Louisiana Voice

At the risk of being accused of being a one-trick pony because of all or our posts about attempts to privatize the Office of Group Benefits (OGB), we thought we would offer a quick overview of Gov. Bobby Jindal’s policies, of which OGB is but one facet.

Besides OGB, Jindal has already sold off one state agency, the Office of Risk Management. That privatization left many ORM employees years short of retirement age, thus jeopardizing not only their livelihoods, but medical benefits as well.

The sale agreement stipulated that the buyer was required to hire ORM employees for a “minimum” of 12 months. Of course the ORM director was sure to remind his employees who had just had their job security unceremoniously yanked away that he still had his job and, what’s more, would be eligible for retirement in 2012. That must have given everyone there a warm fuzzy.

Jindal tried unsuccessfully to sell several state prisons but was resisted by the legislature. But odds are he will be back next year with another attempt.

A campaign brochure published by candidate Jindal in 2007 touted his love for state employees and his dedication to hard-working civil servants of which, he reminded us, he was one. Maybe so, if you consider Secretary of the Department of Health and Hospitals and head of the University of Louisiana System as fitting the description of civil servant.

Nevertheless, in 2010, he tried unsuccessfully to push through legislation to abolish the Department of Civil Service and to dissolve the Civil Service Board, the only protection, such as it is, available to civil service employees.

He was successful in freezing classified (civil service) pay that same year and extended that freeze in 2011. The reasoning was the opposition to the myth of something referred to as “automatic” pay increases. No one bothered to mention that once an employee maxes out at a particular pay level, there are no more raises unless he or she is promoted. Nothing automatic there.

Many of those civil service workers have college-age children and didn’t help when Jindal endorsed an $84 million college tuition increase. Fortunately for them—and for the rest of parents with college kids—that measure died in the legislature.

This year, Jindal, who has taken the ridiculously entrenched position of no new taxes (not even a routine renewal of cigarette taxes, already one of the lowest rates in the nation), nevertheless tried to push a bill down the throats of those civil servants he so loves that would require that they pony up an additional 3 percent of their frozen paychecks to their retirement contributions.

That idea might actually have had some merit if the extra 3 percent would have been dedicated to paying down the state retirement system’s unfunded liability, but it wasn’t. Instead, the money would have gone directly into the State General Fund to help Jindal look like a financial wizard in using the money to close the $1.6 billion gap in the state budget, a situation civil service employees had no part in creating.

But keep in mind the proposals to increase tuition and civil service employees’ retirement contributions weren’t taxes: they were simply fee increases. But when you’re writing the check, the distinction could be difficult to make.

Bear in mind, too, that Jindal did all this while advocating more and more corporate tax incentives (read: exemptions) for well-heeled campaign contributors.

The governor also laments the loss of our best and brightest college and university graduates to other states but when it comes to his own appointees, he doesn’t seem quite as committed to the concept of hiring Louisiana first.

His first Recovery School District Superintendent was Paul Vallas. Vallas came here from Chicago by way of Philadelphia. His replacement, John White, is from New York. [And who could think it was coincidence that two weeks after White was brought in to replace the departing Vallas as head of RSD, State Superintendent of Education Paul Pastorek resigned and Jindal immediately endorsed White for Pastorek’s job? Who could possibly believe the entire sequence of events was not orchestrated from Jindal’s fourth-floor State Capitol office?]

But we digress. Jindal’s Secretary of the Department of Health and Hospitals (DHH) is Bruce Greenstein of Washington State by way of Maryland.

His Deputy Commissioner of Administration is Mark Brady of New Hampshire and his own press secretary is Kyle Plotkin of New Jersey.

Certainly, there must have been a sufficient pool of Louisiana talent from which to hire for these positions.

But that should come as no surprise, considering his campaign expenses. Of 670 campaign expenditures in 2008, only 219 were paid to Louisiana companies. It seems the governor prefers companies from Virginia, Texas, Maryland, and elsewhere.

And contracts issued to out of state firms throughout the administration number in the hundreds, many of which were issued to campaign contributors. But that’s another story for another day later this week. We promise.

While boasting at every opportunity of his dedication to transparency, openness, and accountability, he saw to it that ethics legislation passed early in his administration would exempt the governor’s office.

