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Archive for the ‘Taxes’ Category

LouisianaVoice set to launch online newspaper ‘Louisiana Free Press’ to be devoted exclusively to state political news

Posted in Attorney General, Auditor, BESE, Boards, Civil Service, Commissions, Contract, Contracts, Education, Ethics, Governor's Office, Health Care, Higher Education, House, Senate, Jobs, Legislature, Legislators, Lobbyist, Politicians, Privatization, Public Records, Recovery School District, Regents, Retirement, Revenue, State Agencies, Taxes, Transparency, Veto, Vouchers, Waste on August 10, 2012| 19 Comments »

LouisianaVoice will soon have a sister publication in the form of an online state newspaper, according to publisher Tom Aswell.

The new feature, which will be published online in newspaper format, will be a weekly publication geared exclusively to Louisiana political news.

“This will be a free-subscription publication because we want everyone in Louisiana—and elsewhere—to have access to what elected and appointed officials are doing that affect the daily lives of Louisiana’s citizens,” Aswell said.

The name of the new publication will be Louisiana Free Press and will be accessible via the link http://www.louisianafreepress.com, Aswell said.

Louisiana Free Press will be supported 100 percent by advertising revenue and our coverage will be broadened from publishing a single story at a time. There will be multiple stories posted each Friday and the coverage will vary greatly.

Several writers will be contributing coverage of many more agencies than have historically been covered by LouisianaVoice.

These writers will be covering the Louisiana Supreme Court proceedings, Louisiana Attorney General opinions, audit reports of all state and local agencies as they are provided by the Legislative Auditor’s office. Moreover, coverage of agencies will be increased—agencies like the Department of Health and Hospitals, Department of Environmental Quality, Department of Natural Resources, Department of Wildlife and Fisheries, and the Department of Education, the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education, Board of Regents, University of Louisiana System Board of Supervisors and the Public Service Commission, the governor’s office, the lieutenant governor, state treasurer and the legislature, as well as other more obscure state boards and commissions.

“We feel it is important that Louisiana’s citizenry remain informed about what their public officials are doing in Baton Rouge, New Orleans and elsewhere,” Aswell said.

“This is an ambitious endeavor but for too long, too many agencies, board and commissions have operated under the radar of the media,” Aswell said. “We anticipate that is about to change.

“That is not to say that everything we write will be of an investigative nature or that each story will be some major exposé. Most will be of a routine nature but will provide news otherwise not available to the public.”

LouisianaVoice will issue further updates as the schedule for launching Louisiana Free Press develops.

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Another potential member of the Teague Club: Jindal wants LLT board member Vallee gone for independent thinking

Posted in Governor's Office, Taxes, Teague, Transparency on July 16, 2012| 1 Comment »

Gov. Piyush Jindal has yet another dissident in his crosshairs.

This time it’s Louisiana Land Trust (LLT) board member Don Vallee of New Orleans who he wants to Teague.

This time, however, there could be a slight problem known as the State Constitution.

LLT, originally the Road Home Corp., is a publicly-chartered non-profit organization formed to manage properties purchased by the State of Louisiana under the current Road Home Program as part of the ongoing recovery effort from damage caused by hurricanes Katrina and Rita in 2005.

Once it takes title to properties purchased by the Road Home Homeowner Assistance Program, LLT has broad powers to receive and dispose of the properties, to accept funds “from any sources,” to borrow against the properties and to obtain payment for obligations under the guidelines set forth by the Louisiana Recovery Authority and to provide for financing as administered by the Office of Community Development (OCD).

Funding for LLT is provided through community development block grants (CDBG) funds administered by OCD.

LLT is governed by a seven-member board of directors with one member appointed from a list of three persons nominated by the president of the Senate and one appointed from a list of three nominated by the speaker of the House.

Donald Vallee, former president and general manager of Boland Marine and Manufacturing Co. of New Orleans, was nominated by then-House Speaker Jim Tucker and subsequently appointed by Jindal in May of 2008.

Vallee has occasionally clashed with other board members, even accusing one member of a conflict of interest. Vallee said in 2009 that he felt rents in New Orleans were artificially inflated by voucher rates.

In successfully lobbying the state Bond Commission for a temporary moratorium on new bonds for subsidized, affordable-housing construction in New Orleans, he said in September of 2009 that the city’s rental market “overbuilt.”

The Bond Commission hearing was prompted by a Bureau of Governmental Research report that supported Vallee’s position.

The report said that since Katrina, a larger share of New Orleans families received federal housing subsidies. It further suggested that the city may be in danger of having too much affordable housing, predicting that by 2012, if all proposed projects were completed, one in four households in New Orleans would be subsidized.

The rate was one in 10 prior to Katrina.

“What we don’t need is more construction,” Vallee reiterated. “We need reasonable rents.”

He said the moratorium on new subsidized housing was necessary because no one had properly studied the big picture. He called for the moratorium to remain in place until a comprehensive market study could be completed by an independent party—“someone without any skin in the game.”

Tucker also supported the moratorium, saying policymakers had been “flying by the seat of our pants” when making determinations of what housing subsidies were necessary in New Orleans. The result, he said, was an “excess supply.”

Added to the problem was the credit-market crash of 2008 stalled some developments and potential builders were unable to find investors to buy state-allocated tax credits.

Apparently Vallee’s independent streak doesn’t sit well with Jindal, who has expressed his wishes to replace him.

