Feeds:
Posts
Comments

Archive for the ‘Revenue’ Category

π-yush sued over constitutionality of contingency revenue in state budget, use of one-time funds for recurring expenses

Posted in Budget, Governor's Office, House, Senate, Legislature, Legislators, Revenue on January 15, 2013| 12 Comments »

Attorney General James “Buddy” Caldwell punted, Gov. Piyush Jindal wouldn’t listen and State Treasurer John Kennedy…well, he is, after all the state treasurer.

The three statewide Republican officeholders were named defendants in a lawsuit filed by two Republican state representatives on Tuesday. One of those was Cameron Henry of Metairie who Jindal had bounced from his vice-chairmanship of the powerful House Appropriations Committee in November after Henry voted for a motion by Rep. Katrina Jackson (D-Monroe) that the administration opposed.

Rep. Joe Harrison also was removed from the Appropriations Committee in the showdown vote in which the administration came perilously close to losing its move to award the third party administration contract for the Office of Group Benefits.

The other plaintiff in Tuesday’s lawsuit was Rep. Kirk Talbot of River Ridge.

Reached for comment, Talbot said the suit simply seeks a declaratory judgment on three major issues with which he, Henry and other legislators disagree with Piyush.

“We are not seeking an injunction,” he said. “We’re not trying to shut state government down. We are simply seeking a ruling on the constitutionality of the governor’s submitting an executive budget with contingency revenue and the spending of one-time money on recurring expenses.”

He said last year’s budget contained contingency expenditures. “That would be, for example, the inclusion of anticipated revenue for the sale of prisons or state hospitals. If the sales don’t materialize (they didn’t in the 2011 session), then we have a problem, a financial shortfall.”

Likewise, he said the suit is also seeking a decision on the requirement under state law that the governor’s executive budget “shall not exceed the official of the Revenue Estimating Conference (REC)” estimates and also per state law, appropriations from the state general fund and dedicated funds in the final, enacted bills comprising the state budget “shall not exceed the official forecast in effect at the time the appropriations are made.”

The official revenue forecast for fiscal year 2012-2013 at the time House Bill 1 was passed, as issued by the REC on April 24, 2012, reflected just over $8.1 billion in state general fund revenue available for appropriation.

Instead, the amount actually appropriated in HB1 was $8.34 billion, thus exceeding the REC estimate and the constitutionally-mandated appropriation limit by $240 million, the suit says.

The REC is required by law to meet at least four times per year—by Oct. 15, Jan. 1, the third Monday in March and Aug. 15 subsequent to final adjournment of the regular session. State law requires the REC to establish, by Oct. 15 of each year, an official revenue forecast for the ensuing fiscal year, that runs from July 1 to the following June 30.

State law requires that legislative enactment of the state budget must conform with a subsequent revised forecast issued by the REC by the third Monday in March.

“The REC did not meet by Oct. 15, 2011, by the third Monday of 2012, by Aug. 15, 2012 after adjournment of the 2012 regular session, or by Oct. 15, 2012, as required by law,” the petition says.

The Jindal budget also included $35 million in contingency revenue from the anticipated sale of New Orleans Adolescent Hospital and HB 822 directed State Treasurer John Kennedy to transfer $35 million of the proceeds from the sale or lease of the facility to the Overcollections Fund.

After numerous delays, the Jindal administration finally released the appraisals on the hospital property in November. That appraisal showed the property worth, at most, $20.9 million.

Rep. Neil Abramson (D-New Orleans) has questioned how the Jindal administration arrived at a $35 million estimate. “I was surprised to see the money in the budget at all because that property’s in my district and no one had ever said anything to me,” he said.

Welcome to the real world, Mr. Abramson. That the way the Jindalistas do business.

“…There is no reasonable basis for expecting the New Orleans Adolescent Hospital to, in fact, sell or lease for $35 million during the 2012-2013 fiscal year,” the lawsuit said. “As such, appropriations of those funds are, in fact, prohibited contingent appropriations.”

Henry, reminded that Piyush had already demoted him once, jokingly feigned innocence at first. “This is all Talbot’s fault,” he said. “I thought I was signing up to buy Girl Scout cookies. Next thing I know, I’m a plaintiff in a lawsuit.”

