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Archive for the ‘Revenue’ Category

State Rep. John Bel Edwards frustrated at administration’s refusal to be more forthcoming with legislators and public

Posted in Budget, DOA, Governor's Office, Guest Columnist, Legislature, Legislators, OGB, Office of Group Benefits, Politicians, Privatization, Public Records, Revenue, State Agencies, Transparency on October 16, 2014| 22 Comments »

Editor’s note: State Rep. John Bel Edwards (D-Amite) sparred verbally with Commissioner of Administration Kristy Nichols and Office of Group Benefits (OGB) CEO Susan West at the Sept. 25 hearing by the House Appropriations Committee on proposed coverage plans for OGB members. Edwards, the minority leader of the House and Chairman of the House Democratic Caucus, is an announced candidate for governor in 2015.  He wrote the following piece in an effort to display his frustration over his inability to obtain definitive answers or public documents and records from the administration—and to explain how the administration, as a matter of routine, conceals information from legislators.

By State Rep. John Bel Edwards

At a committee meeting convened last month to address the fiscal “emergency,” at the Office of Group Benefits, Commissioner of Administration Kristy Nichols testified that the premium reductions in 2013 and 2014 that drained OGB’s $500 million fund balance were fiscally sound.

At that hearing, I repeatedly asked if OGB’s actuary – Buck Consultants – had recommended those premium reductions and if they recommended reducing the fund balance. Nichols and an OGB CEO Susan West repeatedly refused to answer. I, along with other legislators at the hearing, asked for copies of Buck Consultants’ recommendations.

Weeks later and I’m still waiting for those reports.

What I do have is an email from Buck Consultants to the OGB CEO that clearly states: “We did not recommend a decrease of 7% effective August 1, 2012, or an additional decrease of 1.77% effective August 1, 2013. Further, we were not asked to provide any recommended rate adjustments for any fiscal years beyond what we provided for Fiscal Year 2012/2013.”

Of course the actuary did not recommend cutting premiums by almost 9 % while health care costs are rising by 6% a year. The consultants knew that would be irresponsible and cause claims payments to greatly exceed premium revenue and drain OGB’s fund balance.

Clearly, the OGB premium reductions that ran the fund balance into the ditch were not actuarially driven. Those premium reductions were driven by the Jindal administration’s desire to spend OGB’s fund balance elsewhere in the budget. When OGB reduced premiums, 75% of the savings went to the state and the Jindal administration was able to spend that money wherever they wanted.

Now that the fund balance is drained and still hemorrhaging at the rate of $16 million a month, the Jindal administration called this self-inflicted wound an “emergency” and proposed raising costs to OGB members – those working and those retired – by $189 million. These higher out-of-pocket expenses will not be shared by the state.

Our state workers, school teachers, support workers, and university staff and faculty and retirees cannot afford this. They do not deserve this. About 25,000 of our retired OGB members are not eligible for Medicare, and many active OGB members bring home as little as $700 per month.

I asked the Attorney General’s Office for an opinion about the legality of Jindal’s effort to unilaterally impose new plans with the exorbitant out of pocket cost increases on workers and retirees. The attorney general’s opinion shows Jindal failed to comply with the Administrative Procedure Act.

This entire debacle has thankfully been slowed down to ensure public notice, public input and legislative oversight as legally required. It is critically important that the administration act in good faith and genuinely consider the testimony and the plight of affected OGB members as well as its own culpability in needlessly causing the “emergency.”

The Jindal administration must honestly answer subsequent inquiries from the public and from legislators and seek ways to lessen the impact to OGB members. The administration must ditch the ill-conceived plan changes and start from scratch with a willingness to increase premiums reasonably and share in the costs of restoring the soundness of OGB.

The recently discovered $178.5M surplus provides the means to both shore up the fund balance and reduce the cost increases on OGB members. The illegal cost increase forced on OGB members in August must be refunded without forcing members to formally request or sue for the refund.

The legislature must finally assert itself as an independent and equal branch of government to provide exactly the kind of check and balance on the Jindal administration provided by the Louisiana Constitution and demanded by the people of Louisiana. We now have this opportunity as there will be legislative oversight hearings on both the emergency and ordinary rules. We must rise to the occasion.

