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Archive for the ‘Public Records’ Category

‘Transparent & accountable’ House decides that legislator’s solitication letters on behalf of ALEC are not public record

Posted in ALEC, American Legislative Exchange Council, House, Senate, Legislature, Legislators, Public Records, Transparency on July 18, 2012| 4 Comments »

There has been an interesting turn of events concerning LouisianaVoice’s attempts to obtain the names of recipients of Rep. Joe Harrison’s letter soliciting contributions of $1,000 to help defray the expenses of “over thirty” state legislators to attend a national conference of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) in Salt Lake City next week.

Harrison (R-Gray) mailed out a form letter on July 2 that opened by saying, “As State Chair and National Board Member of the American Legislative Exchange Council, I would like to solicit your financial support to our ALEC Louisiana Scholarship Fund.” ALEC Letterhead

The letter was printed on state letterhead, which would appear to make the document a public record so LouisianaVoice immediately made a public records request of Harrison to provide:

• A complete list of the recipients of his letter;

• A list of the “over thirty” Louisiana legislators who are members of ALEC.

ALEC membership, of course, is a closely-guarded secret but once the letter was printed on state letterhead—presumably composed on a state computer in Harrison’s state-funded office, printed on a state-purchased printer and mailed using state-purchased postage—the request for a list of members was included in the request for recipients of the letter.

Harrison never responded to the request despite state law that requires responses to all such requests.

LouisianaVoice then contacted House Clerk Alfred “Butch” Speer to enlist his assistance in obtaining the records and last Thursday, July 12, Speer responded:

“Rep. Harrison informs that his assistant will return Monday (July 16) and send the list of recipients of the letter.

“The names of legislators who serve on the task forces of ALEC is not a record of the state. Because joining ALEC is an individual decision for each legislator and does not involve expenditure of public funds, no record of the House is maintained relative to this membership.

“Monday, I will forward you the list of recipients.”

But when Monday came, things had changed dramatically.

On Monday, LouisianaVoice received an e-mail from Speer:

“I have looked further into your records request.” (Notice he omitted the word “public” as in “public records.”)

“Rep. Harrison composed the letter of which you possess a copy. Rep. Harrison sent that one letter to a single recipient,” Speer’s email continued.

“If that letter was distributed to a larger audience, such distribution did not create a public record.

“R.S. 44:1 defines a public record as a record: ‘…having been used, being in use, or prepared, possessed, or retained for use in the conduct, transaction, or performance of any business, transaction, work, duty, or function which was conducted, transacted, or performed by or under the authority of the constitution or laws of this state…’

“My opinion is that the solicitation of donations for ALEC does not create a public record. The courts have been clear in providing that the purpose of the record is determinative of its public nature, not the record’s origin.”

It seems questionable, at best, to contend that the letter went out to only recipient. First of all, the letter’s began with, “Dear Friend:” It would seem logical to assume that if it went to only one person, Rep. Harrison would have at least extended the courtesy to make the salutation a bit more personal, as say, “Dear John:” or “Dear Mr._____:.”

Moreover, it would also seem highly doubtful that Harrison would be soliciting a single $1,000 contribution to cover the expenses of an entire contingent of “over thirty” legislators to attend the conference.

Still, Speer persisted, saying, “…it is my responsibility to consult with Representatives and make the determinations as to what records are or are not public in nature.

“…The contents of (Harrison’s) letter speak for itself….The origin of a document is not the determining factor as to its nature as a public record. The purpose of the record is the only determining factor. Whether the letter was or was not ‘composed on state letterhead, on a state computer, printed on a state-owned printer and mailed in state-issued envelope(s)’ (a list of assertions I do not agree with and which you cannot substantiate) does (sic) not, per force, create a public record. If the letter were concerning ‘any business, transaction, work, duty, or function which was conducted, transacted, or performed by or under the authority of the constitution or laws of this state,’ then such a letter is a public nature.”

That interpretation flies in the face of past requests for records that included e-mail messages and jokes—and in at least one case, pornography—by state employees that had no relation to state business but which news media have obtained and subsequently published and/or broadcast.

Speer then offered a most curious interpretation of the public records statute when he said, “The fact that an official may be traveling does not place the travel or its mode of payment or the source of the resources used to travel ipso facto within the public records law. The purpose of the travel is the determining factor.”

