Louisiana Voice

Sharon Black started out as an aide working for the Louisiana Legislature but she had the looks and the smarts needed to advance her career. All she needed was an opportunity.

It came when she found herself catering to the more basic “needs” of legislators and lobbyists who took notice of her striking beauty and captivating personality. Seeing a growing demand for her services, she recruited others, professional women like herself and college students, who shared her ambitions and tastes for the finer things in life. In time, she found herself being asked to use her discretion to handle matters that had nothing to do with legislation. Men of power took her into their confidence with sensitive documents. Pillow talk from Louisiana’s movers and shakers provided her with the leverage needed to expand her operation into other Southern states.

Then her world is shattered. Arrested for running a multi-state prostitution ring, she suddenly becomes a major liability. While the news media speculates about a “black book” containing the names of her clients, she harbors a much deeper and infinitely more damaging secret: a computer flash drive containing incriminating documents intended as insurance but in a cruel twist of fate, that now only serve as her death warrant. But first, she must get it into hands she can trust.

Desperate, she sends a message from her jail cell to reporter Dylan Bienvenu, the only person she knows won’t betray her. But she only succeeds in placing a target on Dylan’s back as he is hunted by unknown members of a shadowy cartel who want him dead in an adventure that takes him on chases through Baton Rouge, Denham Springs and Madisonville. Along the way, he forms a bond with Sharon’s attorney, J. Harley Pendergast, III, and the two join forces in their quest to find and destroy a major criminal enterprise. In so doing, they encounter bombings, beatings, kidnappings and grand juries as they race to stay one step ahead of their pursuers.

Bordello on the Bayou is my latest book and this is your first opportunity to purchase it. It’s my first fiction story to be published as a physical book (I have two e-books that have never been published in hard print). All my other books are non-fiction.

Bordello on the Bayou is a novel I’ve had kicking around in my head for several years and I finally got around to committing it to paper. A few close friends have read the manuscript and the feedback I’ve received from them has been positive thus far. (But then they are my friends and probably just don’t want to hurt my feelings.)

The price of the book is $30 and you may order your signed copy by clicking on the yellow

button in the column to the upper right of this post or you may send a check for $30 to LouisianaVoice, P.O. Box 922, Denham Springs, LA. 70727.

Five dollars from each order will be used to purchase food for the Baton Rouge Food Bank.

Get your order in today so we can get contributions to the Food Bank before Christmas!

As always, thank you for your support of LouisianaVoice.

–Tom Aswell

About this time last year, when Joe Burrow became the second LSU player to win the Heisman Trophy, he gave an emotional acceptance speech during which he took the time to call attention to the needs of the more unfortunate among us, particularly those in his hometown of Athens, Ohio.

Americans responded to his appeal and contributions as nearly half-a-million dollars in donations poured into food banks in Athens and across the country.

And that was before anyone ever heard of a coronavirus pandemic. It was before people began losing their jobs because of the pandemic shutdown. It was before eviction notices started going out to those who couldn’t make rent or mortgage payments because of the massive layoffs, before parents started going hungry so their kids could eat.

Today, the need is far greater.

People are hurting. Congress, typically, is dragging its feet, unable to put together a stimulus package even though it for damn sure was able to get up off its collective backside long enough to push through a Supreme Court nominee.

But enough about the politics of a suffering nation. I want to talk about something far more important than some politician who couldn’t care less about the plight of average Americans unless they contribute to a reelection campaign.

I was in Rouses Market on Juban Road in Denham Springs earlier this week. Near the checkout I noticed stacks of filled paper bags. I walked over and saw that they were bags for the Food Bank. I picked one up and found it to be quite heavy. What the heck, I thought, I can afford a bag of food for someone. Judging by its weight, I figured it would be $10 or $15.

It was $5. Five bucks. I went back and got a second bag.

When I held my last fundraiser for LouisianaVoice, I made it a point to ask for contributions only from those who could afford it. Unlike certain televangelists, I would never ask anyone to take out a loan in order to support my plea for donations.

