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ATC’s Troy Hebert apparently just a poor innocent victim of a series of unfortunate circumstances and vindictive people

January 6, 2013 by tomaswell

Poor Troy Hebert. He just can’t catch a break.

If he’s not placing a former business partner on the payroll of the Alcohol and Tobacco Control Commission (ATC) but who is not required to report to work, he’s placing a person on the payroll specifically for the purpose of visiting lawmakers in the area.

If he’s not requiring employees to stand as he enters a room and greet him with a cheery, “Good morning, Commissioner,” he’s issuing a new directive prohibiting agents from criticizing other agents to the public and media—a clear violation of the First Amendment.

If he’s not cracking down on state cellphone use by ATC agents—even after explicitly informing them that they were free to use the phones for personal use because of their unusually long working hours across the state (and because the phones come with unlimited minutes), he is putting his agency in such a state of disarray that other law enforcement agencies now exclude ATC from participation in raids—a radical departure from past protocol.

If he isn’t taking off to St. Lucia for a week in December of 2010 without taking leave or leave without pay, he’s using state equipment to haul materials to his home currently under construction in Baton Rouge.

And if he’s not purchasing a $10,000 dog ostensibly for the purpose of sniffing synthetic marijuana even though no drug sniffing canine is qualified to locate synthetic drugs (because the chemical ingredients are constantly changing) and then reassigning the agent who went through training with the dog, then he’s pursuing trespassing charges against a person who rescued an emaciated dog from his vacant, unfinished home.

The latest incident involving the former state senator-cum-highly-paid Piyush Jindal appointee revolves around an 11-month Great Dane that Hebert said he was attempting to nurse through an episode of hip dysplasia—by leaving the animal unattended in a vacant house on Christmas Eve.

Hebert is building a new home on South Lakeshore Drive in Baton Rouge and Angie Brumfield of Denham Springs was walking her own dog around the Louisiana State University lakes with a friend. They stopped at the house which had a sign inviting passersby to photograph the home’s Christmas display.

As they waited for others to finish taking photos, Brumfield looked through a window of the unoccupied home which had no curtains.

Inside, she saw the sick gray-and-white female Great Dane lying on the floor. She described the animal as “emaciated, in distress and with bones protruding where they should not be.”

She said she thought the dog had been abandoned and left there to die.

A photograph by the New Orleans Times-Picayune posted on its nola.com http://www.nola.com/news/baton-rouge/index.ssf/2013/01/sick_dog_found_in_baton_rouge.html
showed an extremely sickly animal lying on a floor, with protruding ribs and hip bones.

She coaxed the dog through a sliding door in the rear of the home but never entered the house, she said. She took the animal home, cared for it over Christmas, looked for lost dog signs, and posted a Cragslist ad in an attempt to locate the owner.

She took it to a veterinarian the day after Christmas and the vet discovered a microchip in the dog which indicated it was owned by Hebert.

Hebert said his veterinarian had given pain medication for the dog and instructed the family to monitor the animal’s progress but the dog, named T-Girl, lost considerable weight because of the illness and was able to walk on only three legs.

Brumfield posted a photo of the dog on Facebook, expressed her distress at its condition and named Hebert and his pediatrician wife Dawn Vick as its owners and that’s when the trouble started.

Hebert, who seems to take undue pleasure at demeaning his employees and criticizing them both privately and in the media, took umbrage at Brumfield’s perceived attack on his reputation. “We have done nothing wrong,” Hebert sniffed. “We’re not going to stand back and allow some stranger who broke into our home, stole our dog and is attacking us on a social website when all we’ve been trying to do is deal with a very sad situation.”

Sure sounds like a vicious crime wave to us.

Sad or not, employees of ATC have confirmed that Hebert regularly brought a Great Dane (it’s not certain if it was T-Girl or another Great Dane owned by Hebert) to ATC last summer and would routinely leave the animal in the back of his pickup truck, exposed to the hot summer sun throughout the day with no food or water.

Now, though, he claims that Brumfield may have harmed T-Girl by moving her and keeping her without medication. “We firmly believe that after she took our dog, it made matters worse,” he said.

