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Archive for the ‘Public Records’ Category

DOE $148K Chief Information Officer issues orders for department staff not to attend March 8 BESE meeting

Posted in BESE, Education, Public Records, Transparency on April 10, 2013| 12 Comments »

James Bowman is officially listed as the Chief Information Officer for the Louisiana Department of Education (DOE).

At $148,000 a year, he ostensibly presides over information technology for DOE.

He may even be the one responsible for redesigning the department’s web page to make it all but impossible to navigate. So much the better to keep the public uninformed about the machinations of DOE.

LouisianaVoice made its initial public information request pursuant to a curious Bowman email way back on March 10 but DOE did not get around to responding until Wednesday of this week. Our request read, in part:

• Pursuant to the Public Records Act of Louisiana (R.S. 44:1 et seq.), I respectfully request the following information:

• Emails sent by James Bowman the week of March 4-7, 2013 relative to directing staff not to attend BESE meeting.

The email was sent by Bowman on March 7 to Dave Elder, Carol Mosley and James McMahon of DOE and read:

• If you have staff that normally attends these meetings, pls advise that they should not attend tomorrow.

Inquiring minds, of course, want to know. Accordingly, we fired off an email to James Bowman, Chief Information Officer for the Louisiana Department of Education, in which we sought…well, information. Our email read thusly:

• What was the reasoning behind your email of March 7 to Dave Elder, Carol Mosley and James McMahon in which you directed them to advise their staff members that “they should not attend” the March 8 BESE meeting?

Bowman opened our email at 6:12 p.m. Wednesday but by 10 p.m. had not responded.

…So much for the information part of his title. Apparently that does not extend to the great unwashed.

For what it’s worth, we were unable to ascertain the exact job titles and salaries of Mosley or McMahon, but Elder was a former information technology director for DOE who has since retired.

As for that mysterious March 8 meeting, the agenda appeared rather routine:

• Academic Goals and Instructional Improvement;

• Administration and finance;

• Educator Effectiveness;

• Policy Information.

We can’t help but wonder if that BESE meeting may have held a clue to DOE’s agreement to provide sensitive student information to a huge computer data base controlled by Fox News honcho Rupert Murdoch—thus the directive to bar certain DOE staff members from attending the meeting.

What might have been buried in that “policy information” item? Or “academic goals and instructional improvement?”

Paranoid? Hell yes.

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BESE apparently watches ‘Bachelorette’; White continues to ignore legitimate media requests for DEO public records

Posted in BESE, Education, Public Records, Transparency on April 9, 2013| 15 Comments »

Call this the John White Special.

Let’s start with BESE’s March meeting at which the calculation of Minimum Foundation Program (MFP) funding was discussed in a 26-page report which at one point appeared to veer off into reality television. The MFP was approved by BESE on March 8.

One of the criteria outlined at that meeting was the High Standards Weight.

“This weight is provided to recognize the cost of providing advanced coursework,” the BESE report said. “A 30 percent weight is provided for students in grades 8 through 11 that (sic) meet the certain criteria on exams. Students must meet the following criteria in order to be considered eligible (one would think that education administrators would know to use the word “who” instead of “that.”):

• Students in 8th grade that (there’s “that” again, instead of “who”) score excellent on Algebra I End of Course (EOC) tests;

• Students in 9th grade who (ah!) score excellent on Geometry EOC tests or score in a 3 or higher on an Advance Placement (AP) exam;

• Students in 10th grade who score 3 or higher on an AP exam;

• Students in 11th grade who score a 3 or higher on an AP exam or a 4+ on an International Bachelorette (IB) course.

Wait. What? Bachelorette? Yep, that’s what it said.

Like we said, reality television rules at BESE.

Maybe someone should have whispered to BESE/DOE that it should be International Baccalaureate before it’s approved for an official state document. And perhaps motivational speaker David “Lefty” Lefkowith could take time to show up for work one day and give proofreading lessons.

The biggest sticking point with White, insofar as LouisianaVoice is concerned, is the difficulty (make that impossibility) of squeezing what are clearly public records out of DOE.

R.S. 44:32(D) provides: “In any case in which a record is requested and a question is raised by the custodian of the record as to whether it is a public record, such custodian shall within three days, exclusive of Saturdays, Sundays, and legal public holidays, of the receipt of the request, in writing for such record, notify in writing the person making such request of his determination and the reasons therefor. Such written notification shall contain a reference to the basis under law which the custodian has determined exempts a record, or any part thereof, from inspection, copying, or reproduction.”

