Louisiana Voice

When I woke up Friday morning, it was 2012 all over again.

The only things missing were Bobby Jindal his own self, along with cow chip-kicking political guru Timmy Teepell, and former Commissioner of Administration Kristy Nichols.

But there it was, in black and white in Friday’s Baton Rouge Advocate: the ghost of nightmares past in a pious pose, being prayed over by State Rep. Rick Edmonds (R-Baton Rouge), who also is an outreach pastor and vice president of Louisiana’s Family Forum, and Ben Clapper, executive director of Louisiana Right to Life.

The event was a statewide pro-life demonstration and Liz was there as the Louisiana Attorney General’s Office’s Solicitor General prior to her unsuccessful defense of the state’s anti-abortion law before the U.S. Supreme Court.

That rally was in January 2020 and the Supreme Court’s 5-4 decision came the following June but now Lizzie’s back in full campaign mode – that is, so long as her boss, AG Jeff Landry opts for promotion to the fourth-floor suite across the Capitol Lake in the 2023 gubernatorial election.

That was the gist of The Advocate’s story last Friday. If Landry runs for governor as expected, Murrill intends to run for her boss’s job as the top legal mind (and I use that term ever-so-loosely) in the state. Actually, I prefer the term I heard used by an old friend from my Ruston Daily Leader reporting days, former Ruston City Council attorney Hale Walker, who somewhat cynically referred to the attorney general as “just another lawyer.”

But Landry as governor? Liz Murrill as AG? Folks, we’re looking at Jindal 2.0. (Actually, with the political baggage that Landry is totin’ around, I don’t think there’s a chance in hell he can get elected governor or possibly even reelected AG.)

Be that as it may, Murrill definitely has her sights set on bigger and better things. And why not? Her career track record is reflective of one who is never satisfied with the status quo. And while there’s nothing wrong with that – who, after all, wouldn’t want their career to progress? – it’s interesting to see WHERE SHE’S BEEN to get an idea of where she would probably like to go, and to consider the possible obstacles in her path.

Let’s go back to Oct. 1, 2012. That’s the date that Jindal named Nichols as his Commissioner of Administration. Murrill, meanwhile, worked in the governor’s office from November 2008 and served for 2 ½ years as Jindal’s Deputy Executive Counsel before she was elevated to Executive Counsel, which is the chief legal advisor to the governor.

When Nichols was appointed Commissioner of Administration, she brought Murrill over a month later, in November 2012, as Executive Counsel to the Commissioner, where she remained for two years.

While working for Nichols, Murrill became embroiled in a difference of interpretation of regulations by then Attorney General Buddy Caldwell and then-State Rep. John Bel Edwards when the Jindal administration gutted the Office of Group Benefits’ reserve fund. Through all the testimony during legislative committee hearings, Murrill was caught on camera as she continually exchanged TEXT MESSAGES with someone, probably some staffer in the governor’s office.

She left the commissioner’s office soon after that hearing and bounced around several jobs before joining Landry’s office in January 2017.

Back in 2009, while employed in Jindal’s office, Murrill became involved in a DISPUTE with LouisianaVoice over the release of public records related to the LSU Board of Supervisors’ decision to cut health care spending and to privatize state hospitals. Shelby McKenzie, an attorney retained by LSU, said that Murrill had advised him that the board should invoke the so-called “deliberative process” in order to deny the release of the records.

The deliberative process gambit is a loose interpretation by which public officials, afraid of any light being shone on what they’re doing, may refuse to allow the public to see what they’re doing or to understand the motivations behind their actions.

But let’s re-examine the employment of Shelby McKenzie in this particular issue.

Shelby was an attorney with the Baton Rouge law firm Taylor Porter at the time he gave that advice to the LSU Board. He currently serves OF COUNSEL to the firm and is an adjunct professor of law at the LSU Law Center and has taught Insurance Law there since 1971.

