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If you remember nothing else about the tax bill, please remember what the House version says about teachers

Posted in Congress, Corruption, Education, Ethics, Governor's Office, House, Revenue, Senate, Taxes on December 9, 2017| 23 Comments »

Bobby Jindal said in a 2015 address to the Louisiana Association of Business and Industry (LABI) that teachers are still at their jobs only by virtue of their being able to breathe.

That was when he was touting his ambitious education reform package that was designed to promote and enrich the operators of charter and virtual schools by pulling the financial rug from under public education in Louisiana.

That, of course, only served to further demoralize teachers and to punish those students from low-income families who could not afford charter schools but all that mattered little to Jindal. And perhaps it’s no coincidence that his former chief of staff Steve Waguespack now heads LABI.

Lest one think that sorry attitude toward teachers and the teaching profession went away in January 2016 when Jindal exited the governor’s office, leaving a fiscal mess for his successor, John Bel Edwards, think again.

Here’s a little wakeup call for those of you who may have been lulled into a false sense of security now that the husband of a teacher occupies the governor’s office: That disdain for public education has carried over into the halls of Congress via this proposed new tax bill now being ironed out between the House and Senate.

Much has already been written about how the tax bill is supposed to benefit the middle class when in reality it does just the opposite—yet those blindly loyal zealots, those supporters of child molesters, those adherents of the Republican-can-do-no-wrong-because-they-wrap-themselves-in-a-flag-and-wave-a-bible-in-one-hand-and-a-gun-in-the-other mantra continue to drink the Kool-Aid and cling to the insane theory that Trump, Rand Paul, Mitch McConnell, Bill Cassidy and John Neely Kennedy have their best interests at heart.

These delusional people get all bent out of shape when a jock refuses to kneel at a football game because they consider it an affront to our military (it’s not) while this tax bill rips more than $40 billion from HUD, including programs that help provide housing for homeless VETERANS. How’s that for honoring our fighting men and women? Where the hell are your real priorities?

Any of you die-hard Republicans out there on Medicare? Are you ready to take a $25 billion HIT? You will under this tax “reform.”

All you Trump supporters who have been so critical of the federal deficit prepared to see that deficit increased by a whopping $1.4 trillion? Sens. Cassidy and Kennedy are. So are Reps. Steve Scalise, Clay Higgins, Mike Johnson, Ralph Abraham and Garrett Graves.

Those of you with college kids presently on tuition exemptions like TOPS might want to get ready; your son or daughter is going to have to declare those benefits as taxable income. Is that why you voted Republican?

And while all this is going down, you can take comfort in the knowledge that the proposed tax “reform” will eliminate the tax on inherited fortunes (you know, the kind that made Donald Trump Donald Trump) and will maintain the “carried interest” loophole which taxes the fees of private-equity fund managers (read: the mega-rich, Wall Street bankers, etc.) at low capital gains rates instead of the higher income tax rates.

But after all that’s said and done, the part of the tax bill that really turns my stomach, the part that sticks in my throat, is a provision that is of so small an amount as to be insignificant—if it weren’t for the principle of the whole thing.

Call it a carry over from Jindal, a snub of teachers, or whatever, it’s galling.

Here it is:

Teachers, particularly elementary teachers, traditionally spend hundreds of dollars per year of their own money on materials and supplies for their classrooms. And it’s not for them, it’s for the children. Keep that in mind, folks. While there are parents out there who would rather buy meth and booze and cigarettes than supplies for their kids, there are teachers who quietly enter the school supply stories and stock up so that kid will have a chance.

Call it personal, if you wish, and it might well be. When I was a student at Ruston High School, I was injured right after school one day. My English teacher, Miss Maggie Hinton, never hesitated. She led me to her powder blue 1953 Chevrolet Bel Air and took me to Green Clinic—and paid the doctor to patch me up. You never hear the Jindals of the world tell those kinds of stories. They don’t fit their agenda.

Under the present tax laws, these teachers, who on average spend $500 to $600 per year (school principals, by the way spend an average of $683 of their own money annually on snacks and other food items for students, decorations and supplies like binders and paper), can take a tax deduction of up to $250 for those expenditures. (And to interject a very personal story, once, while I was making a purchase for a school in Livingston Parish at Clegg’s Plant Nursery, the owner would not accept my money. He donated the items because he, too, supports public education.)