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Gather ’round as the Amazing Jindini attempts yet another harrowing political-death-defying escape from fiscal reality

Posted in Auditor, Budget, Finances, Governor's Office, House, Senate, Legislature, Legislators, Office of Group Benefits, Revenue, Transparency on October 16, 2014| 10 Comments »

            The scene is a cheesy carnival with a sleazy barker trying to coax indifferent passersby into a tent sideshow that is certain to be equal parts hype and fraudulence. You can almost hear his voice as he drones:

            “Step right up folks and see the Amazing Jindini perform his astounding, incredible, UNBELIEVABLE escapes from the perils of political reality! You won’t believe your eyes!

            “Watch and don’t dare blink as his lovely assistant, Kristy, the glib but treacherous attack lady, maneuvers Jindini into inescapable positions right here in Louisiana only to see him emerge, smiling and unruffled, somewhere in Iowa. Or will it be New Hampshire, or maybe on Fox News or even in a Washington Post op-ed?

            “And if this political life-threatening feat should somehow go wrong, if the magically transcendent budgetary numbers don’t add up, hold your breath because Kristy will find a way to blame the whole thing on Jindini’s evil nemesis John Kennedy.

            “It’s implausible, it’s dumbfounding, it’s far-fetched, but ladies and gentlemen, it’s everything you could ever imagine—and then some—in the fantasy world of the Great Jindini: deception, misdirection, transference of responsibility, denial, obfuscation. Political contributions become political favors right before your very eyes. Step right up, folks! You don’t want to miss the Amazing Jindini.”

Such is the descent into the cheap theatrics of political rhetoric and finger-pointing from the Jindal administration these days as Gov. Bobby Jindal (R-Iowa, R-New Hampshire, R-Anywhere but Louisiana), through Commissioner of Administration Kristy Nichols, attempts to deflect the blame for fiscal recklessness onto State Treasurer John Kennedy—or anyone else who dares get in the way.

The latest twist in what is the ongoing soap opera of the Jindal administration, Nichols has claimed that a $178.5 million year-end surplus has suddenly materialized, seemingly out of nothing more than the sheer will of Jindal to appear as a fiscal guru in his tragicomic pursuit of the White House.

LouisianaVoice, meanwhile, has learned that a national bond rating company isn’t buying into the rosy fiscal picture painted by the Division of Administration (D)A) and in fact, feels that by all previous measures, a budget deficit as claimed by Kennedy is the more likely scenario.

When Kennedy challenged the surplus figure, claiming instead that the state in reality had a $141 million deficit, Kristy’s vitriol was unleashed on the Treasurer in quick measure, claiming that Kennedy was responsible for “sweeping” agency funds that have not been appropriated or spent by the end of each fiscal year. She added that while the Treasury had used the money for cash flow, it never included it in the year-end report presented to the Joint Legislative Committee on the Budget (JLCB).

Nearly seven years into Jindal’s term, Nichols opined that it was “disappointing” that Kennedy never reported these balances to the public.

That, of course, should raise the obvious question of why no one in Jindal’s cadre of sycophants has raised the issue before now.

At the same time, Nichols denied Kennedy’s claim that the administration had changed the accounting system from accrual to cash. Bear in mind, however, it was this same Nichols who told the House Appropriations Committee on Sept. 25 (just before she ducked out to take her daughter to a boy band concert in New Orleans) that it was Buck Consultants who recommended a decrease in premiums for Office of Group Benefits members when the actual report submitted by Buck did nothing of the sort.

Kennedy, for his part, released a prepared statement on Wednesday, saying that as Treasurer, he is constitutionally responsible “for the custody, investment and disbursement of state funds. It is a job that I take very seriously. At least three times a year, the Treasury sends a comprehensive report to the administration about every penny, nickel and dime in the state general fund and the Treasury is audited every year by the legislative auditor.”

Kennedy also said that as Treasurer, he is not responsible “for ensuring that the administration is truthful with legislators and the public about the amount of money that can be appropriated from the state general fund. It is the administration’s responsibility to take our reports and tell legislators and the Revenue Estimating Conference about any and all available money instead of creating a secret slush fund.”

Kennedy said it is clear that the state spent more money than it brought in during the fiscal year that ended on June 30. “We have a $141 million deficit,” he said. “It’s also clear that the administration wants to use its own secret slush fund to resolve the problem while blaming others for the mess.” He called the administration’s figures “a manufactured surplus.”