Hebert reported the matter to Baton Rouge police and Brumfield and her friend now face misdemeanor charges of unlawfully entering premises and unauthorized use of a “movable.”

Apparently, Hebert can do little more these days than pursue those who attempt to aid an animal in distress now that the Baton Rouge Police Department and the parish Alcohol and Beverage Control Board no longer work with ATC.

Prior to Hebert’s appointment ATC regularly participated in raids with other law enforcement agencies but two recent raids—one in Baton Rouge and the other in Lafayette—were carried out without ATC’s involvement.

A retired ATC agent told LouisianaVoice that Hebert “has destroyed an agency that once took the lead in serious investigations.”

The former agent said that agents spent years building relationships with local, federal and other state agencies. “We constantly worked with the FBI, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), U.S. marshals, military Criminal Investigation Command (CID) and other agencies,” he said.

“Many of us were integral members of Joint Terrorism Task Forces; we were teaching classes on alcohol and tobacco laws in police academies. We were one of the leading agencies in our field. We conducted compliance checks for sales of alcohol and tobacco to underage customers. We worked with the Louisiana State Police conducting DWI checkpoints.

“We trained and worked with local police departments and sheriffs’ offices to conduct their own operations.

“I think all that has been destroyed,” he said.

Hebert was appointed by Jindal on Nov. 23, 2010 and less than a month later he and his wife vacationed for a week in St. Lucia. He took neither annual leave (because he had not worked long enough to accumulate a week’s leave time) nor leave without pay.

When later confronted by state officials, he blamed a subordinate and was allowed to correct the “error” which, in some quarters, might be considered payroll fraud and grounds for dismissal.

He also hired Sean Magee of Jeanerette, a former business partner in a Hurricane Katrina debris cleanup business (while Hebert was still a state senator), to work for ATC but several agents say he never appears at the Baton Rouge headquarters.

More recently he has hired a legislative liaison whose only duties are to visit with legislators—even as he has reduced the number of enforcement positions which in return resulted in ATC’s becoming ineligible for certain federal grants. The agency also has lost its eligibility for sending agents to the FBI National Academy.

His most recent innovation is to craft a personnel policy expected to be released within the next few days that prohibits agents from criticizing other agents to the public or media.

As the head of a state law enforcement agency, perhaps Mr. Hebert should take the time to familiarize himself with the Louisiana Whistleblower Protection Act (R.S. 42:1169), the Louisiana State Employee Governmental Code of Ethics and the Bill of Rights, particularly the pesky First Amendment which guarantees citizens the right of free speech.

Posted in Civil Service, Governor's Office, State Agencies | 115 Comments »

Separation of Powers: why does our legislature cede its power to the governor? (LouisianaVoice guest column)

December 30, 2012 by tomaswell

By Stephen Winham ©2012

Because the lines have become so blurred recently, we often forget the reason our founding fathers created three separate branches of government in the 1787 U.S. Constitution. It was simple, really – to protect citizens from an abusive, authoritarian government by spreading and providing checks and balances on power. The separation of powers doctrine implicit in the constitution is applied, in varying measure, by both the U. S. and state governments.

While the judicial branch is responsible for preserving the law and resolving legal issues, the legislature is responsible for actually creating laws, including those making appropriations. The executive is responsible for administering these laws. Though the three branches are considered equal, the legislative branch can easily become the most powerful. If this is true, why is the governor so inordinately powerful in Louisiana?

From my perspective, the clearest example of how the doctrine of separation of powers is disregarded in Louisiana is the way the state’s budget is adopted. In many states the legislature considers budget proposals submitted by the governor (the Executive Budget), but then develops its own proposals, often including a document very much like the one submitted by the governor.

In Louisiana, the Legislature accepts the executive branch budget and the original appropriations bills (which are drafted by administration, not legislative, staff) as submitted. Any changes the legislature makes are by amendments to the bills. This should have the value of making a clear distinction between what the governor is requesting and what the legislature chooses to appropriate for state services. However, to the extent the legislature ultimately rolls over and plays dead, as it has over the last 6 years in ways unprecedented since the late 70s, it has ceded its greatest power – that of appropriation – to the executive branch.

