Feeds:
Posts
Comments

Archive for the ‘Transparency’ Category

John White could take lessons from Mark Twain on telling the truth vs. trying to remember what lie was told to whom

Posted in BESE, Contract, Contracts, Education, Public Records, Transparency on June 24, 2013| 13 Comments »

Mark Twain is generally credited with saying, “If you tell the truth, you don’t have to remember anything.”

State Superintendent of Education John White could take a lesson from that great writer because he appears to have trouble remembering what he said to whom these days.

Take, for instance, the AP story by reporter Melinda Deslatte that ran last Thursday (June 20).

The story was an account of a meeting of the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education (BESE) which focused on the controversial attempt by White to enter into a contract to provide sensitive student information to a non-profit data-storage company called inBloom.

inBloom, the brainchild of News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch and controversial New York education executive Joel Klein, is funded primarily by a grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and seeks to create a national database of student information.

The Department of Education (DOE) entered into a memorandum of understand (MOU) on Jan. 15 for the state to provide personal student data ranging from addresses and test scores to medical history and information about learning disabilities. White has assured BESE that the information was protected in secure servers and behind computer firewalls.

inBloom, however, said that while it would do its best to protect the data there was no guarantee that the information would not be compromised by hackers.

But buried deep in Deslatte’s story, White apparently becomes confused about what he has told various people.

In response to former DOE employee Jason France who said the contract was still in force, White said he would send a certified letter to inBloom. But then he added that he had already sent several letters notifying the organization that Louisiana’s data-sharing agreement was terminated.

But wait.

On April 22, LouisianaVoice sent the following public records request to White and DOE legal counsel Joan Hunt:

• “Please provide me with the opportunity to review the official letter or email that you sent to inBloom to cancel the data storage agreement as per the lead paragraph from the Monroe News-Star.”

A copy of the News-Star story was attached to our request.

On May 9, we received a response in the form of a letter from DOE attorney Troy Humphrey which said:

• “Our public information office has requested that I inform you that the Department is not in possession of any public record(s) responsive to the above-written request.”

Wait. What?

Is White really trying to make us believe that between May 10 and June 20, he sent “several letters” of cancellation to inBloom but as of May 9, there was no such letter?

Quite frankly, we have a lot of trouble accepting that scenario.

You may remember we were forced to sue White and DOE a couple of months ago over his refusal to provide public records in a timely manner. We settled for $100 per day per request that DOE was late providing. The final tab was $3,500, plus court costs and attorney fees.

Well, as of today (Monday, June 24), it’s been 45 working days since our request for the letter(s) of cancellation.

The state public records law says that any request for public records must be honored immediately unless the record is in use and unavailable. In such case, the custodian of the record(s) must immediately respond in writing to the requestor as to when the record(s) will be ready for inspection within the next three working days.

At $100 per day, White has already run up a $4,500 tab on just that one request—and the meter’s running.

But there are others that also are pending.

For example, on May 20, we made a follow-up request:

• “…In the public records you provided my attorney, J. Arthur Smith, you included photocopies of several checks to the Louisiana Department of Education from David Lefkowith but you neglected to provide photocopies of the backs of the checks that would indicate whether or not the checks were actually negotiated or deposited. Please provide copies of the backs of those checks.”

Call us jaded or skeptical, but we believe the checks may have been written and never deposited—a clever ruse to satisfy public records requests and hope there was no follow up as to the checks’ final disposition.

Sorry, but like Elvis, we have suspicious minds.

On May 22, Humphrey wrote us that “the Department will identify and locate any public records in its possession that are responsive to the above written request. After any responsive items have been identified, the Department will segregate and set aside those public records that are available for your inspection.”

To date, we have heard nothing further even though DOE had already located the checks and photocopied the fronts of the checks.

Let’s see, that request was made on May 20. Discounting weekends and Memorial Day, that is 25 days—and counting: $2,500.