“I don’t blame them,” he added. “I wouldn’t want to be held responsible for the bad budget practices that drove the Office of Group Benefits into financial ruin, drained the Medicaid Trust Fund for the Elderly, and crippled our universities. As Treasurer, I’ll continue to be a watchdog over the people’s money.” He said if the Legislature wants him to take charge of the budget, “I am more than happy to take on those responsibilities.”

Legislators will get a chance to ask their own questions when the JLCB convenes on Friday in the Capitol.

Meanwhile, Legislative Auditor Daryl Purpera said there no way of knowing if the administration’s claim of a $178 million surplus is valid until a thorough audit has been conducted.

“This is a different way of looking at what is surplus,” he said. “The bottom line is…until we have audited it, I can’t tell you if it’s a good number or bad number or what.”

In contradicting Nichol’s claim that the accounting system was changed by the administration, Purpera said the new figures represents a sudden departure from the method employed since 1997. “This is not the way they have calculated it before,” he said.

Even the administration could not verify the source of the surplus, saying only that it was “not exactly clear, but we are confident it is there,” according to DOA communications director Meghan Parrish.

Jindal desperately needs to avoid the prospect of a budget deficit if he is to continue his quest for the presidency. A budget hole at this juncture would severely wound, perhaps mortally, his oft-repeated claim that he has balanced the Louisiana budget every year of his administration.

That threat alone would go far in explaining the administration’s sudden frenzy in spinning a favorable fiscal tale contrived to propel him into the White House via fantasy land—or Iowa or New Hampshire.

Just another day in the wacky world of Jindini escapism, folks.

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Jindal’s latest accounting ploy bolsters disturbing perception that his administration is quickly mutating into ‘Enron East’

Posted in Book Review, Budget, Business, Contract, Contracts, Corruption, DOA, Ethics, Finances, Fraud, Governor's Office, Legislators, Legislature, Office of Group Benefits, OGB, Politicians, Privatization, Public Records, Revenue, State Agencies, Teague, Transparency on October 12, 2014| 33 Comments »

When Jeff Skilling took over as President and Chief Operating Officer of Enron in June of 1990, he did so only after insisting that the company convert from conventional accounting principles to a method preferred by his former employer, McKinsey & Co.

In 2001, hedge fund manager Richard Grubman said to Skilling, “You are the only financial institution that can’t produce a balance sheet or cash flow statement with their earnings.” By October of that same year, Enron had begun its death spiral in a historic collapse that would pull the giant accounting firm Arthur Andersen down with it.

The key to Enron’s failure was the mark-to-market accounting method, where anticipated revenues and profits are entered into the company’s books before they are ever received. The system allowed Enron to conceal losses and to inflate profits for nearly 11 years before its house of cards came crashing down.

On Thursday (Oct. 8), nearly seven years into his administration, Gov. Bobby Jindal (R-Iowa, R-New Hampshire, R-Anywhere but Louisiana) rolled out a new accounting formula with an alarmingly familiar ring to it.

Jindal, like Skilling, is a McKinsey alumnus.

Commissioner of Administration/Surrogate Gov. Kristy Kreme Nichols announced that the state, instead of having a deficit of $141 million as claimed by State Treasurer John Kennedy, will suddenly have a surplus of $178.5 million, a gaping difference of $319.5 million.

Nichols did not reveal how the $178.5 million was arrived at but Kennedy said the administration is switching to a cash balance form of accounting instead of the modified accrual basis employed by state governments. “If we use the methodology we have always used,” he said, “we don’t have a surplus. We have a $141 million deficit.

“The commissioner says the calculation has been inaccurate for years and it needs to be changed,” he said. “They have to explain why we have been doing it wrong all these years and why the Revenue Estimating Conference is doing it wrong.”

Nichols, an appointed state employee, was less than deferential to Kennedy, a statewide elected official when she sniped back at Kennedy, saying, “I’m surprised the treasurer is not reporting this.” She added that Kennedy is obligated to report available revenue. “He should probably do a review of the accounts to ensure there are no more outstanding revenues he is not reporting.”

Kennedy and Jindal have been at odds for years over fiscal policy, so it was no surprise to see Kristy Kreme, with her super-sized ego, get a little mouthy with the state treasurer. After all, she bolted from a House Appropriations Committee hearing on the Office of Group Benefits on Sept. 25 to take her daughter to a One Direction boy band concert at the New Orleans Smoothie King Arena where she watched from the comfort of Jindal’s executive suite.

