David Lefkowith but you neglected to provide photocopies of the backs of the checks that would indicate whether or not the checks were actually negotiated or deposited. Please provide copies of the backs of those checks.”

Call us jaded or skeptical, but we believe the checks may have been written and never deposited—a clever ruse to satisfy public records requests and hope there was no follow up as to the checks’ final disposition.

Sorry, but like Elvis, we have suspicious minds.

On May 22, Humphrey wrote us that “the Department will identify and locate any public records in its possession that are responsive to the above written request. After any responsive items have been identified, the Department will segregate and set aside those public records that are available for your inspection.”

To date, we have heard nothing further even though DOE had already located the checks and photocopied the fronts of the checks.

Let’s see, that request was made on May 20. Discounting weekends and Memorial Day, that is 25 days—and counting: $2,500.

And then there’s that other May 20 letter in which we made six separate requests:

• Any communications in any form or contracts relative to the “shared Learning Collaborative” or SLC, a project of the Gates Foundation;

• Information regarding Louisiana’s participating in Phase I of the above project;

• Any communications with or information relevant to Wireless Generation, a subsidiary of News Corporation;

• Any communications with or information relevant to Louisiana’s association or business conduct with any corporation or entity owned, led or associated with Iwan Streichenberger;

• Any communication or discussion relevant to the sharing of confidential student information for the purpose of developing and marketing “learning products” or for any other purpose;

• All communication and/or contracts relevant to current or future association with Gates Foundation or its subsidiaries.

To date, DOE has responded only to the first request on this list. That leaves five requests that have been outstanding now for 25 days. Five outstanding requests times 25 days times $100 per day comes to $12,500.

That brings the total for all outstanding requests to $19,500 as of today. Add attorney fees and costs of court and suddenly DOE is knocking on the door of $25,000.

We have already instructed attorney Smith to file suit—again—but that this time he seek sanctions against White and monetary damages over and above the $100 per day for his making it impossible for our sister company, Capitol News Service, to file stories to our client newspapers (about a dozen publications) in a timely manner.

These are unnecessary expenditures—all because White either doesn’t care about the public’s right to know or, as with the case of the letter(s) of cancellation to inBloom, he’s simply a liar.

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LSU Board of Stuporvisors gives away store with improbable blank contract for private operation of four state hospitals

Posted in Campaign Contributions, Contract, Contracts, Governor's Office, Health Care, LSU, Privatization, Public Records on June 4, 2013| 25 Comments »

Depending upon which source you consult, there are from four to six essential components of a contract that make the document legally binding.

The LSU Board of Stuporvisors apparently is unaware of any of them.

• There first must be an offer.

Okay, this one’s a little broad. There was an offer…of sorts. The Biomedical Research Foundation of Northwest Louisiana offered to assume administrative and operational control of the LSU Medical Center in Shreveport and E.A. Conway Medical Center in Monroe.

Likewise, Southern Regional Medical Center and Terrebonne General Medical Center offered to manage the Leonard J. Chabert Medical Center in Houma and Lake Charles Memorial Hospital offered to take over in-patient care and medical education from W.O. Moss Medical Center which will cease operating as a hospital.

But after that, it gets a little sticky:

• There must be an acceptance.

Acceptance is defined as an “unconditional agreement to the precise terms and conditions of an offer.”

To that end, the Board of Stuporvisors came off looking like Larry, Moe and Curly trying to match business acumen with Warren Buffett.

Or Jethro Bodine in negotiations with Donald Trump. You get the picture

The Board of Stuporvisors’ approach to this major enterprise was more akin to the manner in which car dealers attempt to sell a major consumer product with the cheesiest, most offensive television ads possible.

Simply put, there were no specifics in the contract—only 50 or so blank pages to be filled in later.

• Consideration: the payment exchanged for the promise(s) contained in the contract.

Without a specific offer, there can be no financial terms (consideration) and accordingly, no acceptance.