Speer was asked by LouisianaVoice, “What changed between your e-mail of last Thursday (July 12) and today’s (July 16) decision?”

Again, Speer responded:

“I did as I promised. What information I gathered resulted in my e-mail to you.

“What Rep. Harrison was attempting is of no moment unless he was attempting some business of the House or pursuing some course mandated by law. Anyone’s attempts to raise money for a private entity is (sic) not the business of the House nor is it an activity mandated by law.

“Your personal interpretation of the law is not determinative of the actual scope of the law.”

Speer apparently was overlooking the fact that the House and Senate combined to pay 34 current and former members of the two chambers more than $70,000 in travel, lodging and registration fees for attending ALEC functions in New Orleans, San Diego, Washington, D.C., Phoenix, Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas and Austin between 2008 and 2011.

Of that amount, almost $30,000 was paid in per diem of $142, $145, $152 or $159 per day, depending on the year, for attending the conferences. The per diem rates corresponded to the rates paid legislators for attending legislative sessions and committee meetings.

ALEC advertises in pre-conference brochures sent to its members that it picks up the tab for legislators attending its conferences. That would raise the question of why legislators were paid by the House and Senate for travel, lodging and registration costs if ALEC also pays these costs via its ALEC Louisiana Scholarship Fund.

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Bureaucratic shuffle begins (or New Orleans may be struck by another hurricane before Katrina recovery is completed)

Posted in BESE, Education, Public Records, Recovery School District, Transparency on July 16, 2012| 4 Comments »

The Recovery School District (RSD) is in denial about a demand letter from a transportation contractor demanding payment of $7.8 million, including $6.6 million now considered delinquent.

A member of the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education, however, claims to have a copy of the letter.

The contractor, Durham School Services of Warrenville, Illinois, isn’t talking.

State Superintendent of Education John White, who was the RSD superintendent during much of the time for which Durham says it has not been paid, says it’s not his fault and that payment was supposed to come from FEMA funds. White further said that a payment agreement has been reached.

Meanwhile, those most affected, about 140 school bus drivers and 30 monitors employed by Durham are about to be laid off.

But part of the layoff could be attributed to the fact that RSD has nearly 2,000 fewer students to be transported—which raises the question: where did they go?

A New Orleans television station recently aired a story that showed RSD’s $10.5 million contract with Durham School Services is costing the district up to three times as much per student for transportation of RSD students as in some other parts of the country.

Considering all the money wasted on FEMA trailers, blue tarps and cleanup costs following Katrina’s destruction of New Orleans, could the transportation contract be yet another example of the cavalier manner in which federal dollars have been sucked into a black hole of corruption with few of the benefits actually going to the victims of the storm?

Durham retained the services of the politically-connect Jones Walker Law Firm of New Orleans and Jones Walker attorney Michael DePetrillo in February sent a letter of demand to the Louisiana Department of Education (DOE) and RSD for payment of $7.8 million, of which $6,568,694 was said to be past due. The last payment made to the company was on September 20, 2011, and the past due amount is now said to be $6.6 million.

DePetrillo did not return a call to his office.

Nor has Durham returned phone calls even though one spokesman for its New Orleans office promised that someone from its corporate office would “call right back.”

RSD public information officer Kizzy Payton has denied that the district is in possession of any such February letter from Durham or Jones Walker.

Former RSD Superintendent Paul Vallas said he inherited a “terrible” bus transportation system when he was hired in 2007 and he promptly hired Durham which, in the 2008-09 school year bused 7,500 children. For the school year just completed, only 5,700 children were transported by Durham, placing the cost at $1,800 per student.

The Hinds County (Jackson) Mississippi School District contracts with Durham to bus 4,000 students at a cost of $3.6 million, or $900 per student—half of what the RSD-NO pays, or is contracted to pay. Indianapolis also contracts with Durham, as does Memphis. In Indianapolis Durham transports 28,000 under a $15 million contract ($535 per student) and in Memphis, it buses 35,000 students at a contract price of $18 million ($514 per student).

So this means in Memphis, Durham is being paid 58.3 percent more to transport more than six times as many students as it does for the RSD.

Put another way, the company is being paid 65.7 percent less to transport 29.8 percent fewer students in Hinds County.

In addition to its $10.5 million contract with Durham, RSD-NO also has a $500,000-a-year contract with Transpar Group of Memphis to design bus routes and to provide oversight.

