Louisiana Voice

Livingston Parish librarian Amanda Jones may have lost a battle, but not the war.

Not just yet, despite the smug victory lap taken by Michael Lundsford, head of an outfit called Citizens for a New Louisiana, which we suspect, is linked to – and perhaps even partially funded by – Attorney General Jeff Landry.

Lundsford appears to be obsessed with what he calls erotica and he has taken his crusade to libraries all over the state, including Lafayette where he has bullied the parish council into installing its hand-picked Library Board members who in turn are attempting to fire any librarian who attempts to adhere to the First Amendment of the US Constitution.

The Tulane Law Clinic has weighed in on the Lafayette controversy, sending a letter to Library Board President Robert Judge emphasizing what it called a “chilling effect” that the board’s actions could have on “public debate and protected speech.”

The Livingston Parish Library Board told Lundsford to buzz off and he has now singled out the four board members who he claims are “standing in the way” of his efforts to impose his morality standards on the populace.

Not only did he name the four on his post, he even called out the individual parish council members who appointed each board member.

Amanda Jones, who has come under personal attacks by both Lundsford and at least one Livingston Parish resident, Ryan Thames, sued both and Lundsford’s organization. Twenty-First Judicial District Judge Erika Sledge, however, dismissed her lawsuit by declaring Jones a public figure under the definition of the landmark 1964 US Supreme Court NEW YORK TIMES V. SULLIVAN decision.

That decision made it difficult for public figures to sue for defamation unless a publication knew what it was writing was false and published it anyway with “actual malice” and “with reckless disregard of whether it was false or not.”

The Facebook accusation that Jones, School Librarian of the Year, was a pedophile would seem to be the very definition of “actual malice” and “reckless disregard,” but not in the judgment of Sledge.

On Monday, Jones announced that she has “chosen to continue my fight against the men who are spreading malicious and dangerous online attacks against me.

“I have a brand-new legal team and we have FILED A MOTION that asks the judge to reconsider her ruling and additionally proposes an amended petition that restates my claims against my harassers.

“I stand for myself and I stand for all the educators and librarians who are tired of being defamed online and used as political pawns,” she said.

Jones’s fight to defend the First Amendment and to defend herself against harassment has gotten national attention on CNN, USA Today, NBC News, Huff Post in addition to local publications and online blogs such as LouisianaVoice and she has created her own WEB PAGE called, appropriately enough, Speaking Out, in which she tells of her battles with Lundsford and his organization since she exercised her First Amendment rights by speaking out on July 19 in opposition to Lundsford’s attempt to dictate policy to the Livingston Parish library system.

Citizens for a New Louisiana is an ultra-right-wing organization affiliated with the Republican Party and uses the same Virginia law firm to handle its finances as does the National Republican Congressional Committee.

The NRCC in 2008 replaced its treasurer with Keith A. Davis of the Alexandria, Virginia law firm Huckaby Davis Lisker.

Huckaby Davis Lisker has the same 228 South Washington Street address and phone number as the party responsible for the financial records Citizens for a New Louisiana listed on its federal form 990 filed with the IRS.

Keith Davis, a partner in the firm, was the TREASURER of former Texas Sen. Phil Gramm’s campaign for the GOP presidential nomination in 1996 and worked on President George W. Bush’s reelection campaign in 2004. He also was assistant treasurer of both of the elder Bush’s president bids and his firm worked for several House Republicans and performed bookkeeping for the late Arizona Sen. John McCain and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee.

Colorado Rep. Lauren Boebert, who has used campaign funds to pay her rent, lists Huckaby Davis Lisker as her campaign’s treasurer in her latest FINANCIAL REPORT.

The firm also handled the finances of Sen. Marco Rubio whose campaign was found to be in NON-COMPLIANCE with fundraising laws.

If Jones is unsuccessful in getting a rehearing, she could then appeal to the First Circuit Court of Appeal.

An ongoing legal battle in St. Tammany Parish, while having no direct connection to or effect on Attorney General Jeff Landry, nevertheless seems appropriate for comparison to a situation in the AG’s office.

A former captain in the St. Tammany Sheriff’s Office has had his firing upheld by a three-judge panel of the US 5^th Circuit Court of Appeals.

Calvin Lewis was fired in 2017 because he has lived for a decade with his girlfriend who is a convicted felon and the sheriff’s office has a policy that forbids personal relationships or associations with known felons.

Lewis has not decided what his next move will be. He may either seek a rehearing before a full panel or appeal to the US Supreme Court.

Admittedly, it is an apples-to-oranges comparison when considering a situation in Landry’s office but at the same time, it’s interesting to know the policy that cost Lewis his job is not consistent across public agencies, especially in the agency of the chief legal officer of the state.

While the St. Tammany Parish Sheriff’s Office has a specific policy prohibiting associations with known felons by sheriff’s office employees, the AG’s office apparently does not.

