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If you think Chance McNeely’s appointment to head DEQ compliance was an insult, just get a handle on his salary

January 13, 2015 by tomaswell

It took a while but we have an update on Chance McNeely, the 26-year-old who recently made the quantum leap from a policy analyst for the governor’s office to Assistant Secretary of the Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ), Office of Environmental Compliance.

Before we get to that, however, let’s review a couple of items.

What’s it been, five years now that state classified employees have gone without a pay raise?

And didn’t the Office of Group Benefits (OGB) recently raise premiums and reduce benefits, all because Gov. Bobby Jindal manipulated premiums to help cover gaping holes in his state budget, thereby reducing the OGB reserve fund from more than $500 million to something like half that amount?

And hasn’t Jindal issued two expenditure freezes and two hiring freezes within the past 12 months, even specifying that no agency could “use employee transfers, promotions, reallocations or the creation of new positions” in order to circumvent the freezes?

So how is it that Chance McNeely, with a degree in agricultural business and all of four years’ experience (three of those as a legislative assistant for the U.S. House of Representatives. And just what does a legislative assistant do in Washington?), is deemed to be qualified to oversee something as critical as environmental compliance?

As this is being written, there is a federal trial ongoing in Baton Rouge over leaks of toxic chemicals at a DuPont chemical plant in Ascension Parish. But it’s a whistleblower suit, not one initiated by any regulatory agency. And does anyone remember the 1978 death of a truck driver at Bayou Sorrel? That happened when the driver exited his truck and was overcome by lethal chemical fumes.

Most of the state’s environmental issues are situated in South Louisiana, primarily along the Mississippi River between Baton Rouge and New Orleans—the corridor that has been dubbed, deservedly so, as Cancer Alley.

But North Louisiana is not immune. The most controversial issue in the state right now is that proposed open tray burn of 15 million pounds of M6 artillery shell propellant at Camp Minden. Experts say cancer-causing emissions could be spread from Shreveport to Monroe.

We don’t know Chance McNeely, but it is the position of LouisianaVoice that given our track record in protecting Louisiana’s air and water, the job of environmental compliance should be entrusted to (a) someone with an environmental background and (b) someone with vastly more experience.

And the position most certainly should not have been handed to someone who purportedly is planning to walk away come next September in favor of entering law school.

But, adding insult to injury, McNeely’s salary, according to State Civil Service records, just increased by a whopping 57 percent—from $65,000 per year to $102,000.

This for someone who has worked in the governor’s office as a policy analyst (we don’t know what that entails, either) for all of nine months when there are thousands of state employees who have been working for decades for much less than half that.

And DEQ Secretary Peggy Hatch can stand on top of the State Capitol and proclaim (as she already has, but not from atop the Capitol) that McNeely was her first choice for the job, but we aren’t buying it for one nano-second. She hired McNeely at Jindal’s specific instructions and was given her talking points as well.

If, as she claims, it was her idea to recruit someone with no experience for a position as important as environmental compliance for the entire State of Louisiana, then we contend she is no more qualified for her position than he.

But again, we know whose decision it was to make this horribly ill-advised move. And if the citizens of Louisiana were not already aware of how Jindal has turned his back on this state in favor of his own self-promotion, then this move should underscore it.

It’s the biggest slap in the face of the state’s four million citizens since, well, since 1996 when Gov. Mike Foster appointed a 24-year-old named Bobby Jindal as head of the Department of Health and Hospitals.

Posted in Politics | 13 Comments »

Taking a chance on Chance: or how I stopped worrying and learned to love the proposed M6 open burn at Camp Minden

January 12, 2015 by tomaswell

All you folks up in north Louisiana who have been burning up Facebook over that proposed open burn of the 15 million pounds of M6 propellant at Camp Minden need to relax.

All of you who have been in contact with Erin Brockovich in an effort to solicit advice on stopping the burn should just cool your jets.

All of you alarmist who have been saying serious health issues could result from the burn ought to go back to whatever your day job is.

And as for north Louisiana’s congressional delegation, you have your 2016 re-election to think about so perhaps you would be wise to start calling campaign contributors and stop worrying about such things as environmental toxins.

After all, as of today (Jan. 12), Chance McNeely is on the job—until next September anyway—as Assistant Secretary of the Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) Office of Environmental Compliance at a cool $102,000—a 36 percent bump from his $65,000-a-year salary in the governor’s office.