Now understand, that’s a tax deduction of up to $250, not a tax credit, which would be a dollar-for-dollar tax cut. A deduction benefits the teacher only $40 or so off her taxes. But at least it’s something.

The Senate version of the new tax bill would double that deduction to $500, thank you very much.

So, what’s my beef?

Nothing much…except the HOUSE version would eliminate the deduction in its entirety.

That’s right. While the Republicans want to take care of the fat cats (those in Trump’s income bracket would realize tax breaks of approximately $37,000), teachers, under the House version of this tax bill would no longer get even that paltry $40. Zero. Zip. Nada. Nothing. Thank you, Garrett Graves, et al.

That really angers me and it should anger every person in Louisiana with even a scintilla of a conscience.

Because teachers are my heroes. Nearly fifty-seven years after graduating from Ruston High School, my heroes are still named Hinton, Ryland, Perkins, Garner, Lewis, Peoples, Edmunds, Barnes,  Johnson, Garrett & Garrett (any I omitted is only because I took no classes under them). They took a personal interest in a kid with no real promise and made him a little better person. They and my grandparents alone have stood the test of what a true hero should be.

And I am proud to defend the honor of teachers everywhere in their memory.

And the fact that five Louisiana House members—who, by the way, are all up for reelection in 2018—voted for this tax “reform” bill that slaps my heroes in the face really pisses me off.

Did I mention those five are up for reelection next year? That’s 2018, less than a year from now.

A smart voter remembers who represents him.

Those not so smart should go fishing on election day.

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To advice that LouisianaVoice lay off Trump: when hell freezes over or Troy beats Bama, whichever comes first

Posted in Corruption, Economy, Ethics, Exemptions, Fraud, Politicians, Senate, Taxes on November 30, 2017| 20 Comments »

One of LouisianaVoice’s regular readers commented on Wednesday’s post that “half of Congress is occupied by communists” and “half of the supposed ‘good guys’ are swamp creatures that lie to get elected (only half?) and don’t really want the change that got them elected.”

And then he wrote, “Lay off of Trump. You sat by for 8 years as Obama raped and pillaged our country. He turned the IRS and intelligence agencies against us. He made deals with Iran as they chanted ‘death to America.’ Trump isn’t anyone’s savior but at least I don’t have to wonder if he truly hates this country like I did with Osama…I mean Obama.”

Oh dear, where to start? First of all, he every right to his opinion and the right to express it. But saying that “half of Congress is occupied by communists” is such an all-encompassing, paint-em-all-with-the-same-broad-brush kind of generalization that is all too common to people who go off on tangents and post unsubstantiated comments such as that. How can anyone say half of the 535 members of the House and Senate are communists when at the very most, he may have met a half-dozen of them for five minutes? That is such an inane comment that it really doesn’t even warrant dignifying with a rebuttal, so I’ll just leave it at that.

Obama “pillaged our country”? Just how, exactly, did he “pillage” the country? As I recall, Enron self-destructed in 2003, the housing bubble burst, Lehman Brothers went belly up and Bank of America acquired the cratering Merrill Lynch in 2008 near the end of George W. Bush’s term. Moreover, the entire affair was precipitated by the deregulation of financial institutions during the Reagan years.

True enough, Obama’s attorney general, Eric Holder, refused to prosecute the Wall Street bankers who brought on the collapse. That much I’ll give you and I still harbor resentment toward both Obama and Holder over that colossal malfeasance in failing to go after those thieves. You just know if some street thug had robbed a bank of a hundred bucks, he’d see hard time. Yet, those bankers stole billions—and walked away. Some were even paid bonuses of tens of millions of dollars for their trouble.

(You’d think we would’ve learned our lesson with the savings and loan debacle back in the final two decades of the Twentieth Century. William Black even wrote a prophetic book called The Best Way to Rob a Bank Is to Own One. Who knew then that the S&L collapse would reoccur on a much larger scale with the investment banks?)

And that “deal” with Iran is apparently the $150 billion Trump said Obama “gave” Iran. Pulitzer Prize-winning POLITIFACT says Trump got the name of the country right but that was about the extent of his accuracy. The $150 billion, you see, was Iran’s to begin with but had been frozen under several economic sanctions levied against the country. The money—their money—was released following verification by nuclear inspectors that Iran was complying with an agreement to curb its nuclear program. I suppose, though, if our reader got his information from BREITBART, he would have a somewhat different take on the whole affair.