Just as Enron misrepresented its finances for years, it now appears that the Jindal administration may be attempting the same tactic, prompting one political observer to say, “If cooking the books isn’t malfeasance, what is? The bond rating agencies and others rely on the CAFR (Comprehensive Annual Financial Report), where the year-end position is officially reported in decision making and they are not going to like this.”

Another Jindal critic asked rhetorically, “What happens when a state ends a fiscal year with a deficit of $141 million but the administration of the day pretends that there is actually a surplus of $178 million? I don’t think there is any precedent for such a thing ever happening anywhere. This is starting to sound like Enron!”

Odd as it may seem to make that comparison, the similarities between Jindal and Enron run much deeper than the latest developments surrounding the new accounting methods. Here are some points about Enron lifted from The Smartest Guys in the Room: the Amazing Rise and Scandalous Fall of Enron (Penguin Books, 2003), a probing book by Bethany McLean and Peter Elkind about the failed energy company: http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/113576.The_Smartest_Guys_in_the_Room

  • The Deutsche Bank once described Enron as “the industry standard for excellence.” Jindal boasted of instituting the “gold standard for ethics” in Louisiana.
  • When the chief accounting officer of Enron Wholesale expressed concern about wholesale electricity sales, she was reassigned. When another employee questioned Skilling on his claim that Enron was going to make $500 million, she was laid off that same day. When state employees or legislators complain or do not vote with the administration, they are teagued.
  • Pollster Frank Luntz said instability and chaos were defining features at Enron and the six company reorganizations in just 18 months were a “running joke” and that Enron’s lack of discipline was “destructive and demoralizing.” Jindal’s penchant for reorganization and reform has created a similar atmosphere within state government.
  • Enron sold assets and booked the one-time proceeds as recurring earnings. Nearly 40 percent of Enron’s 1998 and 1999 earnings came from sales of assets rather than from ongoing operations. Jindal over the past several years has sold state property, buildings, and entire agencies and turned state hospitals over to private entities.
  • Both Skilling and Jindal are alumni of the blue-chip consulting firm, McKinsey & Co., which wrote the Enron business plan and as far back as 1986, advised AT&T there was no future in the market for cell phones. McKinsey also was an advocate of mark-to-market accounting practices.
  • Both Skilling and Jindal thought—and think—like a consultant. Skilling felt that a business should be able to declare profits at the moment of the signing of an agreement that would earn those profits. But just because traders were reporting earnings under mark-to-market accounting, it did not necessarily follow that the money was in hand. See this link: http://theadvocate.com/news/10494146-123/jindal-budget-surplus-questioned
  • A Wall Street banker said of Skilling: “He’s either compulsively lying or he’s refusing to recognize the truth.” Another banker worried that Enron executives were not carrying out their fiduciary duties and questioned “sweetheart deals” negotiated by them.
  • Skilling believed that social policies designed to temper the markets were “wrongheaded” and counterproductive. “Wrongheaded” has been a favorite term invoked by Jindal whenever he has suffered setbacks at the hands of the courts on issues ranging from education reform to a revamp of state retirement plans.
  • When asked a question he didn’t like, Skilling, in a tactic learned from his days at McKinsey, responded by dumping “a ton of data on you.” Jindal’s one outstanding skill is to spew statistics and factoids in rapid-fire fashion that can overwhelm and confuse challengers.
  • Skilling, like Jindal, was considered brilliant and extremely articulate. He, like Jindal, always seemed to have the right answer and whenever he was asked about problems it was always someone else’s fault.
  • Skilling displayed no remorse for his own actions, nor did he have any sense that he hired the wrong people or emphasized the wrong values. (See above.)
  • Enron founder Ken Lay saw himself as a business visionary, much as Jindal portrays himself as a policy guru. Lay traveled the world to offer his wisdom on everything from energy deregulation to corporate ethics to the future of business. (Ditto)
  • At the end, Enron employees’ accounts were frozen even as top executives were walking away with fortunes.
  • Efforts by Enron and Arthur Andersen to avoid reporting $500 million in losses “only pushed the problem further off and added another tangle to the fragile web of accounting deceptions.” Do we really need to elaborate here?
  • Enron executives accepted the argument that wealth and power demanded no sense of broader responsibility which in turn led them to embrace the notion that ethical behavior requires nothing more than avoiding the explicitly illegal, that refusing to see the bad things happening in front of you makes you innocent and that telling the truth is the same thing as making sure no one can prove you lied.
  • Enron’s mission was nothing more than a cover story for massive fraud, much as Jindal’s administration is being exposed almost daily as a sham. The story of Enron, like that of Jindal, was a story of human weakness, of hubris and greed and rampant self-delusion, of ambition run amok, of a business model that didn’t work and of smart people who believed their next gamble would cover their last disaster—and most of all, of people who couldn’t—or wouldn’t—admit they were wrong.
  • Enron once aspired to be “the world’s greatest company” but rather became a symbol for all that was wrong with corporate America, exposing Lay’s flaws as a businessman that could no longer be hidden behind Enron’s impressive but misleading façade and Skilling’s glib rhetoric.
  • Despite Enron’s efforts to camouflage the truth, there was more than enough in the public record to raise the hackles of any self-respecting analyst (read: reporter). Analysts (read: reporters) are supposed to dive into a company’s financial records, examine footnotes and even elbow their way past accounting obfuscations. Their job, in short, is to analyze (re: report).