Not bad for a 26-year-old with virtually zero experience—especially considering how rank and file state employees have gone without pay raises for five years now.

The title alone should scare the bejeezus out of anyone who might endanger the health of residents by the open burning of 15 million pounds of ammunition propellant. I mean, it’s not like they’re spraying Agent Orange on the peach trees in Ruston.

Chance is a 2010 graduate of LSU (B.S. in agricultural business), which gives him four full years of experience in the real world. What more could we ask of someone in charge of compliance with environmental regulations?

Why, just look at his impressive curriculum vitae:

  • He worked for the U.S. House of Representatives from August 2010 to September 2010 (that’s an entire month, folks!);
  • He worked from September 2010 to May 2011 (nine months—almost enough time to give him tenure) as a program assistant (whatever that title entails) for the NRA (speaking of propellants);
  • He then returned to the U.S. House of Representatives as a legislative assistant in May of 2011 and remained there almost three years (that’s two years longer than Vance McAllister served the residents of Louisiana’s 5th District in Congress);
  • Since last March, he has served as a “policy advisor” for Gov. Bobby Jindal’s office. We’re somewhat in the dark as to what type advice an agricultural business major with four years’ experience may have provided Jindal, who has about as much knowledge of agriculture as he does of constructing $250 million wash ‘n’ wear berms in the Gulf of Mexico.

The Office of Environmental Compliance is charged with conducting inspections to ensure facilities are complying with terms of their permits, responding to complaints, evaluating of air and water conditions statewide, underground storage tank regulations and enforcement.

As DEQ liaison for the governor’s office, McNeely, 26, is said to have helped with air quality issues, landfill matters and the Explo Systems explosive issues near Minden. explo-la-4-14-site-removal-action

Well, that’s certainly a comfort. After all, Jindal was only a year older than that when Gov. Mike Foster appointed him to head the Department of Health and Hospitals.

And like Jindal, McNeely doesn’t seem destined to remain in one place long. Sources tell LouisianaVoice he plans to enroll in law school in September.

“He was completely my choice,” said DEQ Secretary Peggy Hatch of McNeely’s hiring. “He has been our policy adviser at DEQ on a number of matters. He was the first who came to my head.”

Hatch may have been more accurate to say she was told by Jindal that McNeely was her choice.

It will certainly be interesting to watch McNeely’s performance in the brewing controversy in Minden. However it plays out, it won’t be pretty.

The M6 was abandoned on site after the bankruptcy of Explo Systems in 2013. A year earlier, in October 2012, one of Explo’s bunkers exploded, rattling homes and shattering windows four miles away and creating a 7,000-foot mushroom cloud.

An ensuing investigation by state police revealed the millions of pounds of M6, used as an explosive propellant for launching artillery shells, stored in 98 bunkers scattered throughout Camp Minden. http://www.thenewsstar.com/story/news/local/2015/01/08/controversy-heats-open-burn-camp-minden/21468283/

The EPA has issued assurances that a controlled open burn is inexpensive and safe, with little environmental impact.

Others disagree.

“Our Louisiana politicians have allowed our beautiful state to become a dumping ground for toxic waste,” said retired Gen. Russel Honoré, leader of the Louisiana Green Army. “Our elected officials have allowed Bayou Corne, Grand Bayou, Mossville, and other communities to be polluted by their out-of-state political donors.

“The EPA-sanctioned open burn at Camp Minden without a doubt puts the health and safety of communities at risk and would not be allowed in California or Massachusetts. The good people of Louisiana deserve no less. The GreenARMY supports the citizens’ demand for accountability and their demand for no open burn at Camp Minden.”

Despite pending EPA approval of the burn, LSU-S organic chemistry professor Brian Salvatore said the EPA’s test burn was only to determine how the material burns and not the by-products in the smoke.

Salvatore said he posed the question of how much uncombusted dinitrotoluene (DNT, one of four chemicals contained in M6) escaped with the burn but was told the heat was too intense for monitoring. DNT causes cancer, he said. “It’s known as a definite carcinogen.

Other chemicals, he said, can cause birth defects and can trigger issues for those suffering from asthma. “All of these things are associated with these chemicals,” he said. “And they will happen.”