The way the budget is handled is far from the only example of how the executive branch overextends its power via a compliant, and some would say, complicit legislature. Again, why is this so? Is it because the governor actually has extraordinary power by law? No, and remember it is the legislature that makes the law in any event.

I believe the legislature actually enjoys and benefits from being controlled by the governor. No matter what happens in Louisiana government these days, an individual legislator can excuse his/her actions to constituents by claiming s/he could not buck the governor, no matter how hard s/he tried. It’s a win-win situation for the legislature and the governor. The governor continues to wield unbridled power and enjoy positive national press while the legislature can quietly blame him for anything that goes wrong. Both the governor and, ironically, legislators are free to take full credit for anything that goes right.

The governor and members of the legislature are elected to serve the people’s interests. When the bulk of power is in the hands of one person, the value of the separation of powers doctrine is lost, including the extent to which the people’s interests are represented. This was apparently treated humorously when our four previous governors met in a recent forum, but it is no joke.

Posted in Ethics, Governor's Office, Legislature, Legislators | 9 Comments »

Notable Quotables (in their own words)

December 29, 2012 by tomaswell

“It is extremely satisfying to see a politician being made the rube by just the kind of sensationalism (in this case satiric) that they seem to adept at manufacturing these days.”

—Blogger Hudson Hongo, who latched onto Congressman John Fleming’s Facebook post, remarking on the Louisiana lawmaker’s falling for a satire story on The Onion about the opening of an $8 billion abortionplex.

Posted in Congress, Notable Quotables, Politics | 1 Comment »

Fleming bans critical comments from his Facebook page while posting criticism of satirical story on The Onion

December 29, 2012 by tomaswell

You couldn’t really blame Rep. John Fleming (R-Minden) if he simply canceled his Facebook account after the ridicule heaped upon him for his having fallen for a “story” on The Onion.

For those who still don’t know, The Onion is a web page that offers parodies of news stories.

Of course, Fleming, the all-in-one political reincarnation of Willie Rainach, Leander Perez and John Rarick, isn’t the only public official to fall for a satirical story published by The Onion. Only a few weeks ago the official Chinese People’s Daily English language website picked up the story in which The Onion named North Korea’s Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un as the “Sexiest Man Alive,” http://www.npr.org/2012/12/01/166293306/the-onion-so-funny-it-makes-us-cry running it verbatim and adding a 55-photo slideshow of Kim.

But when The Onion ran a story in May of 2011 announcing that Planned Parenthood had opened an $8 billion Abortionplex, Fleming swallowed the bait, albeit nearly a year later, giving the story new legs http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/02/06/john-fleming-onion-planned-parenthood_n_1257763.html.

The story provided details of the “sprawling abortion facility,” including more than 2,000 rooms, coffee shops, bars, dozens of restaurants, retail outlets, a three-story nightclub and a 10-screen multiplex theater—“features intended not only to help clients relax, but to foster a sense of community and make abortion more of a social event.”

Last February, Fleming jumped into the fray, posting on his Facebook page, “More on Planned Parenthood, abortion by the wholesale.” http://literallyunbelievable.org/post/17153265749/how-exactly-did-you-get-elected Fleming spokesman Doug Sachteben later confirmed that the red-faced congressman had removed the post but the damage was done.

The blog Literally Unbelievable, which posts Facebook statuses from users who believe Onion articles, pounced on Fleming’s status before it was removed and re-posted it, prompting a few interesting comments:

• “…The Republican Party has become the party of the rich, the paranoid and the simple-minded.”

• “How can he really believe something so patently stupid?”

• “How much of a moron can you be and not be declared unfit for public office?”

• “Since Fleming is clearly brain-dead, can we unplug him now?”

So, not only was the good congressman from Minden gullible, he was also way behind the curve in being so.

Gullible and slow: not a good combination for a member of Congress, but welcomed by The Onion’s editor, Joe Randazzo.

“We’re delighted to hear that Rep. Fleming is a regular reader of America’s finest news source and doesn’t bother himself with the New York Times, Washington Post, the mediums of television and radio, or any other lesser journalism outlets,” he said.

Of course, Fleming loves to post onto his Facebook page, with many of his messages containing vitriolic criticism of political opponents.

