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Archive for the ‘State Agencies’ Category

ATC’s Troy Hebert apparently just a poor innocent victim of a series of unfortunate circumstances and vindictive people

Posted in Civil Service, Governor's Office, State Agencies on January 6, 2013| 115 Comments »

Poor Troy Hebert. He just can’t catch a break.

If he’s not placing a former business partner on the payroll of the Alcohol and Tobacco Control Commission (ATC) but who is not required to report to work, he’s placing a person on the payroll specifically for the purpose of visiting lawmakers in the area.

If he’s not requiring employees to stand as he enters a room and greet him with a cheery, “Good morning, Commissioner,” he’s issuing a new directive prohibiting agents from criticizing other agents to the public and media—a clear violation of the First Amendment.

If he’s not cracking down on state cellphone use by ATC agents—even after explicitly informing them that they were free to use the phones for personal use because of their unusually long working hours across the state (and because the phones come with unlimited minutes), he is putting his agency in such a state of disarray that other law enforcement agencies now exclude ATC from participation in raids—a radical departure from past protocol.

If he isn’t taking off to St. Lucia for a week in December of 2010 without taking leave or leave without pay, he’s using state equipment to haul materials to his home currently under construction in Baton Rouge.

And if he’s not purchasing a $10,000 dog ostensibly for the purpose of sniffing synthetic marijuana even though no drug sniffing canine is qualified to locate synthetic drugs (because the chemical ingredients are constantly changing) and then reassigning the agent who went through training with the dog, then he’s pursuing trespassing charges against a person who rescued an emaciated dog from his vacant, unfinished home.

The latest incident involving the former state senator-cum-highly-paid Piyush Jindal appointee revolves around an 11-month Great Dane that Hebert said he was attempting to nurse through an episode of hip dysplasia—by leaving the animal unattended in a vacant house on Christmas Eve.

Hebert is building a new home on South Lakeshore Drive in Baton Rouge and Angie Brumfield of Denham Springs was walking her own dog around the Louisiana State University lakes with a friend. They stopped at the house which had a sign inviting passersby to photograph the home’s Christmas display.

As they waited for others to finish taking photos, Brumfield looked through a window of the unoccupied home which had no curtains.

Inside, she saw the sick gray-and-white female Great Dane lying on the floor. She described the animal as “emaciated, in distress and with bones protruding where they should not be.”

She said she thought the dog had been abandoned and left there to die.

A photograph by the New Orleans Times-Picayune posted on its nola.com http://www.nola.com/news/baton-rouge/index.ssf/2013/01/sick_dog_found_in_baton_rouge.html
showed an extremely sickly animal lying on a floor, with protruding ribs and hip bones.

She coaxed the dog through a sliding door in the rear of the home but never entered the house, she said. She took the animal home, cared for it over Christmas, looked for lost dog signs, and posted a Cragslist ad in an attempt to locate the owner.

She took it to a veterinarian the day after Christmas and the vet discovered a microchip in the dog which indicated it was owned by Hebert.

Hebert said his veterinarian had given pain medication for the dog and instructed the family to monitor the animal’s progress but the dog, named T-Girl, lost considerable weight because of the illness and was able to walk on only three legs.

Brumfield posted a photo of the dog on Facebook, expressed her distress at its condition and named Hebert and his pediatrician wife Dawn Vick as its owners and that’s when the trouble started.

Hebert, who seems to take undue pleasure at demeaning his employees and criticizing them both privately and in the media, took umbrage at Brumfield’s perceived attack on his reputation. “We have done nothing wrong,” Hebert sniffed. “We’re not going to stand back and allow some stranger who broke into our home, stole our dog and is attacking us on a social website when all we’ve been trying to do is deal with a very sad situation.”

Sure sounds like a vicious crime wave to us.

Sad or not, employees of ATC have confirmed that Hebert regularly brought a Great Dane (it’s not certain if it was T-Girl or another Great Dane owned by Hebert) to ATC last summer and would routinely leave the animal in the back of his pickup truck, exposed to the hot summer sun throughout the day with no food or water.