And then there’s that other May 20 letter in which we made six separate requests:

• Any communications in any form or contracts relative to the “shared Learning Collaborative” or SLC, a project of the Gates Foundation;

• Information regarding Louisiana’s participating in Phase I of the above project;

• Any communications with or information relevant to Wireless Generation, a subsidiary of News Corporation;

• Any communications with or information relevant to Louisiana’s association or business conduct with any corporation or entity owned, led or associated with Iwan Streichenberger;

• Any communication or discussion relevant to the sharing of confidential student information for the purpose of developing and marketing “learning products” or for any other purpose;

• All communication and/or contracts relevant to current or future association with Gates Foundation or its subsidiaries.

To date, DOE has responded only to the first request on this list. That leaves five requests that have been outstanding now for 25 days. Five outstanding requests times 25 days times $100 per day comes to $12,500.

That brings the total for all outstanding requests to $19,500 as of today. Add attorney fees and costs of court and suddenly DOE is knocking on the door of $25,000.

We have already instructed attorney Smith to file suit—again—but that this time he seek sanctions against White and monetary damages over and above the $100 per day for his making it impossible for our sister company, Capitol News Service, to file stories to our client newspapers (about a dozen publications) in a timely manner.

These are unnecessary expenditures—all because White either doesn’t care about the public’s right to know or, as with the case of the letter(s) of cancellation to inBloom, he’s simply a liar.

Read Full Post »

Campaign finance ethics fines mount up; collections? not so much since Gov. Jindal’s ethics ‘reform’ hyperbole of 2008

Posted in Commissions, Ethics, Governor's Office, Politicians, Transparency on June 19, 2013| 10 Comments »

Gov. Bobby Jindal loves to travel across the country telling anyone who will listen about the “gold standard” of ethics reform he singlehandedly passed to strengthen Louisiana’s ethics laws as one of his first acts upon taking office in 2008.

Except it simply isn’t so.

There are more than 981,000 reasons that indicate Jindal’s boasts are just so much hot air, devoid of any substance.

More than 300 candidates for local, state and national offices, many of them attorneys (and more than a few disbarred attorneys) owe more than $891,500 in fines for filing campaign finance reports late or not at all.

Moreover, 25 political action committees (PACs) owe an additional $90,000, according to figures provided by the Louisiana Board of Ethics.

So, just how is it that so many fines and such a large amount—at least four candidates had accrued penalties in excess of $25,000 each—have managed to go uncollected for so long (some dating as far back as 1999)?

For the answer to that, we have to go all the way back to January, 2008, Jindal’s first month in office. One of his first acts was to call a special session of the legislature to pass his “ethics reform” package that effectively gutted the State Board of Ethics. Ten of the board’s 11 members resigned in protest—seven of those because the “reform” legislation transferred ethics enforcement power from the state ethics board to administrative law judges, a move that rendered the board useless.

Next question: What’s so wrong with turning enforcement power over to administrative law judges? Well, for starters, the administrative law judges are selected by an appointee of the governor, hardly a hands-off, arms-length, non-political approach to ethics. In fact, Elliot Stonecipher, a Shreveport demographer and political analyst, observed the Jindal package created a situation in which “we could have people with a relationship with the governor (enforcing ethics laws).”

For decades the ethics commission had full authority to bring charges, hear cases and impose penalties on public officials accused of wrongdoing. No more.

Former Ethics Chairman Frank Simoneaux, who has been critical of the manner in which the ethics board and the administrative judges have interacted on issues, said he agrees that the responsibility for investigating and deciding ethics cases should be split but that administrative judges are not the method that should be employed.

Oh, and there’s this: Jindal proposed the legislation while he was under investigation by the Louisiana Board of Ethics. The timing of his “reform” measures has to be considered at least somewhat suspect, given that the ethics commission cited Jindal’s campaign for campaign finance disclosure violation just before Jindal pushed through his package.

Examples of outstanding ethics fines for late campaign finance reports include:

• Richard C. Bates, a 2006 candidate for 24th Judicial District Judge (Jefferson Parish) who has since been disbarred: $2,600;

• Michael Bell, former legislative assistant to former Sen. Wilson Fields (now a district judge) and himself an unsuccessful 2011 candidate for the state senate: $3,260;

• District Judge Wilson Fields, unsuccessful 2010 campaign for First Circuit Court of Appeal: $1,000;

• William Bowman: unsuccessful 1997 candidate for St. Helena Parish Clerk of Court: $2,720;

• Raymond Brown: unsuccessful 2004 candidate for Orleans Parish Sheriff: $9,500;

