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Archive for the ‘Transparency’ Category

DOA hires Jan Cassidy, sister-in-law of Cong. Bill Cassidy, at $150,000; previous employers’ records are less than stellar

Posted in Civil Service, Contract, Contracts, Education, Governor's Office, Health Care, Jobs, Legislature, Legislators, Lobbyist, OGB, Office of Group Benefits, Politicians, Privatization, State Agencies, Transparency on March 15, 2013| 20 Comments »

Copyright Tom Aswell 2013

It’s interesting to watch legislators beat their breasts over pay raises that some state agencies awarded to classified (civil service) employees in light of their past ambivalence when the Jindal administration pumped up the payroll with highly-paid unclassified political appointees.

Commissioner of Insurance Jim Donelon and Commissioner of Agriculture Mike Strain, for example, gave 4 percent raises to their rank and file classified employees—$540,000 in raises in the case of the Insurance Department that Donelon said came from self-generated funds from his office.

Strain and Donelon said they gave the raises because he had the money in his budget and that he was required to either give the raises or sign a civil service letter certifying that there were no funds available.

That didn’t stop Reps. Simone Champagne (R-Erath) and John Schroder (R-Covington) from criticizing the pay bumps because there have been no across the board merit increases in state government for more than four years now. http://www.nola.com/politics/index.ssf/2013/03/la_statewide_elected_officials.html

But where have they been the past couple of years as Jindal appointed one washed-up legislator after another to six-figure deadhead jobs in state agencies like Insurance, Revenue, Veterans Affairs, Home Security and others while rank and file employees—the ones who do the work— continue into their fifth year with no raise at an average salary of a little under $40,000? https://louisianavoice.com/2012/02/

For that matter, where have any of the legislators been as the Department of Education has continued unabated in its relentless drive to pad its payroll with six-figure sycophants?

Are Gov. Jindal and Superintendent of Education John White so arrogant or so out of touch that they feel they can continue to load the state payroll with top-heavy, largely out-of-state political appointees—many of whom, it turns out don’t even bother to register to vote in Louisiana or comply with state law that requires that they change their vehicle registrations within certain specified deadlines—without the public or media noticing?

A quick peek indicates that some of the unclassified salaries seem to proliferate in the Department of Education:

• John White, Superintendent: $275,000;

• Michael Rounds, Deputy Superintendent: $170,000;

• Howard Drake and Gayle Sloan, Liaison Officers: $160,000 each;

• Kerry Laster, Executive Officer: $155,000;

• David Lefkowith, precise title still a mystery: $146,000;

• Kunjan Narechania, Chief of Staff to John White: $145,000;

• Gary Jones, Executive Officer: $145,000;

• Deirdre Finn, part time PR Director (working from home in Tallahassee, FL.): $144,000;

• James P. Wilson, Director (of what?): $142,000;

• Melissa Stilley, Liaison Officer: $135,000;

• Elizabeth Scioneaux, Deputy Superintendent: $132,800;

• Debra Schum, Executive Officer: $132,000;

• Hannah Dietsch, Assistant Superintendent (someone please explain the difference between an assistant superintendent and a deputy superintendent.): $130,000;

• Nicholas Bolt, Deputy Chief of Staff (as opposed to assistant chief of staff): $105,000.

Perhaps you may have noticed in that lengthy laundry list of high-paying position, there was not a single name followed by the title “Instructor” or any other title that would indicate classroom experience.

But even with all the featherbedding at DOE, there’s one appointment in particular in the Division of Administration (DOA) that stands out as the poster child for Jindal cronyism.

Last Dec. 3, Jan Cassidy was hired by DOA as Assistant Commissioner in Procurement and Technology at an annual salary of $150,000. http://www.linkedin.com/pub/jan-cassidy/6/4aa/703

It was not immediately clear what she is supposed to procure since a statewide expenditure freeze was in place at the time of her hiring. Moreover, technology, in theory at least, is handled by the Office of Computing Services.

