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Jeff Hughes taints entire judiciary with TV ads that promote his personal philosophy but are they hiding his real agenda?

Posted in Campaign Contributions, Courts, Governor's Office, Judges, Louisiana Purchase, Politicians, Transparency on November 12, 2012| 7 Comments »

Things are not always as they seem.

Take those flag-waving, gun-loving, pro-traditional marriage, pro-life, pro-death penalty TV ads that helped propel one Jefferson Davis Hughes into the Dec. 8 runoff for the 5th District Louisiana State Supreme Court seat being vacated by the retirement of Chief Justice Kitty Kimball.

To see and hear those ads, one could reasonably come to the conclusion that Hughes is the epitome of American conservative values and that he personally was responsible for the patriotic revolution that freed the colonies from the British Crown.

One of the distasteful ads opens with the portentous voiceover saying in an appropriately ominous tone, “President Obama would never appoint Jeff Hughes to the Louisiana Supreme Court” as if that fact alone qualified him for the office—never mind the fact that Obama appoints none of the State Supreme Court justices.

That stunning opening statement is followed by the pronouncement, complete with all the patriotic fervor the unseen voice can muster that Hughes is pro-gun, pro-life, pro-traditional marriage. And while the ad doesn’t say so, Hughes announced at a recent forum held by the Baton Rouge League of Women Voters that he also supports the death penalty.

Thanks in large part to those slick, misty-eyed, lump-in-the-throat tributes to all that is good and holy, Hughes, with the obligatory “R” behind his name, will face Democrat Circuit Judge John Michael Guidry in next month’s runoff election.

Guidry, who chose to rely on a tactic unheard of in today’s age of electronic media and expensive political consultants/pollsters—public forums and face-to-face campaigning—had no TV ads and yet still managed to finish first in the field of eight candidates with 93,119 votes (27 percent) to 71,911 (21 percent) for Hughes.

The Hughes ads led to the question of propriety on his part because, as Baton Rouge Advocate writer Bill Lodge correctly pointed out, part of Canon 7 of the Louisiana Code of Judicial Conduct stipulates that neither a judge nor a judicial candidate shall make “any statement that would reasonably be expected to affect the outcome or impair the fairness of a mater pending in any Louisiana state court.”

And while gay marriage and gun bans have not yet made it into the Louisiana legal system, there is nothing to say they won’t. Abortion and the death penalty, however, certainly have been raised in the state’s court system.

The question then becomes, did Hughes cross the line in expressing his personal beliefs and prejudices when a judge—at any level, from city court to State Supreme Court—is charged with enforcing the law in total disregard of his own political philosophy?

In our opinion, he stepped far over that line. We feel it is entirely inappropriate for a judge to campaign like a typical political candidate—because he is not. Judges are held, necessarily, to a much higher standard—and they should be. Politicians by their nature are expected to pander to the electorate; judges, on the other hand, are supposed to be fair and impartial in administering the laws—with heavy emphasis on fair and impartial. To express a political stand so charged with controversy and legal interpretation during a campaign taints the entire judiciary.

Of course, the U.S. Supreme Court, in a typical 5-4 split, has ruled otherwise. The Minnesota Supreme Court’s canon of judicial conduct likewise prohibited judicial candidates from advancing their views during campaigns for office but the nation’s high court said that violates the First Amendment right to free speech.

But remember, too, that the U.S. Supreme Court also gave us the Citizens United decision that says corporations are people and are thus free to make unlimited and unreported campaign contributions to secretive super PACs on behalf of favored political candidates.

The Citizens United decision only served to intensify the growing tsunami of secretive campaign contributions funneled through political action committees so we, the citizenry, have no idea who the financial power brokers are behind the candidate(s) seeking our votes.

Campaign finance has evolved into such insanity that when we make a paltry $100 contribution to our favored candidate’s campaign, we may eventually find ourselves pitted against the interests of a corporation that plowed $100,000 into that same candidate’ campaign through some super PAC. When that issue—us against say, banks or credit card companies or environmental polluters—comes to a committee or floor vote, which way do you think our “favored candidate” will vote?

All this brings us back to those cheesy ads that could just be a smokescreen to conceal more sinister underlying issues.

Hughes received only about $44,000 in campaign contributions and $10,200 of that was money he transferred from funds remaining from a prior campaign. He also loaned his campaign $250,000 but even that was not nearly enough to cover the glut of television spots and the widespread mail-outs.

So who paid for that advertising?

One report said that the Citizens for Clean Water and Land http://www.cleanwaterandland.com/ ponied up the money.