Now, I’m asking again – but not for me. I’m asking those of you who, like me, are fortunate enough to have not had your income stream interrupted, those who can afford it, to do it for your neighbor, for your relative, and yes, for a stranger you’ve never met and probably never will. And do it for yourself. Someone once said give ’til it hurts. I say give ’til it feels good.

And don’t do it just at Christmas. Every time you go to the store, pick up one of those bags and drop it in your cart. It’s five bucks, folks. Five bucks. You spend more than that on snacks or beer or a cute decoration. But people are hungry.

Put that snack back on the shelf. Forget that televangelist. Forget Donald Trump’s con game. Do something that actually helps the less fortunate among us. Purchase a food bag or make a donation directly to the Food Bank.

It’s five bucks.

To paraphrase Marcellus in Shakespeare’s Hamlet, something is rotten in the Parish of St. Landry.

So rotten, in fact, that even the otherwise moribund, impotent, lifeless Louisiana Board of Ethics found it necessary to actually recommend that the Ethics Adjudicatory Board (gasp) take disciplinary action against an individual found to be in violation of the state’s “gold standard of ethics” as set forth by Bobby Jindal more than a decade ago.

How rotten?

Try $336,407 worth of rotten.

Try a member of the LSU Board of Supervisors rotten.

Or could it be let’s try to embarrass Gov. John Bel Edwards rotten?

Here are the sordid details.

Patrick C. Morrow, Sr., a founding partner of the Opelousas law firm Morrow, Morrow, Ryan, and Bassett, was appointed on Jan. 5, 2012, as a member of the Opelousas General Health System Board of Trustees and served in that capacity until his resignation on July 15, 2020.

Morrow is the sole owner and operator of Patrick Morrow, a Professional Law Corporation (PMPLC). PMPLC, on the other hand, is a 25 percent partner of the law firm, Morrow, Morrow, Ryan and Bassett, A Louisiana Partnership (MMRB).

Morrow is the managing general partner of MMRB. All “significant” decisions are made by a vote of the four partners, the ethics board said in its ruling.

On Aug. 17, 2016, the Opelousas General Hospital Authority, a public trust doing business as Opelousas General Health Systems (OGHS), entered into an attorney representation agreement with MMRB whereby MMRB agreed to represent OGHS in a class action lawsuit against Blue Cross Blue Shield of Louisiana.

Morrow executed that agreement on behalf of MMRB on Aug. 26, 2016, and a petition, signed by Morrow, was filed by OGHS’s behalf by MMRB.

The agreement provided for compensation of MMRB in exchange for the law firm’s services as OGHS’s legal counsel in the class action litigation. As a 25 percent partner in MMRB, PMPLC would conceivably receive 25 percent of the compensation received by MMRB.

As sole owner of PMPLC, Morrow would thereby have an interest in the fees earned by PMPLC.

There are two active lawsuits in which OGHS is a plaintiff. The first is the Blue Cross litigation and the second is an Opioids product liability class action lawsuit. Morrow and MMRB filed a notice of withdrawal as counsel in the opioid litigation on June 2 of this year, about six weeks prior to Morrow’s resignation as a member of the OGHS Board of Trustees.

Morrow, PMPLC, and/or MMRB received $336,407 IN compensation as a result of the legal services that were provided to OGHS – $40,000 ON Sept. 26, 2016; $202,607 on Jan. 2, 2018, and $93,800 on April 2, 2018.

In its’ ruling, the ethics board said:

• R.S. 1111(C)(2)(d) (sic) provides that no public servant and no legal entity in which the public servant exercises control or owns an interest of more than 25 percent shall receive anything of economic value for or in consideration of services rendered, or to be rendered, to or for any person during his public service unless such services are neither preformed (sic) nor compensated by any person from whom such public servant would be prohibited by (statute).
• R.S. 42:1115(A)(1) prohibits a public servant from soliciting or accepting, directly or indirectly, any thing (sic) of economic value as a gift or gratuity from any person or from any officer, director, agent, or employee of such person, if such public servant knows or reasonably should know that such person has or is seeking to have a contractual, business, or financial relationship with the public servant’s agency.