The fact that Cassidy is the sister-in-law of Congressman Bill Cassidy is enough to raise eyebrows in some quarters. Bill Cassidy last year hired Jindal aide and former campaign manager Tim Teepell and his company, OnMessage, for his re-election campaign. Teepell was hired by the Washington-area political consulting firm to head up its Southern Office which Teepell appears to run out of the governor’s office on the fourth floor of the State Capitol. Cassidy later terminated his relationship with Teepell and OnMessage. No explanation was given.

Jan Cassidy worked for Affiliated Computer Services (ACS) for 20 months, from June 2009 to January 2011 and for 23 months, from January 2011 to November 2012 for Xerox after Xerox purchased ACS.

As Xerox Vice President—State of Louisiana Client Executive, her tenure was during a time that the company held two large contracts with the state.

The first was a $20 million contract with the Department of Health and Hospitals (DHH) that ran from July 1, 2009 to June 30, 2011. That contract called for Xerox to provide “assessment, reassessment and care planning to individuals seeking and receiving long term personal care services.” The contract, which paid Xerox $834,000 per month, also required the company to disseminate “appropriate notices to recipients relative to these aforementioned services.

The contract was funded 50 percent by the state and 50 percent from federal funds—despite Jindal’s professed disdain for federal funds.

The second contract of $74.5 million, 100 percent of which was funded by a federal community development block grant and which ran from March 27, 2009 to March 26, 2012,, required ACS/Xerox to administer a small rental property program to help hurricane damaged parishes recover rental units.

Cassidy’s responsibilities while at Xerox called for her to “facilitate development and progress of ‘Louisiana Model’ into other states,” according to information contained in her internet biography.

During her 20 months with ACS, from June 2009 to January 2011, she was Regional Vice President of Business Development. Her web page says that while at ACS, she “generated new business in state governments within the central region of the United States.”

A search of the state contract data base by LouisianaVoice turned up four contracts with ACS totaling $45.55 million and campaign finance reports revealed ACS political contributions of $17,500 to Louisiana candidates, including three contributions totaling $10,000 to Jindal.

One of those contracts, which expired on Dec. 31, 2012, called for ACS to provide actuary and consulting services to the Office of Group Benefits (OGB) and Buck Consultants during the administration’s efforts to privatize OGB at a contract cost of $2 million. That is in addition to what the state paid Buck for its work which in the final analysis, did not support the administration’s efforts which were nevertheless successful.

Current state contracts with ACS/Xerox include:

$600,000 with between DOA and ACS Human Resources Solutions and Buck Consultants to assist in advising DOA with regard to public retirement systems and insurance benefits for public employees (June 1, 2011 to June 1, 2013);

$13.95 million with the Department of Social Services to provide electronic benefits transfer system (July 1, 2010 to June 30, 2009);

$28.9 million with DHH to provide information and referral services to people seeking long term care services (July 1, 2011 to June 30, 2014; 50 percent federal, 50% state funding).

But while Jan Cassidy’s work for a company with more than $120 million in state contracts and her relationship as Bill Cassidy’s sister-in-law might be enough to raise eyebrows among observers of Louisiana politics, the track record of ACS in other governmental contracts beyond the state’s borders should certainly prompt hard questions:

• Texas Gov. Rick Perry, a vocal critic of Obamacare as a “failed program,” had his Health and Human Services Commission contract with ACS for that state’s Medicaid dental program. That contract quadrupled to $1.4 billion as Texas Medicaid spent more on braces in 2010 ($184 million) than did the other 49 states combined. But an audit found that 90 percent of reimbursement requests involved procedures not covered by Medicaid, which does not fund cosmetic dentistry. The Wall Street Journal said statewide fraud reached hundreds of millions of dollars. ACS spent more than $6.9 million in lobbying Texas politicians from 2002 to 2012 and contributed $150,000 to Perry. Because ACS contracts to process Medicaid claims for several states, including Louisiana, one investigator indicated the problem may run much deeper than that found in Texas. http://info.tpj.org/Lobby_Watch/pdf/MedicaidDentalFraud.pdf
http://www.wfaa.com/news/investigates/Texas-Medicaid-Problems-May-Apply-To-Country–133719543.html