• Douglas Castro: unsuccessful 2005 candidate for Orleans Parish Clerk of Court: $10,420;

• Albert Donovan, former legal counsel to Gov. Edwin Edwards, 2003 unsuccessful candidate for Secretary of State: $39,500;

• James Fahrenholtz: 2000 and 2004 candidate for Orleans Parish School Board: $41,000;

• Sandra Hester: unsuccessful 2004 candidate for Orleans Parish School Board: $10,660;

• Percy J. Marchand: unsuccessful 2007 candidate for Orleans Parish state representative: $26,600;

• Robert Murray: unsuccessful 2003 and 2007 candidate for state representative: $16,900;

• Donald Ray Pryor: unsuccessful 2002 candidate for Orleans Parish Registrar: $36,200;

• Gary Wainwright: unsuccessful 2007 candidate for Orleans Parish District Attorney: $30,700;

The Ethics Commission is so weakened by Jindal’s 2008 ethics revamp that it is not only unable to collect outstanding fines but it is even powerless to prevent those with unpaid fines from running in subsequent political races.

Enforcement is just as ineffective with political action committees.

The United Democratic Ballot, Inc., for example, owes $14,000 in unpaid fines dating back to 2002.

Others include:

• The Westbank Independent Coalition (Jefferson Parish): $8,000 in 2003;

• The African American Voters League: $9,000 in 2002;

• Baton Rouge Youth Movement: $8,000 in 2011 and 2012;

• Home Builders Association of Central Louisiana: $8,000 in 2010;

• Independent Rx PAC: $3,500 in 2010;

• Shreveport Committee on Political Education: $4,400 in 2006 and 2010;

As a reward for his comments critical of Jindal’s ethics reform package, Simoneaux was not re-nominated to another five-year term on the board—effectively fired—by the Committee on House and Governmental Affairs in April of 2012.

Ethics, like beauty, are in the eye of the beholder. Put another way: those who have the gold are making the rules.

Read Full Post »

LA. not the first state in which CNSI contracts have come under scrutiny but you’ll need a program to follow players

Posted in Contract, Contracts, Governor's Office, Health Care, Transparency on June 9, 2013| 34 Comments »

Even as he was tweaking the bid specifications that would qualify Client Network Services, Inc. (CNSI) to submit a proposal for a $185 million contract with the Department of Health and Hospitals (DHH), Bruce Greenstein must surely have known of problems his former employer had experienced in other states.

In a related story, LouisianaVoice has learned that James Gorman, a senior technical advisor for the Center for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) founded a company, HWT, a subsidiary of OptumInsight, a “trading partner” with Bayou Health, the program through which most of Louisiana’s Medicaid recipients receive health care services.

CMS is a federal agency within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) which is charged with working in partnership with state governments to administer Medicaid. CMS must also give its stamp of approval on state contracts with companies such as OptumInsight and CNSI.

Greenstein worked in Seattle for Microsoft prior to his being named DHH Secretary by Gov. Bobby Jindal in July of 2010. Prior to that he also worked for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (DHH) where he oversaw the state Medicaid programs in the Northeast. He led the federal government’s efforts in working with states in reforming state Medicaid programs—a position that would have afforded him intimate knowledge of the workings of companies like CNSI, OptumInsight and others.

Then-DHH Secretary Greenstein awarded but then refused to identify CNSI as the winner of the contract a year ago. His refusal threatened his confirmation by a Senate committee before he finally relented and named CNSI.

Greenstein worked for CNSI in 1995 and 1996. He told the Senate committee that he had constructed a “firewall” between him and CNSI so that he could not influence the awarding of the contract. But emails obtained by the committee revealed that Greenstein and CNSI executives exchanged dozens of emails during the selection process.

Protesting the award at the time were unsuccessful bidders ACS State Healthcare of Atlanta, Ga., and Molina Medicaid Solutions of Long Beach, Calif.

ACS claimed that CNSI deliberately low-balled its cost. CNSI subsequently obtained a $9 million amendment, increasing the cost to $194 million and then requested an additional $40 million immediately prior to word that the FBI had subpoenaed all CNSI records from the Division of Administration.