“Based on the foregoing facts,” the ethics board said, “Mr. Morrow violated R.S. 42:1111(C)(2)(d) by virtue of his receipt of a thing of economic value for services rendered to PMPLC/MMRB at a time when he served as a member of OGHS, and at a time when MMRB had a contractual, business, or financial relationship with OGHS.”

• The board requested that the Ethics Adjudicatory Board:
• Conduct a hearing on the foregoing charge;
• Determine that Patrick C. Morrow, Sr. violated (state statutes), and

Assess the appropriate penalties in accordance with the recommendation of the board to be submitted during a public hearing “or at another time deemed appropriate by the Ethics Adjudicatory Board.”

Granted, on the surface, things do look somewhat suspect from the standpoint of existing state ethics laws.

But why now? Why this particular individual?

But may have noticed that bold-faced “more than” earlier.

That might well be a technicality on which Morrow may hang his defense. He is, after all, only a 25 percent partner in MMRB, not “more than” 25 percent, as the law specifies as being the bar. It’s a fine point, but one worth attention going forward.

It wasn’t too many years ago that this same ethics board let three BOARD OF ELEMENTARY and SECONDARY EDUCATION (BESE) members and the sister of the BESE president off the hook for similar activity.

Jay Guillot, a board member from Ruston, was given the green light with the awarding of a $16 million state contract to HGA, a company in which he had/has a major (partnership) stake.

Then-BESE President Chas Roemer consistently voted on matters concerning charter schools despite his sister, CAROLINE ROEMER SHIRLEY’S simultaneously serving as executive director of the Louisiana Association of Public Charter Schools.

And then there’s BESE member KIRA ORANGE-JONES, who served as executive director for Teach for America (TFA), which simultaneously had contracts with the Louisiana Department of Education.

BESE member Holly Boffy likewise managed an outfit called EdTALENTS in Lafayette. EdTalents contracted with local school districts which were governed and regulated by BESE.

Orange-Jones and Boffy continue to serve on BESE.

Another glaring contradiction by the ethics board which left observers scratching their heads involved former State Police Superintendent Mike Edmonson and that infamous road trip to San Diego via the Grand Canyon and Las Vegas taken by four of Edmonson’s state troopers back in 2016.

In that case the ethics board first ABSOLVED the troopers of wrongdoing – in secret – in April 2018 when it said they were merely following orders from Edmonson. But in August 2019, that same ethics panel CLEARED EDMONSON. And guess who Edmonson’s attorney was in that ethics board hearing? Non other than Gray Sexton, who once headed the board but who now represents clients before his old board.

So, it’s pretty easy to see how the ethics board conveniently overlooked other apparent conflicts before it decided to knuckle down and do its job with Morrow. The question, though, is why, why now and why Morrow?

Could it be that Morrow was singled out because he was appointed to the LSU Board of Supervisors by Gov. Edwards, thus making him an expedient political target?

Or perhaps it’s because of the high-profile status of MMRB with former Federal District Court Judge Richard T. (Ted) Haik’s affiliation with the firm in 2016 as of counsel status?

Whatever the ethics board’s motives, you can bet there’s a back story to all this somewhere that has yet to be told.

Perhaps the Ethics Board should be hauled before a different ethics board, if such a board only existed, for a hearing on its numerous breaches of ethics.

The facts seem to be fairly basic.

Officials at Baton Rouge Community College misappropriated more than a quarter-million dollars in student technology fees to illegally bump the salaries of five employees during fiscal year 2017.

Then-Chancellor Dr. Larissa Littleton-Steib acknowledged as much in a Dec. 13, 2017 letter to Legislative Auditor Daryl Purpera, whose office had verified the misapplication of $260,733 of the funds in its Dec. 27, 2017, AUDIT REPORT.

The letter from Littleton-Steib said that BRCC management “concurs” with the findings and that management “recognizes its responsibility for maintaining compliance” with state law. It further outlined “corrective action” she said would be taken to “mitigate future risk and errors.”

There was no indication as to whether or not the recipients of the illegal salary increases would be required to repay the money.

Purpera’s office had been tipped off by George Thompson in early 2016 of the practice which apparently had been going for several years and which could have ultimately resulted in the misapplication of more than a million dollars between 2012 and 2017.