In 2015, when Landry first ran for the office, it was a three-person race: Landry, incumbent AG Buddy Caldwell, and Geraldine Broussare Baloney of Garyville in St. John the Baptist Parish.

In that first primary, Caldwell polled 35 percent to Landry’s 33 percent. Baloney finished third with 18 percent, throwing the race into a runoff between Caldwell and Landry.

On Nov. 2, three weeks before the Nov. 21 runoff, Baloney announced that after meeting with Landry, “followed by prayerful consideration with my family, I have decided to endorse Jeff Landry because of his willingness to embrace forward thinking policies, his desire to actually transform and change the way the attorney general’s office does business.”

Long story short, Landry defeated Caldwell with 56 percent of the general election vote.

As for “the way the attorney general’s office does business,” well, Landry knew the drill. He obviously had cut a deal with Baloney because as soon as he’d settled into the job, he hired Baloney’s daughter, Quendi Baloney, to head up the AG’s Fraud Section.

So, what’s so unusual about that? Those kinds of deals are cut all the time in elections. Jay Dardenne was a candidate for governor in 2015 and when he didn’t make the runoff, he endorsed John Bel Edwards. When Edwards was elected, who did he appoint as his commissioner of administration? None other than Jay Dardenne.

But then Dardenne wasn’t a convicted felon. QUENDI BALONEY was and is. She had been charged in 1999 with 11 felony counts of credit card fraud and theft. She eventually pleaded guilty to three counts and received a suspended prison sentence.

And now we learn that Quendi Baloney’s sister, Abril Baloney Sutherland, is an applicant for the position of executive counsel for the Southeast Louisiana Flood Protection Authority-East in New Orleans. Word on the street is that Thomas L. Colletta, Jr. is the early odds-on favorite for that post but don’t be surprised if Landry has something to say about the final selection.

And it’s not as if the authority couldn’t use some wise legal counsel, given the results of its latest AUDIT by the legislative auditor’s office.

I don’t want to call Landry a hypocrite but in 2016, he demanded to know why Gov. Edwards would allow a convicted felon to serve as legal counsel for the Louisiana State Licensing Board for Contractors.

He questioned the board’s retaining former State Sen. Larry Bankston as its legal counsel, pointing out that Bankston served 44 months in prison for his 1997 conviction on a video poker-related bribery scheme.

“Mr. Bankston is a convicted felon who has been previously disbarred,” Landry sniffed. “An attorney who represents the board in a fiduciary capacity to the board and is a legal representative of the state of Louisiana.”

Wow. That took some real chutzpah on Landry’s part to raise that, of all issues.

But Landry is absolutely correct. And an individual who pleaded guilty to three counts of fraud being put in charge of the AG’s Fraud Section in exchange for a political endorsement just has to raise a few eyebrows – even in Louisiana.

Landry’s proclamation on his WEBPAGE two months after taking office that there was “a new sheriff in town” and that he was ending the “Buddy system” didn’t take long to become a cruel joke when that $17 MILLION SCAM to hire Mexican welders and pipefitters under H-2B visa rules through three companies owned by Landry and his brother, Ben Landry, was made public. He even managed somehow to funnel nearly HALF-A-MILLION DOLLARS of campaign contributions to those companies.

Of course, he had his own “buddy system” that bubbled to the surface when one of his prosecutors resigned in protest over the way in which he said Landry smoothed over a kiddie porn case on behalf of a “politically connected individual.”

Then the “new sheriff in town” put political contributor Shand Guidry on the AG’s payroll as some sort of “special agent/investigator” despite the fact he possessed zero qualifications for the job. But it all evened out when Guidry put Landry on the board of his oil services firm, Harvey Gulf, at a kickback salary of between $50,000 and $100,000.

Finally, in a snit, Landry demanded that LSU communications professor Bob Mann BE PUNISHED for a tweet last December in which he had the audacity to be critical of Landry for dispatching “some flunkie to the LSU Faculty Senate meeting…to read a letter attacking covid vaccines.” Mann noted that it was “quite the move from a guy who considers himself ‘pro-life.’”

We have to wonder if Mr. Landry is familiar with the First Amendment.

From his DIRTY CAMPAIGN against Charles Boustany when their two congressional districts were consolidated in 2012 through his absurd legal battle to OVERTURN the 2020 presidential election, Landry has shown himself to be vindictive, petty, churlish, manipulative, and downright reprehensible. He is a politically-conniving, hypocritical opportunist, far removed from the personification of the type leader this state needs and craves – as a congressman, attorney general, governor, or even a deputy sheriff.

