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Payback time: NGOs that have been receiving legislative appropriations face accountability or must repay funds

July 29, 2013 by tomaswell

Deadline Set for Turnover to Office of Debt Recovery

of more than $4 million Owed to Taxpayers

State Treasurer John Kennedy announced Monday that 36 Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) have until August 31, 2013 to fulfill their obligations under the law or be turned over to the Office of Debt Recovery for the collection of approximately $4.452 million owed to taxpayers.

“The Legislature and the Governor made it very clear with the passage of House Bill 629 and the establishment of the Office of Debt Recovery that the days of owing the state money and hiding are over,” Kennedy said. “We now have an agency in state government with teeth whose sole mission is to ensure every penny owed to the taxpayers is recovered.”

Treasurer Kennedy announced that the Department of the Treasury will issue final demand letters this week to 36 entities that have failed to comply with the provisions of Executive Order BJ 2008-30, established by Governor Kathleen Blanco and continued by Governor Bobby Jindal, which requires transparency and accountability from NGOs that have received direct taxpayer support in past appropriation bills.

“Over the last several years, our Audit & Compliance Division has repeatedly sent certified letters, sent e-mails and even made personal call attempts to these particular entities demanding the required ‘progress reports’ and the supporting documentation required under the law with little or no response,” Kennedy said.  “While most NGOs have worked in good faith with our office and have been in compliance, these 36 organizations have become the most flagrant violators of these important requirements.”

Under the regulations, NGOs receiving taxpayer money directly via HB 1 must provide progress reports and corresponding documentation to the Treasury in order to maintain their appropriations. Examples of the required paperwork include a comprehensive budget, detailed description of the public purpose, and detailed cost information outlining the use of the appropriated funds.  Entities failing to comply with the provisions are required to return the full appropriation to the State Treasury.

Should these 36 entities ultimately decide to continue their non-compliance, they will be among the first items on the agenda for the new Office of Debt Recovery.  Treasurer Kennedy has long advocated the establishment of such an office and made it a top priority during Governor Jindal’s Streamlining Commission in 2009.  Now that HB 629 has made that a reality, state agencies will be required to refer unpaid receivables to a centralized unit for collection.

“I’m hoping all agencies across state government will aggressively utilize this new mechanism to maximize revenues,” Kennedy said. “Every dollar that is brought in by this new process is one less dollar we have to raise in taxes or cut in important priorities, such as funding education or aiding the disabled.”

List of 36 Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs)

Out of Compliance with Executive Order BJ 2008-30

12th   Ward Save Our Community Organization, Inc. $520,000
Algiers   Enterprise Community Council, Inc. $25,000
BASIC   of Louisiana $85,000
Booker   T. Community Outreach Program $25,000
Boys   & Girls Club of Natchitoches $75,000
Children   of the Village Foundation, Inc. $10,000
Community   Awareness Revitalization & Enhancement Corp. $130,000
Community   Services of Richland, Inc. $30,000
Daughters   of Promise $25,000
Desire   Community Housing Corp. $100,000
Emmit   Spurlock Memorial Foundation $10,000
Fourth   District Missionary Baptist Association of Louisiana, Inc. $75,000
Gordon   Plaza Elderly & Handicapped Apartments, Inc. $30,000
Just   Willing Foundation $75,000
Kids   Coupes, Inc. $140,000
Lady   Flame, Inc. $2,000
Life   Economic Development Corporation $100,000
Lower   Ninth Ward Neighborhood Council, Inc. $15,000
Martin   L. King Jr. Neighborhood Association in Shreveport $100,000
McKinley   High School Alumni Association $125,000
Muttshack   Animal Rescue Foundation, Inc. $15,000
National   Empowerment Coalition, Inc. $150,000
Neighbors   for a Better Baker $10,000
Novice   House, Inc. $50,000
Purple   Circle Social Club $50,000
Rapides   Primary Health Care Center, Inc. $550,000
Serenity   67 $150,000
Southside   Economic Development District, Inc. $50,000
Succor,   Inc. $550,000
Tab-N-Action   (Boy Scouts of Ouachita Parish) $30,000
The   Colomb Foundation, Inc. $300,000
The   Olive Branch Ministries $20,000
Treme   Community Education Program, Inc. $325,000
Twelfth   Ward Save Our Community $100,000
Wilbert   Tross, Sr. Community Development & Counseling Center $350,000
Young   Emerging Leaders of LA $55,000

