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Archive for the ‘Transparency’ Category

On Point of Personal Privilege: Man up, Governor

Posted in Governor's Office, OGB, Office of Group Benefits, Transparency on June 29, 2011| 6 Comments »

It would seem to me that if the governor were any kind of man at all, he would take the time to personally visit the Office of Group Benefits and attempt to assuage the feelings of fear, dread, and resentment that presently permeates that entire agency.

If he plans to dismantle, sell off or turn over the agency to a third party administrator, he needs to make his intentions known once and for all. Clearly. He owes the employees of OGB and indeed, all state employees, retirees, and their dependents that much.

It’s the transpranency, stupid.

Of course his mouthpiece, er Chief of Staff Timmy Teepell, will argue that the governor is far too busy running the state to take time out for such mundane matters. After all, there is no hurricane or oil spill to afford him face time on network television. He just wouldn’t look “governorish” stooping to such levels.

To that I say bull crap! Meadow muffins! Road apples!

He for damned sure isn’t too busy to visit north Louisiana Protestant churches every sunday as a prelude to soliciting campaign contributions from congregation members; he wasn’t too busy to make himself available to visit dozens of states last year in campaign appearances for Republican candidates; he wasn’t too busy to show up for out-of-state fundraisers for his own campaign; and he wasn’t too busy to flit about the country promoting his shallow, self-promoting, ghost-written book. And when did he find time to “write” it? He was all of 39 when he “wrote” it and he’s going to tell us, indeed the nation, about leadership and crisis? Give. Me. A. Break.

He certainly wasn’t running the state when he was on all of those out-of-state trips. He was absent so much that an LSU student had to go looking for him and ask him to return home and do his job. And they say college students like to cut classes.

So, guv, I hereby issue this challenge to you: do your job. Let the citizens of this state know your true intent as regards the Office of Group Benefits.

You owe it to us or we owe you nothing come this fall.

Man up.

Tom Aswell

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OGB ordered to report to DOA; is next step privatization? And naming of fiscal analyst is now two weeks overdue

Posted in Governor's Office, House, Senate, Legislature, Legislators, OGB, Office of Group Benefits, Teague, Transparency on June 29, 2011| 4 Comments »

Gov. Bobby Jindal’s office has ordered the Human Resources staff at the Office of Group Benefits (OGB) to report to Paul Rainwater and the Division of Administration (DOA), according to State. Sen. D.A. “Butch” Gautreaux (D-Morgan City).

Gautreaux, who is term-limited and not seeking elective office, called on opponents of privatization of the agency to mobilize to resist the governor’s plan.

He is a member of the OGB board of directors and is Chairman of the Senate Retirement Committee and has been a vocal opponent of both Jindal and administration plans to privatize OGB.

Sources inside the administration indicated the latest move requiring OGB to report to DOA is the first step in the administration’s efforts to dismantle the agency altogether prior to selling its book of business to a private investor.

A Request for Proposals (RFP) was issued earlier and a tentative deadline of June 15 set for the selection of a fiscal analyst to evaluate the assets of OGB preparatory to soliciting bids from the private sector for the takeover of the agency and its $500 million equity balance. No financial advisor has yet been publicly named by the administration even though public information requests have been submitted to Rainwater and Deputy Commissioner of Administration Mark Brady.

If a financial analyst is named and DOA does not respond to the public information requests, Rainwater and Brady will be in open violation of state public records law. Violators are subject to fines, courts costs and attorney fees.

Rainwater has been ambivalent as to the true intent of the administration, first issuing an earlier RFP specifically for the sale of OGB and later testifying before Gautreaux’s committee that nothing other than a third party administrator was being sought for the OGB Preferred Provider Organization (PPO) and possibly the HMO.

The agency went through two administrators within a two-month period once the efforts to privatize the agency became public knowledge.

Tommy Teague, who ran the agency as its CEO for five years, taking it from a $60 million deficit to a $500 million surplus, was fired on April 15 and replaced that same day by Scott Kipper, who moved over from the State Department of Insurance.

Six weeks later Kipper resigned over Rainwater’s failure to keep his promise to the Senate and Governmental Affairs Committee to make available to committee member Karen Peterson a report by Chaffe & Associates of New Orleans. His resignation became effective last Friday.

Chaffe had been hired in March by Jindal to conduct a preliminary assessment of OGB in order that Jindal could incorporate its findings into his executive budget by March 19. When no mention of the OGB sale was subsequently included in that budget, it was assumed by many that the Chaffe report did not say what the governor wanted to hear.

That theory seemed to be confirmed later first when Rainwater went back on his word, given under oath, and again when conflicting dates appeared to indicate the possibility that two versions of the report existed.