Transpar, a Missouri company, worked with Vallas when he was chief of schools in Chicago and questions arose then about inflated contracts with the company.

Transpar, in addition to receiving $500,000 a year to draw up bus routes and to provide oversight, also is housed in the RSD New Orleans offices.

School officials in Memphis, Indianapolis and Hinds County, Mississippi, said oversight and route planning is either handled in-house or worked out with Durham and that the additional services of a company like Transpar are not needed.

The controversy over the money Durham says it is owed by RSD raises an even bigger question about the state’s Minimum Foundation Program (MFP) funding for the Recovery School District.

Transportation costs are factored into the MFP appropriation for each school district, meaning the state appropriated funds to be used for the transportation of students in the RSD.

Capitol News Service has submitted public records requests to DOE in an attempt to ascertain what happened to the funds appropriated to RSD for transportation and why those funds were not used to pay the Durham contract.

White, in an email to CNS on Monday said, “You would have to ask Durham directly whether there have been layoffs and to what any layoffs are attributable. Durham has not informed the RSD of the state of any such action.”

Then, addressing the transportation costs, White said, “FEMA covers transportation costs for transporting students being served in modular campuses, such as is the case for many schools in post-Katrina New Orleans.

“Because the facilities master plan was in a period of decision-making, and thus not finalized, FEMA delayed payments.

“They have since re-started payment and the RSD and Durham have arrived at a payment agreement.”

He did not explain why the facilities master plan was still in a period of “decision-making” six years after Katrina hit New Orleans.

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Another day in the Piyush Jindal administration and another prevarication; is anyone here capable of telling the truth?

Posted in BESE, Education, Exemptions, Incentives, Governor's Office, Public Records, Revenue, Taxes, Vouchers on July 6, 2012| 1 Comment »

Another day in the administration of Gov. Piyush Jindal and another prevarication.

And another.

It seems these days anything that comes out of the present administration in Baton Rouge is subject to instant skepticism and ridicule.

There’s Emailgate, the now infamous emails that State Superintendent of Education sent to members of the governor’s staff in which he outlined a deliberate plan to obfuscate the growing discontent over the approval of 315 vouchers to a school in Ruston that had no facilities, books or teachers to accommodate the additional students.

Now Emailgate has been expanded to the Department of Natural Resources (DNR) which somehow has become embroiled in the controversy over that alternative fuel tax rebate that shortened former Revenue Secretary Cynthia Bridges’s career with the state.

A ruling by Bridges on House Bill 110 of 2009 was signed into law by Jindal as Act 469 to give tax credits to purchasers of vehicles which used alternative fuels such as propane, butane and electricity.

At the time, the tax credit was projected to cost the state about $900,000 over five years but when flex fuel vehicles began hitting the market and Bridges issued her ruling as required by the act, that five-year cost suddenly mushroomed to $100 million.

Administration officials said the governor did not know about the ramifications of the credit until mid-June when he rescinded the rule that he had signed into law three years earlier.

Emails obtained by the Associated Press through a public records request, however, indicate that DNR Secretary Scott Angelle and chief legislative lobbyist for the Jindal administration was told about Bridges’s ruling on May 1, the day after she issued it.

Bridges resigned almost immediately after Jindal rescinded the ruling and was replaced by Jane Smith, leading to speculation that she was pressured to resign to make room for Smith. Smith, it might be remembered, originally authored HB 110 and when she lost her bid to move up to the Senate last October, she was recruited by the administration to take the second-in-command post at Revenue even though, in her own words, she “didn’t know nothing about revenue.”

Adding to the growing lack of credibility in utterances by this administration was an indication that the actual cost of the alternative fuel credits had not been determined, according to the internal emails.

Or instead of a lack of credibility on the part of Piyush and his minions, perhaps it was simply a lack of competence.

Apparently the administration did not bother to ask the right people the right questions.

We did.

A routine public records request to the Department of Revenue by LouisianaVoice revealed that 5,456 returns had been received by the department claiming total tax credits of $18,046,454.

That’s 5,456 returns filed and total tax credits of $18 million, Governor, just in case you still haven’t been told.

Those credits were retroactive to the date that Jindal signed the bill into law in 2009—just in case he forgot.

Or in case he wants Communications Director Kyle Plotkin to put his spin on what he says he didn’t know.

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Timmy Teepell neglected to close out his state email account when he left the governor’s office 11 months ago–or did he?