Had the second amendment been granted, the cost would have been close to the $238 million bid of ACS but the CNSI contract was cancelled by the administration as a federal grand jury investigation got underway. That investigation is still ongoing.

While at CNSI, Greenstein was vice president for Healthcare. While there, he focused on state healthcare systems and claims payments and vital records systems.

Given his experiences with Medicaid systems and given the fact that he resided in Seattle at a time when CNSI was experiencing a multitude of problems with its system in Washington, it’s difficult to imagine that he was unaware of problems the company was having when he “tweaked” the bid specifications to accommodate his former employer.

In 2006, CMS launched an investigation into ongoing problems with the State of Maine’s web-based information management system. CNSI was contracted for that work in 2001 at $14.5 million, but the costs quickly escalated to $70 million as complaints began coming in almost immediately. CNSI had never built a Medicaid billing system before landing the contract with Maine and the company missed its 2002 deadline for completion as well as several subsequent deadlines. Even after the system finally went live in 2005, it malfunctioned and for more than a year the state had to send out estimated payments to Medicaid providers.

After only three days it was learned that the new system had sent 24,000 claims (about 50 percent of all claims) into a “suspended” file.

Normally, suspended claims were those that were either rejected or which contained minor errors. The original system had suspended only about 20 percent of the claims.

Now, instead of payments, doctors were receiving no payments and when they resubmitted the claims, the new system installed by CNSI automatically rejected them again because it was programmed to reject any claim it had already rejected.

Claims had to be processed by hand by state employees but they could process only 1,000 claims per week. Even when the rejection rate was reduced to 20 percent, doctors complained that it was still rejecting legitimate claims.

Doctors, dentists, hospitals, clinics and nursing homes received no payments for services for weeks at a time and some practices were forced to close their businesses or to take out loans to pay their bills.

The experience was much the same in Washington State where hundreds of thousands of claims went unprocessed, causing some doctors and clinics to cease taking new Medicaid patients until they got paid for the ones they’d already treated.

Glitches in the CNSI system resulted in the suspension of thousands of claims which, like those in Maine, had to be processed by hand. By November of 2010, there was a backlog of about 271,000 suspended claims.

One medical center said the state was about $3.8 million behind in payments.

A CNSI spokesperson attributed the problems to managerial mistakes and not deficiencies in the product. “We did not understand the magnitude of such an implementation,” he said. That would seem to be an understatement as the original contract cost of $71 million ballooned to $164 million.

In Michigan, a 2006 three-year, $51.5 million contract was amended no fewer than five times and the contract amount currently is $227.2 million.

And now, the State of Illinois, in an apparent effort to circumvent public bid laws, has entered into an interagency agreement with Michigan to create a shared Medicaid Management Information System (MMIS) to serve both states with CNSI getting the contract for both states.

One of the common threads connecting Illinois and Louisiana is OptumInsight, which reported $1.3 billion in corporate revenues in 2008. OptumInsight has a contract with Illinois to administer its MMIS exchange.

Besides serving as a “trading partner” with Bayou Health, OptumInsight is a wholly-owned subsidiary of UnitedHealth Group. UnitedHealth Group, in turn, offers benefits through two companies, UnitedHealthcare and Optum. UnitedHealthcare has an $83 million consulting contract with DHH to provide enhanced primary care case management. Bringing things full circle, Optum has three operating divisions: OptumHealth, OptumRx and OptumInsight.

If all that is confusing to you, don’t feel bad. The question is how difficult will it be for the federal grand jury to sort all this out so that it can make a determination of whether or not any laws were broken with Louisiana’s contract with CNSI?

A second, even more interesting question is why did the Jindal administration, in cancelling the CNSI contract, issue the self-serving statement that it would not tolerate corruption when there has been no trial or even any formal charges filed?

Third, and most important of all, if Jindal is so intolerant of corruption, why did he allow Greenstein to “resign,” but remain on the job for an entire month before his departure?

It would seem at this point that the answers to all three questions lie with Greenstein and those answers may well rest on what kind of deal he can make with federal prosecutors—depending, of course, on whether the investigation reaches the point of indictments.