He said munitions similar to M6 were burned in Merrimac, Wisconsin in the 1970s and the chemicals leached into the area’s groundwater. He said it took years for symptoms to manifest themselves but officials are now seeing declining health among residents.

He said if the open burn takes place, residents in a 50 mile radius, from the Red River to the Ouachita River, could be affected. http://www.ktbs.com/story/27811846/lsu-s-professor-warns-camp-minden-open-tray-burn-could-cause-cancer-birth-defects

Citizens for Safe Water around Badger, an organization based in Merrimac, has been in contact with local opponents of the Minden burn.

Environmental activist Erin Brockovich has even gotten on board via Facebook. In a message to one Minden area resident, she said, “Change, no matter what it is, starts with you, but sometimes finding the resources for you to enable change can be difficult. It’s about creating awareness of the issues that we all should be concerned about.”

But not to worry. In Washington, the House has passed a bill that effectively prevents scientists who are peer-reviewed experts in their field from providing advice to the EPA.

Rep. Chris Stewart (R-Utah) sponsored H.R. 1422, the Science Advisory Board Reform Act, which changes the rules for appointing members to the Science Advisory Board (SAB).

SAB provides scientific advice to the EPA administrator but the Stewart resolution stipulates that board members “may not participate in advisory activities that directly or indirectly involve review or evaluation of their own work.”

Said another way, a scientist who has published a peer-reviewed paper on a particular topic, say open burning of M6, will not be able to advise the EPA on the findings contained in his or her paper. This means the very scientists who are most knowledgeable about a subject will not be allowed to discuss it.

Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Massachusetts) told House Republicans: “I get it, you don’t like science. And you don’t like science that interferes with the interests of your corporate clients. But we need science to protect public health and the environment.” House Passes Bill that Prohibits Expert Scientific Advice to the EPA | Inhabitat – Sustainable Design Innovation, Eco Architecture, Green Building

So all things considered, it’s good to know Chance McNeely is on the job.

Posted in Governor's Office, House, Politicians | 19 Comments »

Walter Monsour resigns from EBR job paying $365K, joins local firm with hefty state contracts and ties to Gov. Jindal

January 12, 2015 by tomaswell

We really don’t like clichés and while it may be the pot calling the kettle black, a rose by any other name should be avoided like the plague. And at the end of the day, we like to think outside the box and avoid the low hanging fruit.

But the more things change, the more they stay the same.

Take, for example, the latest twist in the saga of Walter Monsour, erstwhile Executive Director of the Baton Rouge Redevelopment Authority (RDA), an agency responsible for the redevelopment of blighted areas of East Baton Rouge Parish.

The problem was that RDA was operating on a shoestring budget of $847,000 and from that meager allocation, Monsour was drawing down $365,000 in salary and benefits—about 43 percent of the agency’s total budget.

On top of that, his son’s law firm was getting about $190,000 in contract payments from firms that received contract payments from RDA.

Mayor-President Kip Holden had earlier rejected RDA’s request for $3 million in funding from the city-parish and funding from federal tax credit programs had been drying up.

Under fire for his salary, Monsour resigned in November. In his resignation letter, he said he made his decision to leave in order to “extend the financial life of the RDA.”

Of course that’s not the end of the story. Things just don’t end that way in the realm of Louisiana politics and the politically connected.

Monsour, it turns out, has landed on his feet. He has been hired by CSRS, Inc., a self-described firm of engineers, architects, planners, surveyors and fund-sourcing experts.

Monsour joins the Baton Rouge-based firm’s “senior leadership team” and will lead a newly-formed private sector development business unit, according to an announcement by CSRS.

If the name CSRS seems familiar, perhaps it’s because we included them in our recent post about state contracts and campaign contributions to Gov. Bobby Jindal.

In that post, we discussed Jindal’s executive order to cut back on state contracts and speculated whether or not those cuts would apply to those who contributed generously to his various political campaigns.

We noted that CSRS had a $5 million contract with the state—to provide landman services on an “as-needed” basis—and that the company and its principals had contributed $10,000 to Jindal.

Well, that’s not entirely accurate. It turns out CSRS has been awarded 11 contracts totaling $15.2 million during Jindal’s administration and the campaign contributions total $20,000.

There were, besides the $5 million contract, which began on July 1, 2013 and will end on June 30, 2016, two others which combined to account for the bulk of that $15.2 million.