Rainwater testified before the Senate and Governmental Affairs Committee during his confirmation hearing on May 31 that he received the Chaffe report on May 25 but that it was in the “deliberative” process and its contents could not be divulged.

Four days earlier, Paul Holmes, an attorney with DOA, notified LouisianaVoice by email that the report was received on May 25 but that it was in the “deliberative” process and thus, not public record.

With both men claiming the report was received by DOA on May 25, it raised eyebrows when a copy of the report was “leaked” to the Baton Rouge Advocate. That report was dated June 3 by its authors, nine days after Rainwater and Holmes said they received it.

Moreover, the copy that was supposedly leaked did not contain the stipulation that the only benefit to privatizing OGB would be if the buyer retained the $500 million surplus. Those who had seen the May 25 version said that language was contained in the report.

Gautreaux, in a Tuesday email said the Joint Legislative Committee on the Budget needed to be informed of the administration’s latest maneuver. “Tell them to make it personal,” Gautreaux said to the email’s undisclosed recipients, adding that the OGB administrative staff will likely be fired as a next move by the governor.

“Jindal and his staff have no idea how frightening it is to a senior or anyone with chronic illness to not know if their medication will be covered or the procedures will be available under a private carrier yet to be announced, he said.

Even if the administration does understand, he said, “There is not an ounce of compassion in their hearts. You have to have a life experience like most of us have had to understand the fear that many OGB members have at the very threat of losing their coverage.

“I have a 40-year-old son with MS (multiple sclerosis). He has a family and a great job. He worries every day that if his company changes hands and he loses the coverage he has, he would never be able to afford the $3800 in medication he takes every month. There are thousands of stories like this in OGB,” Gautreaux said.

“Mobilize your troops now. We will never replace the valuable plan once it is lost.”

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Much of Jindal campaign cash goes to out-of-state firms

Posted in Campaign Contributions, Governor's Office, Transparency on June 29, 2011| 4 Comments »

Much has been written about the efficient fundraising capabilities of Gov. Bobby Jindal, and rightly so.

He has traveled to the four corners of the nation soliciting campaign funds ostensibly for this year’s re-election campaign and has raised, depending on whose figures one chooses to use, between $9 million and $12 million.

Virtually unmentioned in all the coverage of his numerous trips and his weekly visits to Protestant churches for the purposes of either direct fundraising or building a base for future solicitations is his propensity to spend his money with out-of-state vendors in efforts to further his political career.

Since 2003, Jindal has spent an estimated $16.5 million on polling, political advertising, printing, direct mail, telephone banks, office rent, fundraising expenses, and campaign staff.

Of that amount, $6.2 million, or 37.6 percent of the total, has gone to pay out-of-state companies for such services as direct mail, polling, printing, and for automated telephone calling—businesses one might justifiably expect to find operating in Louisiana.

That could emit a hollow ring to his oft-repeated lament of the state’s losing its “best and brightest” young people to other states that offer better employment opportunities.

One of his favorite vendors is a company called Olsen & Shuvalov of Austin, Texas. He paid that firm $827,400 in 30 separate transactions between April of 2007 and March of this year for printing and mailing expenses. The payments ranged from a low of $6,353.86 last August to a high of $94,432.30 in June of 2007.

That amount, however, pales in comparison to the money paid to two separate firms in Alexandria, Virginia. His campaign, in fact, seems to favor Virginia companies.

The Jindal campaign paid Todd & Castellanos Creative Group nearly $2.7 million in 24 separate payments for media advertising buys, all during 2003 in his unsuccessful first run at the governor’s office. He didn’t use the firm during his 2007 campaign.

His campaign paid Onmessage, Inc., more than $1.3 million in 30 payments between March 2007 and February of this year for research, advertising, production, and consulting expenses.

A partial list of other out-of-state Jindal campaign expenditures includes:

• The Anderson Group of Bowie, Maryland—$300,000 in 13 payments between May 2003 and March 2004 for polling, consulting and statewide surveys;

• National Media of Alexandria, Virginia—$176,600 in 19 payments, all in August, September, and October of 2007, for advertising expenses;

• FLS-DCI of Phoenix, Arizona—$122,500 in seven payments between February 2004 and October 2007 for telephone bank costs and fundraising expenses;

• Mary Kate Johnson of Bethesda, Maryland—$99,000 in 22 payments between August 2008 and January 2010 for fundraising expenses;

• Stormo & Associates of Caledonia, Michigan—$86,600 in 11 payments for research and consulting from February 2007 through January 2008;