LouisianaVoice heads into its final week of our October fundraiser and you may have noticed I haven’t badgered you as much this time. Postings in which I shamelessly begged for money have been sporadic for two reasons: (1) I abhor coming to my readers with my hand out. I rejected advice from a wise lobbyist years ago to make LouisianaVoice a paid subscription blog because I wanted everyone to have unfettered access to what I cover. (2) We’ve actually almost reached our goal for this cycle.

Almost.

Truth is, our readers have been more than generous and we appreciate that more than we could ever adequately express. But we do still have expenses and we like to have funds to cover them. Gasoline is higher now and the cost is rising. I am involved as a plaintiff in a couple of litigation cases over public records (which I expect to win either at the state court level or on appeal). That costs money and the document copies I have requested from every parish for a story I’m working on are going to cost a bundle. Thanks to you, we’re covered. For now.

But like there’s never too much pitching on a baseball team, there’s never quite enough money, it seems. I know that’s true in most of your own cases, as well. But if you can (and ONLY if you can comfortably), please help us by clicking on the yellow DONATE button in the column to the right of this post and give by credit card or mail a check to Capital News Service, P.O. Box 922, Denham Springs, Louisiana 70727.

As always, thank you for your loyal support these past 11-plus years.

The Bossier Parish Police Jury has descended into the abyss of totalitarian authority and it has done so with no prior notification, with no public comment, and most likely without even understanding he perilous magnitude of its actions.

By following the dangerous but inexplicably popular trend of making scapegoats of public libraries, the police jury is setting itself up as the moral police in much the same manner as the fascists did in Germany nearly a century ago.

Except it has never been about library content or book placement.

It’s all about power and control. Nothing else.

All this nonsense about protecting the minds of children is just that: nonsense. Misdirection. Lies. And it’s playing right into the hands of the fascists who, while screaming “socialism” and “communism,” are slowly and most assuredly chipping away at the very freedoms upon which this country was founded.

The growing battles over local libraries which began in Florida and quickly spread to other states have been popping up all over the state map: Lafayette Parish, Livingston Parish, and now Bossier Parish.

And in Bossier Parish, it seems, they don’t mind breaking a few state laws to achieve their goal.

Those who advocate clamping down on what libraries can offer are people with ulterior motives and their actions are not directed at the overall benefit of the populace. Instead, it is to perpetuate one thing and one thing only: control.

The first thing any totalitarian movement does do when setting out to grab power and establish control is to destroy access to public information.

Oh, to be sure, they think they’re patriots carrying out God’s wishes. But in their zeal, they are taking a page right out of the fascist playbook. And to paraphrase George Burns in the movie Oh God!, they stopped doing God’s wishes a long time ago.

Were it up to these neo culture police and their war on drag queen shows, Flip Wilson’s hilarious Geraldine character (“If you can fly 600 miles per hour in the dark and find Los Angeles, you can find my luggage”) would never make on TV today. Robin Williams would never have been allowed to play Mrs. Doubtfire.

But back to Bossier Parish and the shenanigans of the parish police jury, which, according to its legal counsel, does not have to adhere to established Louisiana ethics laws. Even the parish manager may also be in violation of a state residency statute.

Take the police jury’s Sept. 21 meeting, for example. The parish library was not on the agenda but that did not stop member Doug Rimmer, vice president of the library board of control, from reporting that two members of the library board would be removed so that they could be replaced by two members of…the police jury.

There was a provision for public comment, all right, but since that item wasn’t on the agenda, there was no way for the “public” to know of the impending action (much like when the Livingston Parish Police Jury allowed audience members to sign up to comment on its proposal to send a letter to the parish librarian and then passed the resolution without allowing comment).

As it stands right now, four of the five Bossier Parish Library Board members – Rimmer, Charles Gray, Glenn Benton, and Bob Brotherton – are also members of the police jury and the fifth member is expected to be replaced by a police jury member.

So, how does Louisiana’s dual office-holding law apply in such a case. According to R.S. 42:61-66, a person holding a local elective office (police jury) MAY HOLD A PART-TIME APPOINTIVE POSITION. But the law does not specifically address that elected official’s ability to appoint himself or to hold a part-time appointive position on a committee or commission governed directly by the elective body on which he serves.

That would be prohibited according to several opinions by the Louisiana attorney general’s office, though Bossier parish attorney Patrick Jackson dismissed those as basically just another attorney’s opinion.

The police jury decided to appoint themselves after declaring that it was difficult to find five people out of the parish’s 130,000 citizens willing to serve on the board despite one individual’s assertion that no fewer than five people actually submitted their personal resumes and letters of interest to the police jury – which the police jury promptly ignored.

Nor should it be ignored that the police jury members who were being considered for appointment to the library board participated in the discussion and voting and did not abstain as they should have, thus creating an obvious conflict of interest and ethics violation.

Nor should it go with mentioning that the police jury on Facebook solicited names for membership on several other boards – but not the library board.

