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DCFS funding slashed, necessitating ‘driveway visits,’ but overworked caseworker is arrested for falsifying records

March 13, 2016 by tomaswell

(You may enlarge the type by clicking on the plus (+) sign above the image and moving the bar at the bottom to the right to read the entire text.)

On Feb. 15, an arrest warrant was issued for a north Louisiana employee of the Louisiana Department of Children and Family Services (DCFS) following an investigation of more than two months by the Office of Inspector General.

Kimberly D. Lee, 49, of Calhoun in Ouachita Parish, subsequently surrendered to authorities and was subjected to the indignity of being booked into East Baton Rouge Parish Prison on Feb. 17 after being accused of filing false reports about mandatory monthly in-home visits with children in foster care.

As is often the case, however, there is much more to this story.

A month earlier, on Jan. 10, LouisianaVoice received a confidential email from a retired DCFS supervisor who revealed an alarming trend in her former agency:

“I served in most programs within the agency, foster care, investigations, and adoptions,” she wrote. “Over my career I witnessed the eight years of (Bobby) Jindal’s ‘improvements.’

“Those ‘improvements’ endanger children’s lives daily. The blight is spread from the Secretary to the lowliest clerical worker in the agency. People are overworked and underpaid but it’s not just that. People are so distraught from the unrelenting stress that children are in danger. Add to that the inexperience of most front line workers and their supervisors’ inability to properly train new staff.”

She then dropped a bombshell that should serve as a wake-up call to everyone who cares or pretends to care about the welfare of children—from Gov. John Bel Edwards down to the most obscure freshman legislator:

“In the Shreveport Region, the regional administrator (recently) told workers that they may make ‘drive-by’ visits to foster homes, which means talking to the foster parents in their driveway. Policy says that workers will see both the child and the foster parent in the home, interviewing each separately (emphasis added). A lot of abuse goes on in foster homes. Some foster families are truly doing the best they can but they need counseling and guidance from their workers. The regional administrator’s answer to that one? Have the foster parent call their home development worker—another person who can’t get her job done now.”

She wrote that she had heard of two separate incidents “where a child new to foster care was taken to a foster home and left without paperwork, without contact information for the person in charge of the case and without knowing even the child’s name.”

Moreover, she said, vehicles used in the Shreveport Region “are old, run-down, and repairs are not allowed. The last time new tires were bought was in 2014. When one (of the vehicles) breaks down, they just tow it away. No replacement is ordered.”

Could those factors have pushed Lee to fudge on her reports? Did the actions attributed to her constitute payroll fraud or did budgetary cuts force her into cutting corners in order to keep up with an ever-increasing caseload? Lee says yes to the latter, that she was told by supervisors to get things done, “no matter what.” Child welfare experts said her actions and arrest shone a needed light on problems at DCFS: low morale, high turnover, fewer workers handing greater numbers of caseloads, and increasing numbers of children entering foster care.

http://theadvocate.com/news/14909284-31/louisianas-child-protection-system-understaffed-and-overburdened-after-years-of-cuts-child-advocates

To find our own answers, LouisianaVoice turned to a document published on Jan. 5 of this year by the Child Welfare Policy and Practice Group of Montgomery, Alabama.

The 77-page report, entitled A Review of Child Welfare, the Louisiana Department of Children and Family Services, points to:

  • A growing turnover rate for DCFS over the past three years from 19.32 percent in calendar year 2012 to 24.26 percent in 2014;
  • A 33 percent reduction in the number of agency employees to respond to abuse reports;
  • A 27 percent cut in funding since fiscal 2009, Bobby Jindal’s first year in office;
  • An increase in the number of foster homes of 5 percent;
  • An increase of 120.5 percent in the number of valid substance exposed newborns, from 557 to 1,330;
  • A trend beginning in 2011 that shows 4,077 children entered foster care but only 3,767 exited in 2015;
  • A 19 percent decrease in the number of child welfare staff positions filled statewide from 1,389 in 2009 to 1,125 in 2015.
  • Of the 764 caseworkers, 291, or 38 percent had two years’ experience or less and 444 (58 percent) had five years or less experience.

Moreover, figures provided by the Department of Civil Service showed that of the agency’s 3,400 employees, 44.5 percent made less than $40,000 a year and 19 percent earned less than $30,000.