Likewise, one JOHN P. MURRILL is currently a partner at Taylor Porter and serves on the firm’s Executive Committee. He is married to Liz Murrill.

Taylor Porter currently has at least a dozen contracts with the State of Louisiana totaling more than $3 million and until earlier this year, was the legal counsel for LSU. Such legal contracts with state agencies are generally issued by the Attorney General’s Office with the concurrence of the agency to be represented.

State law prohibits any person holding at least a 25 percent ownership in an entity from doing business with an agency that employs an immediate family member. It’s highly doubtful that John Murrill is a 25 percent stakeholder in a large firm such as Taylor Porter, which would allow the firm to legally contract with the state.

Still…

Cory Porter is a candidate for New Iberia city marshal in the Nov. 13 election.

Problem is, he has CRS Syndrome. Cleaning it up just a bit, CRS means Can’t Remember Stuff.

In June 2019, less than a year after the New Iberia Police Department was reactivated, Porter was the subject of a complaint that resulted in a 17-page report that found Porter guilty of departmental policy violations of professional conduct and abuse of power while clearing him of intimidation and harassment charges.

It seems that Porter was taking online courses with Central Christian College, though it’s unclear if that was Central Christian College of Kansas of Central Christian College of the Bible in Missouri of even some other Central Christian College.

Either way, it just seems sort of wrong on several levels that Porter would seek help from fellow officers in writing essays, doing other homework assignments and taking exams in his name – at any Christian college. That’s generally considered cheating and only allowed at big-time college football programs where such activity is the norm.

But the complaint went a little further in asserting that in addition to soliciting the writing and testing skills of the other officers, who just happened to be female, Porter attempted to get one such officer, Det. Coquina Mitchell to attend a New Orleans Saints game with him. Mitchell said when she informed him that she didn’t date fellow officers, Porter told her he had fathered a child with another co-worker.

She said he also once demanded to know why she didn’t answer her home phone on one occasion when he called her and that he drove slowly past her house several times. On still another occasion, she said he was assisting with a traffic stop when Porter appeared at the scene and demanded that she leave with him because he had a class assignment due that night that she needed to finish.

Several other officers were interviewed in the internal investigation and, for the most part, corroborated Mitchell’s story – particularly the story of his demanding that she leave the scene of a traffic stop in order to complete his class assignment.

Porter, when interviewed by Capt. Seth Pellerin, denied asking her to attend the Saints game, contending that he had never even been to a Saints game. He also denied seeking a relationship with Mitchell and said he never asked Mitchell to help him with school work but that she volunteered her assistance.

Porter said he did drive in front of Mitchell’s house but it was for the purpose of surveilling a burglary suspect in the neighborhood.

He was unable to remember, however, just when she began her help although he did remember installing his class program on her computer. Nor did he remember ever phoning her or asking help on assignments from clerk Kristen Broussard even though Broussard had computer screen printouts of work she’d done for him. Porter also could not recall arriving at the traffic stop and demanding that Mitchell leave with him.

“I told Capt. Porter that this was a huge conflict of interest, having a subordinate of his do his online college courses,” Pellerin wrote in his June 21 report.  “Capt. Porter stated that he did not realize it at the time (probably couldn’t remember the regulations) but can see it now. Capt. Porter sated in all his years in law enforcement he has only tried to help people, including his co-workers.”

In his conclusion, Pellerin wrote, “After reviewing all the documentation and interviews, the alleged policy violations against Capt. Corey Porter are sustained. Capt. Porter violated New Iberia Police Department General Order 113 Professional Conduct and New Iberia Police Department General Order 115 Abuse of Power. After reading the policies to Capt. Porter, I asked him if he admits to violating the above-mentioned policies and he said yes.”

Pellerin wrote that he found no evidence that indicated Porter had romantic feelings for Mitchell. Nor did he feel that Porter was seeking retribution against Mitchell.

