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Faircloth says his state income is a ‘pittance,’ but his $1.1 million is 11th highest among state’s top 50 legal contracts

July 24, 2013 by tomaswell

The Faircloth Law Firm doesn’t even show as a blip on the Louisiana Office of Contractual Review’s (OCR) Top 50 list of legal contractors with the State of Louisiana for the Fiscal Year July 1, 2010 through June 30, 2011.

Altogether, the top 50 contracts represent a combined total of $81.4 million, according to OCR’s list.

The list ranks state contracts from the largest—the Department of Justice (Louisiana Attorney General) at $18 million to number 50—the $276,000 contract of the New Orleans law firm of Vezina & Gattuso, but does not include Faircloth.

That’s because the Faircloth Law Firm received its payments in fiscal years 2012 and 2013 and did not show up on the FY-2011 list.

Most attorney contracts, with the exception of the Attorney General and public defender contracts, are awarded over a three-year period.

It should be noted that simply because a firm is awarded a contract of, say, $1.5 million, it does not necessarily reflect the actual amount paid the firm. Often, cases conclude long before the contracts are exhausted and in other cases, they extend beyond the financial terms of the dates of the contracts and must be amended or renewed.

The Associated Press reported Wednesday that Faircloth has received more than $1.1 million in contract work from various state agencies, which would put the firm about midway on the list of top 50 firms. Records provided by the Office of Risk Management (ORM) through the Division of Administration (DOA) show that the Faircloth firm was actually paid $931,000 in 2012 and 2013.

Most contracts awarded through ORM are done so at set hourly rates which are generally uniform from firm to firm, though there are exceptions where a firm will receive a contract with a higher per hour representation fee. And while LouisianaVoice was not provided with Faircloth’s hourly fee, it is assumed that it is higher than customary simply because he represented the governor’s office in several court cases, many of which he lost in the lower courts and in the appeals process.

More recently, the attorney general’s office has contracted Faircloth’s firm to represent the state in litigation against BP for the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill and is also represented the state in litigation by CNSI which was fired from its $200 million Medicaid contract with the Department of Health and Hospitals.

Those two cases alone are expected to reap an additional $675,000 in addition to the $1.1 million already paid but Faircloth downplays that amount as insignificant in the overall scheme of things.

“I know what we do is a pittance compared to how much gets contracted,” he said.

Oh, really?

Let’s compare.

With the $675,000 from CNSI and BP cases added to the $1.1 million already received, that’s almost $1.8 million total.

Of the 50 biggest legal contracts listed by OCR, only 10 were for more than $1.8 million and half of those were for either the attorney general’s office or four contracts of $5.1 million for the legal services for the defense of persons pursuing post-conviction relief of a capital conviction; $4 million for legal services for the Louisiana Public Defender Board and contracts for $2.1 million and $2 million for legal representation for capital cases where an ethical conflict in the representation of indigents is needed.

Faircloth denies that he is getting the lucrative contracts because of his ties to the governor as first his executive counsel and most recently as a member of the University of Louisiana Board of Supervisors.

Sean Lansing, a spokesman for Jindal first said the governor’s office doesn’t direct agencies to hire specific attorneys but later revised his statement when told that agency directors indicated that Jindal’s office had suggested hiring Faircloth in the past. “We have recommended Jimmy in certain circumstances because he is a great lawyer but at the end of the day, it is up to agency heads to decide on whom to hire.

“I don’t deny that I have the benefit of knowing all those folks,” Faircloth said of his connections to the governor’s office. “I would like to think that in my working with (state agencies), they would say, ‘Jimmy’s a very good lawyer. Let’s hire him.’

“I like to think I get the call because we give pretty good service,” he said.

Posted in Attorney General, Contract, Contracts, Governor's Office, Public Records, State Agencies, Transparency | 4 Comments »

Former Jindal Executive Counsel Faircloth has history of losing state legal cases but gets big fees: $930K in 2 years

July 23, 2013 by tomaswell

BATON ROUGE (CNS)—It would seem that Jimmy Faircloth isn’t doing very well when representing the gret stet of Looziana in the various courtrooms around the state—either as an advocate of an unwinnable case on behalf of the state or as a candidate for the Louisiana Supreme Court.

Faircloth’s name has surfaced more often than bubbles in little Flatulent Filmore’s bath water, but always, it seems, on the losing end of the score.