In the end, of course, Enron crumpled under the weight of its own corruption and mismanagement, destroying thousands of lives and even taking down one of the big five accounting firms in the process.

The Jindal administration with each passing day, with every revelation of some new scandal (the Edmonson Amendment, CNSI, the Murphy Painter fiasco, et al) and with each new flawed policy (the Office of Group Benefits debacle), is looking more and more like a train wreck that will adversely affect Louisiana citizens for years to come.

Just call it Enron East.

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Watching Kristy Kreme Nichols responding to legislators like watching Jerry Lewis movie: mixture of exasperation, humor

Posted in Contracts, DOA, Governor's Office, House, Legislature, Legislators, Office of Group Benefits, OGB, OGB, Office of Group Benefits, Privatization, Revenue on October 1, 2014| 23 Comments »

Listening to Commissioner of Administration Kristy Kreme Nichols’ responses to questions during last Thursday’s House Appropriations Committee hearing over changes to the state Office of Group Benefits (OGB) health plans, one word kept coming to mine: bromides.

Bromide is defined by Merriam-Webster as “a statement that is intended to make people feel happier or calmer but (which) is not original or effective,” and by Wikipedia as “a phrase or platitude that, having been employed excessively, suggests insincerity or a lack of originality in the speaker.”

No matter which definition one might choose, that is precisely what legislators and members of the audience were treated to during the seven-hour hearing at the State Capitol.

Keep in mind as you read this that subsequent to the hearing last Thursday, the administration of Gov. Bobby Jindal (R-Iowa, R-New Hampshire, R-Anywhere but Louisiana) retreated from its plans of the gang rape of 230,000 state employees, retirees and dependents so that the administration can follow the law for a change and proceed through the legal process of obtaining approval of the proposed benefit changes for OGB members. https://louisianavoice.com/2014/09/30/in-need-of-aloe-vera-after-being-burned-by-appropriations-committee-last-week-ogb-announces-enrollment-extension/

Katrina Jackson (D-Monroe), for example, sparred with Nichols on the issue of the $1.3 million contract with Ansafone, Inc. of San Diego and Ocala, Florida to field phone calls from OGB members. “Where is the project work plan?” Jackson asked. “No one at OGB knew what it was when I called. No one on the committee has received any project work plan. We have a $1.3 million contract for phone service. Is this something that Blue Cross/Blue Shield (BCBS) should be doing?”

“We had no other choice but to ramp up our customer service for open enrollment,” Nichols said.

Jackson again asked if fielding questions from members should be something BCBS should be doing to which Nichols responded, “OGB has always retained a customer service component.”

Jackson said legislators were told three years ago that privatization of OGB “would be helpful to members, not harmful. We fixed something that was not broken and now it’s broken. We were doing pretty good but then for some reason we offered the business to BCBS, everyone shifts to that and our utilization costs go up.”

Jackson finally got Nichols to concede that utilization is a major issue. “Vendors have to 100 percent accountable for managing utilization with us. To the extent that the request for proposals (RFP) and current contract did not explicitly mandate that, we need to in the future.”

We’re glad we could clear that up for you.

Kenny Havard (R-Jackson) asked Nichols why the Administrative Procedures Act, which lays out a step by step procedure for the adoption of rule changes. For a complete list of APA requirements, click here: apa

“We are,” Nichols said.

“You’re doing that now,” Havard countered. “But you didn’t before. If you’d done it before, we wouldn’t be here now. Who decides what laws we have to follow and which ones we do not have to follow in this?”