The Internal Affairs report became public during a court procedure during which Porter was impeached as a witness, a source told LouisianaVoice.

Nor is Porter the only candidate with a certain amount of political baggage.

During a recent forum, candidate Brett Lang was asked about his service with the Iberia Sheriff’s Office, and particularly whether or not the rumors floating around about him being on the Brady List were true.

The Brady List is part of the Brady Disclosure Doctrine, which requires that the prosecution disclose any and all evidence that is favorable to the defendant, also known as exculpatory evidence. The Brady List is a list kept by DAs containing the names of law enforcement officers who are known to have lied, coerced, mislead or withheld information during their scope of duty as a police officer.

The prosecution must make the defense aware if a particular officer played any part in the arrest investigation, handling of evidence etc. of the defendant’s case. This essentially means that any officer who is on the Brady List has no standing in court. The officer, for lack of a better term, is impeached. Though there may be no legal charges against them, his testimony is not tainted.

“As a former police officer, I know that a Law Enforcement Officer’s most important weapon is his word,” said an observer. “It is extremely concerning that Mr. Lang admitted to being on the Brady List. He also mentioned at the same meeting that he would have himself removed from the list, which, as far as I know, cannot be done, nor has he ever re-addressed being removed to by knowledge.”

There are three candidates for the Iberia City Marshal’s office: Porter, a Democrat; Lang, No Party, and Dickie Fremin, a Republican.

How twisted are our priorities that a college football coach, surrounded on Saturdays by 85 behemoth-like scholarship football players we affectionately refer to as student-athletes, must still have the protective services of a Louisiana State Trooper when vulnerable female students must live unprotected and in fear of those very coaches, players, and other sexual predators?

How warped have our sensibilities become that coaches who ignore – or worse, condone or even participate in – sexual harassment/assault are paid huge settlement packages when – and if – they finally leave while those who attempt to protect the university’s integrity are unceremoniously shown the door?

How discouraging is it for faculty members to devote themselves to the task of encouraging and challenging students and to conduct meaningful research when hiring and firing is done on a whim and on the basis not of merit but of political expediency?

How embarrassing is it that in 2019, the LSU Athletic Department showcased its brand-spanking-new facilities for its pampered (and from all indications, shielded) players that included a players’ lounge and a locker room that includes, of all things, sleeping pods for each individual player (remember: they’re 85 scholarship players) all for the bargain price of $28 million – while at the same time, the rest of the campus has a $510 million backlog in maintenance and renovation?

How disgraceful is it that the LSU Board of Supervisors, the university’s governing board, is comprised for the most part of appointed political hacks who owe their positions of power to their fealty to the state’s sitting governor and not necessarily to the more noble calling of academic excellence – and acts accordingly?

Let’s concentrate on that last question because anything concerning LSU, be it academics, physical plant, athletics or administration, begins and ends with the Board of Supervisors. It’s comprised of an appointed group of individuals who, for the most part, are contributors to the governor’s campaign. “For the most part” must be said because some members are holdovers from the previous governor and are not necessarily campaign contributors to the current governor.

But the board is about as political as the word political can be defined. Members receive coveted perks and privileges over and above the status that goes with sitting on the governing board, micromanaging every aspect of one of the nation’s leading universities. In Louisiana, the only board that even comes close is the so-called Louisiana Stadium and Exposition District, which presides over the John A. Alario Sr. Event Center, the Smoothie King Center, the New Orleans Saints Training Facility and of course, the Superdome.

To say that the LSU Board has been a colossal failure in the responsibility of carrying out its duties is to belabor the obvious. It has allowed a culture of toxicity to exist to the extent that female students ARE NOT SAFE anywhere on campus, whether it’s the ATHLETIC DEPARTMENT, the FRENCH DEPARTMENT, or the once prestigious MED SCHOOL.