Thompson was subsequently fired and wife Lisa Thompson have filed a lawsuit in 19^th Judicial District Court in Baton Rouge against the Board of Supervisors of Community and Technical Colleges and Ronald Solomon, Chief Information Officer for BRCC.

Thompson was hired by BRCC as Student Technology Fee Lab Coordinator in April 2008. The Technology Fee Committee Agreement was approved in 2005 and was already in place when he was hired.

That agreement mandated a committee of voting members with students holding the majority of memberships. The original agreement also mandated that it could only be amended upon a vote of at least two-thirds of the members.

In May 2012, Thompson was informed by Vice-Chancellor for Administration Pam Diez that she had drafted a new agreement which was being put in place and which would make the original agreement “less restrictive,” according to Thompson’s petition.

Two months later, in July, Thompson was notified that the Student Technology Department was disbanded and that he would be reporting to Chief Information Officer Ronald Solomon.

In November 2012, Solomon introduced a new agreement which he said was retroactive to Sept. 14, 2012, which reduced the committee’s membership to a student minority status and made Solomon chairperson of the committee despite the Student Government Associations’ never having approved the appointment of Solomon as chairperson.

When Thompson brought up the requirement for a committee meeting to approve any funding and that there had been no committee meetings concerning student the fee disbursements, as required, for the entirety of 2013, Interim Auxiliary Services Director Timothy Johnson “became abusive and cautioned that the money may have been used to fill other budget gaps and warned (Thompson) that questioning discrepancies and the status of the student tech budget was hazardous to (Thompson’s) job security,” Thompson’s lawsuit claims.

The kicker came in the summer of 2014 when Thompson made an electronic submission for “small, routing requisitions” for Solomon’s approval from the fee proceeds and the request was returned as “NSF.”

Thompson then researched the system which revealed “large fee expenditures for ‘compensation of board members,’” the lawsuit says. “Additionally, the system showed that salary items had increased substantially since 2012 although no committee meetings had been called to discuss and approve these items,” it said.

Thompson met with Solomon on Friday, May 8, 2015 to discuss plans for summer school registration and during that meeting, Thompson says he reminded Solomon that there was “potential for legal issues” since BRCC had had no meetings or accountability to the students regarding use of the fee proceeds in more than two years. Thompson says in his lawsuit that Solomon “vowed that students would never be allowed to control the fee proceeds.”

One week later, Solomon escorted Thompson to Human Resources where he was handed his termination notice.

He maintains in his lawsuit that he was subjected to systematic harassment by BRCC administrative personnel after he raised questions about the misuse of the fee funds.

“LA. R.S. 17:3351.1 required an annual accounting of the use of monies derived from the fee and a written plan developed where the students have the opportunity to make recommendations concerning the use of fee proceeds,” his lawsuit said.

To view that statute, click HERE.

The Thompsons are represented by Baton Rouge attorney J. Arthur Smith, III.

Thankfully, Donald Trump’s – and Mitch McConnell’s – ploy of loading up the Supreme Court with Trump appointees hasn’t worked.

Trump’s blatant attempt to overturn the will of the American voters (remember how the Republicans whined that the Democrats were trying to do that during the impeachment proceedings? Funny how short memories can be.) was turned back Friday when the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear that silly suit brought by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton.

It appears to have been Trump’s last gasp effort to thwart the will of the people and now we need only await the outcome of the Electoral College vote on Monday to make Joe Biden’s election official.

For four years, we saw Congress only as Trump’s lapdog instead of serving as checks and balances, as the Constitution intended, against overreach of power. Thank God the Supremes still understand the separation of powers concept.

From my time as a former part time disc jockey at KRUS, a booming 250-watt AM station in Ruston back in my college days, several songs come immediately to mind that I once played on my request show, appropriately called Requestfully Yours, that somehow now seem appropriate.

Roy Orbison’s It’s Over comes immediately to mind. That would be my first dedication to Trump.