The first was a contract with the Office of Coastal Restoration for $4.1 million that ran from July 1, 2008 through June 30, 2011 that called for the firm to “augment” existing professional engineering staff. Upon expiration, it was immediately renewed for $4.2 million.

As for Monsour, he may have been thrown under the bus but he’s got his game face on and it looks like a win-win situation for him as he steps up to the plate with his boots on the ground for this cash cow and you can bet he won’t leave any money on the table.

And that’s the elephant in the room.

Posted in Budget, Campaign Contributions, Contract, Contracts, Governor's Office, Politicians | 9 Comments »

Five-member state GOP Congressional delegation votes to sacrifice employee pay; protects corporate CEO tax breaks

January 11, 2015 by tomaswell

Pulitzer Prize winning author Hedrick Smith’s best-selling book Who Stole the American Dream? is a real eye-opener for anyone who still believes our elected officials in Washington are the watchdogs of democracy and are ever-vigilant in protecting the interests of their constituents (that would be you and me).

Smith is not the only one who has tried to warn us of the unholy alliance between Wall Street, large corporations, lobbyists and members of Congress. Charles Derber’s Corporation Nation, says one critic, “is the single best explanation of how big corporations have usurped the power of ordinary citizens…”

David Cay Johnston, another Pulitzer winner, has three books (Free Lunch, Perfectly Legal and The Fine Print) that illustrate how complicated tax laws and federal regulations favor the very rich by transferring the tax burden and other costs to the fast disappearing middle class.

For our purposes here, however, we shall limit the discussion to Smith and his book by highlighting some of the book’s timeline:

  • 1950—Top CEO salary in America: GM chairman Charlie Wilson is paid $663,000, roughly  $5  million  in  today’s  dollars,  and  about  40  times the annual wage of his average assembly line worker. Corporate ethic frowned on CEOs taking stock grants as unfair “competitive avarice.” Economists call this period “The Great Compression because the income gap between the rich and the middle class is at its narrowest in the twentieth century.
  • November 1967—Pat  O’Neill, at nineteen, starts a thirty-five-year career with United Airlines  as  a  jet  airline  mechanic,  working  the  overnight  “graveyard  shift”  at Chicago’s   O’Hare  field. He works his way up to chief mechanic, making $60,000 a year, leading a crew that does repairs and safety checks so that planes are ready to be airborne by dawn.
  • August 1971—Corporate attorney Lewis Powell sparks a political rebellion with his call to arms for Corporate America. Circulated by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Powell’s   memo warns that anti-business attitudes and government regulation are threatening to “fatally weaken or destroy” the American free enterprise system. Powell declares that business must arm itself politically, battle organized labor and consumer activists, and mount a long-term campaign to change the balance of power and policy trends in Washington. Later that same year, President Nixon appointed Powell to the U.S. Supreme Court.
  • 1971–1972—The CEOs  of  America’s  biggest  corporations, responding to Powell’s  memo, organize the Business Roundtable, which becomes the most potent political lobbying arm of Corporate America. The National Association of Manufacturers moves its headquarters to Washington. In one decade the U.S. Chamber of Commerce doubles its membership and the National Federation of Independent Businesses (small business) grows from 300 to 600,000 members.
  • 1973—The productivity of U.S. workers rises 96 percent since 1945, and average hourly compensation rises in tandem—94 percent from 1945 to 1973. Average Americans share in the nation’s prosperity.  In the next three decades, from 1973 to 2011, worker productivity rises another 80 percent but hourly compensation rises only 10 percent. Ordinary Americans are cut out of their share of the nation’s economic gains.
  • October 1976—Inspired by their mentor, free market economist Milton Friedman, business school professors Michael Jensen and William Meckling propose in an academic study that CEOs be given stock options to align their interests with those of stockholders. Corporate boards, seeing an advantage because options are not charged as a company expense, adopt this “pay for performance” idea, and by 1980, 30 percent of CEOs are receiving stock option grants.
  • Late 1970s—Business mobilizes politically. The number of companies with Washington lobbying offices grows from 175 in 1971 to 2,445 a decade later. Along with 2,000 different trade associations, businesses have a combined Washington staff of 50,000, plus 9,000 lobbyists and 8,000 public relations specialists. Business lobbyists and advocates now outnumber members of Congress by 130 to 1.
  • 1980—Congress passes a deregulatory bill that overrules state usury laws and effectively abolishes limits on interest rates for first mortgages, paving the way for the future subprime mortgage boom.
  • 1994—The CEO stock option boom takes off. 70 percent of CEOs now receive stock option grants and by 2000, grants of millions of stock options become the norm, hugely increasing CEO pay. Corporate executives overtake the inherited rich as the biggest portion of the nation’s richest 1 percent.
  • 2001–2003—The Federal Reserve, led by Chairman Alan Greenspan, cuts interest rates 11 times from 6.5 percent to 1 percent, providing cheap money to fuel a housing boom and revive the U.S. economy. Home prices rise so fast that Americans borrow $700 billion a year from their home equity. Despite warnings about the dangers of rising personal  debt,  Greenspan  hails  home  owners’  “equity  extraction”  as  the  engine  for consumer demand and economic growth.
  • 2003—Airline  mechanic  Pat  O’Neill  retires from United Airlines after 35 years on the job, but when United Airlines declares bankruptcy, his lifetime pension is drastically cut, and his employee stock option plan collapses. His 401(k) suffers from a sharp stock market decline and he is forced to take another job. To rebuild financially, O’Neill is still working today, and he expects never to retire.
  • 2005–2006—More than half of the people to whom banks sell subprime mortgage loans, at high interest rates with heavy fees, are actually solid mainstream middle-class borrowers who qualified for—and should have been sold—prime loans.
  • 2006—Oracle CEO Larry Ellision, with $706.1 million in pay and stock in 2001, tops a Wall Street Journal compilation of the biggest CEO pay packages from 1995 to 2005. Close behind are Michael Eisner of Disney, with payouts of $575.6 million in 1999 and $203 million in 1993; and Sandy Weill of Citigroup, with pay of $621.8 million in three big years between 1997 and 2000.
  • July 4, 2007—Hundreds  of  workers  at  Sunbeam Razor’s  profitable plant in McMinnville, Tennessee, are laid off and ordered to train their replacements in a factory in Mexico, in a firing ordered by Sunbeam CEO Al Dunlap. Dunlap has makes a personal fortune as a serial downsizer of businesses. Jack Wahl, owner of Sunbeam competitor Wahl Clipper Corporation, criticizes the Sunbeam layoffs as shortsighted and “extremely wasteful,” and says his company runs profitably with U.S. workers.
  • 2007—The richest 1 percent take a near-record 23 percent of the personal incomes paid to all Americans, earning a combined $1.35 trillion a year, which is more than the entire economies of Canada, Italy, or France.
  • 2007—Among economic sectors, corporate profits see their share of national income rise during the Bush years to the highest level since 1943, while the share of national income going to employee salaries and wages sinks to its lowest level since 1929.
  • 2008—In a Cornell University survey, 57 percent of people say they have never benefited from any government program or policy. But questioned in more detail, it turns out that 94 percent have actually benefited from at least one program. The average person has used four government programs.
  • 2009—After a taxpayer bailout, big Wall Street banks rebuff President Obama’s appeal to “hire American.” They continue offshore hiring and domestic layoffs. In the 2000s, the Hackett Group reports, 3.9 million jobs in finance, IT, human resources, and back-office functions have been lost in North America and Europe. In 2011, JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America and Citigroup sign new contracts to offshore $5 billion worth of ITJ and back-office work to Indian firms.
  • 2010—Wall Street financial firms hire 1,447 former government officials as lobbyists to fight new banking regulation legislation, attempting to eliminate or water down provisions for strict regulations. After the bill passes, Wall Street bankers and lobbyists continue the battle to delay or weaken new regulations.
  • 2010—In the Congressional elections of 2010, business interests outspend labor $1.3 billion to $79 million, a 16-to-1 advantage for business. In soft-money contributions to political parties, rather than donations made directly to candidates through political action committees, the business advantage is 97-to-1 ($972 million for business to $10 million for labor).
  • 2010—Thirty-three of 60 new Tea Party members elected to the House are millionaires. Tea Party members have an average net worth of $1.8 million. Overall, 261 of the 535 senators and House representatives are millionaires—49 percent compared to 1 percent among the public at large. http://hedricksmith.com/timeline-who-stole-the-american-dream/

The CEOs of the top corporations in the U.S. made, on average, 331 times the wages of the average rank-and-file U.S. worker in 2013, compared to that 4:1 ratio reported in 1950. The CEO-to-minimum-wage-worker pay ratio was 774:1. http://www.aflcio.org/Corporate-Watch/Paywatch-2014

Between 1978 and 2013, CEO compensation increased 937 percent.