It took an independent 250-page REPORT, for which the school paid about $100,000, to tell the board what it should have known all along: that it’s handling of its Title IX obligations was ham-handed and smacked of a clumsy attempt at a coverup. The school’s handling of sexual harassment, and sexual abuse cases was apparently so mishandled that the board belatedly saw fit to FIRE its long-time legal firm and replace it with LEGAL COUNSEL who couldn’t even defend crosstown Southern University in a public records case.

Somehow, everyone missed – or ignored – the EMBEZZLEMENT of half-a-million dollars from a Baton Rouge children’s medical foundation, $180,000 of which somehow found its way into the hands of the father of LSU offensive lineman Vadal Alexander

Even reports of incompetence and nepotism of the HEALTH SCIENCES CENTER in New Orleans were inexcusably ignored.

And of course, the totally predictable action was to PUNISH  the whistleblower (as long as it wasn’t a coach blowing a whistle at practice) or FIRE  anyone who might in any way be considered an EMBARRASSMENT to the university, who might point out a LEGAL LIABILITY, or who might pose a THREAT to grant funding from say, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

When that $100,000 report on Title IX violations came out, though, the university administration apparently felt it was obligated to take some form of proactive measures. Accordingly, two “high-ranking” athletic department officials were SUSPENDED  – for 30 and 21 days – for their failure to act when informed of sexual misconduct.  Several legislators, predictably, said that punishment was sufficient.

The events in the LSU athletic department, besides leading to the dismissal of LES MILES, has had a ripple effect beyond the Baton Rouge campus. At the University of Kansas, where Miles landed, he was forced out there as well, along with the athletic director who hired him and former LSU President F. King Alexander was likewise shown the door at Oregon State.

The focus then returned to LSU (if, indeed, it ever left). Momentarily distracted by the glitter of an undefeated season, the national championship and a box of awards, including the school’s second Heisman Trophy winner, people pushed the investigation to the back burner. But two mediocre seasons that followed 2019 has reignited interest in who knew what and when they knew it and has resulted in a $17 million buyout of Coach Ed Orgeron’s contract.

Writer GLENN GUILBEAU wrote an intriguing story that has to be taken seriously considering all that has occurred. Basically, he asks if that generous buyout might be purchasing Coach O’s silence in lieu of firing him for cause, which would cost LSU and boosters nothing but at the risk of much more dirty laundry being aired that LSU would just as soon remain under the proverbial rug.

If indeed that is the case, those responsible at LSU should be summarily fired and any board members who are complicit should immediately resign. Nothing short of a total cleansing is acceptable. A truth enema, as it were, is unequivocally essential.

And not to kick a man when he’s down, but there are the reports of past transgressions by Orgeron that should have been a red flag. In 1982, when he a defensive line coach with the Miami Hurricanes, Orgeron got in a fight in a Baton Rouge bar and was subsequently granted a “voluntary” LEAVE OF ABSENCE by the team for “personal reasons.” Nine years later, in 1991, apparently back in good graces with the team, a Miami-Dade County woman filed a RESTRAINING ORDER against Orgeron, accusing him of repeated violence against her.

It is no longer possible to ignore the fact that there are serious problems throughout Louisiana’s flagship university system and that those problems run deep and have become so entrenched that a sleazy culture of protectionism has been allowed to flourish for a select few at the expense of allowing those of lesser influence and fewer connections to become scapegoats.

And everything about that is wrong.

Everything.

The Washington Post had an interesting STORY on Saturday. It seems a fat cat Trump donor who helped finance the Jan. 6 insurrection (have you noticed the Repugnantcans are demanding that we cease calling it an insurrection?) also gave $150,000 to the nonprofit arm of the Repugnantcan Attorneys General Association (RAGA).

Julie Jenkins Fancelli, daughter of the Publix grocery story chain founder, gave the funds to the organization’s Rule of Law Defense Fund (RLDF) on Dec. 29, 2020.

So what, you say? Well, that was just eight days before the Jan. 6 insurgency (is that a better word for it?). Turns out the money was used to pay for a robocall urging a march on the U.S. Capitol in an effort to “call on Congress to stop the steal.”