In 2014 (the latest year for which figures are available), the median income for Louisiana for a single-person household was $42,406, fourth-lowest in the nation, as compared to the national single-person median income of $53,657.

http://www.advisorperspectives.com/dshort/updates/Household-Incomes-by-State.php

“The stresses within the system are at risk of causing poorer outcomes for some children and families,” the report says in its executive summary. “…Recent falling outcome trends in some of the areas that have been an agency strength in the past are early warnings of future challengers.”

Despite years of budgetary cuts under the Jindal administration, Louisiana has maintained “a high level of performance in achieving permanency for children in past years and currently is ranked first among states in adoption performance,” the report said.

The budget cuts, however, “have negatively affected the work force, service providers, organizational capacity and increasingly risk significantly affecting child and family outcomes” which has produced a front-line workforce environment “constrained by high caseload, much of which is caused by high turnover and increasing administrative duties and barriers that compromise time spent with children and families.”

And it is that threat to “compromise time spent with children and families” that brings us back to the case of Kimberly Lee and to the email LouisianaVoice received from the retired DCFS supervisor who cited the directive for caseworkers to make “drive-by” visits to foster homes, leaving children with foster homes with no paperwork, contact information or without even knowing the children’s names, and of the state vehicles in disrepair.

It’s small wonder then, in a story about how Jindal wrecked the Louisiana economy, reporter Alan Pyke quoted DCFS Secretary Marketa Garner-Walters as telling the Washington Post if lawmakers can’t resolve the current budget crisis, many Louisiana state agencies will see budget cuts of 60 percent. http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2016/03/07/3757416/jindal-louisiana-budget-crisis/

As ample illustration of Bobby Jindal’s commitment to social programs for the poor and sick, remember he yanked $4.5 million from the developmentally disadvantaged in 2014 and gave it to a Indy-type racetrack in Jefferson Parish run by a member of the Chouest family, one of the richest families in Louisiana—but a generous donor to Jindal’s gubernatorial campaigns and a $1 million contributor to his super PAC for his silly presidential run.

Well, thanks to the havoc wreaked by Jindal and his Commissioner of Administration Kristy Nichols, the legislature did find it necessary to pass the Nichols’ penny tax (not original with us but the contribution of one of our readers who requested anonymity) to help offset the $900 million-plus deficit facing the state just through the end of the current fiscal year which ends on June 30.

Were legislators successful? Not if you listen to Tyler Bridges, one of the more knowledgeable reporters on the Baton Rouge Advocate staff. “Legislators were neither willing to cut spending enough, nor raise taxes enough nor eliminate the long list of tax breaks that favor one politically connected business or industry over another,” he wrote in Sunday’s Advocate (emphasis added). http://theadvocate.com/news/15167974-77/a-louisiana-legislature-that-ducked-tough-budget-decisions-during-its-special-meeting-convenes-again

As is all too typical, most of the real “legislation” was done in the flurry of activity leading up the final hectic minutes of the special session, leaving even legislators to question what they had accomplished. In military parlance, it would be called a cluster—.

But that should be understandable. After all, 43, or fully 30 percent of the current crop of legislators, had to work their legislative duties around their busy schedules that called upon them to attend no fewer than 50 campaign fundraisers (that’s right, some like Neil Riser, Katrina Jackson, and Patrick Connick had more than one), courtesy of the Louisiana Oil and Gas Association, the Beer Industry League, CenturyLink and a few well-placed lobbyists. http://www.nola.com/politics/index.ssf/2016/03/louisiana_special_session_fund.html

It is, after all, what many of them are best at. (Seven of those were held at the once-exclusive Camelot Club on the top floor of the Chase Bank South Tower. We say “once-exclusive” because last week the Camelot announced that it was closing its doors after 49 years. Restrictions on lobbyists’ expenditures on lunches for legislators was given as one cause for the drop in club membership from 900 to 400. Not mentioned was the fact that Ruth’s Chris and Sullivan’s steak restaurants in Baton Rouge have become favorite hangouts for legislators and lobbyists during legislative sessions. One waiter told LouisianaVoice during the 2015 session that one could almost find a quorum of either chamber on any given night during the session—accompanied, of course, by lobbyists who only wanted good government.) https://www.businessreport.com/article/camelot-club-closing-afternoon-can-no-longer-viable-club-owner-says

LEGISLATORS’ FUNDRAISERS

Bridges accurately called the new taxes that will expire in 2018 “the type of short-term fix” favored by Jindal and the previous legislature “that they had vowed not to repeat.”