Now, though, he claims that Brumfield may have harmed T-Girl by moving her and keeping her without medication. “We firmly believe that after she took our dog, it made matters worse,” he said.

Hebert reported the matter to Baton Rouge police and Brumfield and her friend now face misdemeanor charges of unlawfully entering premises and unauthorized use of a “movable.”

Apparently, Hebert can do little more these days than pursue those who attempt to aid an animal in distress now that the Baton Rouge Police Department and the parish Alcohol and Beverage Control Board no longer work with ATC.

Prior to Hebert’s appointment ATC regularly participated in raids with other law enforcement agencies but two recent raids—one in Baton Rouge and the other in Lafayette—were carried out without ATC’s involvement.

A retired ATC agent told LouisianaVoice that Hebert “has destroyed an agency that once took the lead in serious investigations.”

The former agent said that agents spent years building relationships with local, federal and other state agencies. “We constantly worked with the FBI, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), U.S. marshals, military Criminal Investigation Command (CID) and other agencies,” he said.

“Many of us were integral members of Joint Terrorism Task Forces; we were teaching classes on alcohol and tobacco laws in police academies. We were one of the leading agencies in our field. We conducted compliance checks for sales of alcohol and tobacco to underage customers. We worked with the Louisiana State Police conducting DWI checkpoints.

“We trained and worked with local police departments and sheriffs’ offices to conduct their own operations.

“I think all that has been destroyed,” he said.

Hebert was appointed by Jindal on Nov. 23, 2010 and less than a month later he and his wife vacationed for a week in St. Lucia. He took neither annual leave (because he had not worked long enough to accumulate a week’s leave time) nor leave without pay.

When later confronted by state officials, he blamed a subordinate and was allowed to correct the “error” which, in some quarters, might be considered payroll fraud and grounds for dismissal.

He also hired Sean Magee of Jeanerette, a former business partner in a Hurricane Katrina debris cleanup business (while Hebert was still a state senator), to work for ATC but several agents say he never appears at the Baton Rouge headquarters.

More recently he has hired a legislative liaison whose only duties are to visit with legislators—even as he has reduced the number of enforcement positions which in return resulted in ATC’s becoming ineligible for certain federal grants. The agency also has lost its eligibility for sending agents to the FBI National Academy.

His most recent innovation is to craft a personnel policy expected to be released within the next few days that prohibits agents from criticizing other agents to the public or media.

As the head of a state law enforcement agency, perhaps Mr. Hebert should take the time to familiarize himself with the Louisiana Whistleblower Protection Act (R.S. 42:1169), the Louisiana State Employee Governmental Code of Ethics and the Bill of Rights, particularly the pesky First Amendment which guarantees citizens the right of free speech.

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ATC’s Troy Hebert throws subordinates under the bus to deflect from his own inadequacies, inept mismanagement

Posted in ATC, Ethics, Governor's Office, Legislature, Legislators, State Agencies on December 20, 2012| 8 Comments »

Office of Alcohol and Tobacco Control (ATC) Director Troy Hebert, one of those former legislators to whom Piyush Jindal appointed to a six-figure state job, made a big production this week of his so-called “audit” of personal use of state cell phones by agents working under him.

Hebert, of Jeanerette, resigned from the State Senate in November of 2010 to accept the appointment as ATC director at $107,000 per year and has conducted a reign of terror in the ensuing two years.

While Hebert claims that only a half-dozen or so employees have left his agency, a survey by LouisianaVoice learned that the number was closer to 50. Some of those were fired only days after being hired by Hebert while others quit out of disgust.

Hebert obviously considers his status in more grandiose terms than most elected officials, much less appointed department heads, though there are rumors floating around that he considers himself as a potential candidate for governor.

Though he is merely a mid-level department head, he nevertheless requires his employees to stand when he enters a room and to address him with a cheery, “Good morning, Commissioner.”

Such courtesy is normally extended only to heads of state, not obscure state bureaucratic appointees.