Records obtained by The Post show that Fancelli also gave $300,000 to Women for America First, the “Stop the Steal” organization that actually obtained the permit for the Jan. 6 riot stoked by Donald Trump shortly before the event.

Both of Fancelli’s contributions were facilitated by Caroline Wren, a Repugnantcan fundraiser who served as the “event planner.” Right wing-nut/talk show host/conspiracy promoter Alex Jones has said the Jan. 6 “rally” (well, they’ve really cleaned it up, haven’t they?) cost in the neighborhood of half-a-million dollars and that “a donor” paid for 80 percent of the cost.

Nearly two months earlier (On Nov. 9, to be exact, the week after the presidential election), RAGA asked the U.S. Supreme Court to INVALIDATE the Pennsylvania ballots. Guess who was the sitting chair of RAGA at the time?

One JEFFREY MARTIN LANDRY, extinguished attorney general for the gret stet of Looziana. And of course, that effort, like the 62 attempts that followed in courtrooms all across the U.S. FELL FLAT as the Repugnantcans, led by the likes of Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell were simply failed to prove a single instance of widespread voter fraud.

Landry remains among the RAGA LEADERSHIP even though his term as chairman has expired and naturally, he was just “ OUTRAGED” as all get-out at the violence that erupted during the peaceful demonstration by all those tourists, violence instigated, no doubt, by all those nasty infiltrating Antifa types.

On Jan. 9, just three days after that Capitol “tour,” LouisianaVoice published a story which revealed that Landry’s fingerprints were “all over” those robocalls inviting all those patriotic Americans to the U.S. Capitol to support their wronged leader. To review that story, click HERE

Keep in mind, if you will, that this man has aspirations to become Louisiana’s governor. If you want to elect Jindal 2.0, he’s your man. In baseball parlance, he consistently takes his eye off the ball and that’s the reason he has struck out so often.

He doesn’t even know the DIFFERENCE between Jefferson and Orleans parishes.

While lamenting the existence of so-called sanctuary cities, he busied himself in a side-business of providing IMPORTED WORKERS with the assistance of a convicted felon and somehow saw the logic in putting a well-heeled campaign contributor on the attorney general’s office PAYROLL.

He punted on the investigation into malfeasance in the 4^th Judicial District Court in Monroe and likewise bailed on the investigation of the rapes inside the Union Parish jail.

He has stood by and done nothing about the taxi scam being condoned by ICE whereby detainees are forced to hire taxis to take them to bus stations and airports when ICE’s own regulation stipulate that they are to be provided transportation if they’re not within walking distance.

He has likewise done nothing about the repeated violations of basic human rights by private prisons in Louisiana.

He has remained silent as State Police run roughshod over basic citizen rights – even to the point of killing one unarmed motorist who had no drugs or alcohol in his system or in his vehicle.

He has been AWOL in any case of police overreach while keeping a high profile in his never-ending battles with Gov. John Bel Edwards. Inexplicably, he has defied the governor in attempts to protect Louisiana citizens with a mask mandate during the coronavirus pandemic – a mandate that actually had the state at the top of the list of states with favorable trends in the pandemic’s infection rate.

But he had not the slightest hesitation in interjecting himself into a foolish, futile effort to upset the election of the president of the United States when 63 separate courts subsequently ruled there was no basis to the claims of fraud.

Louisiana does not need someone who ignores the rule of law as our next governor. We also don’t need him to continue in the office of attorney general. He sadly conjures up images that classic Earl Long dig at Gremillion.

In retrospect, LSU got a bargain when it fired basketball coach Johnny Jones.

He only got $750,000 in severance pay.

Les Miles got twice that – $1.5 million – to go away and he got that much even after his departure under the cloud of the Title IX scandal that enveloped the LSU athletic program, even to the point of his being accused of sexual impropriety.