Can we get an Amen?

In the meantime, he observed that Gov. John Bel Edwards and Commissioner of Administration Jay Dardenne, because the legislature still left a $50 million hole in the current budget, will have to decide which state programs will be cut—again.

Emphasizing the risks to children, Garner-Walters told legislators in a committee hearing during the just-completed special session that state DCFS staff numbers 3,400, down a third from the 5,100 it had in 2008. “You can’t just not investigate child abuse,” she said.

Former Baton Rouge Juvenile Court Judge Kathleen Richey, now heading up Louisiana CASA (Court Appointed Special Advocate), a child advocacy non-profit, has expressed her concern over the budgetary cuts that make DCFS caseworkers’ jobs so much more difficult.

“Our political leaders need to understand that while infrastructure represents a physical investment in our future, our children represent an intellectual investment in our future,” she said. “We have to protect innocent children who have no one else to stand up for them.”

Posted in Budget, Campaign Contributions, Civil Service, DHH, Ethics, Fraud, Governor's Office, Health Care, Jobs, Layoffs, Legislature, Legislators, Lobbyist, PACs, Politicians, Politics, Taxes | 21 Comments »

State Police Commission members probing LSTA appear to have committed similar campaign contribution violations

March 10, 2016 by tomaswell

Today’s scheduled meeting of the State Police Commission to decide whether or not to conduct an official investigation into the Louisiana State Troopers Association (LSTA) has been cancelled because of an illness in one commissioner’s family and because of severe flooding in north Louisiana where some of the commissioners live.

The delay may have been convenient for three of the commission members in that the delay will give them time to formulate an explanation for their own actions.

The commission is charged with the responsibility of investigating individual state troopers accused of wrongdoing and to preside over appeals of punishment handed out to troopers.

The issue before commissioners is the controversy that arose after the LSTA funneled campaign contributions through the organization’s executive director to political candidates. State law prohibits individual state troopers from participating in political campaigns in any form, including endorsements and making campaign contributions.

Because the association’s funding comes largely from membership dues, the laundering of the contributions through the personal account of Executive Director David Young and the ensuing reimbursement of Young for “expenses” prompted outcries from LSTA membership.

Those protests were mostly voiced by retirees because active troopers are reluctant to openly criticize the association’s activities for fear of reprisals and LSTA, in a recent letter to members, seized on that lack protests from active members in an attempt to shift the blame on what it characterized as disgruntled retirees who had been mostly inactive until the issue flared up.

In more familiar parlance, that is known as shooting the messenger.

Among the more visible recipients in recent years, Bobby Jindal and Gov. John Bel Edwards each received in excess of $10,000 and the LSTA even set the precedent of endorsing Edwards in last November’s general election against U.S. Sen. David Vitter but stopped short of complying with a request from State Police Superintendent Mike Edmonson for the association to write a letter of endorsement for Edmonson’s reappointment by Edwards.

Edwards did, in fact, re-appoint Edmonson but following the flap over the campaign contributions, returned the money he received from LSTA. Jindal did not return his contributions.

Retired State Trooper Leon “Bucky” Millet said on Wednesday that the commission appears to be “circling the wagons” in its own defense, given revelations that three of the commission member violated the same statutes against political involvement the LSTA members are being accused of violating. http://laspc.dps.louisiana.gov/laspc.nsf/b713f7b7dd3871ee86257b9b004f9321/85d048928ae51fa086256e9a004cc8e8?OpenDocument

Civil service employees and state troopers are prohibited from engaging in political activity, including making political contributions to candidates.

In the LSTA case, the Code of Governmental Ethics, Section VIII of R.S. 18:1505.2 (B) also lists the making of contributions or loans “through or in the name of another” as a prohibited practice. http://ethics.la.gov/Pub/Laws/cfdasum.pdf

LSTA legal counsel Floyd Falcon told the commission that he did not know why the checks to various political candidates were made in Young’s name.