• Termination Clause: allow a contract to be ended without cause, though some courts have held that the clause cannot be invoked without cause.

So thus far, we have no specific offer, no financial terms (consideration) and no termination clause—only an acceptance of a vague offer—all of which brings up the fifth component of a legal contract:

• A contract must be recognized as valid by the courts and subject to the court’s ability to compel compliance.

It’s hard to imagine a contract being recognized as valid by any court anywhere (except possibly in Louisiana) where there is no specific offer, no acceptance of a specific offer, no financial terms and no termination clause.

Finally, we have the strongest, most binding qualifier of all for a legal contract:

• Competent Parties: parties to a contract must be competent and authorized to enter into a contract.

Wow, that’s a toughie.

Competent?

Hell, the LSU Board of Stuporvisors just gave away the store. How competent is that?

Competent?

Let’s ask a few simple questions of the board members, seven of whom own their own businesses, three are in government/public service, one is a banker, one is a publisher, one is a doctor and one is an attorney:

• Would you, as an executive, doctor, banker, attorney or business owner, allow your company, firm, practice, publication, or bank to enter into a contract with no stipulations, no conditions, no financial considerations—all to be filled in at a later date by someone other than yourself, after the contract has been signed by all parties?

We didn’t think so. So, why would you commit LSU and the State of Louisiana to such an ill-advised agreement?

Competent?

The LSU Board of Stuporvisors just named as the new president of the state’s flagship university a man whose highest academic achievement was that of assistant professor before he succeeded his father to the presidency of Murray State University in Kentucky as if he was the heir to some throne and then was named by his personal friend and benefactor, the chancellor of the University of California system, as president of California State at Long Beach. How competent is that?

Competent?

The Board of Stuporvisors put up a determined fight to keep secret the list of candidates for the LSU presidency.

It’s almost as if they were guarding a highly classified state secret.

Or hiding something.

What could they have been hiding?

Who knows? With the propensity for secrecy that has become the trademark of the Jindal administration, everything is concealed from view. Remember, it was Gov. Bobby Jindal who invented the term “deliberative process” as an all-encompassing term to protect his office from the public’s right to know what its government is up to.

It is Jindal’s Department of Education that has been sued at least three times in efforts to pry public information out of that shadowy department.

It was in Jindal’s Department of Health and Hospitals (DHH) that a controversial $184 million contract was awarded to the former employer of then-DHH Secretary Bruce Greenstein—a contract that is now under the microscope of federal investigators.

One has to wonder at this point how hard a legal battle the Board of Stuporvisors would wage against efforts to determine specifics of the hospital contracts.

Why are we so jaded, so cynical?

We’re not; we’re realistic, pragmatic. We connect the dots. Let’s review.

• Item: The Biomedical Research Foundation of Northwest Louisiana offered to assume administrative and operational control of the LSU Medical Center in Shreveport and E.A. Conway Medical Center in Monroe.

• Item: The President and CEO of the Biomedical Research Foundation of Northwest Louisiana is John F. George, Jr., M.D.

• Item: John F. George, Jr., M.D., is a member of the LSU Board of Stuporvisors.

• Item: John F. George, Jr., M.D., made two contributions of $5,000 each to Jindal’s 2007 and 2008 campaigns.

• Item: The Jindal administration dismissed talk of a conflict of interest by pointing out that George will not receive a salary as president and CEO of the foundation, thereby allowing him to remain as a (voting) member of the LSU Board of Stuporvisors.

• Item: On Oct. 25, 1996, the Louisiana State Board of Ethics ruled that Natchitoches Times Publisher Lovan Thomas was prohibited from participating in a decision by the Board of Trustees for State Colleges and Universities to contract with the Times for printing services and that the participating question “cannot be cured by recusal since (state law) prohibits an appointed member of a board from curing a participating problem through disqualification.”

And lest we forget, there are always those pesky campaign contribution reports that members of many boards and commissions must wish we would forget.

We won’t. We can’t.