And that awful hire of Bo Pelini who was supposed to resurrect the Tigers’ four-man defensive front. But Pelini came with baggage and he and head coach Ed Orgeron were the personification of oil and water – they just didn’t mix – and LSU’s defense averaged surrendering 429 yards per game, fourth-worst among FBS teams.

The answer, of course, was to write another check. In this case Pelini got $4 million to make an early departure. Between Pelini, offensive coordinator Matt Canada and passing game coordinator Scott Linehan, who also were asked to exit, LSU cut checks totaling $7 million.

Now comes word that LSU, less than two years removed from a national championship from one of the best teams ever assembled and after giving Orgeron a nice raise and a contract extension, will now pay “Coach O” $16.949 million (oh, hell, just say $17 mil and be done with it) to vacate the premises at the end of the 2021 season.

The signs were there all the time that Orgeron was a problem just waiting to erupt. There was that restraining order from a woman in Miami during his time with the Hurricanes, his altercation at a bar in Baton Rouge as a visiting coach, his reported hell-raising drinking problems early in his career, and the unconfirmed story of his habit of cutting across a neighbor’s lawn in his pickup truck when he was head coach at the University of Mississippi. One entrenched at LSU, there was his divorce and later, that photo of him and a girlfriend in bed, all capped off by his mishandling of reports of sexual assaults by his players.

But then, there was that miracle of 2019 that managed to gloss over all those personal and professional warts only to be followed by failures that resulted in the blunt reminder of those shortcomings. Does anyone else see a parallel with a guy named Trump here?

So, now, in addition to forking out $17 million to bid adieu to the gravely-voiced Orgeron, the school will have to come up with another huge multi-year cash outlay to entice some other coach to Baton Rouge and Canes Chicken is going to have to shell out a few thousand to change all its billboards that currently tout “Coach O” in favor of the newcomer.

You’d never know things were tight economically around Baton Rouge what with the payout to Orgeron, that eight-year, $23.6 million contract for Kim Mulkey and the paltry $6.5 million, five-year contract for incoming baseball coach Jay Johnson.

Well, you wouldn’t know things were tight unless you visited other parts of the LSU campus, beginning with the school’s library where employees with offices in the basement know to wear rain boots during heavy rainfall because the water drips through the ceiling lights and pools around their feet and shelves on the lower floor are covered in plastic sheeting to protect microfilm and ancient government texts from the drips and floor tiles have been replaced with sheets of plywood.

It was estimated in 2016 that LSU had a $510 million BACKLOG  of renovation and improvement projects on its Baton Rouge campus. By 2019, that figure had swollen to $720 MILLION.

That same year, LSU opened an all-new, ultra-modern $28 million football OPERATIONS BUILDING  – complete with sleeping pods for those poor jocks. And yes, I’m aware it was financed with private funding, which says a lot about just what all those LSU supporters support.

Across all of Louisiana’s four- and two-year public schools, the total backlog on deferred maintenance ranges from $1.5 billion to $2 billion. The projects waiting for funding include roof replacements, air conditioning and heating unit repairs, upgrades to make buildings accessible to the disabled and other improvements associated with the wear and tear of decades-old facilities.

Public higher education institutions saw their state aid slashed by 55 percent during former Gov. Bobby Jindal’s tenure. And although tuition and fee increases can be used to plug operating budgets at many schools like LSU, campuses are struggling to deal with their growing lists of renovation and infrastructure needs as historic buildings continue to age without funds to maintain them.

Over the past five years, the Board of Regents reports that only $4.5 million has been allocated for deferred maintenance work at higher education facilities.

But there’s no shortage of money to hire coaches and pay them top-tier money and then shell out mega-bucks to make them go away when they don’t meet expectations.

And for good measure, there’s also sufficient funds available to build the Taj Mahal of facilities to ensure that the athletes will continue to be pampered, no matter who occupies the head coach’s office.