Three days.

If Jesus could escape from his tomb in three days, the Department of Education certainly should be able to lay its hands on and produce requested public records within that prescribed time.

Yet, LouisianaVoice has outstanding records requests dating back to March 6 without so much as an acknowledgement from DOE. We know Superintendent John White received the requests because our email alerts us whenever a recipient has opened one of our emails. There’s a reason for that.

Following are some of our outstanding public records requests:

Sent: Wednesday, March 06, 2013 8:58 PM
To: john.white@la.gov
Subject: PUBLIC RECORDS REQUEST

Pursuant to the Public Records Act of Louisiana (R.S. 44:1 et seq.), I respectfully request the following information:

I would like a list of and a CV for the following:

All personnel who now work or who have worked in the Louisiana Department of Education since January of 2007 who worked for or otherwise were associated, affiliated with or employed by Teach for America, the New Teacher Project, and/or the Eli Broad Foundation;

In providing this information, please provide the following information:

Dates of employment for each;

Job title for each;

Salary for each.

(Nothing.)

Sent: Sunday, March 10, 2013 8:29 PM
To: john.white@la.gov
Cc: J Arthur Smith
Subject: PUBLIC RECORDS REQUEST

Pursuant to the Public Records Act of Louisiana (R.S. 44:1 et seq.), I respectfully request the following information:

emails sent by James Bowman the week of March 4-7, 2013 relative to directing staff not to attend BESE meeting.
Emails sent by Nick Bolt since Feb. 1, 2013 pertaining to Shared Learning Collaborative, including any and all communications relative to off-line discussions of SLC or Shared Learning Collaborative.

(Nothing.)

Sent: Tuesday, April 02, 2013 10:04 AM
To: john.white@la.gov; troy.humphrey@la.gov
Cc: J Arthur Smith
Subject: PUBLIC RECORDS REQUEST

Pursuant to the Public Records Act of Louisiana (R.S. 44:1 et seq.), I respectfully request the following information:

Please allow me to review all contracts, purchase orders and authorizations to hire, executed and/or signed by Kunjan Narechania from January 1, 2012 through April 1, 2013. In providing these documents, please do not omit the signature page(s).

Please allow me to review all forms, including literacy, high school redesign and accountability authorized and/or signed by Kunjan Narechania from January 1, 2012 through April 1, 2013. Please include all signature page(s).

Please allow me to review all contracts, purchase orders and authorizations to hire executed and/or signed by Michael Rounds since his employment with DOE. Please include all signature page(s).

Please allow me to review all contracts, purchase orders and authorizations to hire executed and/or signed by David “Lefty” Lefkowith since his employment with DOE. Please include all signature page(s).

Please provide copies of all travel records/travel documents/travel reimbursements for David “Lefty” Lefkowith since his employment with DOE.

(Nothing.)

Sent: Sunday, April 07, 2013 9:00 p.m.
To: john.white@la.gov; troy.humphrey@la.gov
Cc: J Arthur Smith
Subject: PUBLIC RECORDS REQUEST

Pursuant to the Public Records Act of Louisiana (R.S. 44:1 et seq.), I respectfully request the following information:

Please provide signed time sheets verifying David Lefkowith’s presence in the DOE offices since his employment with DOE.

(Nothing yet, though the three-day deadline was not expired as of this writing.)

Even more serious is White’s dangerous little game of telling outright lies about the existence of public records and of playing favorites with the media.

The Independent of Lafayette attempted to obtain public records from DOE way back in April 2011 asking the department for correspondence DOE had received from the U.S. Department of Education relative to Louisiana’s No Child Left Behind waiver application.

After first denying the existence of the requested correspondence, DOE finally acquiesced on Friday, May 4, and told the paper the documents would be provided on Monday, May 7.

Instead, White, spoon fed the information, including extensive details and comments from White himself to a reporter for the New Orleans Times-Picayune so that his favored reporter could have the story first.

Mr. White should know that is not the way you try to manipulate the media in Louisiana or anywhere else. Any newspaper worth its salt will do what it must do to protect its interest from such shabby behavior—and the Independent did.