Let’s take a quick look at those who found it in their hearts to support Jindal financially and were subsequently rewarded with coveted seats on the LSU Board of Stuporvisors:

• Hank Danos: $18,500;

• Robert “Bobby” Yarborough (former Jindal Campaign Treasurer): $45,000;

• Scott Ballard: $5,000 from his company, WOW Café & Winery Franchising;

• James E. Moore: $21,000 from Moore and his company, the Marriott Courtyard of Monroe;

• Stanley Jacobs: $10,000 from Jacobs and his wife;

• Scott Angelle: $4,000;

• Ray Lasseigne: $17,232 from Lasseigne and his company, TMR Exploration;

• Blake Chatelain: $28,000 from Chatelain and his wife;

• Rolfe McCollister (former Jindal Campaign Manager): $18,000;

• Jack Lawton, Jr.: $61,000 from Lawton, his business interests and family members;

• Chester Lee Mallett: $15,000;

• John George: $10,000.

What’s even more difficult to fathom is that 12 of the 15 members of the LSU Board of Stuporvisors actually coughed up more than a quarter-million dollars for the privilege of serving as a pack of submissive lap dogs for the governor—obviously with no will of their own.

So now, salary or no, George is allowed to serve as President and CEO of the foundation while also serving as a voting member of the LSU Board of Stuporvisors which, in its collective wisdom, has just approved a contract for his foundation to take over the LSU Medical Center in Shreveport and E.A. Conway Medical Center in Monroe—a contract with millions of dollars and hundreds of state jobs at stake—and a contract which contains 50 blank pages but which also:

• contains no specific offer;

• contains no acceptance of a specific offer;

• contains no termination clause and from all appearances to our admittedly layman’s mind;

• is susceptible to a challenge by some indignant taxpayer(s) or group of affected hospital employees in that it could be interpreted as invalid because of the court’s inability to compel compliance, and

• has no competent parties—at least on the LSU Board of Stuporvisors’ side of the bargaining table.

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Jindal’s criticism of IRS investigations of conservatives is more of the same notoriously lame, hypocritical hyperbole

Posted in ATC, Education, Governor's Office, House, Senate, Legislature, Legislators, Lobbyist, Politicians, Public Records, Transparency on May 30, 2013| 6 Comments »

It was with more than a little amusement that we read a couple of weeks ago that Gov. Bobby Jindal had called for jail time for any Internal Revenue Service officials found to have unfairly targeted conservative groups to be put in jail.

As usual, Jindal made his indignant, self-righteous proclamation at an out-of-state forum. This time, it was in a speech to Virginia Republicans in yet another stop in his 2016 presidential campaign that would be better suited for a Saturday Night Live parody skit than serious political discourse.

Oh, it’s not that we don’t agree with Jindal on this one point. The IRS certainly is far too powerful and is a force to be feared if one happens to be on the wrong end of a tax audit.

But coming from Jindal, it is simply yet another example of the “reform” governor’s façade of pseudo-transparency—hypocritical at worst, the subject of stinging ridicule at best.

“You do not take the freedoms of law-abiding citizens, whether you disagree with them or not, and keep your own freedom,” the Boy Blunder opined. “When you do that, you go to jail.”

But here’s the thing, Guv: It was only last March 11—not even three months ago—that we learned that one of Bobby’s boys, one Troy Hebert to be precise, director of the Office of Alcohol and Tobacco Control (ATC), had ordered a background investigation on LouisianaVoice editor Tom Aswell (that would be me). Here is the link to that post:

https://louisianavoice.com/2013/03/11/atc-director-troy-hebert-orders-background-investigation-of-louisianavoice-publisher-tom-aswell-but-did-we-pass/

Normally, we would not hold Jindal accountable for the actions of a rogue department head. But now the question must be asked if Hebert’s investigation was truly the action of a rouge department head, of someone who went “off the reservation,” or if the investigation may have been ordered by higher-ups.