• Advanced Mailing Services of Woodbridge, Virginia—$84,400 in eight payments from October 2009 through February 2010 for mailing expenses;

• Political Solutions of Washington, D.C.—$81,500 in three payments for printing expenses, in July, September and October of 2007;

• National Cable Communications of New York, New York—$75,200 in two payments in September 2003 for television advertising;

• Southwest Publishing and Mailing Corp. of Topeka, Kansas—$69,400 in seven payments for mailing expenses from March of 2010 through January of this year;

• Aristotle International of Washington, D.C.—$65,300 in 30 payments from December 2006 through January of this year for office expenses, “E-donation fees,” and computer software;

• Strategic Direction.com of Tallahassee, Florida—$53,000 in three payments for automated calling and campaign consulting in October and November of 2003 and February 2004;

• Nova List, LLC, of Herndon, Virginia—$41,600 in five payments from September 2009 and March 2010 for mailing expenses;

• The McIntosh Company, Inc., of Dallas, Texas—$29,600 in six payments from June of 2009 through February of this year for fundraising expenses;

• Response America of Arlington, Virginia—$23,900 in five payments for mailing expenses from April of 2010 through January of this year;

• Praxis List Co. of Austin, Texas—$16,100 for mailing expenses in January and March of this year.

Given the fact that 47 payments totaling $581,700 were made to out-of-state firms for mailing expenses from August 22, 2008—about seven months after he took office—through March 31 of this year, one has to wonder what those mail-outs were for. His campaign for re-election has barely gotten underway and there doesn’t seem to have been an unusually large number of Jindal campaign mail-outs in Louisiana residents’ mail boxes over the past three years.

One must also be wondering if there are no Louisiana firms capable of handling telephone banks, polling, printing, political consulting, and mail-outs.

Or does the governor feel that he needs the business and political resources in other states just in case he should one day decide he does not have the job he wants, after all?

There must be scores of Louisiana printing companies, political consultants, direct mail services, advertising agencies, and polling and phone bank services wondering the same thing.

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Rainwater to be confirmed by Senate, Brady out; no word on Regents’ Ed Antie or DHH’s Bruce Greenstein confirmations

Posted in Governor's Office, House, Senate, Legislature, Legislators, OGB, Office of Group Benefits, Transparency on June 21, 2011| 10 Comments »

Paul Rainwater is in, Mark Brady is out.

That’s the word out of Baton Rouge after a series of confirmation hearings on the commissioner of administration and his deputy commissioner, respectively.

The Senate and Governmental Affairs (S&GA) Committee has been holding confirmation hearings for several weeks for appointees by Gov. Bobby Jindal, including Secretary of the Department of Health and Hospitals Bruce Greenstein and Board of Regents for Higher Education member Ed Antie.

The hearings have not gone well for any of the four men. Sources indicate that senators apparently are peeved at the perceived arrogance of Rainwater and Brady and the lack of candor on the part of Greenstein and Antie.

There has been no word on the fates of Greenstein and Antie, but the word coming out of the legislature Tuesday was that Rainwater would be given a pass and confirmed as commissioner of administration while Brady, who was brought into the Jindal administration from New Hampshire by Jindal, will not.

Brady is perceived by many in the legislature and in DOA as a hatchet man brought in by Jindal for the specific purpose of ramming the governor’s privatization agenda through the legislature.

Jindal’s plans for selling three state prisons fell through under heavy opposition from legislators and prison employees. The sale of the Office of Group Benefits (OGB) has encountered similar opposition from retired state employees, retired teachers, legislators, and even state district judges but rumors circulating in Baton Rouge Tuesday said that Jindal will move forward with the sale of that agency as soon as the legislature leaves town after Thursday’s adjournment.

Greenstein refused for more than an hour to reveal the name of the winner of a $300 million, multi-year contract for DHH before finally revealing that the winner was CNSI of Gaithersburg, MD., a company by whom he previously was employed.

Antie, of Carencro, and founder of Central Telephone, denied that he had any contracts with the state or specifically, the Board of Regents. It turns out, as was revealed in the hearings, that one of Central Telephone’s subsidiaries, Sun America, has a $531,000 contract with the Board of Regents for the lease of fiber optics for the Regents’ Louisiana Optical Network Initiative, a state-of-the-art fiber optics network that connects eight major research universities in the state.

No specific reason was given for the prediction that Brady would not be confirmed but he sat through several particularly grueling confirmation sessions with members of the S&GA Committee, mostly over the pending sale of OGB as well as DOA denials of access to a financial report done on that agency by Chaffe & Associates of New Orleans.