Here are a few others:

• The Supremes to Trump: Stop! In the Name of Love!
• Donald Trump to the Supremes: Where Did Our Love Go?
• Trump to the Supremes: Nothing but Heartache
• Trump to the Supremes: My World is Empty without You
• Trump to the Supremes: River Deep, Mountain High
• Trump to the Supremes: Going Down for the Third Time
• Trump to the Supremes: Some Things You Never Get Used To
• America to the Supremes: I Hear A Symphony

Certainly, there are others and you can add your own to this list but I would suggest that Pigmeat Markham’s Here Comes the Judge is just too easy.

On a more serious note, I said HERE on Thursday that there was a question of whether or not Texas even had any legal standing to bring that ridiculous lawsuit against Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Georgia and on Friday, The Supreme Court agreed that none existed.

That made Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, Louisiana AG Jeff Landry and 16 other attorneys general, none of whom were from the four states where the lawsuit was challenging the results of the election, look extremely foolish.

Bigly Extremely.

If one wants to stretch credulity to its breaking point, Paxton’s motives were somewhat understandable: He has spent a large part of his career under indictment for securities fraud; he was recently reported to the FBI by his own deputies for bribery, and the Associated Press has reported his involvement in an extra-marital affair.

Trump can’t help him with his marriage or with any state criminal charges, but if he’s in trouble with the feds, he can throw his loyalist a lifeline before leaving office. To that end, Paxton’s doomed lawsuit could be a signal to Trump that a preemptive presidential pardon before Trump leaves office would be greatly appreciated.

As for the motives of our very own AG and four of our five Republican House members, one can only speculate as to their motives, although political expediency and pandering to their uninformed base would be pretty good guesses.

Of course, Landry is simply a political hack to begin with and he is obviously angling for a shot at the governor’s office in the 2023 election. If he’s successful, he would just be Bobby Jindal 2.0. He would be no more successful as governor than he has been in winning cases as attorney general.

For my money, the best bet for the Republicans in 2023 would be 6^th District Congressman Garret Graves, the only Republican member of the Louisiana delegation with the good sense not to sign onto Paxton’s windmill-tilting lawsuit.

All four of the others JUMPED ON BOARD like they thought they were headed for Disney World. Ralph Abraham (lame duck 5^th District), Steve Scalise (David Duke-dominated 1^st District), Clay Higgins (McCarthyism-tinged 3^rd District) and Mike Johnson (pseudo-family values 4^th District) all joined Paxton’s quixotic quest to overturn the U.S. Constitution.

Their actions take them to the precipice of treason because they were complicit in an effort to strike down the very principle on which a democracy must be based: free elections devoid of intimidation, suppression or threats. To drape their motives in the cloak of patriotism and godliness does nothing to mitigate the felonious intent of their undertaking. Calling themselves patriots does not make them such.

Unsurprisingly, Mike Johnson leaves himself exposed as the ugliest festering boil of the lot: he is supposed to be the family values guy, the one who claims to have “devoted his life and career to fighting for the fundamental freedoms and traditional values that have always been a priority to the people of Louisiana,” according to his WEB PAGE.

But with a pandemic overrunning our hospitals, with people dying in record numbers from the virus, with people losing their jobs and with businesses shutting down, instead of devoting his time and energy to leading the fight for some sort of economic relief for his constituents, he spends his energies on behalf one constituent: Donald J. Trump.

Mike Johnson should recognize and acknowledge the fact that his priorities do not include a man who cheats on his wife, fondles women as if they were his personal chattels, ridicules physically-handicapped people, consorts with murderous dictators, and who, rather than trying to reach some common ground, viciously attacks anyone who dares disagree with him. Instead, Mike Johnson has become part of the problem with a Congress that takes too many breaks (it’s on one right now) even as Americans are going without food, losing their health insurance coverage, and are facing evictions from their homes because of the pandemic.

Instead of striving to help hurting citizens of the 4^th District, Mike Johnson was lamenting the fact that he wasn’t able to sign more Republican House members onto Paxton’s lawsuit because he “ran out of time.”

What happened to his “family values” credo? Doesn’t he realize that “family values” means keeping families together? Doesn’t he know that “family values” includes security, protection of jobs, healthcare and shelter? Apparently, he’s forgotten all that.

Perhaps Mike Johnson should be reminded that the people of the 4^th District, the people of Louisiana, the people of America, are also running out of time.