Young, however, admitted the maneuver was an attempt by LSTA to attempt to circumvent civil service and commission rules when he told the commission he made the contributions as a non-state employee so “there could never be a question later that a state employee made a contribution.” https://louisianavoice.com/2016/01/15/louisianavoice-exclusive-at-long-last-it-can-be-disclosed-that-the-reason-for-all-the-problems-at-state-police-is-us/

On Wednesday, an announcement was posted on the commission’s Web page by commission Chairman Franklin Kyle of Mandeville that said Thursday’s meeting was cancelled “due to the lack of a quorum.” http://laspc.dps.louisiana.gov/laspc.nsf/b713f7b7dd3871ee86257b9b004f9321/3723e021aee8206586256e9a004cf303?OpenDocument

But then Kyle went on to say, “I thought it proper to keep the public informed of the ongoing investigation into State Police Commission rules violations” requested by state police retirees.

Kyle said that on March 3, a rule to show cause was issued to the retirees “to produce the names of Louisiana State Troopers who allegedly violated State Police Commission rules in addition to any evidence they have that supports the allegations. Those gentlemen have until March 18, 2016, to do so, and additional subpoenas may be issued for any additional evidence that will assist the investigation. Upon receipt of sufficient evidence, a public hearing will be scheduled. There will be more information at the April meeting of the (commission), as well as subsequent meetings, until this investigation is completed.”

Wait. What?

Kyle is putting the onus on two retired state troopers to come up with the names of LSTA members who may have initiated the contributions? Isn’t that the job of the commission as an investigative board? The retirees have sought records from LSTA and their efforts have been thwarted at every turn, yet they are expected to come up with the names?

Mr. Kyle, it is the commission which has subpoena power, not a couple of retirees. Do your job and issue the subpoenas. That’s how investigations are conducted.

But then again, perhaps Mr. Kyle and a couple of his cohorts have good reason to delay the investigative process. After all, they are under the same rules as state troopers and civil service employees.

Yet, LouisianaVoice has obtained campaign finance records which show that commission members Kyle, Freddie Pitcher, William Goldring, the wives of Kyle and Goldring and one of Goldring’s companies (Magnolia Marketing) have been quite active in making their own political contributions during their time of service on the commission.

In fact, Kyle was appointed to replace shipbuilder-banker Boysie Bollinger of Lockport because of Bollinger’s political activity.

Now that we know of their own participating in making campaign contributions during their tenure on the commission, it will be more than a little interesting to see how the investigation of LSTA will be handled. Will they recuse themselves, leaving the investigation to the four remaining board members?

Or will the commission saddle the retirees with the impossible task of coming up with names of troopers involved in the decision to make the contributions through Young and to reimburse him for his trouble?

Of, as often is the case, will the probe simply quietly go away with no action taken?

This is Louisiana, after all, and we do have a long-standing tradition to uphold.

Here are the links to the campaign contributions of the three members, their wives and Goldring’s business:

FRANKLIN KYLE CONTRIBS FOR FIRST TERM

FRANKLIN KYLE CONTRIBS FOR SECOND TERM

MELISSA KYLE CONTRIBS

WILLIAM GOLDRING CONTRIB

JANE GOLDRING CONTRIB

MAGNOLIA MARKETING CONTRIBS

FREDDIE PITCHER CONTRIBS

 

Posted in Boards, Campaign Contributions, Commissions, Elections, Ethics, Governor's Office, Politicians, Public Records, State Police | 12 Comments »

One week after LouisianaVoice story, feds hand down three-count indictment of Iberia Parish Sheriff Ackal, top deputy

March 9, 2016 by tomaswell

As much as we would love to take credit, the three-count federal indictment of Iberia Parish Sheriff Louis Ackal and Lt. Col. Gerald Savoy was in the works long before our initial story on March 2. https://louisianavoice.com/2016/03/02/iberia-sheriff-burning-hotter-than-tobasco-on-a-fever-blister-after-beatings-deaths-political-payoffs-fight-with-reporters/

Our story, after all, was about one incident, that god-awful video of the deputy beating a prisoner and then turning a vicious dog loose on the man as he lay on the floor helpless to defend himself.

There were others, in the prison chapel, of all places, because there were no video surveillance there.