Read Full Post »

Civil Service Commission rejects LSU Hospital privatization by 4-3 vote but re-hearing is already set for 8 a.m. Monday

Posted in Boards, Civil Service, Contract, Contracts, Governor's Office, Health Care, LSU, Transparency on June 5, 2013| 52 Comments »

Gov. Bobby Jindal had another roadblock thrown in his path to privatization of four LSU hospitals on Wednesday when the State Civil Service Commission, by a 4-3 vote, rejected the state’s contracts with private hospitals to take over state-run facilities in New Orleans, Lafayette, Houma and Lake Charles.

The matter has already been scheduled for a re-hearing on Monday at 8 a.m. in the Louisiana Purchase Room on the first floor of the Claiborne Building at 1201 North Third Street in Baton Rouge.

In taking the action, commission members complained that the information provided by LSU was insufficient.

Really? A contract with 50 blank pages was not enough? The commission perhaps needed some specifics—like an offer and an acceptance and a termination clause?

It should be noted that the commission did not vote to reject the administration’s layoff plans relative to the privatization of the Interim Hospital in New Orleans, University Medical Center in Lafayette, Leonard Chabert Medical Center in Houma and W.O. Moss Medical Center in Lake Charles.

Civil Service Director Shannon Templet must make a decision on the layoff plan by next Tuesday in order for the layoffs to become effective on June 24.

But if the privatization plan is not approved, the hospitals would necessarily have to keep nearly 3,000 classified employees on the job in order to keep the hospitals open.

Dr. Fred Cerise, the former head of the LSU Health System who was fired by Jindal (through the Board of Stuporvisors, of course), said on Wednesday that the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) still has not given the go-ahead for the hospital privatization plan and without that approval, everything else is moot.

Cerise said the state plans to use the $110 million that Children’s Hospital in New Orleans is paying to take over the Interim Hospital (formerly Big Charity before that facility was abandoned after Hurricane Katrina and a new structure built) will be used by the state to leverage greater matching funds from Medicaid.

“But if CMS does not approve the plan, the state will have to repay Medicaid for any excess money it received on the basis of that $110 million,” he said, adding, “I don’t think there’s any way CMS is going to give its stamp of approval to this plan.”

Dr. Michael Kaiser, Chief Executive Officer of the LSU Health Care Services Division, said he would ask the commission to reconsider its decision. He said the commission would be provided with the agreements between LSU and the private companies.

“I’m not sure what they intend to show the commission on Monday,” Cerise said, “but there’s no way they can show a savings when contracts for privatizing two of the hospitals (Chabert and Moss) don’t even contain any financial details.”

That, of course, raises the question of just why was the commission not provided copies of the agreements in the first place. Did Kaiser expect the commission to simply rubber stamp the privatization plan as it has in the past and as the LSU Board of Stuporvisers does on a regular basis with anything Jindal sends over?

In the past the Board of Stuporvisers has done Jindal’s bidding without question—from the firing of LSU President John Lombardi, LSU System General Counsel Raymond Lamonica, and Drs. Roxanne Townsend and Cerise, to operating in complete secrecy to hire a new LSU president who possesses credentials that are questionable at best, to approving essentially blank contracts for the takeover of LSU hospitals in Shreveport, Monroe, Houma and Lake Charles. The contracts consisted of about 50 blank pages and contained no mention of financial terms, specific offers, acceptances or termination clauses.

And for the privilege of doing Jindal’s bidding, members of the Board of Stuporvisers get to metaphorically lick the master’s hand with campaign contributions totaling about a quarter-million dollars between them.

All of which raises another question that no one has asked to this point but one for which there is a desperate need for an answer:

• When was the last time the LSU Board of Stuporvisors took any action during this governor’s administration that supported academics and was not done to achieve a political agenda—Jindal’s political agenda, to be specific?

Anyone? Bueller? Bueller? Anyone?

Kaiser, in the wake of the unexpected rejection of the administration’s plan by the commission, only now bemoans the fact that in anticipation of approval of the privatization, the public hospitals have no money in the state budget for the new fiscal year that begins on July 1.

That would be because Jindal did not include funding in his budget back in January because he was certain his privatization plan would be approved.

Somewhere out there, the ghost of Jim Nabors as Gomer Pyle is flashing a big, innocent grin and saying to Bobby Jindal, aka Barney Fife, “Sur-PRISE, Sur-PRISE, Sur-PRISE!” (Our apologies to Barney Fife.)