“The legislature sets laws and we try to follow,” Nichols replied.

“Everything we do lately ends up in court and that’s exactly where this is heading,” Havard shot back. “We’ve created a problem that we’ve put on the backs of state workers. We have people making $500 a month and you’re about to raise their insurance (costs) and somebody needs to answer for it because we’ve created a problem and blaming it on somebody else. I don’t support Obamacare but I also don’t support Jindalcare.

“We lowered premiums so the state would not have to put up its share and now the fund balance is dwindling,” he said. “I just want to know who made the decision that we didn’t have to follow the APA.”

“We are following the APA,” Nichols continued to insist. In our opinion, the plan of benefits does not have to be promulgated because it’s in the OGB authority.”

State Sen. Ed Murray (D-New Orleans) attempted to question Nichols but soon grew frustrated at her evasiveness and gave way to Rep. Greg Cormer (R-Slidell) who asked but did not receive a definitive answer: Did an actuary give the opinion on the rate decrease of 7 percent? Cormer told OGB CEO Susan West, “If you were a private insurer, the Department of Insurance would have already taken you over” because of the agency’s mismanagement.

Jack Montoucet (D-Crowley) asked Nichols, “Where would OGB be today had we not made all the changes, if we’d left them alone and let them do their job? To me, it wasn’t broken. I never got a call in six years (prior to privatization) complaining about OGB. Today, I gotta tell you, Jesus Christ, I’m getting phone calls every day and this (new plan) hasn’t even been implemented. That’s scary.”

Nichols, as she did most of the day, stammered and fumbled for an answer. “All public employee health plans are experiencing the same thing,” she finally said, but then said that the cost increases “could have been prevented if we’d structured the HMO correctly in the beginning.”

Joe Harrison (R-Gray) went further than the others in calling for a special legislative session to deal with the OGB crisis and noted that there were no problems with the agency during the tenure of Tommy Teague, who was fired as CEO on April 15, 2011.

“Mr. Teague had a solvent plan and I’ve yet to hear any in the administration tell me why we moved away from that plan,” Harrison said.

“I would ask that we have a special session on this,” he said. We have more than 200,000 lives we are adversely affecting. There are other options to this. Many in the insurance and health care industry have looked at this and (have) said there are better ways to go.”

The hardest questions, however, came from Rep. John Bel Edwards (D-Amite). Following up on a question asked earlier by Rep. Greg Cromer (R-Slidell), Edwards asked if the recommendations for premium decreases three consecutive years were made by an actuary.

“I was not with OGB then,” West said. “I don’t have that information with me…”

“It’s been three hours since that question first came up,” Edwards said.

“I don’t have that information with me,” West repeated.

“It’s been three hours since that was asked,” Edwards said again. “That’s three hours in which those reports could have been brought over here. Who made the decision to reduce premiums by 9 percent total in fiscal years 2013 and 2014?”

“Ultimately, the administration,” Nichols said.

“The OGB director?”

“I wasn’t at DOA in fiscal year ’13,” Nichols said. “I don’t know where the recommendation came from.

When Edwards elicited testimony from Nichols and West that the OGB policy board had not met in more than a year even as the OGB fund balance was dwindling by $16 million per month, he asked, “Was there a lack of a quorum because there weren’t enough members appointed to the board (by the governor) or that they weren’t showing up for meetings?”

“A combination of both,” West said.

“So we have a situation where (the decision was made) to reduce premiums by 2.25 percent in 2012 which drained the fund balance by 3 percent knowing costs were going up 6 percent, and an additional reduction of over 7 percent the next year and an additional reduction of almost 2 percent the following year all the while with costs of health care going up and we were surprised that the fund balance went down?

“This is a self-manufactured crisis that you are now saying is an emergency because we had a fund balance that was healthy,” Edwards said. “We had OGB members who were relatively happy with the plan and today we have an unhealthy fund balance and OGB members who are very unhappy. In fact, I would not that not a single OGB member came to testify today who support any of those plans—not a single one of them.”

Edwards if there was to be discussion of stability for OGB, “we can’t leave it in the hands of whoever’s been running it for the last two years…”

He then asked Nichols when the decision was made to follow the rule of promulgation as mandated in the APA.