Posted in Governor's Office, House, Senate, Legislature, Legislators, Public Records, Revenue, Transparency | 14 Comments »

Louisiana ranks second to Tennessee as worst state in which to be unemployed but don’t tell Jindal or $320K Moret that

July 29, 2013 by tomaswell

BATON ROUGE (CNS)—Poor Gov. Jindal; he just can’t catch a break.

No sooner does he try to put a positive spin on six straight months of increased unemployment rates in the state than 24/7 Wall St., the financial news and polling firm, publishes a survey showing that Louisiana is second only to Tennessee among the worst states in American in which to be unemployed.

Even Mississippi, at 10th worst, ranks eight notches higher than Louisiana.

Jindal, who loves to cite any survey that puts Louisiana in a favorable light, is likely to overlook the latest 24/7 findings which indicate the following for the state:

  • The 24.6 percent of average weekly wage covered is lowest in the nation (the national average is 33 percent);
  • The average weekly payout of $201 is second lowest;
  • The 30 percent of unemployed who are receiving benefits is tied with Tennessee for fifth lowest (again, the national average was 45 percent);
  • The 1.1 percent one-year job growth is 19th lowest;
  • The state’s unemployment rate of 7 percent puts it in the middle of the pack at 25th lowest—but Louisiana is one of only a handful where the unemployment rate actually rose from the previous year.

Jindal (through Lansing, of course; he never takes tough questions from the media) denies that the increased unemployment rate and the 3,800 state employees who received their pink slips in the last budget year are linked in any way.

Wow. As they say, figures don’t lie but liars figure.

Claiming that many of the state employees found new jobs with the private companies that took over state services, Sean Lansing, who apparently has taken Kyle Plotkin’s place as lead Jindal apologist, said, “Louisiana’s economy is continuing to thrive as we consistently outperform both the national and Southern economies. Suggesting otherwise can only be done by ignoring a slew of statistics and metrics that prove just how well we’re doing.”

Speaking of ignoring “a slew of statistics,” figures released by the Louisiana Workforce Commission indicates there were 146,800 unemployed in June in Louisiana, or 7 percent, up from 6.8 percent in May and the sixth straight month of increased unemployment.

Unemployment rates, it should be noted, count only those unemployed who continue to seek jobs, not those who have given up looking. That said, the fact that only 30 percent of the state’s unemployed (tied with Tennessee for fifth lowest) are receiving unemployment benefits would seem to contradict the administration’s rosy outlook.

Lansing, of course, fell back on certain business surveys which seem to come out every week painting the state as some kind of idyllic garden spot for business climate—all while Louisiana’s college graduates continue to leave the state in droves in search of better opportunities elsewhere.

If Louisiana is such an attractive magnet for business and jobs, someone please explain how this state has managed to go from eight to six congressmen (congressional representation is based on population, remember) and is projected by some experts to drop to five with the next census. (If all those people who have left the state had stayed, we can’t help but wonder what the unemployment rate would be.)

Lansing also pointed to decreases in Medicaid and food stamp enrollment and improved per capita income statistics to bolster the administration’s claim that Jindal is some sort of economic miracle worker.

But wait! Let’s take the food stamp enrollment first. “A state can have a great program, but if they make it really, really hard for people to qualify for benefits, then it’s just a great program sitting there that no one can use,” said Rebecca Dixon, policy analyst at the National Employment Law Project.