Posted in BESE, Charters, Education, Governor's Office, Public Records, Transparency, tagged , on July 6, 2012| 1 Comment »

State Education Superintendent John White has Emailgate, that embarrassing communication with the governor’s office in which he laid out his plot to shroud legislators and the public with a cloud of B.S.

Plaquemines Parish President Billy Nungesser apparently accesses parish emails kept for use only in emergencies like hurricanes, floods and tornadoes but used by him to solicit contributions to his political fundraiser—to be attended by Piyush Jindal, no less.

And Rep. Joe Harrison (R-Gray) uses state letterhead to solicit contributions to the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) so his pals in the House and Senate can get expense-paid trips to ALEC’s Salt Lake City conference later this month.

Things just can’t get any better.

Or can they?

Timmy Teepell ostensibly departed his $165,000-per-year position as Gov. Piyush Jindal Chief of Staff last October to head up the Baton Rouge Southern office of OnMessage, Inc., a political consulting firm out of Virginia—but he apparently forgot to close out his state email account.

Yet, more than eight months after his announced departure and 11 months after he officially terminated his employment, Teepell not only continues to maintain a high-profile presence in and around the State Capitol and the governor’s mansion (his Jeep Wrangler remains a fixture in both locations and he was seen on almost a daily basis on the floors of the House and Senate during the recently completed legislative session), but he also retains an active state email account in the governor’s office.

Moreover, there is no physical addressed listed for a Baton Rouge office of OnMessage, nor is there a local telephone listing. Nor is OnMessage, Inc. registered in Louisiana, according to corporate records on file with the Louisiana Secretary of State.

Last Oct. 24, OnMessage posted a news release on its web page announcing that Teepell had joined the firm “as a partner and head of our new Southern office.”

The news release went on to say that Teepell “will open and manage our new OnMessage Southern office in Baton Rouge and will work on campaigns throughout the country.”

When Jindal announced that Teepell was leaving to join OnMessage, he said the move was “effective immediately,” even though the last official date of employment with the governor’s office was July 1.

Yet, when Teepell left the state payroll on July 1, 2011, he was quickly placed on the payroll of Jindal’s campaign which paid him more than $91,300 between July 15 and Dec. 30.

In the months immediately following the October announcement of Teepell’s departure, Jindal’s campaign was also making payments to OnMessage of $46,000 in November and another $55,000 in December—time during which Teepell was supposed to have been employed by OnMessage, leaving unexplained why the governor’s campaign would be making simultaneous payments to both Teepell and OnMessage for those two months.

Jindal’s ties to OnMessage go back at least to the 2007 governor’s race. OnMessage was used extensively in that race by Jindal’s campaign which shelled out approximately $1.3 million for consulting work by the firm. Additionally, Curt Anderson, another OnMessage partner, ghost-wrote Jindal’s book Leadership and Crisis.

In February, it was announced that Teepell’s OnMessage office in Baton Rouge had signed on to work for Republican Congressman Bill Cassidy’s 2012 re-election campaign. A check of Cassidy’s campaign expenditures, however, revealed no payments to either Teepell or OnMessage through the end of June.

An email to Teepell at Timmy.Teepell@la.gov from Capitol News Service was not answered. Likewise, emails to Jindal Executive Counsel Elizabeth Murrill and Communications Director Kyle Plotkin asking why Teepell still had an active state government email address did not receive responses.

Perhaps that was because OnMessage’s Baton Rouge Southern office took a long weekend for the July 4th holiday.

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Notable Quotables (in their own words)

Posted in ALEC, American Legislative Exchange Council, Ethics, Legislature, Legislators, Notable Quotables, Public Records, Transparency on July 5, 2012| Leave a Comment »

“I, along with other members of the Louisiana Legislature, greatly appreciate your contribution to the scholarship funds. Your $1,000 check…can be sent directly to me…”

–Exerpt from solicitation letter by State Rep. Joe Harrison (R-Gray) seeking contributions to the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) Louisiana Scholarship Fund. The scholarship fund pays the expenses of state legislators to attend ALEC conferences.

“Relative to the attached letter which you mailed out (on state letterhead) soliciting contributions to the ALEC Louisiana Scholarship Fund, please provide me with a complete list of those to whom these solicitations were sent.”

–Public records request submitted on July 5, 2012, to State Rep. Joe Harrison by LouisianaVoice.

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