Kaiser said the administration would have to try and determine what other action could be taken if the privatization is not approved.

More than 3,500 employees work at the four hospitals. Of that number, 2,953 are classified, or Civil Service rank-and-file employees. The remainder are unclassified and do not enjoy Civil Service protection. Their layoffs do not have to be approved by the commission.

More than half of the classified employees (1,690) are employed at the Interim Hospital in New Orleans. The remainder are at University Medical Center in Lafayette (487), Leonard Chabert Medical Center in Houma (556) and W.O. Moss Medical Center in Lake Charles (220).

It will be interesting to see if any legislators from the affected areas show up for Monday’s Civil Service Commission re-hearing. Republican House Speaker Chuck Kleckley is from Lake Charles.

Other Calcasieu Parish House members include Democrats Michael Danahay, A.B. Franklin, and Dorothy Sue Hill and Republicans Brett Geymann, John Guinn and Ben Hensgens.

Calcasieu senators include Republicans John Smith, Ronnie Johns and Dan “Blade” Morrish.

House members from Lafayette Parish include Democrats Terry Landry, Jack Montoucet, Stephen Orgego and Vincent Pierre and Republicans Taylor Barras, Stuart Bishop, Nancy Landry, and Joel Robideaux.

Senators who represent Lafayette Parish are Republicans Elbert Guillory, Johathan Perry, Page Cortez and Fred Mills.

Terrebonne/Lafourche parish House members include Republicans Gordon Dove, Sr., Joe Harrison and Lenar Whitney of Terrebonne and Democrat Jerry Gisclair and Independent Jerome “Dee” Richard, both of Lafourche. Richard, by the way, was present at Wednesday’s commission hearing.

Representing Lafourche and Terrebonne parishes in the Senate are Democrats Troy Brown and Gary Smith and Republicans Norbert Chabert and Bret Allain.

Orleans Parish House members include Democrats Neil Abramson, Jeffery Arnold, Austin Badon, Wesley Bishop, Jared Brossett, Walt Leger and Helena Moreno. Orleans Republicans include Raymond Garofalo, Christopher Leopold and Nick Lorusso.

Senators who represent Orleans include Republicans A.G. Crowe and Conrad Appel and Democrats Karen Carter Peterson, Jean-Paul Morrell, David Heitmeier and Edwin Murray.

Read Full Post »

Jindal’s criticism of IRS investigations of conservatives is more of the same notoriously lame, hypocritical hyperbole

Posted in ATC, Education, Governor's Office, House, Senate, Legislature, Legislators, Lobbyist, Politicians, Public Records, Transparency on May 30, 2013| 6 Comments »

It was with more than a little amusement that we read a couple of weeks ago that Gov. Bobby Jindal had called for jail time for any Internal Revenue Service officials found to have unfairly targeted conservative groups to be put in jail.

As usual, Jindal made his indignant, self-righteous proclamation at an out-of-state forum. This time, it was in a speech to Virginia Republicans in yet another stop in his 2016 presidential campaign that would be better suited for a Saturday Night Live parody skit than serious political discourse.

Oh, it’s not that we don’t agree with Jindal on this one point. The IRS certainly is far too powerful and is a force to be feared if one happens to be on the wrong end of a tax audit.

But coming from Jindal, it is simply yet another example of the “reform” governor’s façade of pseudo-transparency—hypocritical at worst, the subject of stinging ridicule at best.

“You do not take the freedoms of law-abiding citizens, whether you disagree with them or not, and keep your own freedom,” the Boy Blunder opined. “When you do that, you go to jail.”

But here’s the thing, Guv: It was only last March 11—not even three months ago—that we learned that one of Bobby’s boys, one Troy Hebert to be precise, director of the Office of Alcohol and Tobacco Control (ATC), had ordered a background investigation on LouisianaVoice editor Tom Aswell (that would be me). Here is the link to that post:

https://louisianavoice.com/2013/03/11/atc-director-troy-hebert-orders-background-investigation-of-louisianavoice-publisher-tom-aswell-but-did-we-pass/

Normally, we would not hold Jindal accountable for the actions of a rogue department head. But now the question must be asked if Hebert’s investigation was truly the action of a rouge department head, of someone who went “off the reservation,” or if the investigation may have been ordered by higher-ups.