And I just flat-out refuse to hold Obama responsible for the federal government’s response to Hurricane Katrina as some of Trump’s supporters continue to do. After all, the man wasn’t even president then and had only been in the Senate eight months. I actually heard one woman in Denham Springs mutter in disgust, “Thanks, President Obama” when she found the post office closed on Columbus Day—a federal holiday since 1968.

Finally, in response to the request to “lay off of trump”: not a chance in hell.

He has the chutzpa to question Obama’s loyalty to this country while choosing (typically of the TrumpCult) to overlook the fact that Trump has feuded with CNN, MSNBC, Time magazine, Elizabeth Warren, Jeff Flake, Bob Corker, Hispanics, and The New York Times—but strangely never with the Nazis, David Duke, Jason Kessler, or Vladimir Putin. All of which begs the question of where Trump’s loyalties lie.

Nope, I’m not going “lay off of Trump,” or the rest of the Repugnantcan gang of thugs who want to award generous—and permanent—tax breaks to the wealthy while doling out meager temporary breaks to the middle class and the poor.

  • Especially when Trump and his EPA Administrator have proposed the repeal of the Clean Power Plan which will give the go-ahead for polluting companies to pollute even more. That EPA administrator, Scott Pruitt, you may remember, filed numerous suits against the EPA while Oklahoma attorney general which, I suppose, somehow makes him the perfect candidate to run the agency. Maybe I should sue Microsoft in hopes of being named the new CEO.
  • Especially when Trump appoints his budget director Mick Mulvaney to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau created by (ahem) the Obama administration to protect Americans from predatory lenders and faulty mortgages—like the very ones that nearly brought down the world economy in 2008. Mulvaney, by the way, once called the bureau “a joke…in a sick, sad way.”
  • Especially when I read a story from 24/7 Wall Street just this week about the top 50 corporations that park their assets offshore. Of those 50 companies, which have a combined $1.7 trillion stashed in overseas accounts, 10 are healthcare and pharmaceutical companies, three are big oil, two are insurance giants, five are military contractors, five are computer companies and internet providers and 11 (count ‘em) are financial companies—many of the ones whose criminal activity (never prosecuted by Attorney General Holder) brought about the 2008 crash that necessitated the federal bailout.

Those 50 corporations, along with all the others, no doubt, have located enough loopholes to make their 35 per cent tax rate. Despite their bitching and moaning that the rate is too high, the 50 averaged just over 25 percent in effective tax rates.

  • AIG, one of the companies that gave us the 2008 recession, for example had an effective tax rate of minus 5 percent, meaning it not only paid no taxes, but actually got money. Likewise, General Motors had an effective rate of minus 32.9 percent.
  • Morgan Stanley, another of those Wall Street bankers who torpedoed the economy, had an effective tax rate of 17.2 percent, less than half the supposed rate of 35 percent. Bank of America, yet another of the rogue Wall Street bankers, had an effective tax rate of 17.9 percent.
  • The pharmaceutical company Allergan had an effective tax rate of zero.

What was your personal tax rate again?

Just take comfort in the knowledge that the biggest tax breaks under this bill go them that got—corporations and the filthy rich.

The wealthiest 1 percent of people worldwide have more wealth than the rest of the earth’s population combined.

Just eight individuals possess more wealth than 3.6 billion people—half the world’s population.

True, not all of those live in the U.S. But let that sink in and be proud for those who will realize the most generous tax breaks under this bill. But don’t take my word for it. See for yourself by clicking HERE. (Be sure to scroll down to the illustration of the spheres of influence.)

Trump and the Republicans in Congress, having failed in every effort to repeal Obamacare, are now so desperate to accomplish something, anything, before standing for reelection next year (the full House and one-third of the Senate), that they are flailing away like a blindfolded man in a martial arts tournament in a near-hysterical effort to get this ill-advised tax bill passed.

Those who proudly call themselves advocates of good ol’ American capitalism will rail against the redistribution of wealth, spitting out the term as if it were a vulgarism of the vilest sort. But a dramatic redistribution of wealth has been taking place for the past several decades. And it has been—and continues to be—redistributed upward, not downward. That’s the dirty little secret they will never discuss because that kind of redistribution is perfectly okay.