It’s an innocuous sounding name and seems to express a goal to which we all aspire but even such noble-appearing endeavors as clean water and land can have underpinnings of greed and objectives of enrichment through political proximity.

Citizens for Clean Water and Land was established by John Carmouche and other plaintiff attorneys for the apparent purpose of influencing the outcome of the Supreme Court race and for paving the way for a favorable ruling by that court at some time in the future.

During the legislative session earlier this year, Carmouche was front and center in the battle to resist reforms in the handling of Louisiana’s so-called legacy lawsuits, http://www.vcstar.com/news/2012/may/31/legacy-lawsuit-compromise-sent-to-governors-desk/ an issue that now appears headed for the courts. Carmouche and other plaintiff attorneys were opposed to the reform legislation because it made it more difficult to recover damages against oil companies.

Legacy lawsuits deal with the extent of cleanup of environmental damage caused by the practices of oil producers in the state decades ago.

The reform effort was initiated in part as a result of a $72 million judgment against Shell Oil for its failure to clean up property owned by the family of Lake Charles attorney Michael Veron.

In short, no matter what your position may be on the issue of oilfield cleanup, do we really need a State Supreme Court justice whose campaign is bankrolled by special interests (read: plaintiff attorneys) who feel the need to grease the skids in the hope that their case will eventually make its way before that same Louisiana Supreme Court?

The hidden agenda in this race then would appear to come down to three words:

Influence for sale.

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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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100 pay increases approved for state’s top earners following Gov. π-yush 2010 pay freeze order; hiring freeze also ignored

Posted in Attorney General, Budget, Civil Service, Commissions, Economy, Education, Exemptions, Incentives, Governor's Office, Higher Education, Jobs, LSU, ORM, Office of Risk Management, Public Records, RSD, State Agencies, Transparency on October 22, 2012| 10 Comments »

Editor’s note: The information contained in this story was received via printouts from the Louisiana Department of Civil Service of those earning $100,000 or more for the years 2009 through 2012. Each year was listed separately. Accordingly, when the name of Patti Gonzalez of the Office of Risk Management did not appear until the 2012 printout, the indication was she had received a pay increase. This was not the case and there was no explanation as to why she did not appear in prior years but Ms. Gonzalez says she has not received an increase since March of 2010.

Likewise, no state elected officials received pay increases as their salaries are set in statute. Civil Service printouts did indicate pay increases for all but two statewide elected officials but this apparently was in error.

Rank and file state civil service employees have gone without pay increases, merit or otherwise, since 2009 but at least 104 managers, directors, supervisors and five statewide elected officials already making in excess of $100,000 a year have received increases over the past three years.

Not included in the tabulation were doctors, nurses, pharmacists, higher education professors or, with one exception, those who were promoted from one job to another and got raises.

Altogether, more than 3,200 state employees earning more than $100,000 per year accounted for an annual payroll of approximately $432 million—an average of about $135,000 each.

The average pay of a state civil service employee is approximately $39,600.

In most cases—but not all—the pay increases were 4 percent increases. A 4 percent increase for one making $100,000 would be $4,000. That would fund four such increases for workers earning only $25,000 a year.

There were those, however, who did better. Much better.

Michael Diresto went from $103,792 in 2011 to $118,792 this year, a $15,000 (14.5 percent) bump. He was listed by the Department of Civil Service as a “director” in the Division of Administration (DOA) for both years. On the DOA web page, he is identified as an assistant commissioner for policy and communications.

Bruce Unangst, executive director of the Real Estate Commission, also saw his annual salary balloon from $109,000 in 2011 to $125,000 this year, a 14.7 percent increase.

In the governor’s office itself, Executive Counsel Elizabeth Murrill did extremely well for herself. Her 2011 salary of $110,000 grew to $165,000 this year—before her transfer to DOA where presumably, it will remain the same. Her one-year pay hike was a whopping 50 percent, according to Civil Service records.

In the Department of Insurance, 14 employees earning $100,000 or more received 4 percent increases from 2011 to 2012 while four others, including an attorney supervisor, did not. Insurance Commissioner James Donelon this year also hired former state legislator Noble Ellington, who had no experience in insurance, as deputy commissioner at a salary of $149,900.

Five of 14 employees of the Port of New Orleans Port Commission who earn $100,000 or more were awarded pay raises ranging from 5.5 percent to 7.5 percent.