The first time we heard the Louisiana Tech graduate’s name was when he was named in January of 2008 as Gov. Elect Bobby Jindal’s choice as his executive counsel.

Jindal’s pick was controversial from the get-go. Faircloth was still sticky from his three-year hitch as legal counsel for the Coushatta Indians, whom he advised to sink $30 million in a formerly bankrupt Israeli technology firm called MainNet for whom his brother Brandon was subsequently employed as vice president of sales.

It was not the first bad decision by the Coushatta Tribe. Three years earlier, they attracted undesired national attention when it was revealed that they had paid lobbyist Jack Abramoff $32 million to help promote and protect their gambling interests and got little in return.

Those same Coushattas also paid another $400,000 to Aubrey Temple of DeRidder, whom Jindal would later name to the Coastal Protection and Restoration Financing Corp. Temple was never able to account for the $400,000. Temple also was a key player in an attempt by another Jindal ally, Donald T. “Boysie” Bollinger of Lockport, to purchase Toledo Bend water from the Sabine River Authority for possible resale in Texas.

Okay, this is getting way too convoluted. Let’s get back to Alexandria attorney Faircloth.

Faircloth resigned as executive counsel in 2009 to run for the Louisiana Supreme Court. It was a race he lost by 53-47 percent.

Two years later he was fined $1,000 by the Louisiana Board of Ethics for violating state ethics laws when he entered into a contract to represent the Louisiana Tax Commission only six months after he resigned as Jindal’s executive counsel. State law required him to wait a full year before representing any state agency. He returned the $7,000 he had received in legal fees from the Tax Commission.

In December of 2010, Jindal appointed Faircloth to the University of Louisiana Board of Supervisors. In January of this year, Faircloth resigned and was replaced by his wife, Kelly.

The latest episode with Faircloth is yet another legal setback—this time at the hands of the First Circuit Court of Appeal which upheld a lower court decision that the LSU Board of Stupevisors must make public the names of the candidates for LSU president.

The Stupevisors withheld the names of all the candidates except the ultimate selection, F. King Alexander of California State University Long Beach and the Baton Rouge Advocate and the New Orleans Times-Picayune each filed suit to force the board to reveal the names of the three dozen candidates who were considered.

Faircloth, true to form and like his mentor Jindal, refused to admit defeat graciously. He described the matter before the appeals court as “not an appeal” but merely a question of what LSU owed in damages and legal fees. He added that LSU would “get its chance to appeal.”

Normally, only the losing party of a civil court matter would be required to pay damages and legal fees, so it’s somewhat confusing to understand where, exactly, Faircloth is drawing the line between winning and losing or what is and what is not an appeal.

No matter.

Faircloth, if nothing else is a trooper and the matter lives on in the courts—and Faircloth’s meter keeps running.

Other cases in which Faircloth has gone down in flames include a federal case in Tangipahoa in which a U.S. District Court Judge in November of 2012 ordered a halt to implementation of Jindal’s new voucher and teacher hiring laws in Tangipahoa because the state laws conflict with court orders in decades-old desegregation cases in Tangipahoa and at least 30 other parishes.

“They (the plaintiffs) can’t even describe the standard or what programs are affected” by the desegregation order, Faircloth sniffed.

In March of this year, a Baton Rouge district court judge negated the teacher tenure and evaluations section of Gov. Jindal’s education reform.

Faircloth had no comments about that ruling but Jindal had plenty to say. “We expect to prevail in the state Supreme Court,” he said.

Two months later, in May, the Louisiana Supreme Court shot down the Jindal administration’s method of funding the statewide school voucher program, ruling that it diverted money from each student’s per-pupil allocation to cover the cost of private or parochial school tuition.

The very next month, the Supremes struck down a change to the state retirement system that had been pushed through the legislature by Jindal—because the measure had not been approved by the constitutionally-required two-thirds vote.

Ironically, State Rep. Kevin Pearson (R-Slidell), who sponsored the retirement changes in the 2012 legislature, was the same legislator who pushed for the constitutional amendment the previous year that required that any retirement plan which results in an actuarial cost to the state to be passed by a two-thirds vote.

So Faircloth must really feel bad about all those losses, right? After all, those TV lawyer ads say you pay nothing unless you win, right?