And know, too, that there is only one reason to park money offshore: to dodge taxes.

How much do you have sheltered in the Cayman Islands? Or Aruba? Or Belize?

Didn’t think so. Yet, it is the white middle class and white working poor, the ones who make up the core of the 35 percent that comprises the TrumpCult, who are being screwed by this clown and the Republicans in Congress.

And the saddest part is they don’t even know it.

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DNC not alone in internal turmoil: DSCC members call leadership of Sen. Karen Carter Peterson into question

Posted in Campaign Contributions, Corruption, Elections, Ethics, Finances, Governor's Office, Legislature, Legislators, PACs, Politicians, Senate on November 7, 2017| 14 Comments »

New Orleans native Donna Brazile has created quite a stir over her new book Hacks: The Inside Story of the Break-ins and Breakdowns that Put Donald Trump in the White House. But her description of the infighting in the national Democratic Party is mirrored at least in part on a local scale by what has been transpiring in the Louisiana Democratic Party since State Sen. Karen Carter Peterson ousted Buddy Leach as State Chairman in 2012.

Brazile, in her book, described how candidate Hillary Clinton took over the Democratic National Committee’s funding during the primary season while still competing with Sen. Bernie Sanders for the Democratic nomination for President. By gaining control of the party’s finances, Brazile said, Clinton effectively rigged the process to kill whatever chance Sanders may have had to win the nomination.

But paralleling the infighting that developed between followers of Hillary and Sanders, the Louisiana Democratic Party appears to have fallen into its own state of considerable disarray on Peterson’s watch. And its problems, like that of the DNC, can be traced back to money and power.

Back room deals, endorsements, and questionable expenditures in the recent campaign for state treasurer have raised a number of questions. For example:

  • Is State Sen. Neil Riser truly a Republican?
  • If so, why did he lavish money on traditionally Democratic organizations like the Black Organization for Leadership Development (BOLD), THE New Orleans East Leadership PAC, New Orleans East Leadership PAC, Louisiana Independent Federation of Electors, Algiers PAC, Jefferson United, and Treme Improvement Political Society in his campaign for state treasurer?
  • Are the aforementioned actually Democratic organizations or are they simply a means to raising money in exchange for the endorsement of the highest bidder?
  • If they are Democratic organizations, why didn’t they endorse Democrat Derrick Edwards in the first primary instead of waiting until Riser lost—he finished dead last among the four major candidates—to direct their support to Edwards?

BOLD’s open bidding policy pre-dates Peterson. In 2003, the organization endorsed Bobby Jindal over Kathleen Blanco for governor. Of course, that was after Jindal paid BOLD $10,000 for “consulting and printing.”

During his campaign, Riser’s expenditures included $15,000 to BOLD for printing (BOLD, which Peterson’s dad, Ken Carter, co-founded, subsequently listed Riser at the top of its sample ballots), $14.500 in two contributions to New Orleans East Leadership PAC, a $10,000 contribution to the Louisiana Independent Federation of Electors, $6,000 to Algiers PAC for printing, $5,000 to Jefferson United for undetermined expenses, $5,000 to Treme Improvement Political Society.

But the treasurer’s race is merely symptomatic of a far greater problem within the State Democratic Party.

One of Peterson’s first acts as the new State Chairperson in 2012 was to nullify all parish executive committee appointments made during Leach’s tenure. And it’s been downhill ever since.

In an organization that is perpetually financially strapped, the Executive Committee, once stacked with her appointees, awarded her an annual stipend of $36,000 plus expenses. This was done without the approval of the Democratic State Central Committee, most of whom were unaware of the stipend. She has continued taking the money in her second term, again without approval.

Stephen Handwerk, Executive Director of the State Democratic Party, pulls down nearly $100,000 in salary but he has been reluctant to make use of an available database to identify and engage Democratic voters, claiming he has insufficient staff to do so. Yet, he found the time to take a second salaried job with the Democratic National Committee, according to DNC expense reports.

Peterson also has made it a point to take care of family in her role as chairperson. Her sister, Eileen Carter, of Houma, was paid $13,000 during October and November 2015 for “organizational/grassroots consultation,” according to figures provided by the Louisiana Ethics Commission.