You do not play favorites and you certainly do not ignore legitimate requests from the media—most media. Some take umbrage at such efforts to control information that rightfully is the domain of the public.

It will end ugly.

LouisianaVoice has retained legal counsel and as this is being written is preparing to initiate legal action against White, DOE, BESE and its president, Chas Roemer. It is BESE, after all, that hired White and it is BESE to whom he answers so BESE is legally liable for the behavior of its upstart superintendent who apparently feels the laws to not apply to him.

But apply to him they do. It will cost us money, but in the end, we will be upheld in our efforts and when that happens, the court not only may assess legal fines against the department and BESE, but it can also order DOE and BESE to pay our legal fees and our court costs.

And then there’s the negative publicity that would go with yet another embarrassing court decision against DOE.

Strother Martin (the warden in Cool Hand Luke) notwithstanding, there is no failure to communicate here.

NOTE: (J Arthur Smith copied in several of our public records requests to White is our legal counsel.)

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Winner of billion dollar state DHH contract fails to disclose company’s ownership, connection to Blue Cross Blue Shield

Posted in Contract, Contracts, Health Care, Public Records on April 2, 2013| 16 Comments »

A company that was chosen over 11 other companies for a state contract worth nearly $1 billion may have violated a state law in 2011 when it submitted a sworn affidavit that no other entities owned more than 5 percent of its company.

When Michael Rashid, president and CEO of the AmeriHealth Mercy Family of Companies (AMFC) signed off on a three-year, $926 million contract with the Department of Health and Hospitals (DHH) in September of 2011, he submitted a required disclosure of ownership dated Oct. 7, 2010 and signed by AMFC Senior Vice President of Legal Affairs and General Counsel Robert Gilman.

The contract calls for AmeriHealth Mercy to provide “a broad range of services necessary for the delivery of healthcare services to Medicaid enrollees participating in the Medicaid Coordinated Care Network (CCN) Program.”

Services include developing and maintaining an adequate provider network, access standards, utilization management, quality management, prior authorization, provider monitoring, member and provider services, primary care management, fraud and abuse monitoring and compliance, case management, chronic care management and account management.

The contract includes 24/7 access to a health care professional, service authorization, provider payments, claims management, marketing and member education, according to the contract document.

Such disclosures of ownership are standard with state contracts to ensure that there are no conflicts of interest or ethics violations that would occur if a state employee or immediate family member held an interest in a company contracting with the state.

Gilman signed the notarized disclosure form which identified AmeriHealth Mercy Health Plan of Philadelphia, PA., as the only entity having more than a 5% ownership of AmeriHealth Mercy of Louisiana.

The only problem with that was that AmeriHealth was jointly owned by Mercy Health System and Independence Blue Cross (IBC) with each owning 50 percent of AmeriHealth.

That arrangement had been in existence since 1996 but in August of 2011, two months before Gilman’s affidavit and a month before Rashid signed the contract with the state, IBC purchased an additional 10 percent and Blue Cross Blue Shield (BCBS) of Michigan bought the remaining 40 percent, giving the two Blue Cross entities 100 percent ownership of AmeriHealth.
http://www.crainsdetroit.com/article/20110809/FREE/110809869/blue-cross-buys-40-stake-in-national-medicaid-company

Bruce Greenstein was appointed Secretary of DHH by Gov. Bobby Jindal in July of 2010 and he was confirmed by the Louisiana Legislature in June of 2011 after a contentious standoff with the Senate and Governmental Affairs Committee over Greenstein’s refusal to identify the winner of a $185 million Medicaid contract with DHH. http://www.gov.state.la.us/index.cfm?md=pagebuilder&tmp=home&cpid=27

He finally relented and admitted that the winning contractor was his former employer, CNSI of Gaithersburg, MD. Circumstances of that contract have prompted a federal investigation by the U.S. Attorney’s office and Greenstein has announced he will resign in May.

In early August of 2011, barely a month after Greenstein was officially confirmed, IBC and BCBS of Michigan announced that they would partner to expand services to Medicaid beneficiaries nationally through the AmeriHealth Mercy Family of Companies. http://www.ibx.com/company_info/news/press_releases/2011/08_09_IBC_and_BCBS_of_Michigan.html

The joint announcement noted that a 2010 report from the National Association of State Budget Offices indicated that Medicaid represented states’ second largest budget obligation after education, averaging 22 percent of total state spending.