Nope and nope. Taking the second question first, those lawyer ads are for plaintiff attorneys who work on contingency. Defense attorneys like Faircloth get paid, win or lose.

That should take care of the first question; Faircloth gets paid, win or lose. And he certainly gets paid well.

LouisianaVoice made our customary public records request. On July 9, we asked the governor’s office, the Office of Risk Management (ORM) and the Division of Administration (DOA) for an accounting. The answer finally came on July 19, eight days late under the state’s public records laws.

There was a caveat with which we take issue: The response from DOA attorney Joshua Melder said, “Some information has been redacted pursuant to the Office of Risk Management’s pending claims privilege.”

The public records law, as we understand it, does protect matters of attorney-client privilege or details of ongoing litigation such as settlement negotiations. Attorney fees would not, as we interpret the law, be protected but we let it pass for now. After all, we don’t possess the knowledge of the great legal minds who protect the state’s interests so proficiently.

The figures for fiscal years 2012 and 2013, exclusive of the figures redacted pursuant to ORM’s pending claim privilege, show that the Faircloth Law Firm pulled down an eye-popping $931,000 in those losing causes–$843,300 of that in FY-2013.

Not a bad return on Faircloth’s $23,000 in campaign contributions to Jindal campaigns in 2003, 2006 and 2010.

Now if he would just win an occasional case, Jindal might be a little happier with his favorite attorney.

Posted in Boards, Contract, Contracts, Governor's Office, Judges, Politicians, Public Records, Transparency | 14 Comments »

Notable Quotables (in their own words)

July 22, 2013 by tomaswell

“I got the tower and the transmitter set up and then I was told not to flip the switch.”

—Former Department of Public Safety (DPS) radio maintenance technician Rusty Whittington, in his accusation that DPS Director of Information and Technology Jeya Selvaratnam ordered him not to place an emergency radio transmitter into operation in the hours following landfall of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans in August of 2005 even though normal State Police radio communications had been knocked out by the storm.

Posted in Politics | 1 Comment »

Ex-DPS employee says supervisor gave order not to use LSP transmitter following Katrina in quest for FEMA funding

July 22, 2013 by tomaswell

A former Department of Public Safety radio technician has claimed that DPS Director of Information Technology Jeya Selvaratnam ordered that an emergency radio transmitter not be placed into operation in the hours following Hurricane Katrina’s landfall in New Orleans despite the loss of normal radio communications by State Police.

Rusty Whittington, who subsequently resigned following Selvaratnam’s order, now works in the private sector. He is not related to W.R. “Rut” Whittington, who served as State Police Superintendent from 1996 to 2000.

He said Louisiana State Police (LSP) communications were knocked out by Katrina and he was ordered to transport a 100-foot portable tower designed specifically for such emergencies into the New Orleans area so that there might be communications in the immediate vicinity of Troop B.

He said the transmitter had a maximum range of “perhaps 12 miles, probably better at 10 miles,” which is why he erected the tower on the Clearview Boulevard overpass over I-10. “It was in close proximity to Troop B and would have given us some communication capability at a time when it was desperately needed,” he said.

He said the equipment is manufactured in Oklahoma for just such events. He said the system cost about $125,000. “It was designed to keep working in conditions like Katrina. He said that he was dispatched to New Orleans “within 24 hours” of Katrina’s devastation of New Orleans.

“I was the fourth person in line to get the word to set the system up,” he said. “First, the word came down from the governor (Gov. Kathleen Blanco), then to (State Police Superintendent Terry) Landry, then to Jeya (Selvaratnam) and then me. I was the one who rolled with it.”

Selvaratnam was in charge of the State Police radio and communications section at the time, Whittington said.

“I got the tower and the transmitter set up and then I was told not to flip the switch,” he said. “This was within 24 hours of the storm when people’s lives were at stake. They (State Police administrators) knew the main system was down.”

Whittington said he believes the reason Selvaratnam gave the order to not power up the system was because the number one priority of DPS at the time, rather than saving lives, was to make DPS appear helpless so that the department could apply for funds from the Federal Emergency Management Administration (FEMA) to upgrade the entire DPS communications system.

“The (portable) system sat there for three days while State Police were unable to get communications moved to Bridge City.”

He said Selvaratnam was a difficult person with whom to work. “Jeya told me on one occasion that the way to control people was to divide and conquer,” he said.