If the charges contained in the grand jury indictment are true, Ackal would have to be considered something of a sadist with a penchant for meting out—or at least condoning—particularly harsh punishment to black prisoners. http://www.katc.com/story/31430512/iberia-sheriff-indicted-for-their-parts-i

In a related issue, Roberta Boudreaux has yet to receive a response from the Louisiana Board of Ethics over her official complaint against Ackal. https://louisianavoice.com/2016/03/03/between-beating-guilty-pleas-sexual-harassment-lawsuit-and-ethics-complaint-iberia-sheriff-louis-ackal-has-his-plate-full/

Ackal defeated Boudreaux in the general election last November after giving a job to the third place finisher who subsequently endorsed him for re-election—the second consecutive election in which he hired the third place finisher in exchange for an endorsement in the general election. Giving anything of value in exchange for a political endorsement is against state law.

Boudreaux, contacted by LouisianaVoice, said it has been 60 days since she lodged the ethics complaint but the commission has been strangely silent in its response. That apparently is the legacy left us in Bobby Jindal’s “gold standard of ethics” about which he was so quick to boast in his ludicrous quest for the Republican presidential nomination.

“This is a sad day for law enforcement and for Iberia Parish,” Boudreaux said, adding that it was her understanding that there will be “more to follow” she said, adding, “I just hope the good guys at the department stick around.”

LouisianaVoice will continue to monitor the Ethics Commission to determine if it is actually staffed by warm bodies or Jindalesque see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil monkeys.

But back to the INDICTMENT, which brings to 10 current and former Iberia Parish Sheriff’s Office (IPSO) employees who have been charged in the federal investigation of the department.

It was the plan and purpose of the conspiracy that Ackal, deputies and supervisors “would punish and retaliate against inmates and pre-trial detainees by taking them to the chapel of the (Iberia Parish Jail), where there were no video surveillance cameras, to unlawfully assault them,” the indictment said. “It was further part of the agreement that the officers and supervisors who witnessed these unlawful assaults would not intervene to stop them.”

The document charged that deputy Byron Lassalle, “understanding that Ackal wanted him to assault the detainee to retaliate against him for (a) lewd comment, Lassalle, in the presence of Ackal and Savoy, asked (Wesley) Hayes where there was a place at the jail without cameras, and Hayes responded, ‘the chapel.’”

The indictment said while the prisoner was being hit “multiple times with a baton, he “was compliant and not posing a threat to anyone” and no officer in the chapel attempted to stop “the unlawful assault.”

It said that up learning another prisoner was in jail for a sex offense, “Lassalle took his baton, held it between his own legs as if it were a penis, and forced it into (the prisoner’s) mouth,” causing him to choke.

As first and then another prisoner, while being beaten, blamed the lewd comment on someone else, deputies would bring the newest accused into the chapel to be beaten, apparently without making any real effort to determine who actually made the comment. In short, punishment, not seeking the truth, seemed to be the top priority.

If convicted, Ackal and Savoy could face up to 10 years in prison, plus fines of $250,000 for each count.

As further evidence of the complete deterioration of law and order in Iberia Parish, LouisianaVoice has obtained additional documents that show unrestrained lawlessness on the part of the Iberia Parish Sheriff’s Office.

In that case, which will be laid out in greater detail in a future post, LouisianaVoice will chronicle how deputies not only raided the home of an Iberia Parish Teach of the Year on the basis of an informant who was paid $45 by a deputy, but one of the deputies later pleaded guilty to stealing jewelry, a gun, money, and knives from the teacher’s home during the raid.

In perhaps the most implausible thing to come out of that raid was a list of evidence found in the teacher’s home that included “counterfeit five dollar bills,” prompting a retired state police officer to simply shake his head in disbelief. “Who makes counterfeit five dollar bills?” he asked rhetorically. “I’ve never seen counterfeit bills in denominations smaller than twenties.”

There is probably no more interesting sight than seeing the expression on one’s face the moment he realizes he is wrong. That look most surely crossed the face of the district attorney at some point in time.

The raid and the ensuing charges against the teacher, which cost him his job, are so egregious in nature that the district attorney’s office has offered him the opportunity to plea to a misdemeanor with no jail time, no probation, and complete expungement of his record. No such deal would ever be offered if prosecutors weren’t fully aware they had laid an egg.

The significance of that move was not lost on the teacher, Darius Sias, who has a civil lawsuit pending against the sheriff’s office. He rolled the dice in turning down the plea offer so that he could pursue his civil suit. “I want to go to trial on this,” he said.