He quickly turned serious, however.

“We first sought a legal opinion from the attorney general and he told us he would not render an opinion on the constitutionality because that was a matter for the courts.

Gov. Jindal forced us to do this. He thinks he is right and we think we’re right. If we are ultimately found to be right, we can avoid a repeat of the practices that have put us in such a fiscal dilemma,” he said.

The lawsuit has been assigned to 19th Judicial District Court Judge Tim Kelley who is married to Jindal’s one-time commissioner of administration Angéle Davis.

Kelley, in another lawsuit, ruled in December that Jindal’s school voucher program unconstitutionally diverted public funds to private and parochial schools. That ruling is presently under appeal.

Read Full Post »

Dispute in Winn Parish over 55,000-acre hunting lodge reads like a Grisham novel with cast of Mike Foster, Dick Cheney and imprisoned former Winn sheriff Bodie Little

Posted in Governor's Office, Grant, Grants, Legislature, Legislators, Politicians, Public Records, Revenue on January 15, 2013| 16 Comments »

A wrongful arrest lawsuit filed in 8th Judicial District Court in Winnfield names as defendants a former Louisiana Wildlife Commission chairman and a Department of Louisiana Wildlife and Fisheries agent but the litigation is only the latest in an ongoing dispute whose roots go far deeper into the lush pine forests of Winn, Caldwell and LaSalle parishes.

Wyndel Earl Gough (pronounced “Goff”) and Gary L. Hatten filed the lawsuit on Jan. 10, naming William “Bill” Busbice of Broussard, former chairman of the Louisiana Wildlife and Fisheries Commission during the administration of former Gov. Mike Foster, as one of the defendants.

Also named were Terry Carr, identified as an overseer or manager of Busbice’s Deer Management Assistance Program (DMAP) land, and wildlife agent Rusty Perry after Gough and Hatten were arrested by Perry in December of 2010 for illegally hunting deer on DMAP land without Busbice’s permission.

It was not until April of 2012, however, that a bill of information was issued by the district attorney charging the two with one count each. On Oct. 24, those charges were formally dismissed by the district attorney’s office.

Both Gough and Hatten deny ever having hunted on DMAP property.

Busbice began purchasing some 55,000 acres in the three parishes, mostly in Winn, after Louisiana-Pacific shut down its operations at Urania in 2002. Louisiana-Pacific initially sold the forest land to Barrs & Glawson Investments of Atlanta, GA, to Roy O. Martin Lumber Co. and to Martin-Urania Corp. for $74 million. Barrs & Glawson re-sold tracts totaling 50,383 acres in Winn, 6,068 acres in LaSalle and 4,800 in Caldwell to Six-C Properties, headed by Busbice.

Since purchasing the land, Busbice has erected eight-foot fencing around the property and constructed a hunting lodge on the land that caters to high rollers who don’t mind ponying up a few thousand dollars for the privilege to hunt deer.

Six-C subsequently donated 1,500 acres of the land to Make A Wish Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to granting wishes to children with life-threatening medical conditions.

Additional property owners in the area, including other members of the Gough family, claim that Busbice’s fencing in 55,000 acres in the three parishes, mostly in Winn, has deprived them of their hunting rights.

One of those, Michael Atkins, sued Busbice and his company, Six-C Properties, after Busbice erected a fence completely surrounding 10 acres of land owned by Atkins. His lawsuit, which he won at the trial court level but which was overturned in part on appeal, contended that the fence not only prevented him from hunting but also blocked access to his property.

The latest lawsuit, however, goes back more than a decade and involves principals other than Busbice and the two plaintiffs.

Names that have surfaced in what has become a conspiracy-laden story include imprisoned former Winn Parish Tax Assessor A.D. “Bodie” Little, former Gov. Mike Foster and former Vice President Dick Cheney.

Landowners, including the Goughs, maintain that Foster hosted Cheney on a hunting trip in 2002 and shortly afterwards a federal grant came through Foster’s administration which was used to purchase the land which eventually came under the control of Busbice and Six-C.