He said DPS did eventually receive FEMA money but that it would be difficult to account for how it was spent. “They (DPS) replaced equipment and upgraded other equipment, but tracking how the money was actually spent would be next to impossible,” he said.

He said he became disgusted with the manner in which Selvaratnam handled the emergency communication system incident and resigned from DPS shortly afterward to enter the private sector.

He said he could only speculate as to whether or not Selvaratnam received orders not to put the emergency system into service from higher up the LSP chain of command.

Posted in State Police | 10 Comments »

Sexual harassment in DPS rewarded by promotion of guilty party, reprisals against employee who witnessed, reported it

July 21, 2013 by tomaswell

A state employee who witnesses any incident of sexual harassment is required to report what he sees or hears immediately.

The Civil Rights Act of 1964 made sexual harassment illegal in the workplace and today, in theory at least, federal laws regarding sexual harassment protect virtually all private and public employees in the U.S.

The Louisiana Department of Culture, Recreation and Tourism (DCRT), for example, has a complaint procedure clearly defined in writing which says, “Any employee experiencing or witnessing sexual harassment by anyone in the Office of the Lieutenant Governor and DCRT, including any manager, supervisor, administrator, co-worker, vendor, client or visitor shall immediately report the inappropriate conduct.”

The departmental regulation further says that under most circumstances, complaints should be made to the employee’s supervisor but “if the complaint involves the employee’s supervisor or someone within the direct line of supervision, or if the employee for any reason, is uncomfortable in reporting to his/her supervisor, he/she may contact any other supervisor” or contact the agency’s human resources director.

But if an employee who witnesses sexual misconduct and dutifully reports it he may find himself with a target on his back and he may well end up as the one who finds himself the subject of investigation, punishment and possibly even termination.

Take the case of Dean Vicknair, a former information technology employee of the Department of Public Safety and Corrections (State Police), who was responsible in part for the five-day suspension of his supervisor for sexual harassment of a female co-worker in 2005 but who ended up paying for his actions with his career.

One would think DPS would be the last place where sexual harassment would be tolerated.

Think again.

Even though DPS has an online State Sex Offender and Child Predator Registry site, it appears to have learned nothing from the 2004 incident involving Jeya Selvaratnam, then a supervisor but since promoted to Director of Information Technology and Communications.

In February of 2012, the State Probation and Parole Office, part of the Department of Corrections (DOC), settled a federal sexual harassment lawsuit involving a supervisor and a female employee of the Probation and Parole district office in Thibodaux in which the female victim was awarded $50,000 and the agency was ordered to initiate a sexual harassment training policy for its employees.

DOC spokesperson Pam Laborde said after the suit was settled that agency officials were “very quick and very swift to act” once the woman’s claims were reported to them. “If the (Probation and Parole) director didn’t know about the incident, how can you take action?” she asked. “We do have good policies in place. We’ll just brush them up where we need to.”

Despite her claim that the agency director was unaware of the supervisor’s actions, the Justice Department said at least four other department employees, including a part-time internal affairs investigator, knew about her harassment, which progressed from inappropriate comments to sexual assault,  but said nothing.

Perhaps that was because, even though that case involved a different agency, the DOC employees were aware of Vicknair’s experience at DPS which culminated in his forced retirement nearly six years after first reporting the incident by his supervisor.

In the end, an unblemished career spanning nearly 21 years meant nothing as he was forced out—while Selvaratnam was promoted.

In a seven-page letter of suspension to Selvaratnam dated April 26, 2005, State Police Col. Henry Whitehorn cited “overwhelming” evidence that Selvaratnam pursued the female subordinate over a six-year period, dating back to Nov. 16, 1998 and in December of 2002, while standing outside the State Police building with Vicknair, the female employee walked past and Selvaratnam told Vicknair he wanted to have sex with her (in the interest of decency, we paraphrased the exact quote provided in Whitehorn’s letter). Whitehorn is currently a U.S. marshal in Shreveport.

Soon after that conversation, Vicknair left DPS for the Department of Transportation and Development “because of problems he had with you,” Whitehorn wrote in his letter to Selvaratnam.

Vicknair did not report the conversation to the woman until more than a year later, in January of 2004, at which time the woman lodged a complaint against Selvaratnam, Whitehorn said. The following day, the woman attempted call out to Selvaratnam in a hallway and he turned and berated her verbally, reminding her, “You are my subordinate.”