Other payments made by the Louisiana Democratic Party under Peterson include:

  • Twelve payments of $600 each to the Chicken Shack of Baton Rouge for party card distribution and catering. Chicken Shack is a business owned by former State Sen. Joe Delpit of Baton Rouge.
  • Four separate payments of $900 each to J&M Transportation of Slidell for state party card distribution. J&M is a limousine service.

Peterson denies being among the three prominent Democrats (including then-Sen. Mary Landrieu) who met with then-State. Rep. John Bel Edwards at New Orleans International Airport in 2015 and tried to convince him to withdraw from the governor’s race so that a moderate Republican might be elected. Landrieu has since apologized for her part in that effort but Peterson has not.

Peterson also threw up roadblocks to the State Democratic Party’s official endorsement of Derrick Edwards (no relation to Gov. John Bel Edwards) for treasurer until after the first primary, in which Edwards led all candidates as the only Democrat in the race.

According to the State Democratic Party’s by-laws, “The Democratic State Central Committee (DSCC) shall conduct such activities, as it deems appropriate to elect Democratic candidates in national, state and local elections.”

Yet, there was Republican Riser’s name at the top of BOLD’s sample ballots which most likely accounts for Peterson’s reluctance to endorse Edwards at the outset.

Gov. John Bel Edwards, despite Peterson’s attempt to get him to drop out of the gubernatorial race, has been loath to support a replacement for her for fear of alienating the Legislative Black Caucus.

But the biggest concern to several Democratic Parish Executive Committee (DPEC) members is the lack of membership on no fewer than 29 parish executive committees, a condition critics attribute to Peterson’s lack of timely appointments.

“There are 29 parishes which have five or fewer members on their committee,” one DPEC member said. “There should be at least 15 members of each parish executive committee. That’s nearly half the state that has non-existent or non-functioning DPECs. Livingston Parish has only seven of 15 seats filled. One member of the Livingston DPEC has been working since February to get the seats filled but that still hasn’t been done even though names have been submitted.”

And nearly two years into Peterson’s second term as state chairperson, there are 33 DSCC vacancies. “If she fills positions at all, it’s usually with her minions,” one DSCC member said.

Parishes with one or more vacancies in DSCC representation include Caddo, Bossier, DeSoto, Sabine, Lincoln, Union, Ouachita, Iberville, Pointe Coupee, West Baton Rouge, West Feliciana, Caldwell, Catahoula, Franklin, LaSalle, Tensas, Concordia, East Carroll, Madison, Tensas, Rapides, Lafayette, Vermilion, Calcasieu, Acadia, Iberia, St. Martin, East Baton Rouge, Livingston, Tangipahoa, Washington, St. Tammany, and Jefferson.

Meanwhile, Peterson in March of this year managed to get herself elected to the DNC as Vice Chair of Civic Engagement and Voter Participation. “How ironic is that?” the DSCC member asked.

“Karen Carter Peterson is an ambitious politician of questionable loyalties who has used her chairmanship of DSCC to build a fiefdom and to launch a national career, all at the expense of the organization she was elected to build and serve,” the DSCC member said.

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First Circuit Court of Appeal to hear oral arguments on closure of Pineville’s Huey P. Long Hospital on Nov. 7

Posted in Boards, DHH, Governor's Office, Health Care, Layoffs, Politicians, Privatization, Senate on October 24, 2017| 3 Comments »

Oral arguments are scheduled to be heard on Nov. 7 in the First Circuit Court of Appeal in Baton Rouge on a three-year-old matter that a layman unfamiliar with the way in which judges can manipulate and interpret laws to keep the meter running would think should have been settled two years ago.

But settling cases quickly and decisively is not the way the courts work and because of that, the case involving the unconstitutional closure of Huey P. Long Medical Center (HPLMC) in Pineville in 2014 rocks on, continuing to rack up fees for contract attorneys for the state—all paid for thanks to the generosity of Louisiana taxpayers.

Meanwhile, the fate of some 570 employees has been held in abeyance since the hospital’s closure on June 30, 2014.

And the manner in which its closure was approved prompted the lawsuit by plaintiffs Edwin Ray Parker, Kenneth Brad Ott and the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME).