Efforts by LouisianaVoice to confirm that allegation have been unsuccessful, though an entry of more than $87.86 million was included on page 29 in Foster’s fiscal year 2003-2004 executive budget under the column heading of Federal Funds.

Marty Milner, fiscal officer for the Office of Facility Planning and Control, said in a 2008 email to investigator Art Walker that he had found the $87.86 million but some projects were funded through the Department of the Military and the Department of Transportation and Development but his office did not handle the accounting for those departments. Accordingly, he said, he was unable to determine the disposition of the money.

Michael Gough, one of the landowners in the area, likened the Six-C hunting camp to the state’s arrangement with the White Lake Preservation in Vermilion Parish. In that case, BP donated the 71,000-acre preserve to the state but retained mineral rights on the property—and received millions of dollars in tax breaks.

Foster, governor at the time, negotiated the deal with BP and subsequently appointed a board comprised of private citizens to manage the property.

Another controversy surrounding the Six-C property arose in 2008 when a group of Winn Parish taxpayers filed suit against then-assessor Bodie, claiming that the increase in their taxes was a direct result of their opposition to Bodie’s election as sheriff.

Bodie was sentenced to a 13-year federal prison term last August for drug possession with intent to distribute.

An Alexandria Town Talk investigation revealed that several of Bodie’s friends benefitted from under-assessments. Among those was Six-C, which was the beneficiary of an assessment that was $351,800 low, according to one local resident.

Under the $20 per acre forestland value, Six-C was billed $98,601 on its Winn Parish properties, then consisting of 31,600 acres. Winn Parish resident Grady McFarland, however, said Six-C should have paid taxes based on an $88.90 per acre value, or $450,410.

Almost as an afterthought to the whole affair, Glenn Austin, district conservationist for the Natural Resources Conservation Service, accompanied Michael Gough on a tour of several locations around the boundary of Six-C property to inspect where “flood flaps,” made from old conveyor belts, were stretched across the bottom of the fence where it crossed streams and creeks in the area.

The flaps, installed to prevent wildlife from escaping, impeded the water flow, causing flooding and erosion. “There was sediment deposited within the channel banks at almost every location,” Austin said. “This increase in sediment load and increased turbidity in the water channels could be degrading the water quality” within the streams, he added.

Austin told Gough that if the area was deemed to be a wetland, then the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers would have regulatory authority over the area.

Read Full Post »

π-yush has more Christmas cheer: Revenue plans shutdown of all state satellite offices except Benson…er, New Orleans

Posted in Budget, Campaign Contributions, Economy, Governor's Office, Jobs, Layoffs, Revenue, State Agencies on December 19, 2012| 6 Comments »

Get ready, Louisiana taxpayers. If you encounter a need for a one-on-one meeting with a Louisiana Department of Revenue spokesperson to discuss your state taxes in the near future, you soon will be out of luck. You’ll need to juke on down to Baton Rouge or New Orleans to get face time.

Though no announcement has yet been made of a target date, LouisianaVoice has learned that all other state revenue satellite offices are being shuttered.

The closures, of course, will not affect New Orleans where the state is locked into that overpriced lease agreement with Tom Benson as part of the notorious state giveaway to keep the Saints in Louisiana. That’s the deal whereby Benson purchased the old Dominion Tower across from the Superdome with the understanding that the state would move all its New Orleans offices there and pay about twice was it was paying for its former office space.

It was not immediately known how many state employees would be affected, but suffice it to say the timing of the decision, coming as it does a week before Christmas, couldn’t be worse for Revenue staffers in Shreveport, Monroe, Alexandria, Lake Charles and Lafayette.

Having already gone for more than three years without a raise, they now face the prospects of unemployment.

Of course, certain employees have nothing to worry about. The cutbacks will only apply to the grunts, the ones who actually do the day-to-day work, the ones who have to suffer indignities from supervisors and flak from unhappy taxpayers.

This is the same agency, by the way, that hired former State Rep. Jane Smith first as Assistant Secretary at $124,446 despite her professed lack of knowledge about revenue. Upon the firing of Secretary Cynthia Bridges over that alternative fuel tax (a bill authored by smith, no less, and signed into law by Jindal), Smith was briefly promoted to secretary by Piyush.