“The general counsel advice to OGB,” Nichols said, “was a plan of benefit changes should not be required to be promulgated…”

DOA general counsel Liz Murrill stopped texting long enough to interject, “We had the conversation at the beginning of September.”

“When was the decision made?” Edwards repeated.

“At the beginning of September,” Murrill said.

“The (OGB policy) board looked at what you wanted to do in July so you knew what you wanted to do by July 30. If you had started the rule promulgation process by August 30, you could get through the entire process before January 1. You didn’t do that.”

Nichols, in a weak attempt to defend the emergency rule procedure in lieu of promulgation, asked, “Why was OGB allowed to implement 41 emergency rules in the past?”

“I suspect because nobody challenged it,” Edwards shot back. “Typically, you don’t follow the law unless you get challenged and that’s the real precedence that you’re following.”

Saying a Pew Survey shows that Louisiana is the third stingiest state in the nation in providing health coverage for public employees, Edwards said there is a “tremendous disconnect between saying we had an inflated reserve fund that it needs to be right-sized and today saying we have an emergency because the fund balance is not enough and it’s on its way (from a high of $520 million) to $8 million.”

He then again asked the question that no one had answered to that point. “In fiscal year 2012 there was a 3 percent erosion of the fund balance. Yet, in fiscal 2013, there was a 7.11 percent reduction in premiums followed by 1.8 percent even though health care costs were going up by 6 percent. What actuary told you those reductions were sound?”

“Buck Consulting recommended a 2.25 decrease for calendar 2012,” Nichols said.

“If you don’t have an emergency, then what you’re going to start on January 1 is invalid and you’re causing a bigger problem than if you simply go through the ordinary rule making process,” Edwards said. “Anyone who’s adversely impacted by having to pay a higher deductible or higher co-pays by an invalid emergency rule has a right to have that money returned to them.

“The safest thing to do if you are really worried about the taxpayers of the state of Louisiana is to give very serious thought to stopping the emergency rule making process, go forward with the ordinary rule making process and have whatever plans survive that process implemented in a year that doesn’t start until they (the rules) become final.

“Public meeting notices, meeting requirements, and oversight by the legislature are all very, very important. We had people today saying this was the first opportunity that they had to come and voice their objections. That’s an important part of this whole process.”

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Baton Rouge newapaper’s praise of Edmonson’s ‘refusal’ of retirement raise is disingenuous and an insult to its readers

Posted in Corruption, Ethics, Judges, Lawsuits, Legislators, Legislature, Media, Retirement, Revenue, State Police on September 20, 2014| 19 Comments »

It’s seldom that I disagree publicly with members of the fourth estate. Besides preferring to focus my energy on reporting on the myriad ways state government falls short of its number one priority of protecting the interests of the state and its citizens, I generally have a deep professional respect for our peers in the media.

I worked for 30-plus years in various capacities—sports reporter, news reporter, copy editor, investigative reporter and managing editor—for several newspapers all over the state, including Monroe, Shreveport, Donaldsonville, Baton Rouge and four separate stints at the Ruston Daily Leader where I began almost 50 years ago. I kept returning at a higher position mostly because of my loyalty to my mentor, Publisher Tom Kelly. I even managed to pick up a few reporting awards along the way, including three for investigative reporting.

A news reporter will never get rich working for a newspaper; the pay just isn’t that good. Those who spend their time sitting through endless hours of city council, police jury, school board and even legislative committee meetings, mind-numbing courtroom testimony and who climb out of bed in the middle of the night to cover a shooting or a fire do so for the love of the profession.

So yes, I do maintain an abiding respect for these dedicated individuals.

But when I see facts deliberately being glossed over and key points ignored in order to protect or project a favorable image of a public official who has deliberately and blatantly attempted to use his position or to manipulate the political system to his financial advantage, I cannot in good conscience keep quiet.

The Baton Rouge Advocate editorial of Friday, Sept. 19, stands out as one of the most unabashedly transparent attempts to pin a bouquet on a state official who recently condoned one of the most underhanded attempts at abusing the legislative process in recent memory.

That attempt, of course, was the amendment by State Sen. Neil Riser (R-Columbia) to Senate Bill 294 in the closing hours of the recent legislative session. The bill, authored by State Sen. Jean-Paul Morrell (D-New Orleans) originally addressed procedures to follow in disciplinary cases for law enforcement officers but was amended to give State Police Superintendent Mike Edmonson special treatment in awarding him an unconstitutional increase in retirement income of somewhere between $30,000 and $55,000 per year.