• In Alabama, Carol Steckel, then the director of the state Medicaid agency, awarded a $3.7 million contract to ACS in 2007 even though the ACS bid was $500,000 more than the next bid. ACS, however, had a decided edge: it hired Alabama Gov. Bob Riley’s former chief of staff Toby Roth. And Carol Steckel? She now works as chief of Louisiana’s DHH Center for Health Care Innovation and Technology. http://www.ihealthbeat.org/articles/2007/8/22/Alabama-Contract-for-Medicaid-Database-Sparks-Controversy.aspx
http://harpers.org/blog/2007/09/the-inside-track-to-contracts-in-alabama/

• In Washington, D.C., the Department of Motor Vehicles reimbursed $17.8 million to persons wrongly given parking tickets. The contractor that operated the District’s ticket processing? ACS. http://www.questia.com/library/1G1-86379580/overbilled-drivers-to-get-cash-back-dmv-plans-to

• In June of 2007, ACS agreed to pay the federal government $2.6 million to settle allegations that it had submitted inflated charges for services provided through the U.S. Departments of Agriculture, Labor, and Health and Human Services. ACS admitted that it had submitted inflated claims to a local agency that delivered services to workers using funds provided by the three federal agencies. http://washingtontechnology.com/articles/2007/07/11/acs-settles-federal-fraud-case.aspx

• In 2010, ACS settled charges by the Securities and Exchange Commission that it had backdated stock option grants to its officers and employees. http://www.sec.gov/litigation/litreleases/2010/lr21643.htm
Jan Cassidy also worked for 19 years, from 1986 to 2005, with Unisys Corp. where she led a team of sales professionals marketing hardware and systems applications, “as well as consulting services to Louisiana State Government,” according to her website.

Unisys had five separate state contracts from 2002 to 2009 totaling $53.9 million, the largest of which ($21 million) was with the Louisiana Department of Public Safety and which was originally signed to run from April 1, 2008 through Nov. 30, 2009, but which the state cancelled in April of 2009.

The contract was for work to upgrade the state computer system that dealt with driver’s licenses, vehicle titles and other related issues within Louisiana’s Office of Motor Vehicles. http://www.wafb.com/global/story.asp?s=10152623

State Police Superintendent Col. Mike Edmonson cancelled the contract, telling legislators that he was dissatisfied with the work and that he believed his staff could complete the project.

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BESE takes funding from disabled students with MFP passage as Chas Roemer tells Lottie Beebe to pipe down

Posted in ALEC, American Legislative Exchange Council, BESE, Education, Governor's Office, Legislature, Legislators, Revenue, Transparency on March 8, 2013| 7 Comments »

When the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education (BESE) approved the Minimum Foundation Program (MFP) for 2013-14, it sent a message across Louisiana that the board and the Department of Education (DOE) have little or no concern for the education of some 82,000 children with disabilities.

It’s not enough that state aid to local school districts is frozen for the fifth consecutive year, but the MFP as approved by BESE will actually cost the local districts every time a student transfers from a public school to a private school.

The action, passed by an 8-3 vote on Friday, appears on the surface to save local school districts money, but the reality is—as Gov. Bobby Jindal and Commissioner of Administration Kristy Nichols are fond of saying—every time a student leaves a public school to accept the still as yet unconstitutional voucher funding to enter a private school, it costs the local district nearly $1,450.

Funding under the MFP is extremely complex because of a number of factors that are taken into account in the process. There are different levels of funding under several criteria, including graduation rate, performance, placement and disability.

Theoretically, the state pays districts an average of $8,537 per enrolled student, though students rarely, if ever bring that precise amount because of the variables in the formula, including the type of disability a student may have. But when a student leaves, those characteristics are not taken into account and the student takes $6,311 in funding with him or her.