At the Department of Health and Hospitals (DHH), several employees received pay increases from 2011 to 2012 despite the pay freeze. They included Executive Director Robert Marier, who went from $196,102 to $205,899 (5 percent); Associate Director Cecilia Mouton, from $185,640 to $194m916 (5.1 percent); Executive Director John Liggio, from $119,044 to $125,068 (5 percent), and Executive Director Lisa Schilling, from $107,702 to $134,638 (25 percent).

None of the four changed job classifications, according to the Civil Service report. One who did change classifications got a 14.8 percent increase, a lower percentage than Schilling. Courtney Phillips was promoted from a Medicaid Program Manager 4 at $102,814 per year to Chief of Staff at $118,019.

One other executive director, six DHH attorneys, a deputy director, a deputy secretary, a budget administrator, an economist and a program director received no salary increases from 2011 to 2012.

Debra Schum, listed as an executive officer in the Department of Education (DOE), got a 20 percent pay raise, from $110,000 in 2011 to $132,000 this year while Kerry Lester, also an executive officer with DOE, got a $5,000 increase, from $150,000 to $155,000 during the same time frame.

But what is particularly interesting about the DOE payroll is the seemingly inordinate number of new hires of people at six-figure salaries, especially in the Recovery School District.

State Superintendent of Education John White has brought in no fewer than 10 new employees at salaries in excess of $100,000 this year alone—and that’s not even counting Deirdre Finn, a part time contract employee who will be paid $144,000 a year to work as communications manager for the department—from her home in Florida.

The idea of hiring a commuting employee, apparently borrowed from DHH and Carol Steckel, who is being paid $148,500 a year as a “confidential assistant” to DHH Secretary Bruce Greenstein to commute back and forth from her home in Alabama, seems to be catching on.

David “Lefty” Lefkowith is being paid $146,000 to commute back and forth from Los Angeles to work at DOE as a “director,” according to Civil Service records. He describes himself in a DOE video, however, as a “deputy superintendent.”

Other new, six-figure employees added by DOE this year include:

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

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

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

• Hannah Dietsch, Assistant Superintendent, $130,000;

• Francis Touchet, Liaison Officer, $130,000;

• Stephen Osborn, Assistant Superintendent, $125,000;

• Sandy Michelet, Executive Director, $120,000;

• Kenneth Bradford, Director, $110,000;

• Heather Cope, Executive Director of the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education, $125,000.

For the Recovery School District (RSD), both the high turnover and six-figure salaries are significant. That’s because there is substantial turnover despite the high salaries and that turnover has stymied any progress the already troubled RSD might have realized.

No fewer than 20 employees earning six figures have left the RSD since 2009, records show.

For the three years from 2010 to 2012, there was a turnover rate among those earning $100,000 or more ranging from 29 to 44 percent from the previous year Civil Service records indicate.

Of 24 RSD employees earning six figures for the current year, 15, or 62.5 percent, are new hires, records show. These include:

• Stacy Green, School Nurse, $145,000;

• James D. Ford, Administrative Superintendent, $145,000;

• Dana Peterson, Administrative Superintendent, $125,000;

• Adam Hawf, Administrator, $120,000;

• Mark Comanducci, Executive Director, $115,000;

• Helen Molpus, Administrative Chief, Officers, $115,000;

• Kizzy Payton, Administrative, Business Office, $110,000;

• Hua Liang, Administrative Chief, Officers, $110,000;

• Nicole Diamantes, Administrative, Other Special Programs, $105,000;

• Isaac Pollack, Administrative, Principal, $105,000;

• Desmond Moore, Administrative, Principal, $105,000;

• Betty Robertson, Other Business Services, $105,000;

• Robert Webb, Administrator, Other Special Programs, $105,000;

• Sametta Brown, Administrator, Regular Programs, $100,800;

• Ericka Jones, Administrative, Principal, $100,000;

• Eric Richard, Administrative, Principal, $100,000.

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Administration moving forward with presenting OGB layoff plan to Civil Service despite shortage of votes on Thursday

Posted in Attorney General, Governor's Office, Health Care, House, Senate, Legislature, Legislators, OGB, Office of Group Benefits, Privatization, Transparency on October 18, 2012| 7 Comments »

LouisianaVoice has learned that Gov. Piyush Jindal plans to move forward with submitting a layoff plan for the Office of Group Benefits (OGB) to the State Civil Service Commission despite failing to obtain sufficient votes to gain legislative approval of a contract with Blue Cross/Blue Shield (BCBS) for the privatization of the agency.

The Jindal administration has been trying for more than a year and a half to privatize the agency that provides health and life insurance coverage to some 226,000 state employees, retirees and their dependents.