Jindal later hired former executive counsel Tim Barfield as secretary but circumvented the state law which limited the secretary’s salary to $124,000 by also giving him the title of Executive Counsel of Revenue and bumping his salary up to a cool $250,000.

Of course, it didn’t hurt that Barfield and his wife contributed $15,000 to Jindal’s campaigns in 2006 and 2010 and that one of his former employers, Amedisys, chipped in another $11,000 to the Piyush cause.

And apparently oblivious to the current state hiring freeze, the new secretary promptly went out and bought himself a chief staff in the person of Jarrod Coniglio, who “will take the lead for all of our day-to-day work and be a great help to us as we work to coordinate and execute with the highest efficiency, accuracy and customer service,” according to Barfield.

The price for his new aide that Bridges apparently never saw the need for? $115,003.

While on his shopping spree, Barfield also picked up a new press secretary: Douglas Baker at an annual salary of $105,997.

True to form in the Piyush administration, efforts to contact the newly-appointed Revenue press secretary for more detailed information about the office shut-downs and accompanying layoffs were unsuccessful.

Read Full Post »

New round of budget cuts to be announced Friday as π-yush administration grapples with declining state tax revenues

Posted in Charters, Governor's Office, Health Care, Higher Education, Jobs, Layoffs, Legislature, Legislators, Privatization, Revenue, State Agencies, Taxes, Vouchers on December 12, 2012| 12 Comments »

Fiscal Year 2012-13 is just half over but more deep budget cuts will be announced on Friday and, in the words of one state official, “It ain’t gonna be pretty.”

And the latest fiscal problems haven’t even encountered a looming tax rebate program being offered to encourage financial viability of state charter schools, a centerpiece of the Jindal administration.

With health care and higher education already devastated by previous cuts, it’s anyone’s guess who will suffer in the new round of belt tightening.

Higher education has already been hit with more than $426 million in cuts since 2009—$25 million since June—and Gov. Piyush Jindal has been conducting a fire sale to unload state hospitals and prisons, so it’s difficult to pinpoint where other cuts can be implemented.

The Revenue Estimating Conference will meet on Thursday and the Joint Committee on the Budget will meet on Friday to officially hear the bad news.

Without specifics (because they weren’t available when this was written), that bad news is:

• Personal income tax revenue is below projections;

• Corporate income tax revenue is below projections;

• Severance tax revenue is below projections (because of an unexpected drop in the price of natural gas);

• Sales tax revenue is below projections.

With the bulk of state revenue coming from income taxes and sales taxes, the news, it seems, couldn’t be much worse.

But it might.

Remember the alternative fuel tax credit?

That’s the bill authored by former Rep. Jane Smith (R-Bossier City) that promised a tax credit of up to $3,000 for vehicles that burn “alternative fuel. It was estimated at the time that the tax credit would cost the state $907,000 over five years.

After losing her bid to move up to the Senate in 2011, Jindal rewarded her loyalty (read: dedication to tax breaks) by appointing her as deputy secretary of the Department of Revenue.

The intent of the bill was to encourage the conversion of vehicles to propane but between the passage of Smith’s tax rebate bill and its implementation, flex-fuel vehicles that run on a blend of up to 85 percent ethanol hit the market.

These vehicles immediately qualified for the rebate and the real cost turned out to be more like $200 million, an increase of almost 1,900 percent after then-Revenue Secretary Cynthia Bridges got around to creating rules for the program.

Caught in a potential fiscal crisis over the tax credits, Jindal promptly fired Bridges, promoted Smith (who authored the bill in the first place) to interim secretary and rescinded the tax credits.

Now, a similar scenario may have arisen in the form of last session’s House Bill 969.

HB 969, by Rep. Kirk Talbot (R-Baton Rouge), which was subsequently signed into law by Piyush as Act 25, offers tax rebates to those making contributions to charter schools.

Piyush vetoed a similar bill by Rep. Katrina Jackson (D-Monroe) that would have given tax rebates of up to $10 million to those making contributions to public schools because, he said, there was no provision in the state budget for the rebates.