On the face of it, that would mean the local districts would keep the difference of $2,226—except it doesn’t work that way. Instead, the state keeps 65 percent of that savings, or $1,447.

If 10 students leave, for example, that would mean the local school board would lose $14,470 in state funding over and above the $63,110 in funding that each of the 10 students takes out of the local system. So the local school system, which had a set amount of money coming in based on the MFP formula, is now losing money.

The Louisiana Developmental Disabilities Council (LDDC) said the use of a different funding formula for traditional public schools than for school choice programs would result in funding inequities for children with disabilities.

That’s putting it mildly.

It’s enough that Jindal and State Superintendent of Education John White would flaunt a court decision, to defy a judge’s ruling that using state money designated for local school systems to fund private vouchers. But to deliberately and with no show of compassion, jerk funding away from special education students is nothing short of unconscionable.

Students with disabilities make up 12.5 percent of traditional public schools but only 8 percent of charter schools and just 3 percent of private schools. Even more significant, in most cases students with disabilities who are enrolled in school choice programs are not those with the most severe, most costly disabilities.

Consequently, more funds leave the traditional public school systems than the MFP formula indicates the local systems should have based on student enrollment. Funds removed from public schools left serving students with disabilities are either provided to the school choice program or, in the case of the scholarship, the state claims an inflated savings.

The reality is (there’s that term again), when all transactions are complete, schools serving higher percentages of students with disabilities, particularly those with severe disabilities, tend to have less funding than expected, LDDC says.

Neither the Special Education Advisory Panel, nor the Louisiana Association of Special Education Administrators, nor the Superintendents’ Advisory Committee nor the Louisiana Together Educating All Children (LaTEACH) recommended or agreed with phasing in the proposed changes.

When member Lottie Beebe attempted to speak out against the proposal, BESE President Chas Roemer interrupted his daydream of running for the U.S. Senate against Mary Landrieu long enough to attempt to silence Beebe by saying, “I think you have made your point.”

“I’m not finished,” Beebe shot back, leveling a broadside at Roemer for his earlier claim that he wants to close the Department of Education.

But all that mattered little to White, eight of the 11 BESE members or to Jindal, who has closed mental hospitals in New Orleans and Mandeville, moved to privatize state hospitals in what he calls “partnerships” with private facilities, and attempted to terminate the state’s hospice program. Public backlash over the move to shut down funding for hospice caused Jindal to miraculously “find” a million dollars to continue the program.

And don’t forget his ongoing efforts to abolish the state income tax in favor of increasing sales taxes, a move that would help the wealthy while increasing the burden on the low- and middle-income residents of Louisiana.

Even though BESE approved the MFP, it must be accepted—or rejected—by the Louisiana Legislature which convenes on April 8.

Meanwhile, the administration is moving forward with its appeal of the ruling by District Judge Tim Kelley that the method of funding the state voucher program is unconstitutional. The Jindal administration has suffered four separate setbacks in the courts as it attempts to implement the far-ranging education “reform” package passed by the legislature last year.

Several legislators have expressed second thoughts at the speed with which those “reforms” were enacted, especially in light of the various court decisions.

Jindal, however, is following the game plan of the American Legislative Exchange Council to the letter and, through White, is attempting to funnel contracts to a company owned by Rupert Murdoch, owner of Fox Television network and the Wall Street Journal—and probably to other political allies, though White thus far has not complied with LouisianaVoice’s request for a list of DOE contracts.

If anyone still wonders about Jindal’s motives, we would remind you of Murdoch’s brash observation: “When it comes to K-12 education, we see a $500 billion sector in the U.S. alone that is waiting desperately to be transformed by big breakthroughs that extend the reach of great teaching.”

The question, of course, is just who defines great teaching?

As we have repeatedly said in past stories and will continue to remind our readers, it’s all about the money. Never forget that. Louisiana’s school children are merely pawns in a very expensive chess game. They are quite simply a means to an end—a very lucrative end.