When a legislator introduced a bill that would have forced elected officials to publicly report the names of campaign contributors whom officials subsequently hire or appoint, it appeared to have Jindal’s endorsement.

Key administration officials worked the legislator over a period of five months and helped draft the language of the bill, which easily passed both houses.

Jindal promptly vetoed the bill.

Could that have been because Jindal appointed more than 200 contributors to some of the state’s most influential boards and commissions? Those appointees contributed more than $784,000 to his campaign in 2007 and 2008.

While no governor could be expected to appoint political opponents to these positions, the campaign contributions do tend to raise eyebrows. “Appointments to boards and commissions are based strictly on an individual’s experience, recommendations, and suitability for the position,” sniffed Jersey Boy Plotkin.

Jindal’s “transparency and accountability” mantra takes on something of a hollow ring when official actions are examined more closely.

When DHH selected a winner for a 10-year, $34 million-per-year technology contract, DHH Secretary Greenstein did everything possible to resist divulging the name of that contractor to the Senate and Governmental Affairs Committee that was considering his confirmation as secretary of the agency. Only after 90 minutes of back and forth bantering, did Greenstein finally admit that the winner was CNSI of Gaithersburg, Maryland, a firm for whom he once worked and one that outsources much of its work to its Technology Development Center—in India.

During his repeated refusals to name the contract, he was asked by senators who his boss was, to whom does he answer.

His answer: “The governor.”

Jindal’s Secretary of the Louisiana Office of Economic Development flatly refused to provide documents to the Legislative Auditor’s office during a routine state audit. This, even though state law clearly directs all agencies to provide all requested materials to state auditors so as not to restrict them in their duties.

Commissioner of Administration Paul Rainwater also attempted to deny auditors access to a report by Chaffe & Associates of New Orleans on the financial assets of OGB.

Rainwater went even further in first approving release of the report to the Senate and Governmental Affairs Committee member Karen Peterson and then doing an about-face and to instruct OGB CEO Scott Kipper to not release the report to anyone.

Kipper subsequently resigned, effective, June 24, which will give him tenure of a little more than two months after replacing former CEO Tommy Teague, who was fired on April 15.

Rainwater has repeatedly made the claim of “deliberative process” in denying access to the report. The deliberative process term emanates from that same State Capitol fourth floor.

Only one question needs to be asked about the Chaffe report that should put everything in perspective as regards Jindal’s efforts to privatize OGB:

If Chaffe & Associates said in that report things that the governor wanted to hear, that supported his unrelenting efforts to sell an agency with a $500 million surplus, is it even remotely possible that the administration would be attempting to withhold the document?

Put another way, if the report supported Jindal’s desire to sell OGB, what possible reason would he have to keep the report secret?

Put still another way, who among you believes Gov. Bobby Jindal has the best interest of state employees at heart? Indeed, who even believes he has the best interest of Louisiana at heart?

Who believes that all those out-of-state trips to support congressional and gubernatorial candidates in Florida, Missouri, Wisconsin, and other states were for the benefit of Louisiana? Why would he support a Florida gubernatorial candidate who headed a company hit with the largest Medicare fraud fine in history?

That candidate, Rick Scott, incidentally, won election.

Who can stretch credulity to the point of believing his frequent trips to other states to promote his book was for the benefit of Louisiana and its citizens?

Who can believe all those out-of-state campaign fundraising trips were for the overall benefit of Louisiana?

All these, the campaigning, the book tours, the fundraisers, occurred during a time of unprecedented financial crisis at home. And security details and aides who travel with him must be fed and housed on those trips—all on the state dime.

If you are a Louisiana public employee or simply a Louisiana citizen and you don’t stand up right now and defend this state from the encroachments and abuses of this governor, then you are part of the problem.

It should be clear by now that Gov. Jindal is oblivious to the plight of this state’s citizenry. This is your future. This is your government. This is your state. It does not belong to the Jindals, the Pastoreks, the Rainwaters.

It certainly does not belong to those who have been brought in from other states like Mark Brady, Bruce Greenstein, Kyle Plotkin, and Goldman Sachs.

Our governor has no right to operate behind a curtain of secrecy, to push his agenda with no input from the governed. He is answerable to the Legislature and he is certainly answerable to the citizens of this state.

His first responsibility is not to the big dollar contributors.

That distinction rightly belongs to you.

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