The announcement then gave a hint of what states might expect.

“AmeriHealth Mercy provides Medicaid managed care services directly to Pennsylvania, Indiana and South Carolina and has subcontracts to provide these services in Kentucky and New Jersey,” it said, adding that AmeriHealth Mercy was chosen to provide Medicaid managed care coverage in Louisiana.

While BCBS companies are supposedly separate and independent in each state and though BCBS of Louisiana currently does not participate in a state Medicaid contract (its contract is with the Office of Group Benefits to administer claims of state employees, retirees and dependents), BCBS has been moving in partnership with AmeriHealth Mercy into other states, including Florida.

The AmeriHealth Mercy contract signing coincided with Greenstein’s appointment and his wife’s employment by BCBS of Louisiana but there is nothing to indicate a connection.

Still, the association between two separate Blue Cross companies and the winner of a state contract worth nearly $1 billion coupled with the curious failure of the winning bidder to list both its owners on the disclosure of ownership form could raise a few eyebrows.

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Notable Quotables (in their own words)

Posted in BESE, Computers, Education, Notable Quotables, Public Records, Recovery School District, RSD, Transparency on April 1, 2013| 4 Comments »

“The findings relating to RSD’s compliance with applicable laws and regulations should be addressed immediately by management.”

—Legislative Auditor Daryl Purpera, in his management letter to Recovery School District (RSD) Superintendent Patrick Dobard in which Purpera noted that a state audit had found that RSD could not account for more than $2.7 million in movable property. It was the sixth consecutive year in which RSD was cited for lax property control and missing or stolen property.

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Six straight years of lousy RSD audits; contracts signed by unauthorized personnel: just another day at White’s DOE

Posted in BESE, Contract, Contracts, Education, Ethics, House, Senate, Legislature, Legislators, Public Records, Recovery School District, RSD on April 1, 2013| 13 Comments »

Like the muddy waters of the Mississippi River that flow right past the Claiborne Building, operations in the Louisiana Department of Education (DOE) just seem to get murkier and murkier and its bureaucracy more and more difficult to navigate.

There is Teach for America (TFA), the cluster of TFA alumni awarded administrative positions in the department and the financial manipulations that go with that program; the controversy over charters and course choice; the ongoing courtroom battles over the funding of vouchers, the questionable appointments of out-of-state commuters, the agreement to feed student personal information into a data bank controlled by Rupert Murdoch, and the ever-daunting challenge of obtaining public records from the department, to name only a few.

Easily the most secretive of any state agency, DOE is supported by a governor who, ironically enough, likes to boast of his administration’s openness and transparency. DOE and Superintendent of Education John White operate with virtual autonomy—mostly because there is no system of checks and balances to ensure that the agency is answerable.

Requests for public records are ignored, The Board of Elementary and Secondary Education (BESE), with the exception of two members, rubber-stamps anything Jindal and White suggest, be it ripping funding away from local school boards to pay for vouchers to approving applications for course choice (online) programs to burdening the department with costly six-figure positions filled by itinerates with little to no classroom experience.

White recently received his annual performance evaluation from BESE and predictably received high marks from nine of the board’s 11 members. The truth of the matter, however, is that White is woefully ill-qualified to lead even a local school system, much less a statewide system of 700,000 public school students.

Unfortunately, his six-weekend course (spread out over 10 months) at the Eli Broad Superintendents Academy does not qualify him to lead a Cub Scout troop. Yet, Gov. Bobby Jindal considered him more qualified than any other candidate to preside over the demolition of public education in Louisiana.

The Eli Broad Academy, by the way, has come under criticism for turning out superintendents who use corporate-management techniques to consolidate power, weaken teachers’ job protections, cut parents out of the decision-making process and introduce unproven reform measures.

The latest audit of the Recovery School District is evidence enough of White’s inability to run a statewide system.

The audit, released on March 27, revealed that for the sixth consecutive year, RSD continued to experience problems keeping track of millions of dollars in movable property.

Why does that reflect on White when Patrick Dobard is the RSD superintendent?

Well, for openers, the latest audit is for the fiscal year ended June 30, 2012 and White did not become state superintendent until January of 2012.

Prior to that, he was superintendent of the Recovery School District.