He even goes so far as to block comments on his Facebook page from anyone who disagrees with him—a practice that should raise eyebrows considering the fact that he ostensibly represents all citizens in his Fourth Congressional District.

“Fleming threatened to ban/block me from his FB page for a comment I made that was not bad; it just pointed out his hypocrisy,” one of his constituents wrote.

Another, a retired federal employee, said he was accepted as a “friend” on Fleming’s Facebook page. “I had no problem viewing and commenting on anything that was posted,” he said. “At that time, I was often appalled at how demeaning Congressman Fleming or his staff was to some of the people who seemed to present a different point of view.

“If comments were supportive or “atta-boy” comments, he would praise the person and be very complimentary. But if they were contradictory, he would be very critical or condescending of the person,” he said.

After posting occasional comments that took issue with Fleming positions, the federal retiree sometime in early 2012 suddenly found that he could read Fleming’s posts but no longer could submit comments.

“I spent 16 years of my career working with congressional members relative to budget, so I am experienced at protocol, respecting and communicating with representatives and senators,” he said. “When I posted a comment, it might be supportive, neutral or contradictory, but the comment was always professionally worded and backed up with facts.

“As best I could tell, I had been flagged or was not allowed to post comments on anything posted on Congressman Fleming’s Facebook page.

“Hence, as a person who lives within his district, I am not allowed to express a concern or an opinion on his Facebook posts,” he said.

As a footnote to an earlier post, perhaps LouisianaVoice was a bit unfair to Fleming in portraying him as being interested in advancing only the interests of the wealthy by opposing any tax increase on those making more than $1 million per year.

We may have inadvertently made him appear greedy in showing how he obtained his riches first as a physician and then by branching out into other areas such as Subway sandwich shops and UPS franchises.

We may even have been unfair in pointing out the discrepancies in his numbers when he said he only has $600,000 left over after his businesses brought in $6.3 million in 2010 and the remaining $5.7 million had to go to paying 500 employees, equipment purchase and leasing and the purchase of food for his restaurants.

After all, it almost certainly was a misstatement on his part to imply that he was paying his 500 employees at a wage below the national poverty level. ($5.7 million divided by 500 employees comes to $11,400 per year, the approximate national poverty level in 2010.)

Surely, it was unfair to imply that Fleming does not care for the working poor when a search of corporations run by him reveals that he represents Fleming Payday Loans, an enterprise that offers short-term loans to those who need quick cash to tide them over from payday to payday.

Never mind that the annualized interest rate of a two-week loan may be as high as 390 percent.

He’s helping the poor, right?

Posted in Congress | 7 Comments »

Poor Congressman Fleming; he simply cannot afford to pay additional taxes on meager income of $6.3 million per year

December 25, 2012 by tomaswell

When Louisiana Congressman John Fleming said he is not in favor of increasing the tax rate for those making $1 million and more per year, you need to probe a little deeper to understand that his real motive in opposing higher taxes might be just a tad self-serving.

Interviewed right after House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, withdrew his “Plan B” fiscal cliff bill which would have extended the Bush-era tax cuts to all households making less than $1 million per year, Fleming made his position crystal clear.

“Raising taxes on any American to me is not the right message, he told CBS reporter Nancy Cordes. “The right message is cutting spending.”

But to fully understand what Fleming, a Minden Republican, is really saying, we have to go back more than a year to Sept. 19, 2011, and review his MSNBC interview with Chris Jansing, giving particular attention to the numbers being bandied around in that interview.

Jansing reminded Fleming that his businesses (Subway sandwich and UPS franchises) earned $6.3 million in 2010.

Fleming said that while his businesses made $6.3 million, “Income flows to my personal tax return. My net income is a mere fraction of $6 million since my net income is more like $600,000. By the time I feed my family, I have maybe $400,000 left over.”

That’s right, folks, Congressman John Fleming, that man of the people whose only concern is the welfare of good, hard-working Americans, can barely make ends meet on $600,000 per year. And that doesn’t even include his $174,000 per year congressional salary, free mail (franking) privileges, district office, furniture and staff.