If anyone still thinks Jindal and White are truly interested in the education of our children, one need only check the record and the myriad of state contracts awarded by DOE—if you can obtain the list.

The biggest mystery of all, however, is just how long are the citizens of Louisiana going to sit on the sideline and let this evil little man continue to exploit the low- and middle-income citizens of this state?

Forget about his running for president in three years; the here and now are far too important for us to remain passive while he continues to rape our state. His DNA is already smeared all over the state’s poor from his repeated past abuses.

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Notable Quotables (in their own words)

Posted in Civil Service, Layoffs, Notable Quotables, State Agencies, Transparency on March 2, 2013| 5 Comments »

“Can you imagine a department having no IT staff? Can you imagine their human resources department being across town? Revenue is bing picked apart and more sections are to be dissolved.”

—Confidential source in email to LouisianaVoice.

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Notable Quotables (in their own words)

Posted in Education, Notable Quotables, Public Records, Transparency on February 28, 2013| 3 Comments »

“The website we inherited was a mess. We cleaned it up.”

—State Education Superintendent John White, in explaining that the Department of Education’s website was changed as a result of complaints “from parents and teachers.”

“…the Department is not in possession of any public records responsive to your request.”

—Department of Education response to request from LouisianaVoice for copies of complaints “from parents and teachers” about the former DOE website design.

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Radar to M*A*S*H compound: ‘Attention. Attention. Transparency arrives at long last to state government’

Posted in Business, Economy, Governor's Office, Jobs, Legislature, Legislators, Revenue, Taxes, Transparency on February 27, 2013| 7 Comments »

For five long years now we have patiently (or impatiently in some cases) awaited the arrival of all that transparency touted by Gov. Bobby Jindal upon his part time occupancy of the governor’s office.

Now it seems that heretofore elusive aspect of the Jindal administration has finally arrived.

No, it wasn’t Superintendent of Education John White telling News Corp. Senior Vice President Peter Gorman (aka “Dude”) that he is White’s “recharger.”

Nor is the LSU Board of Supervisors which has refused to release the names of applicants for LSU president on the grounds that the applications are conveniently (convenient for the board and the administration, that is) submitted to a Dallas consulting firm which, being a private entity, is not subject to the public records law.

It wouldn’t be the Louisiana Office of Economic Development either. LED a couple of years back refused to surrender records to the Legislative Auditor’s office so that the state auditors could perform the function with which they are charged—auditing the state’s books.

And, needless to say, it is not Attorney General Buddy Caldwell, who found a way to punt on our request for assistance in prevailing upon the Department of Education to comply with the Louisiana public records law (the law, the AG’s office informed us, says it can intervene on behalf of the public meetings law but there is no provision for it to assist with public records).

That’s a classic case of legal hair splitting, but hey, the attorney general’s office is the official legal counsel for state agencies (a veritable horde of state-contracted legal counsels notwithstanding), so who are we to argue? We’re just the low-lifes who work, pay taxes and vote in this state. Never mind some 80 or so (we finally quit counting when we reached that number) legal opinions by the AG issued to various state agencies which opine that public records must be surrendered.

But we digress (as we often do).

No, it’s none of those. The shocker here is that the transparency that has suddenly and without warning opened up before our very eyes originates in none other than the governor’s office.

Yep, chalk one up for Bobby, our part time, absentee governor who would rather run for president than run the state.

Don’t believe us? Still harboring some doubts as to the veracity of our claim?
Well, we have the proof.

Jindal is proposing scrapping the state personal and corporate income tax and replacing it with…well, something. He hasn’t the vaguest idea what (he said earlier this month that he’s still working on details of his plan).

In general terms, Jindal is talking about an increase in the state sales tax and a dollar increase in the cigarette tax (remember when he refused to sign the renewal of the 4-cent cigarette tax because, he said, he was opposed to “new” taxes?).