Apparently, whenever one stands between Jindal and tax credits, it gets Piyush’s hackles up.

But Vallee said he will fight his attempted ouster because he believes that Jindal lacks the legal authority to replace him.

“We’re not a state agency,” he said. “We are a private, non-profit corporation. I was not selected by the governor. He did appoint me but it was on the nomination of the Speaker of the House.”

Part of Vallee’s problem could be that unlike many of Jindal’s appointees, he has never contributed to any of the governor’s political campaigns.

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

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

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

And another.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

We did.

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

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

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

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

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State Rep. Joe Harrison uses state stationery to solicit $1,000 contributions in order to support ALEC agenda

Posted in ALEC, American Legislative Exchange Council, Ethics, House, Senate, Legislature, Legislators, Lobbyist, Politicians, Prison, Privatization, Public Records, Retirement, Taxes, Transparency, Vouchers on July 5, 2012| 11 Comments »

It’s been awhile since we’ve written about the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), but State Rep. Joseph Harrison (R-Gray) has proven himself a more than capable successor to former Rep. Noble Ellington (R-Winnsboro).

ALEC is a national organization comprised of hundreds of state legislators from around the country as well as corporations which fund the bulk of the organization’s expenses. Heading the list of those corporations is Koch Industries.

ALEC’s corporate members write “model legislation” for lawmakers to take back to their states for passage into law. Foremost among those are education reform, prison privatization, Medicaid reform, state employee pension reform and reductions of public services.

Ellington is the former state representative who served as national president of ALEC in 2011 and hosted ALEC’s national meeting in New Orleans last August. Ellington, after 24 years in the legislature, did not seek re-election last fall and upon leaving office in January, was hired as Chief Deputy Commissioner for the Louisiana Department of Insurance at $150,000 per year.

Now, not to be outdone, Harrison, the state ALEC chairman, has sent out a form letter on state letterhead soliciting contributions of $1,000 each to finance the travel of Louisiana legislative ALEC members to an ALEC conference in Salt Lake City July 25-28. The identities of the recipients of his requests for money were unknown.

The letter opens by saying, “As State Chair and National Board Member of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), I would like to solicit your financial support to our ALEC Louisiana Scholarship Fund.”

But this letter wasn’t for college scholarships.

“Why does the scholarship fund need your support?” Harrison asked, perhaps rhetorically, in his letter of Monray, July 2. “With over thirty Louisiana Legislators serving on ALEC Task Forces, your support will allow the opportunity (for legislators) to attend conferences funded by the ALEC Scholarship Fund.

“These conferences are packed with educational speakers and presenters, and gives (sic) the legislators a chance to interact with legislators from other states, including forums on Medicaid reform, sub-prime lending, only privacy, environmental education, pharmaceutical litigation, the crisis in state spending, global warming, and financial services and information exchange. All of these issues are import (sic) to the entire lobbying community (note the reference to “lobbying community”).

“I, along with other members of the Louisiana Legislature, greatly appreciate your contribution to the scholarship fund. Your $1,000 check made payable to the ALEC Louisiana Scholarship Fund and can be sent directly to me at 5058 West Main Street, Houma, Louisiana 70360. ALEC is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit educational organization as designated by the IRS.”

It is no surprise that ALEC would be concerned about pharmaceutical litigation, environmental education, Medicaid reform and sub-prime lending since many of its corporate members comprise pharmaceutical companies, oil and chemical companies, medical providers and mortgage lenders.

Even though ALEC picks up the tab for legislators to attend conferences all over the nation, at least 16 Louisiana legislators filed expense reports with the House and Senate for reimbursement of more than $20,750 in expenses related to their attendance at last August’s annual meeting in New Orleans. Additionally, ALEC reimbursed many of those same legislators, plus 19 other members and former House and Senate members an additional $56,200 for other ALEC conferences in such locales as San Antonio, Chicago, San Diego and Washington, D.C.

It is not known if Harrison received any “scholarship” money to attend ALEC conferences, but records obtained from the Louisiana House of Representatives by LouisianaVoice show that he received $9,295.78 in expense reimbursements from the state to attend six conferences in New Orleans, San Diego and Washington, D.C. over a four-year period, from December 2008 to August 2011.

Those included:

• December 2008: Washington, D.C. ($1,896.43);
• September 2009: New Orleans “Out of the Storm Conference ($496);
• December 2009: Washington, D.C. ($1,981.24);
• August 2010: San Diego, California ($970.50);
• November 2010: Washington, D.C. ($2,031.14);
• August 2011: New Orleans ($1,920.97).

LouisianaVoice has submitted two public records requests to Harrison. The first asks for the names of the “over thirty” legislators who are members of ALEC and the second requests, since the contribution solicitation was made on state letterhead, that Harrison provide the identities of every person to whom the solicitation was sent.

It would also be of more than passing interest to know how much in state postage was spent on soliciting funds for a lobbying organization that denies it’s a lobbying organization.

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Notable Quotables (in their own words)

Posted in Governor's Office, Notable Quotables, Revenue, Taxes on June 16, 2012| 3 Comments »

“It will be determined through the process of the proper procedure of rule-making.”

–Gov. Piyush Jindal mouthpiece Kyle Plotkin, trying to explain how the state will deal with pending tax credits for alternative fuel vehicles pursuant to a bill signed into law by Jindal in 2009. Instead of a $1 million cost to the state as originally anticipated, new projections indicate the cost could be as much as $100 million

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