The pay increase of non-supervisory workers during this same time period? 10.2 percent.  http://www.epi.org/publication/ceo-pay-continues-to-rise/

The breaks enjoyed by super rich at the expense of Joe the Plumber are such that even Warren Buffett, Chairman and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway and one of the richest men in America, publicly acknowledged the disparity. Noting that his 2010 tax rate was lower than that paid by 20 of his employees.

“While the poor and middle class fight for us in Afghanistan, and while most Americans struggle to make ends meet, we mega-rich continue to get our extraordinary tax breaks,” he said. “My friends and I have been coddled long enough by a billionaire-friendly Congress. It’s time for our government to get serious about shared sacrifice.”

So, what has all this to do with the price of eggs?

Plenty.

The House this week defeated by a vote of 168-243 House Resolution 5 which would have barred tax deductions for executive pay packages in excess of $1 million unless the company raised worker pay by a percentage tied to its productivity.

We suppose the executives of Wal-Mart need all the help they can get. WAL-MART TAX BREAKS

So how did the Louisiana delegation vote?

Democratic Rep. Cedric Richmond (2nd District) was the only one of the six to vote in favor of the interests of workers over those of in the executive offices.

Voting “no” on the measure were newly elected Reps. Garrett Graves (6th District) and Ralph Abraham (5th District), as well as Steve Scalise (1st District), Charles Boustany (3rd District) and John Fleming (4th District).

We don’t feel that extending even more generous tax breaks for corporate executives to the detriment of those on whose backs they made their fortunes was in the best interest of Louisiana citizens who elected them to be their voices in Washington.

Posted in Congress, Ethics, House, Taxes, Transparency | 8 Comments »

Orleans Tax Assessor employs tactic of ‘throw it up against the wall to see what sticks’ with parish property valuations

January 10, 2015 by tomaswell

By Robert Burns

(Special to LouisianaVoice)

In the 10 years immediately prior to my December 31, 2012 retirement, I held a real estate brokerage license in Louisiana primarily because the only thing I auctioned in my auction career was real estate.  During that time, I took numerous real estate courses and one thing that was repeatedly emphasized regarding property taxes in Louisiana was that “Orleans Parish is a whole different animal.”

LouisianaVoice readers may recall that, prior to Hurricane Katrina, Orleans Parish was unique in that it had seven assessors, each overseeing a different taxing district in New Orleans.  Orleans Parish already receives its taxes one year in advance while all other parishes collect at the end of the year.  In other words, Orleans Parish is already living on borrowed time.  Many changes were advocated after Katrina, and one proposal was the consolidation of those tax assessors into one.  It required an amendment to Louisiana’s Constitution, which overwhelmingly passed on a statewide vote in November of 2006.

LouisianaVoice has learned that considerable frustration and consternation has ensued among many Orleans Parish taxpayers since Orleans Parish Assessor Erroll Williams became the first parish-wide solo assessor in Orleans Parish and was sworn into office in January of 2011.  Before addressing these taxpayer frustrations, however, a brief primer is necessary regarding property tax appeals in Orleans Parish.

Let’s begin with the hypothetical taxpayer who receives notice in the mail from Williams’ office that his property value has been reassessed to a value significantly higher than the taxpayer believes can be justified.  First, those reassessments in other parishes in Louisiana occur only every four (4) years as per Louisiana’s Constitution (the next year for reassessment is 2016); however, LouisianaVoice has learned that a significant number of taxpayers in Orleans Parish are receiving reassessments throughout the four-year timeframe.

One taxing official spoke with LouisianaVoice and relayed that Assessor Williams justifies the practice of annual reassessments by virtue of the fact Louisiana’s Constitution states such assessments shall take place “at least” every four years.  Some irate Orleans Parish taxpayers, however, have suggested that Assessor Williams is engaging in a practice called “sale chasing,” in which his office learns of a property that sells on a given street, and then he begins reassessments of other properties in the same vicinity immediately.