This is the same guy who expresses such indignation at his employees’ use of state cell phones for personal calls who thought nothing of blowing a couple of thousand on low-profile, 22-inch rims for his state vehicle.

This is the same guy who, though he has zero training as a law enforcement official, demanded—and got—emergency lights installed on his state vehicle so he could play cop.

This is the guy who suspended an employee after her physician refused to provide weekly status reports despite the physician’s prior written certification that she was physically unable to work.

This is the same administrator who more than once transferred an employee from one end of the state to the other with as little as two days’ notice.

This is the same agency head who directed an agent to return to uniform status and to re-enter a New Orleans bar for inspections—after that same agent had purchased drugs during an undercover investigation in that same establishment—a directive that might well have served as the agent’s death sentence had things gone badly.

And this is the same guy who made a big production a few months back over a $10,000 expenditure to purchase and train a “synthetic drug-sniffing canine.”

“ATC Commissioner Troy Hebert says (the) new canine will be a great asset when it comes to detecting synthetic marijuana,” the news release said. ‘“It’s a very, very dangerous substance,’ said Hebert. ‘We think this new addition’s going to help us with some of that.’”

The only problem is, the “certificate of certification” from the National Police Canine Association in Waddell, Arizona, dated Nov. 2, certifies the new dog only for marijuana and cocaine, not synthetic drugs.

There’s a reason for that: synthetic marijuana is virtually impossible to detect reliably because the chemical ingredients of synthetic drugs is constantly changing, meaning there is no reliably consistent pattern for animals to learn.

LouisianaVoice earlier reported his propensity to fire employees with little or no reason and that he has settled a couple of discrimination lawsuits brought by former employees.

Hebert fits right into the Piyush Jindal mold of arrogance that permeates this entire administration, from cabinet members who refuse to divulge the identities of contract winners to administrators who refuse to provide reports to legislative committees to the governor himself, who ignores requests for information.

But back to those state cell phones.

ATC agents are often away from home for stretches of 12 hours or longer and upon their hiring, Hebert informs agents that as long as they handle ATC business, they may use their state phones for personal calls.

There you have it. It’s policy.

And now Hebert is trying to come off as a diligent agency head hell bent on keeping recalcitrant employees in line. This from a guy who consistently disregards civil service rules and regulations and gets himself backed into EEO corners that cost the state thousands upon thousands of dollars in payments to former employees and legal fees.

You do not tell your employees it’s permissible to use state cell phones for personal calls and then throw them under the bus for purposes of painting yourself as the noble guardian of the public trust—especially when your own motives are called into question.

The bottom line appears to be that he is setting up a few agents to persecute through a complicit news media at Press Release Central who simply takes press handouts and runs them with no questions asked.

There can be only one explanation for such action: he hopes to deflect criticism of his own administrative actions and misdeeds by tagging his subordinates with perceived wrongdoing.

To that end, he fits right in with this administration.

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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.

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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.

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Notable Quotables (in their own words)

Posted in Education, Governor's Office, Health Care, Layoffs, Notable Quotables, OGB, Office of Group Benefits, Politicians, State Agencies, Transparency on November 2, 2012| 3 Comments »

“A lack of planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on my part.”

—Louisiana Federation of Teachers legislative director Mary Patricia Wray, quoting one of her high school teachers in her testimony Thursday before two legislative committees, in describing the lack of planning and accountability on the part of the Piyush Jindal administration’s proposal to contract with Blue Cross/Blue Shield for the administration of the Office of Group Benefits’ Preferred Provider Organization.

“A policy must not be to identify an emergency which government has either created or failed to prevent and then find a public servant to blame and punish while we promote so-called reform.”

—Mary Patricia Wray, during that same testimony.

“Policy makers keep finding more and more creative ways and more and more sorry excuses to support corporate tax avoidance over public good, privatizing over restoraton and feel-good initiatives over real solutions for our very, very valuable public insititutions.”

—Mary Patricia Wray, on a roll as she ripped into the Piyush administration during her testimony.

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