Never mind that a sales tax would hit the low- and middle-income taxpayers the very hardest https://louisianavoice.com/2013/01/16/par-lsu-economist-richardson-cast-doubts-on-%CF%80-yush-plan-to-replace-louisiana-income-tax-with-state-sales-tax-increase/, abolishment of state income taxes has become the mantra of Republican governors nationwide because it would represent the ultimate tax break (read: political reward) for corporate campaign donors.

But rather than rely on the lack of merits in a weak proposal, Jindal has enlisted his minions to launch a letter-writing campaign in support of his as yet incomplete tax plan.

That’s correct: the plan isn’t even completed, much less polished and officially presented to the legislature and the public, but the letter-writing campaign has already started. Never mind that the plan has as yet progressed no further than a two-page outline pretentiously entitled “A Framework for Comprehensive Tax Reform.” It apparently suffices for the purposes of initiating a well-orchestrated PR campaign from the governor’s office or perhaps from Timmy Teepell’s OnMessage (Oops, we forgot; they are one and the same).

It officially began on Feb. 20 with the publication in newspapers statewide of a letter by LED Secretary and presumed future LSU President/Chancellor/High Potentate Stephen Moret.

Boiled down to its essentials, Moret’s 12-paragraph letter claims that Jindal’s undefined, unreleased, still-in-the-works, everything-still-on-the-table plan would somehow magically bump Louisiana from No. 32 to No. 4 in something called the State Business Tax Climate.

Fine for business climate, yes, but Moret conveniently neglects how that plan, still being formulated somewhere out there in the fog-enshrouded concepts of the policy wonks, would affect the working stiffs. An addition 2 or 3 percent on the sales tax for the purchase of say, a package of toilet paper won’t be such a burden. But tack that same 2 or 3 percent onto the cost of a new refrigerator, central air and heating unit or a new automobile and suddenly, in the words of the late Illinois Sen. Everett Dirksen, you’re talking about real money.

But no matter; Moret obviously had his marching orders: write a glowing letter about how the Jindal Plan (not to be confused with the Stelly Plan that he repealed, at a cost to the state of about $300 million a year) would be great for business—and everyone knows, as President Calvin Coolidge said way back in 1925, “The chief business of the American people is business.” (The stock market crash, of course, was only four years away when he said that, which subsequently put a lot of American people out of business.)

Exactly a week after Moret’s letter, on Feb. 27, the Baton Rouge Advocate (and probably a few other papers across the state) published a second letter endorsing the still mythical tax plan. This one was written by someone named Matthew Glans, who identifies himself as senior policy analyst for The Heartland Institute in Chicago (described by The Economist last May as “The world’s most prominent think tank promoting skepticism about man-made climate change,” according to the institute’s own web page) and which also describes itself as an advocate of free market policies.

Probably its greatest claim to fame, however, came in the 1990s, when it worked with Philip Morris in attempts to debunk the science linking secondhand smoke to health issues and to lobby against government public-health reforms.

(The Heartland Institute bears an eerie resemblance to the fictional “myFACTS” currently being lampooned by Garry Trudeau in the comic strip Doonesbury.)

Glans calls Jindal’s plan “a strong step towards improving the state’s economic competitiveness and returning tax dollars to Louisiana citizens and businesses.”

At the same time he cautions against a system “that allows the government to choose winners and losers.”

“A tax system filled with tax increases on targeted items such as tobacco or subsidies for certain businesses (read: tobacco, in states like North Carolina), however, is not sound policy,” he says, adding, “A system that lowers rates across the board, like much of Jindal’s proposal, would spur economic growth.”

Strange how Glans, sitting in Chicago, could know so much about the part time, absentee governor’s tax plan when Jindal himself confesses that his “plan” is still evolving and stranger still that he would single out tobacco (and tobacco subsidies) as a potential victim of increased sales taxes.

Curious, too, that he is so knowledgeable when legislators remain in the dark.

But, hey, we wanted transparency from our governor.

And this “independent” letter-writing campaign is about as transparent as it gets.

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