Taxpayers have the right to file an appeal of assessments. To use a judiciary analogy, let’s consider Assessor Williams the judge who rendered his ruling. Unhappy with the ruling, the litigant appeals. In the case of a legal case, it would be the appeals court who would hear the appeal. For an Orleans Parish property tax appeal, it is the New Orleans Board of Review that hears the appeal. Who is the New Orleans Board of Review? It’s the New Orleans City Council (NOCC). So, in the legal analogy, the NOCC is the appeals court.

This is where things become interesting. The NOCC is literally flooded with appeals of property tax notices every year; furthermore, the NOCC lacks the technical expertise to ascertain whether the taxpayer or Assessor Williams is correct in the asserted value. Accordingly, for years, the NOCC has contracted out with a firm named Hammerman and Gainer (HGI) to ascertain a valuation and see if an agreement can be reached between the taxpayer and Williams.  LouisianaVoice noted that, after obtaining sizable contracts post-Hurricanes Katrina and Sandy (likely due to political connections and contributions to the campaigns of Gov. Jindal and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christy), the New Jersey Sandy contract was cancelled six (6) months later due to substandard performance. https://louisianavoice.com/2014/12/31/louisianavoice-2014-year-in-review-part-dieu-it-just-gets-weirder-and-weirder-as-we-barrel-with-abandon-into-2015/

HGI subcontracts with licensed real estate appraisers to ascertain a valuation for the appellant. By subcontracting its work and not doing its own appraisals, HGI is adding a layer of cost to the process. Once HGI obtains a valuation from the appraiser, a mini-appeal hearing of sorts transpires with Williams, the taxpayer and HGI. It is unclear how many cases are resolved at this level, but what is known is that a substantial volume of cases winds up in the hands of the NOCC (serving as the first appeals court in our legal analogy) to resolve.

At an NOCC hearing, spreadsheets are distributed among council members, and they literally make an up-or-down vote on literally hundreds of these tax appeals after any individual recommendations are discussed regarding whether to go with HGI’s appraiser estimate or Williams’ valuation. LouisianaVoice has learned that, historically, the NOCC typically has sided with the HGI valuation from the appraiser rather than Williams’ valuation.

Once the decision is made, the NOCC is responsible for notifying both Assessor Williams and the taxpayer of its decision. The taxpayer is notified by certified mail, and NOCC has historically notified Williams via email (which Williams admits) with the entirety of its decisions from the meeting.

What is critical, however, is the timing of notification: By Louisiana Statute, both Williams and the taxpayer have 10 days from receiving notice to appeal the NOCC decision to the Louisiana Tax Commission (LTC) who, to carry our legal analogy a step further, serves as the Louisiana Supreme Court in that their decision typically constitutes the end of the matter.  However, if a taxpayer is still dissatisfied with the LTC’s decision, he can seek judicial review in a Louisiana District Court and simultaneously file a second lawsuit with the taxes being paid under protest.

Sources tell LouisianaVoice that, while taxpayers have been obtaining their certified mailings in a timely fashion, Williams’ notifications have consistently been delayed (one individual has stated the delays have been at Williams’ urging) until after the taxpayers’ 10-day appeal window has closed. Remember, the NOCC has historically tended to favor HGI’s (i.e. the appraiser’s number) which has been in the taxpayer’s favor and not Williams’ favor.  So, the taxpayer gets a warm and fuzzy feeling that everything is over and he can move on with his life because the 10-day window (from when he received notice) has passed.

Well, not exactly.

Sources tell LouisianaVoice that the fact that Williams’ notice has historically been delayed until after the taxpayer appeal period has lapsed has provided him with a “double-secret appeal” window, and he has exercised his appeal rights to the LTC.  The following table derived from stats provided by the LTC would seem to bear this out.

Property Tax Year LTC Appeals Filed by Orleans Parish Taxpayers LTC Appeals Filed by Assessor Williams Total LTC Appeals Filed for Orleans Parish Percentage of Appeals Filed by Assessor Williams
          2012    515    509    1,024   49.71%
          2013    175    421       596   70.64%

 

Now the taxpayer is notified of a third hearing (including the mini-hearing with HGI). This hearing is in Baton Rouge before the LTC.  Worse yet, the taxpayer who thought everything was okay suddenly finds that he is literally among hundreds of other taxpayers, all of whom have traveled to Baton Rouge to have their cases argued before members of the LTC which faces a crowded docket, thanks to Williams’ appealing so many Orleans Parish taxpayer assessments.