Whitehorn also noted that until she filed her complaint against him, Selvaratnam repeatedly called the woman into his office for lengthy conversations and outside for frequent smoke breaks—all of which Whitehorn said forced other employees to take up the slack for the work the woman was unable to perform because she felt she had to acquiesce to Selvaratnam’s demands.

Both Selvaratnam and the female employee were married.

“Mr. Selvaratnam, the evidence is overwhelming that you did, over the course of several years, commencing on or about Nov. 16, 1998, repeatedly and for extended periods of time, keep (the woman) away from her duties as an IT Technical Support Specialist. Your behavior created a hostile work environment for (her) by increasingly interfering with her duties. You took (her) away from her duties to such a great extent that other employees had to perform (her) work for her. Your behavior created a gender-based hostile work environment for (her) and was particularly egregious in view of the fact that you were (her) second tier supervisor at the time. Your behavior was in violation of the Department’s Discrimination and Harassment Complaint Procedure…

“…Behavior which is offensive, inappropriate or in any way creates an unpleasant working environment for your co-workers will not be tolerated. Nor will any form of reprisal for retaliation against (the woman) or anyone involved in the investigative process be tolerated.

“Pursuant to Civil Service Commission Rules…you are hereby suspended for five eight-hour days without pay and allowances. Your suspension will begin at 8 a.m. on Monday May 9, 2005, and end at 4:30 p.m. on Friday, May 13, 2005.”

The female employee won a federal lawsuit against DPS, the details of which were ordered confidential by the court and she also received assurances that she would no longer be under the supervision of Selvaratnam. When he was subsequently promoted, he was once again supervising her and she filed a second suit in state court for breach of contract.

Vicknair, meanwhile, was called back to DPS following Hurricane Katrina to assist in Lotus Notes administration (email administration and trouble shooting) because of a lack of skilled employees in that section. He was assured that there was “no way in hell” Selvaratnam would ever be director of the section.

But Selvaratnam was indeed promoted to director at the insistence of State Police Superintendent Col. Mike Edmonson, Vicknair says, and the woman subsequently transferred to another section.

Vicknair said soon after his promotion Selvaratnam called him into his office and said he had read Vicknair’s transcript and that he “knew who his friends were and who his enemies were,” according to a federal lawsuit filed by Vicknair.

As pressure mounted on Vicknair, he filed grievances against Selvaratnam. When the DPS Grievance Committee investigated his complaints, Vicknair said, the committee interviewed Selvaratnam but none of Vicknair’s witnesses who he said could back up his allegations were called to testify.

Edmonson, who was best man at Selvaratnam’s wedding, was a member of the grievance committee that declined to interview any of Vicknair’s witnesses.

It should be noted here that LouisianaVoice recently received a comment on its June 28 post about the consolidation of 20 Executive Department IT operations from Selvaratnam’s state email address which said, “I don’t see the problem here. Why does everyone hate Governor Jindal? Is this a racial issue?”

When we pointed out that normally a state employee who uses his state email account to respond to political blogs would be reprimanded, Selvaratnam quickly fired off another email—again, from his state email address—denying that he was the author of the original comment. “I did not write to you,” he wrote. “I am not sure how you received this e-mail or who did it or their motive. I would appreciate it if you would remove this from your blog.”

Vicknair, who attempted to comply with requirements to report sexual harassment, only to subsequently find himself the subject of an investigation that left him jobless and which nearly cost him his home, was left disillusioned and more than a little jaded by his experience.

In a letter to DPS Internal Affairs, Vicknair said, “You stated that I failed to cooperate with the investigation” and was accused of inappropriate conduct. “Please explain to me how an attempt to protect a career of 20 years and (to) expose the internal corrupt actions of the current DPS administration warrants a charge of conduct unbecoming.

“My recent experiences have proven that integrity is not a foundation for the internal grievance process and is merely an established ‘feel good policy’ for the perception of adhering to state and federal requirements.

“I should never have been suspended and forced into early retirement after 20 years of impeccable, dedicated state service, but I went down swinging,” he said. “I continue to fight the good fight against corruption in an effort to prevent another person from facing a similar travesty.”

Posted in Ethics, Public Records, State Agencies, State Police | 13 Comments »

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