The committee elicited a promise from Rainwater to make a copy of the Chaffe report available to committee member Sen. Karen Peterson (D-New Orleans) but Brady later ordered OGB CEO Scott Kipper not to provide the report to anyone, including legislators.

That prompted Kipper, who had been on the job only six weeks, to tender his resignation. His last day on the job is Friday.

When a copy of the report was finally made available, it was done only after senators were required to sign a confidentiality agreement which was promptly broken when a senator leaked the report to the Baton Rouge Advocate.

It now turns out that the leaked report may not have been authentic.

Rainwater and DOA legal counsel each had said on different dates that the report was received by DOA on May 25 but Chaffe officials signed off on the legislators’ copy of the report on June 3. Moreover, that report, published by the Advocate on its web blog, contained no date stamps, a requirement for all incoming documents at DOA, including all mail, brochures, and reports.

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Jindal planning OGB sale as soon as legislature leaves town; Administration a model of efficiency, deceit, and subterfuge

Posted in Governor's Office, House, Senate, Legislature, Legislators, OGB, Office of Group Benefits, Transparency on June 21, 2011| 8 Comments »

Sen. Butch Gautreaux dropped a bombshell on Tuesday when he revealed that he had learned that Gov. Bobby Jindal planned to proceed with the sale of the Office of Group Benefits (OGB) within days after the legislature leaves town upon adjournment of the current session.

The OGB privatization controversy has been swirling since Wall Street banking firm Goldman Sachs was brought in to the Division of Administration (DOA) last fall to begin preparation of a request for proposals (RFP) for a financial advisor to conduct a market value analysis of OGB and to then market the agency to potential buyers.

Goldman Sachs subsequently was the only company to submit a proposal but withdrew after negotiations broke down over the firm’s demand that the state indemnify it from future litigation.

In hearings before the Senate Retirement Committee and the Senate and Governmental Affairs Committee, Commissioner of Administration Paul Rainwater flip-flopped on whether the agency was to be sold or simply have its operations taken over by a contracted third party administrator (TPA).

The initial RFP specifically referred to the agency’s being sold but Rainwater at one time said the agency was not for sale during testimony before the Senate Retirement Committee, chaired by Sen. Butch Gautreaux (D-Morgan City), who also is a member of the OGB board of directors.

A second RFP was issued with a deadline for June 6 for the submission of proposals and a “probable” date for naming a contractor of June 15. DOA officials appeared at OGB on June 6 and took possession of the submitted proposals and no one from OGB has ever seen the actual proposals.

It was learned, however, that Goldman Sachs was one of three firms to submit proposals on the second RFP.

On June 17, LouisianaVoice asked the identity of the financial analyst but DOA Chief of Staff Dirk Thibodeaux said no one had been selected.

If Thibodeaux was accurate in his answer, that would mean that DOA had less than a week in which to select a financial analyst to conduct an in-depth financial analysis of the billion-dollar agency, have the analyst market the agency to the private sector, and to agree to terms with a buyer, a scenario virtually impossible to execute.

“My understanding is that Jindal will act on the sale Friday or Monday,” Gautreaux said in an email on Tuesday. “The deal is supposedly done. I am still fighting and will be making a statement in the Senate tomorrow.”

An earlier financial report performed by Chaffe & Associates of New Orleans reportedly said the only advantage in privatizing OGB would be if a buyer was able to keep the agency’s $500 million surplus.

A copy of that report was supposedly leaked to the Baton Rouge Advocate last week but that report contained no such wording.

The leaked report, however, was dated June 3 by the two Chaffe & Associates staff members who authored the report. Rainwater testified on May 31that his office had received the report on May 25, nine days before the June 3 date on the Chaffe report. DOA attorney Paul Holmes, in an email to LouisianaVoice on May 27 also said the report was received on May 25.

Adding to the mystery of the discrepancy in the dates was the fact that the report leaked to the Advocate had no date stamps on any of its 42 pages. DOA policy is that every document, including letters and documents, must be stamped in with the time and date of receipt.

A DOA spokesman said that there were reports within DOA that the Jindal administration was planning to move forward with the privatization of the agency.

If Jindal does proceed with the sale of the agency, it would go against the wishes of the Retired State Employees Association, active state employees, the Retired Teachers Association, and the Louisiana District Judges Association. The Louisiana District Judges Association in March approved a unanimous resolution in opposition to the proposed privatization.

There has been some talk of the possibility of a class action lawsuit by one or more of the associations in an attempt to block any privatization move.

If a move to block the OGB privatization is successful, it would be the second major setback to Jindal. He was earlier stymied in his efforts to sale three state prisons in Allen, Winn, and Avoyelles parishes.

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