Worse yet, Williams reportedly sends no representative to the LTC hearing to defend his office’s valuation, nor is any evidence put on to support his valuation, the same tactic he uses in cases heard at the NOCC appeal hearings as well. Using the legal case analogy, this would be akin to an attorney filing an appeal with the Louisiana Supreme Court and then declining to attend the court’s hearing to argue his points.

Accordingly, the LTC has little choice but to rule in favor of the taxpayer and that concludes the matter. The result is significant time, energy, and financial resources shelled out by the taxpayer all to wind up where he was before Williams began this whole process, which some have characterized as a blatant abuse of power on Williams’ part.

Nevertheless, a certain number of taxpayers either just give up or accept Williams’ assessment (and that may well be exactly what he’s banking on with the theory that some money gained is better than none).  Obviously, to the extent some taxpayers opt not to appeal to the LTC, the result is in fact increased revenues for the City of New Orleans.

As a result, some New Orleans power brokers reportedly are demanding that notifications be sent by the NOCC simultaneously to taxpayers and to Williams (thus eliminating Williams’ double-secret appeal window). A NOCC high-level staffer confided that he is now “personally hand delivering” the spreadsheet nearly immediately after the NOCC approves the valuations.

Nevertheless, like many public officials who don’t like an infringement upon their fiefdoms delay notifying Williams (again, said to be at Williams’ urging). Williams sought an opinion from Attorney General Buddy Caldwell’s office regarding when the NOCC is required to send notifications. Assistant Attorney General Emalie Boyce released this Louisiana AG’s Opinion on the matter on November 24, 2014, which said that notification must transpire contemporaneously or “within the same period of time.” Thus, Williams’ tactic has effectively been eliminated.  Further, by the wording of the opinion, it appears that Williams blames the NOCC for the delay in notification to him and also criticized the NOCC for merely sending email notice rather than certified mail notice (the AG opinion states certified mail is required).  Interestingly enough, when we spoke with the NOCC staffer, he had no idea Williams had even requested the opinion, much less that one had been released by the AG’s Office.

Orleans Parish property tax appeals by Williams for 2014 are down substantially (dropping from 421 in 2013 to only 33 in 2014). LouisianaVoice delved extensively into the reason for the decline by making inquiries of numerous sources providing us with information for this article. Those sources, including the NOCC staffer, relayed that the huge decline is attributable to one at-large councilman who, sensing an opportunity to shore up New Orleans’ finances, acquiesced to Williams’ valuations for 2014 rather than the HGI, appraiser-backed valuations. Thus, Williams has essentially been left with nothing to appeal (at least for 2014) given that his valuations, in an about-face by the NOCC for 2014 vs. prior years, have largely been upheld by the NOCC.

Now, while conducting research for this article, LouisianaVoice was informed by an individual with extensive knowledge of the process that it would be “quite revealing” to seek the legal expenses of the Orleans Parish Assessor and to view copies of litigation initiated against that office over the last several years. Accordingly, we made public records requests of Williams’ office for those records, only to have him attempt to “educate” us on Public Records Laws in that, Louisiana Statutory rate of $0.25 per page notwithstanding, Williams relayed that “our rate is $1 per page.” Again, without citing a Louisiana Statute, we were informed that we’d be responsible for paying all personnel costs for redacting out “attorney-client privileged information” (including the bizarre inclusion of material stated to be in the lawsuits themselves, which are already public record for the world to see!).

We decided that, since Williams is so willing to educate us on Louisiana’s Public Records laws, we’d offer him an opportunity to educate us on a few other matters, such as whether his office attends appeals hearings and, if so, whether his office puts on any evidence in support of his office’s valuations at those hearings. Williams, apparently miffed at our line of questioning, fired off this letter dated January 5, 2015 which said our inquiries were not public records requests (we never asserted that they were but merely relayed in writing that he could feel free to further educate us) but rather “interrogatories,” to which “no answer will be forthcoming to your interrogatories.”

It appears as Jindal’s term nears its end, so too may have the HGI contract to handle Orleans Parish property tax appeals.  Our contact at NOCC said HGI’s status for 2015 is “unclear.”  When we added we’d sent public records request to their New Orleans post office box, he said, “I think you’ll find they’ve quit manning that P. O. Box.”  Another source, when told of our public records request of HGI said, “It’s probably better I not say anything.”

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