And those decreases in Medicaid were brought about in large part by the administration’s policies that have drastically reduced payments to doctors for treating Medicaid patients. As their own push back, many doctors have simply quit accepting new Medicaid patients. One doctor recently told LouisianaVoice that he can see a Medicaid patient “but if I have to order any procedures on that patient, Medicaid won’t pay, so I just don’t take any more Medicaid patients.”

Likewise, Baton Rouge area hospitals have very quietly begun laying off nurses and other personnel—a move directly attributable to the cutback in Medicaid payments approved by the Department of Health and Hospitals under the Jindal administration.

Greg Albrecht, chief economist for the Legislative Fiscal Office, took issue with Jindal’s claim that the climb in unemployment was not related to state layoffs.

“It can’t be the only factor, but to say they’re unrelated seems to be unrealistic and mathematically it can’t be,” he said. “I don’t think you can say the unemployment rate is not influenced by government employment layoffs.”

Economic Development Secretary Stephen Moret, ever the optimist at $320,000 per year (and who wouldn’t optimistic be at that salary?) said he expects the unemployment rate to drop because the state has thousands of jobs “in the pipeline” because of a large number of “just huge” projects in the works across the state. “As I look at the next few years, I see tens of thousands of new jobs,” he said. “I’m quite optimistic about the future.”

Tens of thousands? Wow again. Dude, there are people in this state who can’t hold out for the future, even for a “few years.”

Let’s go back to that 24/7 Wall St. report:

Job growth was relatively slow in the worst states to be employed because new job opportunities were taking longer to materialize. “In most of these states, the number of nonfarm jobs grew slower than the 1.3 percent national rate between June 2012 and June 2013,” it said.

In Louisiana, the nonfarm jobs grew at a whopping 1.1 percent during that time frame. So much for that healthy business climate.

Tens of thousands of new jobs on the horizon?

That’s a lot of guys standing on street corners dancing around like a dog in need of worming while playing air guitar on a cardboard pizza store sign.

That’s a lot of burgers and soft drinks.

You want fries with that?

 

Posted in Civil Service, Economy, Governor's Office, Layoffs, Privatization | 10 Comments »

Notable Quotables (in their own words)

July 28, 2013 by tomaswell

“It is important that ethics board members are completely free of any and all conflicts of interest.”

—Gov. Bobby Jindal, in announcing his appointment of Scott Schneider to the State Board of Ethics on Sept. 23, 2008.

Posted in BESE, Boards, Education, Ethics, Governor's Office, Notable Quotables, Transparency | 2 Comments »

State Ethics Board vice chair resigns after conflict of interest over BESE member, TFA Director Kira Orange Jones exposed

July 28, 2013 by tomaswell

One of the primary functions of the State Ethics Board, on paper at least, is to guard against conflicts of interests on the part of state employees and appointive and elected officials.

So what happens when a member of the State Ethics Board has a conflict of interests?

If you are an appointee of Gov. Bobby Jindal, the answer is: apparently nothing.

Nothing, that is, until you are called out by a member of the media.

Then you quietly resign.

Scott Schneider, vice chairman of the Louisiana Board of Ethics, submitted his resignation just weeks after the Tribune, a newspaper serving the African-American community of New Orleans published a story in its May/June issue headlined “Kira, Kira on the Wall” which explained Schneider’s own conflict of interests in ruling on an Aug. 21, 2012, conflict of interest decision about Board of Elementary and Secondary Education (BESE) member Kira Orange Jones.

New Orleans attorney James Babst had sought the opinion on behalf of client Jones because of her position as executive director of Teach for America (TFA) which holds a lucrative contract with the Louisiana Department of Education.

Ethics Board staff attorneys informed the board that the state Code of Governmental Ethics would prohibit Kira Orange Jones, while she serves as a member (of BESE), from providing compensated services to Teach for America at a time when TFA has or is seeking a contractual, business or financial relationship with either the Louisiana Department of Education (DOE) or the Recovery School District (RSD),” the Tribune said.