The average household income in the U.S. in 2010 was just under $50,000, down 2.3 percent from 2009.

“Class warfare has never created a job,” he said in that interview. “Most people feel owning a business is a virtue, not a vice.”

That, folks, is called spin.

That $6.3 million is “before you pay 500 employees, you pay rent, you pay (for) equipment and food,” he protested, almost to the point of whining.

But his numbers just don’t add up so let’s break them down and then you can decide for yourself just who is promoting class warfare.

Let’s begin with that $6.3 million. By his own admission, he receives $600,000 of that, which leaves a trifling $5.7 million with which he claims he pays 500 employees, pays rent, purchases or leases equipment and buys food for his Subway restaurants.

For the time being, let’s discard all the expenses for rent, equipment and food and say, for the sake of argument, that the entire $5.7 million goes for salaries of those 500 employees.

That works out to $11,400 per employee—UPS drivers, sandwich makers, and supervisory personnel.

The poverty level for a one-person household in America in 2010 was $11,344.

Assuming that his UPS drivers and management personnel were making substantially more than that $11,400 average, reason dictates that the remainder of his workers were among America’s working poor.

Fleming told Jansing President Obama’s deficit reduction plan was a terrible idea which kills jobs provided by wealthy “job creators.”

Whether or not one agrees with Obama, Fleming’s position is a little difficult to square up against the numbers he threw out to Jansing.

Of course Fleming was either grossly exaggerating the number of employees or grossly understating the income from his business enterprises which also include numerous other investments.

Or his employee turnover rate is such that he really did go through 500 workers during 2010 as personnel came and went after unusually brief tenures which would translate into far fewer people on the payroll at any given time.

Not that Fleming is a poor businessman. He already had the good sense to set his businesses up in such a way as to minimize his corporate taxes.

Under the federal tax system, the income of corporations is taxed twice—once at the corporate level through the payment of the corporate income tax and again at the individual rate when corporate profits are distributed. Sole proprietorships, partnerships, S corporations and limited liability companies (LLC) are taxed only at the individual owner level.

According to his congressional financial statement, his companies are all set up as LLCs and partnerships which would explain his statement that the $6.3 million flowed through his personal income taxes.

Congressional financial statements are vague at best, thanks to the requirement that income and liabilities are generally listed within a spacious range between the low and high ends.
For example, here are Fleming’s 2011 income ranges from the following sources:

• Park City Health Services (Fleming also is a physician)—$1 million to $5 million;

• JCF Properties Limited Partnership—$100,000 to $1 million;

• Fleming Franchise Development—$100,000 to $1 million;

• Fleming Subway Restaurants—Over $5 million;

It’s not that we mean to come down too hard on the good congressmen. After all, he went through some tough financial times from 2007, the year before he was first elected, to 2010, the latest year for which figures are available from OpenSecrets.org, as reported by the Washington Post.

His net worth plummeted from $24 million in 2007 to a paltry $6.5 million in 2008 before eventually climbing back to $10.2 million in 2010.

That included $3.8 million in real estate, $3.6 million from his private companies and $3.2 million from unspecified sources.

He did pretty well, too, in attracting big ticket campaign contributions in 2011-2012.

Of the $1,229,259 in total campaign contributions, $1,202,416 (77 percent) was classified as large individual contributions while a mere $26,843 (2 percent) came from small individual contributors.

Another $321,363 (21 percent) came from political action committees, including, among others, Northrop Grumman’s PAC ($15,000), The American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons and Every Republican is Crucial PACs ($10,000 each), National Association of Realtors (8,010), the Shaw Group ($8,000) and the National Beer Wholesalers Association ($7,500).

Other contributors included:

• Atco Investments: $29,000;

• Gamble Guest Care: $15,100;

• Kinsey Interests: $12,300;

• Builders Supply Co.: $12,100;

• Willis Knighten Hospital: $7,200;

• Louisiana State University: $11,850.

We can only hope things pick up for Congressman Fleming in 2013 so that he can feed his family a little better and bring the pay scale of his employees up to the national poverty level and perhaps even endure a tax increase for him and his poor millionaire friends.

Posted in Congress, Taxes | 19 Comments »

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