Here’s the way it all went down:

At 4:07 p.m. on April 1, 2014, a notice of the April 2 meeting at 9 a.m. of the Senate Health and Welfare Committee to consider Senate Concurrent Resolution (SCR) 48 which “Provides for legislative approval of and support to the Board of Supervisors of Louisiana State University for the strategic collaboration with the state in creating a new model of health care delivery in the Alexandria and Pineville areas.”

A “new model of health care delivery” was a clever way of wording the SCR so as not to tip the hand of the Jindal administration’s intent to shutter the doors of HPLMC. Who could possibly be expected to discern from that goony-babble that in less than 24 hours, the decision would become final to close the facility?

There were only two key things wrong, either of which should have been sufficient grounds to stop closure of HPLMC.

First, the Senate’s own rules promulgated in accordance with the Louisiana Open Meetings Law LA 42:19(B), which says that notice of all such meetings must be posted no later than 1:00 p.m. the day prior to the meeting and if notice is posted after 1:00 p.m., the agenda item may not be heard the next day. (emphasis added)

Second, in a 1986 case, the U.S. Supreme Court held that:

A concurrent resolution…makes no binding policy; it is ‘a means of expressing fact, principles, opinions, and purposes of the two House (House of Representatives and Senate).” (emphasis added)

Attorney J. Arthur Smith, III of Baton Rouge argues that Article III, Paragraph 14 of the Louisiana Constitution provides that the style of a law “shall be ‘…enacted by the Legislature of Louisiana’” and Paragraph 15(A) which says rather bluntly, “The legislature shall enact no law except by a bill introduced during that session…” (emphasis added)

Smith said, “The Legislature cannot amend Louisiana statutes by resolution” because an enacting clause “distinguishes legislative action as law rather than a mere resolution” as held in First National Bank of Commerce, New Orleans v. J.R. Eaves in that “failure to include a significant portion of the enacting clause renders the law unconstitutional.”

To put all that in plain English, Smith is simply pointing out case precedents which hold that a concurrent resolution is not the same as a legislative bill and therefore, is not binding.

That’s pretty straightforward and something that a first-year law student should be able to comprehend.

Yet, when the state appealed the ruling of State Judge Pro-Tem Robert Downing of June 23, 2014, which granted plaintiff’s request for a preliminary injunction because the Senate committee violated the Open Meetings Law and provisions of Article III of the Louisiana Constitution, the First Circuit managed somehow to overlook the violations.

Instead, it ruled the state’s appeal as moot since HPLMC closed on June 30, 2014, seven days after Downing’s ruling and the First Circuit did so without even bothering to address the issues on which Downing’s ruling was based.

Moreover, the state appealed directly to the Louisiana Supreme Court on the basis of the declaration of the unconstitutionality of SCR 48. On Jan. 13, 2017, the Supreme Court denied the state’s appeal as moot but on Feb. 24 of this year, granted a rehearing to the First Circuit.

So now, a three-judge panel comprised of Judge John Michael Guidry, Judge John T. Pettigrew and Judge William J. Crain will hear arguments on the constitutionality of SCR 48 and of violations of the Open Meetings Law.

Interestingly, the state argues that notices to the public “need not contain anything other than a bill number” and that the Senate “has no obligation to inform the public of the nature or substance of the legislative proposals it will be considering.”

Now that’s a damned interesting concept. Who knew we, the public, had no right to be informed of what our elected representatives are up to? Who knew the people we elect and send to Baton Rouge have “no obligation” to let us know what they’re cooking up in the House that Huey built? Who knew the Bobby Jindal administration could push a concurrent resolution through the Senate and call it a law? Who knew such upright public servants as Jindal and members of the Senate committee would flim-flam us?

Louisiana R.S. 42:24 authorizes the courts to void “any action taken in violation” provided a lawsuit to void any action “must be commenced within 60 days of the action.”

The Baton Rouge firm of Taylor, Porter, Brooks & Phillips is representing the State in the HPLMC litigation.

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Treasurer candidate Neil Riser at center of 2013 move to skip bid law in favor of Vantage Health purchase of state building

Posted in Campaign Contributions, Contracts, Corruption, DOA, Elections, Ethics, Finances, Governor's Office, Legislature, Legislators, Politicians, Public Records, Senate on September 26, 2017| 12 Comments »

Before Louisiana voters trek to the polls in record low numbers on Oct. 14, there are a few things to consider about State Sen. Neil Riser, one of four candidates for the job of state treasurer, who, besides failing to help landowners being fenced out of their hunting lands, actually took campaign cash from a family member of the one erecting the fences.