Posted in Corruption, Courts, Crime, Ethics, Lawsuits, Politicians, Prison | 2 Comments »

Sadow stretches credibility to breaking point in blaming Edwards for Moody’s state credit downgrade, other ills

March 6, 2016 by tomaswell

Ph.D., it seems really does stand for “piled higher and deeper” in some quarters.

And Jeff Sadow, Ph.D., proves it in spades.

After all, no self-respecting snake oil salesman would attempt to sell what Sadow was hawking in Sunday’s Baton Rouge Advocate.

Normally, we don’t take issue with other bloggers in this space because it is our firm conviction that everyone has the right to his own opinion.

But no one has the right to his own facts and that’s where Sadow has crossed the line with his latest attempt at political erudition of the masses—or at least that part of Louisiana’s masses who subscribe to The Advocate. (And no, that’s not a dig at The Advocate. The fact is, each major metropolitan area of the state has its own newspaper to the general exclusion of all the others, so that necessarily limits the sphere of influence of any given publication.)

There’s an old joke that says 87.3 percent of all statistics are made up on the spot and unfortunately, the Baton Rouge Advocate has provided him a forum to toss out any figures he can conjure up and feed them to us as facts.

Southeastern Louisiana University associate professor of political science Kurt Corbello recently took him to task in a LouisianaVoice guest column, exposing his LSU-Shreveport counterpart as more than a little off base with his data. https://louisianavoice.com/2016/03/01/slu-associate-professor-says-advocate-columnist-can-only-arrive-at-state-expenditure-numbers-by-making-them-up/

Sadow had published the absurd claim that Louisiana ranked “well above the national average in per capita spending when in fact, the state spent $6,365 per capita in spending, $352 below the state average nationwide.

“The only way to arrive at the columnist’s (Sadow’s) conclusion that Louisiana ranks “well above the national average in per capita spending” is to make it all up, Corbello wrote.

Only a week later, Sadow has gone completely off the reservation by blaming the recent Moody’s downgrade of the state’s credit rating on John Bel Edwards who has been governor less than two months.

http://theadvocate.com/features/recipes/15072709-63/jeff-sadow-markets-not-looking-kindly-on-louisiana

Jindal systematically wrecked the state’s economy for a full eight years. And Moody’s and Standard & Poor each put the state on its critical watch list last year. Where the hell was Sadow with his self-righteous indignation during those years?

Remember, Jeff, Louisiana had a Republican governor and Republican majorities (big majorities, we might add) in both the House and Senate during those eight years. Remember also, Jeff, Jindal & Co. managed to incur budgetary shortfalls every single year he was in office even as he kept up the drumbeat to “do more with less.” He cut higher education more than any other state in the nation.

He cut services to the developmentally disadvantaged (but he managed to give $4.7 million of their money to one of the richest families in Louisiana for their Indy racetrack in Avondale. That family, the Chouest family, we should add, was a generous donor to the Jindal campaigns, pour in more than $130,000 to his state campaigns and a cool $1 million to his Believe Again super PAC.

He gutted funding for the Department of Children and Family Services to such an extent that the agency cannot even repair its state vehicles and the overworked staff finds it impossible to properly work its caseloads to protect the state’s foster children.

He did make sure that nursing homes received adequate per bed funding but when you peel back the layers, you see that the industry contributed generously to his campaigns.

A recipient of megabucks from the oil and gas industry, he made sure to kill the lawsuit against 97 oil and gas and pipeline companies for destroying the state’s marshlands.

He vetoed bills passed unanimously in both the House and Senate to ensure transparency in public records, including those of the governor’s office.

He likewise vetoed unanimous legislation that would have made the Louisiana Department of Economic Development justify those billions of dollars of tax breaks, exemption, credits and incentives awarded to businesses and industries who in turn, created only minimum wage, or worse, no new jobs.

Yes, the oil patch dried up virtually with no warning—much like it did in the early 1980s, creating an additional strain on the state budget.

And yet, Jeff, you see all this as the fault of one John Bel Edwards, governor of the State of Louisiana for a full two months?

And you place none of the fault with Jindal? Or the legislature?

Jeff, you’re an educated man, with a Ph.D. on your wall to prove it.