Enter Schneider to save the day for Kira Orange Jones, Superintendent of Education John White and Gov. Bobby Jindal.

Schneider argued against the staff recommendation, ultimately prevailing with the logic that Jones was merely head of the New Orleans office of TFA and not the entire organization.

In a three-page letter from staff attorney Tracy Barker, the Ethics Board noted that while TFA has contracts with DOE in amounts exceeding $50,000 and that while BESE is required to approve and sign the contracts, and that as a member of BESE, Jones voted on those contracts, somehow no conflict existed.

The legislation cited by the board said there is no conflict so long as the following criteria are met:

  • The employee must be a salaried or wage-earning employee;
  • The employee’s salary must remain substantially unaffected by the contractual relationship;
  • The public servant (BESE member Jones) must own less than a “controlling interest” in the company, and
  • The public Servant (Jones) must be neither an officer, director, trustee, nor partner in the company.

So just what part of “executive director” did the Board of Ethics not understand?

That, it turns out, might be the key. Babst, it seems, merely identified his client as an employee of TFA, being careful to note that she did not sit on the board of directors of the national TFA but apparently neglecting to identify her as executive director of the New Orleans office.

And it seems reasonable to assume that whether or not she continues to receive paychecks would hinge in great part on her success in placing TFA teachers in public and charter schools in the New Orleans area through those lucrative contracts with DOE. So much for her salary remaining “substantially unaffected” by the contractual relationship.

And what was Schneider’s motivation in coming to the defense of Jones even as Ethic Board staff attorneys were ready to point out the obvious conflict?

Well, it seems that The Tulane University Cowen Institute’s partnership with TFA last year boosted Tulane to fifth in the nation in the number of university graduating seniors applying to TFA.

Schneider serves as an associate general counsel for Tulane University but somehow never deemed that fact and Tulane’s association with TFA important enough to inform the Ethics Board staff or to recuse himself from the discussion.

Ethics Board—Schneider—Tulane—TFA—Kira Jones—BESE;

BESE—Kira Jones—TFA—Tulane—Schneider—Ethics Board.

Hmmm. Either way you look at it, it fails to pass the smell test.

Ironically, way back in September of 2008, when Jindal announced his appointment of Schneider, he did so with a strong statement about conflicts of interest.

Mary Dumestre had just resigned from the board, saying she wanted to avoid a potential conflict with her appointment and her private law firm work.

That prompted Jindal to stress how important it was “that ethics board members are completely free of any and all conflicts of interest.”

So, perhaps Gov. Jindal can explain how BESE President Chas Roemer continues to be able to take part in discussions and to vote on matters affecting charter schools while his sister, Caroline Roemer Shirley, serves as Executive Director of the Louisiana Association of Public Charter Schools.

Or how the President and CEO of Biomedical Research Foundation of Northwest Louisiana, which is taking over the LSU Medical Center in Shreveport and the LSU-run E.A. Conway Medical Center in Monroe, can simultaneously serve on the LSU Board of Supervisors which negotiated a blank contract with the Biomedical Research Foundation for that takeover.

The only reasonable explanation for all these things—and we have given this a lot of thought—is that Gov. Jindal simply holds the Louisiana electorate in contempt, in total disdain—inconvenient distractions, as it were, to be mollified only when politically expedient to do so.

Posted in BESE, Boards, Contract, Contracts, Education, Ethics, Governor's Office, Transparency | 10 Comments »

No funds for deteriorating classrooms or for disadvantaged, but $1.2 million found for Mannings’ football camp at NSU

July 26, 2013 by tomaswell

The Louisiana Board of Regents in May estimated there was a $1.7 billion backlog in repairing and renovating campus facilities in colleges and universities across the state.

But even with sewer systems that backed up into classrooms, leaky roofs, outdated laboratories and even mold among the deficiencies cited by the Regents, it’s certainly good to know that Gov. Jindal and the Louisiana Legislature could scrape together $1.2 million to make improvements to athletic facilities at Nicholls State University in Thibodaux in order to make life easier for the Manning family.