Riser added the amendment during a conference committee meeting on the bill. Riser was one of three senators and three House members on the conference committee and on the final vote for passage, House members were told, incorrectly, the bill’s passage would create no fiscal impact.

Bobby Jindal’s executive counsel Thomas Enright, Jr., whose job it is to review bills for propriety and constitutionality, gave the bill his blessings and Jindal promptly signed it into law as Act 859.

LouisianaVoice broke the initial story about how the bill allowed Edmonson to revoke his decision years ago to enter into the state’s Deferred Retirement Option Plan (DROP) which froze his retirement benefits at his then-pay level of $79,000 at his rank of captain. By allowing him to renege on his decision which was supposed to be irrevocable, it allowed him to retire at a rate based on his current colonel’s salary of $134,000. Because he has 30 years of service, he receives 100 percent of his salary as his retirement. Thus, the amendment gave him an instant yearly increase in retirement of something between $30,000 and $55,000.

The amendment inadvertently just happened to include one other person, Master Trooper Louis Boquet of Houma, though he was unaware of the amendment and its implications until the public outcry erupted.

A state district judge, ruling on a lawsuit brought by State Sen. Dan Claitor, said the amendment was unconstitutional on several grounds, thereby killing Edmonson’s retirement windfall.

The four-paragraph Advocate editorial on Friday noted that the matter had been “laid to rest” and noted that such furtive bills are common in the Louisiana Legislature. http://theadvocate.com/news/opinion/10299405-123/our-views-a-lesson-for

But it was a single sentence in that editorial that set me off:

“It is to the credit of Col. Mike Edmondson (sic) and Master Sgt. Louis Boquet, of Houma, that they declined to accept the raise because of irregularities in its passage.”

What?!! Besides the misspelling of Edmonson’s name, the editorial completely (and apparently purposefully) omitted key elements of this sordid story.

  • Edmonson defended the amendment and his additional retirement on Public Radio’s Jim Engster Show;
  • He admitted on that same show that “a staff member” had approached him about the possibility of increasing his retirement benefits via the amendment and he personally okayed that staff member to proceed with the legislative maneuver;
  • Neil Riser first denied any knowledge of how the amendment originated but later confessed that it was he who inserted the language into the bill;
  • The legislative fiscal notes (which detail the potential financial impact of pending bills) were not submitted until three days after the session adjourned, evidence that the entire episode took place on the down low, hidden from public view;
  • During a hearing on the amendment by the State Police Retirement System Board, it was revealed that the board’s actuary was initially approached about the amendment “a few weeks” before the close of the session, further evidence that the move was in the works long before that fateful final day of the session;
  • At that same hearing, it was also revealed that the “staff member” who initiated efforts to pass the amendment was State Police Lt. Col. Charles Dupuy, Edmonson’s chief of staff;
  • Edmonson did not reject the raise until the heat from the public and from retired state police officers became so intense that it was politically impossible for him to go through with the charade. The added threat of a lawsuit by retired state troopers and the attacks on the amendment by State Treasurer John Kennedy only served to ensure the foolhardiness of any continued attempts to claim the money;
  • The way the entire affair played out implicated everyone concerned—Jindal, Enright, Riser, Dupuy and Edmonson—in a pathetic attempt to conceal the deed from public view.

In short, Edmonson’s decision was anything but magnanimous. Quite simply, it was forced upon him by the glaring light of public scrutiny—the one thing he feared most.

This silly effort by the Advocate to make Edmonson’s decision seem noble and to make it appear to be anything other than the hands in the cookie jar scenario that it was is a disservice to its readers and an insult to their intelligence.

Perhaps the Advocate should stick to its previous hard-hitting editorials about how nice sunshine is and how lovely the Spanish moss-laden oak trees on the Capitol grounds are.

When John Georges purchased the Advocate from the Manship family, he went before the Baton Rouge Press Club where he made the utterly bizarre statement that he was focused on “not making people angry.”

I’m sorry Mr. Georges, but when you establish a policy of attempting to publish as little offending reporting as possible, that’s a cowardly decision and you’re simply not doing your job.

It was Thomas Jefferson who said, “If I had to choose between government without newspapers and newspapers without government, I wouldn’t hesitate to choose the latter.”

Georges has obviously chosen the former.

And that decision has made the Advocate less of a newspaper, good only for crawfish boils and housebreaking a puppy.

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