Hey, even Henry Kissinger once said paranoid people sometimes have real enemies and recent events and revelations may well justify that paranoia. Read on.

On May 11, we sent a public records request to Superintendent of Education John White and we copied Department of Education (DOE) General Counsel Joan Hunt as is our practice when seeking records.

The request was straightforward enough: we asked for correspondence between White and his old New York boss Joel Klein dating back to July 1, 2011. Specifically, we were attempting to learn what communication the two had conducted relative to InBloom, the company Klein is now affiliated with and which was founded by News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch to serve as a “parking place” (in White’s words—a computer data bank, in more formal terms) for sensitive personal information on Louisiana students and teachers.

Hunt, subsequent to our request, fired off an email that same day to White, DOE attorney Willa LeBlanc and Hebert that said, “Troy, we need to reply and say that.”

But Hunt, most likely inadvertently, copied us into the reply as well.

Curious as to why Hebert would be included in the loop since he is about as far removed from DOE as possible (he’s under the Louisiana Department of Revenue) and equally curious as to what was supposed to have been said, we sent another public records request for all correspondence between DOE officials and Hebert.

The response to that request was even more puzzling:

“No Documents. Attorney-client privilege.”

Okay, first there are no documents but if there were, they would be privileged. That’s like the attorney who responded to a claim that his dog had bitten a passerby: “My dog does not bite. My dog was confined in the yard that day. I don’t own a dog.”

Really puzzled now, we sent another email on May 26 reiterating our request for correspondence between DOE and Hebert: “Inasmuch as you took the liberty to send your email to Troy Hebert, director of ATC and who is not an attorney nor is he a client of you or DOE, there is no client-attorney privilege.”

We also told Hunt that her provision of information about me to a non-involved third party constituted a “serious breach” that I was willing to report to the Louisiana Supreme Court’s Attorney Disciplinary Board.

Two days later we received another letter from the DOE legal office which said:

“As was indicated in the Department’s response dated and emailed to you on May 15, 2013, the Department has no public records responsive to your request. Any communications between the Legal Staff of LDOE and Troy Hebert would be privileged (attorney work product/privilege) and not subject to being released pursuant to a public records request. In addition, the Department is not in possession of any emails between Troy Hebert and John White.” There it is again: My dog doesn’t bite; I don’t own a dog.

We remained perplexed as to why Troy Hebert was brought into the conversation about our initial request. As the director of an agency completely removed from DOE, we knew there was no way possible that Hebert could be a client of either DOE or any of its legal staff and that fact only intensified our determination to learn what was going on.

Then we had occasion to interview Sen. Bob Kostelka (R-Monroe) Tuesday night about the Senate and Governmental Affairs deferral of a bill to protect state employee whistleblowers which had passed unanimously in the full House.

In that interview, Kostelka, a remarkably candid public servant, intimated that the committee had killed the bill to protect employees from supervisory reprisals for revealing official wrongdoing because one Troy Hebert had personally contacted each of the committee members to convey the message that the administration, i.e. Jindal, was not in favor of the bill. Kostelka, seeing the proverbial handwriting on the wall, did not object to the motion by Sen. Greg Tarver (D-Shreveport) to defer the bill.

It is not entirely clear why Hebert would be interjecting himself into legislative matters given the somewhat watery thin theory (in the case of Louisiana, at least) of separation of powers under which our state government proclaims to function.

He is, after all, a member of the administration, or executive branch and should not be lobbying the legislative branch. In fact, he is not even a registered lobbyist. And his dog doesn’t bite.

But at least we can now connect the dots as it all comes together. Hebert is one of those hangers-on—kind of like the new kid in town who hangs around the fringes of the playground hoping to make friends with the locals. He will do anything to curry favor with his boss—not exactly a wise career move at this point—including serving as a go-between messenger boy between the governor’s office and legislators.

…And between the governor’s office and DOE.

And Jindal now has the cajones to vilify the IRS for spying.

We bet Jindal doesn’t even own a dog.

Read Full Post »

« Newer Posts - Older Posts »