Well, Jeff, I have a degree, too. I have a B.S. degree from Louisiana Tech. You probably graduated with honors while I graduated Magna Cum Barely. But Jeff, I live out here in the real world. I get out and talk to people. You obviously do neither.

If you can convince anyone that Edwards, with two months under his belt, is responsible for all of Louisiana’s ills after eight years of Jindal’s reign of error, then you have truly missed your calling.

You should have been a stage hypnotist or better yet, a televangelist. If you can sell what you’re peddling, you could make a linebacker cluck like a chicken or a heathen throw away his crutches.

 

Posted in Politics | 42 Comments »

Jindal, after gutting OGB, breaks the rules by changing plans in mid-stream—with help of obliging OGB administrators

March 4, 2016 by tomaswell

He may be gone but he’s certainly not forgotten.

Bobby Jindal, who did his dead level best to destroy the Office of Group Benefits, is now doing his best to take advantage of the agency for his health insurance.

Meanwhile, LouisianaVoice has learned that OGB Director Susan West went a little ballistic over our post of Thursday (March 3), even saying we didn’t know what we were talking about. But…but, Susan, we were only quoting from the letter that was sent out with your office’s letterhead on it (admittedly, your name, conveniently, was nowhere in the letter).

The person who contacted initially and a second person who contacted us on Friday (March 4) each said that West directed OGB’s fiscal office to ignore the “pay flags” which indicate non-payment of premiums. (In our story, we called them “stop flags,” but we’re told the correct term is “pay flags.)

Now, of course, OGB is scrambling to recoup all the money (at least $10,511 in a single case we have verified) it paid out in claims for employees and retirees who have either switched to other plans or for whatever reason, ceased paying premiums.

LouisianaVoice has learned that Jindal and family had an HMO plan but that he wanted to change to OGB coverage under COBRA, specifically, a health savings account (HSA). Changing a plan is strictly forbidden except during open enrollment which is in October. But the rules, you see, don’t apply to Jindal; they never have. (Perhaps he learned that trick from State Police Superintendent Mike Edmonson who almost got away with getting the legislature to approve an amendment to an obscure bill on the final day of the 2014 session that would’ve given him an illegal $55,000 bump in his retirement pay.)

And let’s not forget that Jindal, after attempting and failing to dismantle LASERS, the retirement system for state employees, quietly purchased time from the system to enhance his own retirement. (Never let it be said that he is lacking in duplicity and cunning.)

No matter. OGB management obligingly approved the switch to the HSA which features low premiums and higher deductibles—basically a major medical-type policy that most people can’t afford. Our source described it as “the Bill Cassidy answer to ObamaCare—sock away a minimum of $10,000 in an HSA and use that for regular medical expenses, except most people don’t have $10,000 to put away and tie up for healthcare alone.”

Not only did Jindal and OGB management skirt the law in changing Jindal’s plan mid-stream, but Jindal also purchased a flexible spending account (FSA). FSAs are highly-regulated by the federal government (which should have gone against Jindal’s very fiber, considering his opposition to everything federal during his term of office). Up to $2,400 a year may be put into an FSA account for a specific purpose such as healthcare expenses or dependent care costs such as daycare. The $2400 is tax deductible so the policy holder saves a bit on state and federal taxes and gives the policy holder free use of the money for the specified purposes.

For state employees, FSA accounts are administered by Discovery Benefits and Jindal, apparently without the sage advice of sidekick Timmy Teepell, submitted his checks for his FSA incorrectly for his COBRA policy, causing “a lot of heartburn” at OGB.

“Discovery Benefits, Inc., is beyond inefficient and impossible to work with,” our source, a retired state employee, said. “There have been many complaints about DBI, including from a state legislator who is outraged over the mess the company has made of her account.

“I made a formal complaint to OGB over DBI’s lack of acceptance of documentation of my dentist’s care, having sent them the requested documentation three times myself, and they had no record either from the dentist or from me. They then locked my account and I could not access my own money. I called DBI and got through after being placed on hold for 20 minutes. I demanded access to my account, which they temporality unlocked.

“OGB staff sent DBI my documentation by email TWICE – DBI never acknowledged either email to my knowledge and demanded that I repay the $100 or so they had paid my dentist, which I refused to do.  So they said they sent a notice to the IRS that I have this $100 taxable income. Idiots.”

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