When the parish library director resigned under duress from the police jury, parish manager Butch Ford was appointed interim director despite having zero experience in the area of library management (he’s an engineer) and does not even possess a library card and despite the library’s already having someone in place who was qualified and who could’ve assumed the duties.

Ford, by the way, resides in Caddo Parish in direct violation of R.S. 33:1236.1 which says that a parish manager and his or her assistant shall reside in and be a registered voter in the parish for which he/she is employed.

Finally, the police jury also:

• Decided to suspend the Bylaws for the Library Board of Control to write new ones, effective immediately
• Decided to rewrite all library policies (this includes the collection policy that protects the library from censorship attempts)
• Decided to potentially shorten library hours of operation
• Cut the library operating budget by $1 million

The problem with all those is that they were done in executive sessions held behind closed doors, a violation of Louisiana open meetings laws.

A decade ago, Louisiana’s graduation rate for special education students stood at a dismal 28 percent. That was because Louisiana was one of only a handful of states that required students with disabilities to take the same standardized tests and to make the same scores as students without disabilities.

HOUSE BILL 1015 in the 2014 regular legislative session by then-Rep. John Schroeder and Sen. Dan Claitor and co-sponsored by literally dozens of legislators from both the House and Senate mandated that an exceptional student’s Individualized Education Program (IEP) would provide an “alternative pathway” to promotion.

The bill would sail through both chambers and was signed into law as Act 833 but not before State Education Superintendent John White and State Director of Special Education Jamie Wong “did everything in their power” to kill the measure, including testifying themselves in opposition to the bill in Senate and House education committees and importing cronies from Washington, D.C., to testify against it, one source told LouisianaVoice.

As a result of passage and implementation of the act, the SPED graduation rate today stands near 70 percent and both White and Wong promptly moved to the front of the line to TAKE CREDIT for its success, that same person said.

As a reward for Wong’s efforts on behalf of Special Education, White in July 2018 conferred upon her the title of appointing authority “for all employees or positions in the Special School District, including the authority to remove or dismiss all employees, including classified employees who have attained permanent status, approve layoff and layoff avoidance measures for all employees, including classified employees who have attained permanent tatus and set hiring rates for unclassified executive positions.”

That was particularly grating to one person who said Wong was “unqualified to consult on anything in special education.”

Wong was first hired in July 2014 at $110,000 per year just about the time she and her husband were moving from Washington to Louisiana so that her husband could work in the upcoming gubernatorial campaign of US Sen. David Vitter.

She had previously served as the education policy legislative correspondent for former US Sen. Mary Landrieu.

Not too long after being given the hiring and firing authority at SSD, Wong began casting her eye at the superintendent’s position. She actively lobbied for the position but Dr. Ernest Garrett, III, was ultimately chosen in August 2019 only to fall victim to the typical Louisiana purge in July of this year when he was fired on the vague grounds of “payroll discrepancies,” becoming one of the first of a succession of firings and resignations that have rocked the Louisiana School for the Deaf.

But even before she pursued the job of SSD superintendent, Wong was hedging her bets by launching a special education consulting company – while still employed by the Department.

On Dec. 1, 2019, she left her position as director of special education and the very next day was named as an education program consultant for DOE at $46 per hour.

But a month earlier, on Nov. 5, she had registered her new special education consulting company, SPED STRAGEGIES, to contract with parish education systems statewide – even as she remained working for the Department of Education (DOE), an apparent conflict of interests and a potential ethics concern because of her individually contracting with local education districts while being simultaneously employed by DOE.

Moreover, in contracting with local school systems, Wong signed a sworn affidavit dated Oct. 27, 2021, claiming that SPED Strategies was a “sole source” provider of services because competition in providing special education collaborative services “is precluded by the existence of a patent, copyright, secret process, or monopoly.”

Designation as a sole source provider allows a vendor to circumvent the state bid requirements and to be awarded a contract for services or products without competitive bidding.

In an accompanying letter dated Nov. 1, 2021, Wong said, “SPED Strategies is the sole creator of the SPED analysis and progress monitoring tool and corresponding district coaching support. The methodology and training involved with this tool continues to evolve as we develop customized experiences for our partners. The tool provides school systems with critical information about the performance and progress of students with disabilities and strategies for improving outcomes.”

Jamie Kelly, supervisor of special education for the Sabine Parish School Board, also provided a Nov. 8, 2021, but which seemed to approach the sole source issue from a different perspective. In her letter she said SPED Strategies was the only company available to come to the parish and “provide direct services to the staff and hold parent meetings when needed.”

Not so, said a spokesman for a consulting firm that he said provides “the same and additional” services. “Many companies provide these services. I don’t see anything that is proprietary on their (SPED Strategies) website.

“Sole source is very difficult to achieve as a consulting firm,” he added. “Even the national consulting firms are not sole source.”

A month after Garrett was appointed superintendent of SSD, Wong resigned at DOE.