Along with efforts to privatize the agency, Jindal is attempting to lay off 177 OGB employees in a move he claims will save the state $20 million despite an initial cost of $70 million of the current OGB fund balance that will be used to pay BCBS to become the agency’s third party administrator (TPA).

State Rep. Katrina Jackson (D-Monroe), who has been lobbying her fellow House members to oppose the BCBS contract, said Jindal has provided no supporting documentation for the projected savings despite several requests that he do so.

“The Office of Group Benefits does not cost the state any money,” Jackson said on Wednesday. “It is a healthy plan that has always remained viable while offering state employees excellent health care benefits.”

The problem with any effort by the administration to gain approval of its anticipated layoff plan is that justification for any layoff approval is limited to two factors found in chapter 17 of the civil service rules.

http://www.civilservice.la.gov/publicationsnotifications.asp

To approval a layoff plan, the Civil Service Commission must have irrefutable evidence that there is either:

• A lack of funds to continue paying the employees;

• A lack of work sufficient to justify retaining the employees.

The administration, of course, could push the argument that with the contract with BCBS, there would be insufficient work for the 177 employees to perform at OGB.

That argument, however, would revert back to an attorney general’s opinion that legislative concurrence would be required before the contract with BCBS could become effective.

That attorney general’s opinion was initially requested by Jackson who contended that the legislature should be a part of the decision-making process.

And that brings everything back to Thursday’s joint meeting of the House Appropriations Committee and the Senate Finance Committee which was supposed to take up that very issue.

As both sides were still jockeying to line up votes Wednesday afternoon, word came down that the administration had pulled the item from joint committee agenda. The reasons for the deletion varied, depending upon who did the explaining.

Jackson said the delay was simply a matter of the administration’s failure to muster enough votes for approval of the contract.

House Appropriations Chairman Jim Fannin (D-Jonesboro) said the committee members did not receive the 80-page BCBS contract until Tuesday and had not had an opportunity to review it.

The governor’s office, however, said that several key members of the committee were scheduled to be out of town, so the decision was made to postpone the vote.

The reasons given by Fannin and the administration do not mesh but then legislators have been complaining for some time about a lack of communication between lawmakers and the governor’s office.

The civil service rules and the failure of the joint committee to take up the BCBS contract could present a classic Catch-22 scenario if the administration does follow through as planned.

What initially was touted by the administration as an efficiency move designed to save the state millions of dollars seems to have become a secondary issue to one of Jindal’s obsession of having his way, of winning at all costs.

The latest decision to try and push through a layoff plan appears to be an indication that he is determined to prevail in a game in which he is on one side of a metaphoric chess board and legislators on the other. In the middle are the pawns that he appears all too willing to sacrifice in order to gain an advantage.

Those pawns are state employees.

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π-yush minions can count; House Appropriations, Senate Finance joint committee meeting on privatization of OGB is cancelled after governor’s office sees it didn’t have the votes

Posted in Civil Service, Governor's Office, Health Care, House, Senate, Legislature, Legislators, OGB, Office of Group Benefits, Politicians, Privatization, Transparency on October 17, 2012| 4 Comments »

Thursday’s scheduled joint meeting of the House Appropriations Committee and the Senate Finance Committee to consider the approval for Blue Cross/Blue Shield of Louisiana to take over the Office of Group Benefits (OGB) Preferred Provider Organization health coverage has been scrubbed.

The reasons for cancelling Thursday’s meeting vary, depending upon who is doing the explaining.

Appropriations Committee Chairman Rep. Jim Fannin (D-Jonesboro) said that he and Senate Finance Committee Chairman Jack Donahue (R-Mandeville) agreed late Wednesday morning to remove the OGB item from the agendas of the joint meeting.

“We just got the contract (with BCBS) yesterday and we need to give people an opportunity to look at it,” said Fannin, who added that the contract was nearly 80 pages.

Fannin, who supports the privatization, admitted the vote count was close but insisted that wasn’t the reason for postponing action.

State Rep. Katrina Jackson, a member of the Appropriations Committee who opposes the contract, however, interpreted the cancellation differently.

“I believe that the cancellation of this meeting indicates the legislature’s willingness to exert independence as a separate and equal branch of government,” she said, adding that she was certain that the administration would continue to apply pressure on members of both committees to come up with the needed votes.

Fanning should have gotten with the governor’s office and gotten their stories together. The two versions don’t mesh.