Hey, even Henry Kissinger once said paranoid people sometimes have real enemies and recent events and revelations may well justify that paranoia. Read on.

On May 11, we sent a public records request to Superintendent of Education John White and we copied Department of Education (DOE) General Counsel Joan Hunt as is our practice when seeking records.

The request was straightforward enough: we asked for correspondence between White and his old New York boss Joel Klein dating back to July 1, 2011. Specifically, we were attempting to learn what communication the two had conducted relative to InBloom, the company Klein is now affiliated with and which was founded by News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch to serve as a “parking place” (in White’s words—a computer data bank, in more formal terms) for sensitive personal information on Louisiana students and teachers.

Hunt, subsequent to our request, fired off an email that same day to White, DOE attorney Willa LeBlanc and Hebert that said, “Troy, we need to reply and say that.”

But Hunt, most likely inadvertently, copied us into the reply as well.

Curious as to why Hebert would be included in the loop since he is about as far removed from DOE as possible (he’s under the Louisiana Department of Revenue) and equally curious as to what was supposed to have been said, we sent another public records request for all correspondence between DOE officials and Hebert.

The response to that request was even more puzzling:

“No Documents. Attorney-client privilege.”

Okay, first there are no documents but if there were, they would be privileged. That’s like the attorney who responded to a claim that his dog had bitten a passerby: “My dog does not bite. My dog was confined in the yard that day. I don’t own a dog.”

Really puzzled now, we sent another email on May 26 reiterating our request for correspondence between DOE and Hebert: “Inasmuch as you took the liberty to send your email to Troy Hebert, director of ATC and who is not an attorney nor is he a client of you or DOE, there is no client-attorney privilege.”

We also told Hunt that her provision of information about me to a non-involved third party constituted a “serious breach” that I was willing to report to the Louisiana Supreme Court’s Attorney Disciplinary Board.

Two days later we received another letter from the DOE legal office which said:

“As was indicated in the Department’s response dated and emailed to you on May 15, 2013, the Department has no public records responsive to your request. Any communications between the Legal Staff of LDOE and Troy Hebert would be privileged (attorney work product/privilege) and not subject to being released pursuant to a public records request. In addition, the Department is not in possession of any emails between Troy Hebert and John White.” There it is again: My dog doesn’t bite; I don’t own a dog.

We remained perplexed as to why Troy Hebert was brought into the conversation about our initial request. As the director of an agency completely removed from DOE, we knew there was no way possible that Hebert could be a client of either DOE or any of its legal staff and that fact only intensified our determination to learn what was going on.

Then we had occasion to interview Sen. Bob Kostelka (R-Monroe) Tuesday night about the Senate and Governmental Affairs deferral of a bill to protect state employee whistleblowers which had passed unanimously in the full House.

In that interview, Kostelka, a remarkably candid public servant, intimated that the committee had killed the bill to protect employees from supervisory reprisals for revealing official wrongdoing because one Troy Hebert had personally contacted each of the committee members to convey the message that the administration, i.e. Jindal, was not in favor of the bill. Kostelka, seeing the proverbial handwriting on the wall, did not object to the motion by Sen. Greg Tarver (D-Shreveport) to defer the bill.

It is not entirely clear why Hebert would be interjecting himself into legislative matters given the somewhat watery thin theory (in the case of Louisiana, at least) of separation of powers under which our state government proclaims to function.

He is, after all, a member of the administration, or executive branch and should not be lobbying the legislative branch. In fact, he is not even a registered lobbyist. And his dog doesn’t bite.

But at least we can now connect the dots as it all comes together. Hebert is one of those hangers-on—kind of like the new kid in town who hangs around the fringes of the playground hoping to make friends with the locals. He will do anything to curry favor with his boss—not exactly a wise career move at this point—including serving as a go-between messenger boy between the governor’s office and legislators.

…And between the governor’s office and DOE.

And Jindal now has the cajones to vilify the IRS for spying.

We bet Jindal doesn’t even own a dog.

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