Don’t get us wrong. We have nothing against the Mannings. We were not among those who got up in arms when Peyton and Eli opted to ply their trade for the University of Tennessee and Ole Miss, respectively. In fact, Eli’s gravitation to Oxford was just natural, given that Dad Archie played there. But didn’t our Bert Jones embarrass Archie and the Rebels 61-17 back in 1970? And two years later, Jones somehow managed to get off two passes in the final four seconds, the second one to Brad Davis for a 10-yard touchdown and a 17-16 win (We know, set your watches back two seconds…).

No, this is not about Archie, Eli, Peyton and Cooper and their football camp at Nicholls.

This is about priorities.

Jindal somehow can’t find money to help the developmentally disabled in this state but he can find $1.2 million (with the assistance of State Sen. Norby Chabert, R-Houma, and State Rep. Lenar Whitney, R-Houma), to make improvements to the 25 football fields on which the Manning Passing Academy teaches some 1200 football campers—campers who, we are reasonably certain, pay a hefty fee for the privilege of receiving tutelage from the quarterbacking legends.

Pardon us for not fawning all over the Mannings and praising Jindal’s efforts to keep the passing camp at Nicholls (even though Archie Manning said he had no intentions of moving the camp). So what if they were to move the camp? Where would they take it? In all likelihood, they’d simply go to another Louisiana city.

“The improvements are good for the academy (no kidding?) but it is good for Nicholls (which classroom or professor benefits from this?) and I want to thank the folks here and the people at the South Louisiana Economic Council for working to get this done,” Jindal said, apparently forgetting for the moment the pressing need for better classroom facilities at institutions of higher education all over the state.

And did it slip his mind that he has slashed the higher education budget by 80 percent since he became governor?

“This academy has a $1.8 million impact to our state,” the governor said.

Wait. What? Did anyone at that staged announcement in the John L. Guidry Stadium’s Century Club Room on July 12 have the presence of mind to challenge that statement? Did anyone asked the governor to quantify those numbers?

If not, we will. Right here. Right now.

How does Jindal and/or the South Louisiana Economic Council calculate the economic impact of this event? Campers who stay overnight pay the Mannings, not local hotels or eateries. We love the way in which political leaders, for the sake of political expedience, pluck such numbers out of thin air.

The biggest economic impact, we would guess, would be the fees charged by the Mannings for their “academy.” And that money goes into their bank accounts, not the Lafourche Parish economy. Does anyone seriously believe the Mannings stage their annual academy for free?

Based on the academy’s fee schedule (see comments by GJD), the Mannings take in something between $500,000 and $700,000 for the four-day camp.

We let our civic proud show through when Peyton won his one Super Bowl and Eli his two. Okay, we were also thrilled when Peyton lost that one special Super Bowl to the Saints. And we were a little smug when he had that great comeback season for Denver last year. But to take funding away from needed projects and lavish it on these millionaires who are promoting…football? A game?

“They don’t have to spend their summers here,” Jindal said of Daddy Archie and sons. “They don’t have to rearrange their schedules to be here. They choose to do that.”

Wow. Talk about gooneybabble. Talk about mindless spin. Talk about convoluted logic.

Spend their summers here? Try four days. Rearrange their schedules? What the hell is Jindal talking about? They specifically arrange their schedules around this annual event to rake in a small fortune—far more than the average state employee earns in a year—even more than some of Jindal’s non-classified appointive positions (readers’ collective gasps would go here). You’re damn right they choose to do that, Governor. Anyone in his right mind would choose to do that for the money they get.

Come to think of it, though, they probably spend more days at their passing academy each year than you do in Louisiana, Governor.

It’s one thing to turn your back on those in need in order to help your wealthy friends, Guv, but don’t blow smoke up our togas while you’re doing it.

Posted in Budget, Governor's Office, Higher Education, House, Senate, Legislature, Legislators, Politicians | 16 Comments »

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