The audit says, “For the sixth consecutive year, RSD did not ensure that movable property was safeguarded against loss, including loss arising from unauthorized use and misappropriation. Our review of RSD’s movable property activity disclosed the following:”

• RSD’s annual certification of property inventory, which the Louisiana Property Assistance Agency did not approve, disclosed $26,664,976 in total movable property, which included 1,633 items with a total acquisition cost of $2,738,016 that have been identified as unlocated during the past four-year period. Of the 1,633 unlocated items, 1,380 items were computers or computer-related equipment. The 2012 annual certification also identified 908 items with a total acquisition cost of $1,482,060 (54 percent) as unlocated for the current period.

• RSD reported 10 incidents at six separate schools involving 97 movable property items with an acquisition cost of $73,667 as missing/stolen to the legislative auditor and the local district attorney. Of the 97 movable property items, 70 were computers. Management has represented that seven items with an acquisition cost of $6,118 have been recovered.

• The 10 reported incidents involved computers being stolen from four RSD direct-run schools and one charter school. There was no sign of forced entry in three instances that resulted in a loss of 48 items with an acquisition cost of $20,064. In one instance, 26 Dell laptop computers and 20 Apple I-Pod Nano media devices with an acquisition cost of $17,031 were stolen from an RSD direct-run school’s storage room.

• RSD’s movable property function is hampered by the decentralization of movable property at the various custodians (schools) and a lack of accountability and training of the custodians for RSD property. Failure to safeguard movable property increases the risk that assets may be misreported, lost or stolen. In addition, the year-to-year cost of replacing lost or stolen movable items could reduce the availability of funds (federal or state) for other educational objectives.

• During FY 2012, RSD did not ensure that employee separation dates were accurate or timely. Not recording separation dates accurately and timely could result in overpayments for terminated employees. This is the sixth consecutive year that we have cited RSD for inadequate controls over its payroll process.

White apparently is far more focused on insulating himself with fellow Teach for America (TFA) and Eli Broad Academy alumni by appointing them to top administrative positions.

Take Chief of Staff Kunjan Narechania and Deputy Superintendent Michael Rounds, for instance.

Rounds, like White, is a 2010 alumnus of Eli Broad and was brought in by White as Deputy Superintendent at $170,000 per year.

Rounds resigned his position as Chief Operating Officer for Kansas City Public Schools a year ago following an investigation into bid irregularities involving a $32 million renovation project for Kansas City schools and a month later the contract was cancelled by Kansas City Public Schools Superintendent Stephen Green (can you say Bruce Greenstein and CNSI?).

And then there is Narechania, a TFA alumnus who, while officially serving as White’s chief of staff, in reality performed functions normally handled only by a deputy or assistant superintendent.

Narechania oversaw all expenditures in the department; no one purchased anything—not a computer, not even a ball point pen without first obtaining authority from Narechania. All assistant superintendents and directors were required to report to her. No one was hired by the department without her stamp of approval—even when no one was quite sure what the new hire would actually be doing. That was evidenced only days before David Lefkowith was hired last June when she emailed White that there needed to be a decision about what to do about Lefkowith. As late as September and December of 2012, she was still signing off on contract amendments, a duty that did not fall within the job description of a chief of staff.

On Sept. 21, she signed off on an amendment to the department’s 15-year, $65.6 million contract with Data Recognition Corp. for administration of the statewide iLEAP testing program. The amendment added three additional years (to June 30, 2015) and $20.96 million to the existing contract.

Beneath her signature was the crossed through printed title “Assistant Superintendent.”

The other contract amendment had the proper title of Chief of Staff beneath her signature that approved a $3.5 million amendment to a $17.5 million contract with Pacific Metrics Corp. for the replenishing of materials for science, social studies and math.

So why didn’t White simply have Narechania confirmed as deputy or assistant superintendent?

One source within the department said it was because when White appeared before the Senate and Governmental Affairs Committee for approval of the appointments of several other administrators last June, he knew he could not obtain Narechania’s confirmation because she was already acting as his number two, sighing all personnel paperwork, contracts, etc., on his behalf.

It would have been awkward to explain that to the committee.

That could be the reason he asked BESE to petition the legislature to approve a reorganization of DOE and has proceeded with that reorganization—without either BESE or legislative approval.

The problem, however, is that he has been operating outside the law for more than a year now by allowing her to sign off on personnel matters and on DOE contracts.

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