Riser, author of that infamous bill amendment in the waning minutes of the 2014 legislative session that would have given State Police Superintendent Mike Edmonson an additional $100,000 or so per year in retirement benefits, has received some other interesting contributions as well.

The Louisiana Safety Association of Timbermen gave $2,500 to his senate re-election campaign in March 2014 and only 18 months later filed for BANKRUPTCY on behalf of its self-insurance worker’s compensation fund, leaving quite a few policy holders in the lurch.

Several nursing homes have contributed $2,500 each to his treasurer campaign. The nursing home industry, heavily reliant on state payments on the basis of bed occupancy, consistently benefited from favorable legislation by the Louisiana Legislature over the past decade that discouraged home care for the elderly.

But by far the biggest beneficiary of Riser’s legislative efforts is Vantage Health Plan, Inc., of Monroe which contributed $1,000 in 2015 to his Senate re-election campaign and another $1,000 to his treasurer campaign in March of this year.

Vantage has received six state contracts totaling nearly $242 million during the time Riser has served in the State Senate.

But it was Riser, along with Sens. Mike Walsworth of West Monroe, Rick Gallot of Ruston and Francis Thompson of Delhi, who pushed Senate Bill 216 of 2013 through the Legislature which cleared the way for the state to bypass the necessity of accepting bids for the purchase of the state-owned former Virginia Hotel and an adjoining building and parking lot. That was done expressly for the purpose of allowing Vantage to purchase the property for $881,000 despite there being a second buyer interested in purchasing the property from the state, most likely for a higher price.

By law, if a legislative act is passed, the state may legally skip the public bid process to accommodate a buyer. This was done even though a Monroe couple, who had earlier purchased the nearby Penn Hotel, wanted to buy the Virginia and convert it into a boutique hotel. Thanks to Riser and the other three legislators, they were never given the opportunity.

And Vantage, from all appearances, really got a bargain. The building was constructed in 1925 at a cost of $1.6 million and underwent extensive renovations in 1969 and again in 1984, according to documents provided LouisianaVoice, all of which should have made the property worth considerably more than $881,000. Read the entire story HERE.

Internal documents revealed concerns by Vantage that if the building were to be offered through regular channels (public bids), “developers using federal tax credits could outbid Vantage.”

Another document said, “VHP (Vantage Health Plan) fears that public bidding would allow a developer utilizing various incentive programs to pay an above-market price that VHP would find hard to match.”

Finally, there was a handwritten note which described a meeting on Nov. 1, 2012. Beside the notation that “Sen. Riser supports,” (emphasis added) there was this: “Problem is option of auction—if auction comes there is possibility of tax credits allowing a bidder to out-bid.”

All of which raises the obvious question of why did the Jindal administration turn its back on the potential of a higher sale price through bidding, especially considering the financial condition of the state during his entire term of office? We will probably never know the answer to that.

One might think that that kind of effort on its behalf would be worth more than a couple of thousand in campaign cash to Vantage. Vantage could have at least shown the same gratitude as the relative of the owner of 55,000 of fenced hunting property in Riser’s district.

When landowners in Winn, Caldwell and LaSalle parishes felt they were being fenced out of their hunting rights back in 2013, they did what any citizen might do: they went to their legislator for help–in this case, Riser, who paid the obligatory lip service of expressing concern for landowners Wyndel Gough, Gary Hatten, and Michael Gough but who, in the end, did nothing to assist them.

Instead, as so often happens today in politics, he sold out to the highest bidder.

One the $5,000 contributors to Riser’s campaign is none other than Hunter Farms & Timber, LLC, of Lafayette. An officer in that firm is Billy Busbice, Jr., of Jackson, Wyoming.

William Busbice Sr., one-time chairman of the Louisiana Wildlife and Fisheries Commission, and Junior’s father, is a partner in Six C Rentals Limited Partnership of Youngsville, LA. Which purchased and proceeded to fence in some 55,000 acres of prime hunting land a few years back.

The original LouisianaVoice story on that dispute can be read HERE.

All of which only serves to underscore the long-held perception that we in Louisiana, by continually electing the type of public officials who are interested only in the next big deal, get the kind of representation we deserve.

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