The only problem is, the provisions of Act 25 contain no dollar cap which, like the alternative fuel tax, could blow a gaping hole in the state’s budget should a sufficient number of people make contributions to the private scholarship program.

It’ll be interesting to see how the Boy Blunder handles the latest financial crisis since the state is running out of one-time money with which to plug budget holes, thousands of state jobs have already been eliminated, there are few remaining assets that can be sold off, and health care and higher education have already been cut just about as much as they can stand and still function.

Perhaps Piyush might actually see the need to jettison a few six-figure appointive positions handed out to former legislators like Smith, Noble Ellington, Troy Hebert, Lane Carson and numerous others.

That would be a start—a show of good faith, at least.

Read Full Post »

Merry Christmas! E.A. Conway Hospital in Monroe receives word that 41 employees to be laid off effective November 30

Posted in Budget, Economy, Governor's Office, Health Care, Jobs, Layoffs, LSU, Revenue, State Agencies on October 16, 2012| 4 Comments »

A new survey by 24/7 Wall Street has revealed that the Monroe Metropolitan Area, which includes 11 northeast Louisiana Parishes, is the sixth-poorest metropolitan area in the U.S. and at 27.9 percent, has the eighth-highest percentage of households living below the poverty line.

Accordingly, The LSU Health Sciences Center in Shreveport sent out notices to 41 employees of E.A. Conway Medical Center in Monroe Tuesday that they will no longer have jobs after Nov. 30.

Merry Christmas to E.A. Conway employees who will soon be unemployed. Great timing.

University Medical Center (UMC) Chancellor Dr. Robert Barish simultaneously notified E.A. Conway employees and State Civil Service Director Shannon Templet that 25 of the 41 employees targeted for layoffs are nurses.

Others include four police officers, two nursing assistants, two administrative coordinators, and (one each) respiratory care therapist, speech/audiologist specialist, EKG technician, radiologic technician, social worker, electriction, mobile equipment operator and printing operator.

The layoffs, Barish said, are the result of a reduction in federal Medicaid dollars to the state and are necessary “after other budgetary measures were taken, as a layoff avoidance measure, that did not meet the total dollars needed to match the reduction.”

The overall impact of the layoffs and cutbacks to E.A. Conway will be $8.5 million, he said.

With such a high poverty rate, many of the 178,000 residents of the Monroe Metropolitan Area rely on Conway for health care. Now, those health care services will either be cut back drastically or delayed for many who need them most.

Merry Christmas to tens of thousands of northeast Louisiana residents who will soon find medical care more difficult to obtain.

While median income across the nation decreased by $642 per year from 2010 to 2011, it went into a free-fall in the Monroe Metropolitan Area, plummeting by $5,434.

At the same time, the area’s poverty rate rose by an eye-popping seven percentage points. Moreover, the 11.4 percent of households earning less than $10,000 in 2011 was the third-highest percentage of all metropolitan areas.

The cutbacks and layoffs at Conway would appear to have been implemented with no planning and little consideration given to the needs of the areas served just as other policy moves have been made.

The Jindal administration, for example, privatized the John Hainkel Home and Rehabilitation Center in New Orleans in 2011 and in June of this year, Department of Health and Hospitals Secretary Bruce Greenstein quietly notified the facility that it was revoking its license, ostensibly because of deficiencies found during inspections.

A more likely reason for the action is that 73 of the home’s 82 patients pay for their care at the Hainkel Home through state Medicaid funding. Ergo, close the facility and if those 73 patients are unable to enter another facility that accepts Medicaid patients, Jindal gets to cut Medicaid costs in a furtive move that flies under the radar.

And it won’t be a simple task for those patients to find a new care provider. The Hainkel Home is one of the few remaining options in New Orleans for Medicaid patients and Veterans Administration patients. Most nursing homes will not accept Medicaid and V.A. patients and are actively purging current Medicaid and V.A. patients from their populations.

So, while Piyush Jindal continues to push for corporate tax breaks and exemptions for campaign contributors, he embarks on a campaign of slashing budgets and cutting services as a means of making up revenue lost by what can only be described as to poor—or perhaps contrived—administrative decisions.

Such are the methods of the Piyush Jindal administration.

Read Full Post »

« Newer Posts - Older Posts »