The word out of the governor’s office was that it has the votes already but that certain key members were scheduled to be out of town Thursday so the meeting needed to be re-scheduled.

That claim can probably be taken with a grain of salt. This is the same administration that insisted it took no active part in the day to day operations of LSU but yet insisted on reviewing any public records relative to the LSU Health Services prior to their release to Capitol News Service.

A more likely scenario is that Gov. Piyush Jindal’s staff members can count.

They saw that the votes (a simple majority is needed to approve the privatization) were not there and like NASA, aborted the mission.

For now.

Members of both committees were being lobbied heavily by both sides late Wednesday in the final hours before the meeting was finally cancelled. It’s a certainty that the pressure on the committee members will not abate—especially from the governor’s office. This is a must-win for him.

The original number of OGB personnel expected to lose their jobs with the BCBS takeover was 177 but some have already retired or found other jobs. That number is now about 150.

An important twist to the story involves the proposed layoffs. The Division of Administration is scheduled to submit a layoff plan to the Civil Service Commission in next few days but no layoff plan may be considered by the commission without an approved contract with Blue Cross/Blue Shield (BCBS).

Without the concurrence of the two committees, however, there can be no approved contract and thus, no layoff plan.

The privatization plan (but not the layoff plan) was approved by the Civil Service Commission in August but State Rep. Katrina Jackson (D-Monroe) requested and got an attorney general’s opinion that said the administration must obtain the concurrence of the legislature to finalize the transfer.
BCBS already serves as the third party administrator (TPA) for OGB’s HMO program.

OGB has accrued a fund balance in excess of $500 million over the past six years since Tommy Teague took over as director of OGB. But he was fired on April 15, 2011 when he did not get on board the Jindal privatization plan quickly enough. His successor lasted only six weeks before he, too, was gone.

Jindal has claimed that a private TPA would be able to run the various health and life insurance plans of about 225,000 state employees, retirees and their dependents.

A Legislative Auditor’s report, however, said that privatization could lead to increased health insurance premiums because of a private insurer’s higher administrative and marketing costs, its requirement to pay taxes on income and its need to realize an operating profit. The state does not pay taxes nor is it required to turn a profit.

The Jindal administration has employed tactics bordering on the clandestine in efforts to shore up its position. At one point it even refused to release a report by New Orleans-based Chaffe & Associates with which it contracted to determine the “fair market value” of OGB’s business.

When a copy of the report was released, however, questions arose immediately because of conflicting dates given by the Division of Administration (DOA) as to its receipt date and by the fact that none of the pages of the report was date-stamped.

DOA routinely date stamps every page of documents it receives to indicate the date and time the documents were received.

This led to speculation that there may have been two Chaffe reports. Even so, the one that was leaked to the Baton Rouge Advocate said that a private insurer would be required to build in the extra costs of taxes and profits when setting premiums.

Much of the reason for the closer-than-expected vote may have to do with growing resentment on the part of legislators who have seen hospitals and/or prisons closed in their districts, actions they say were taken by the administration without the benefit of giving lawmakers a heads-up.

Jindal, in closing prisons and hospitals, has done so while leaving it up to area legislators to try and explain to constituents why they will be out of work or why health care will be either cut back or unavailable.

Only this week, notices went out to 41 employees at E.A. Conway Hospital in Monroe that they would no longer be employed after Nov. 30—just in time for the Christmas holidays. Twenty-five of those were nurses.

Similar cutbacks have taken place at health care facilities all over the state and in August, Jindal abruptly announced the closure of Southeast Louisiana Hospital in Mandeville, effective this month, throwing some 300 employees out of work.

Moreover, with the earlier closure of a mental health facility in New Orleans, the entire area of Orleans, Jefferson, Plaquemines, St. Bernard, Tangipahoa, Washington and St. Tammany will be without access to mental health treatment at a state facility.

“The Office of Group Benefits does not cost the state any money,” Jackson said. “It is a healthy plan that has always remained viable while offering …excellent health care benefits.

“Our research has revealed that more than $70 million of the existing OGB surplus (more than $500 million) would be used to effectuate this privatization,” she said.

“The governor’s office claims that the state will realize $20 million in savings. However, this claim came without any supporting documentation even after numerous requests for that documentation.

“OGB’s administrative costs are 2 percent while the industry standard for private insurers is 6 percent. It seems that, at some point, it (the privatization) would actually cost the state additional money,” Jackson said.

http://house.louisiana.gov/H_Cmtes/H_Cmte_AP.asp

http://senate.legis.louisiana.gov/Finance/Assignments.asp