“Wisdom should be left to the political arena and not to us.”
–State Civil Service Commission member John McClure, during discussion of proposal by the Division of Administration to approve a contract for Blue Cross/Blue Shield to take over functions of the Office of Group Benefits which will result in 121 state employees losing their jobs. (We’re still not entirely sure what he meant, but leaving wisdom “to the political arena” is truly frightening.)
Posted in Civil Service, Contract, Contracts, Governor's Office, Notable Quotables, OGB, Office of Group Benefits, Privatization, Transparency | 1 Comment »
Anyone who didn’t think the fix was in before the meeting ever convened had only to attend Wednesday’s meeting of the State Civil Service Board to realize that the outsourcing of the Office of Group Benefits was a done deal and the meeting itself a mere formality.
Anyone who thinks the Department of Civil Service has not become a toothless tiger had only to observe the manner in which the commission rolled over and let the governor’s proxy, i.e. Division of Administration (DOA) rub its tummy until the docile feline was once again asleep.
Oh, sure, the vote was close, 3-2, with members Curtis Fremin and Sidney Tobias voting no on the proposal by Gov. Piyush Jindal to issue a contract to Blue Cross/Blue Shield (BCBS) which will eliminate 177 positions, 121 of which are actually filled. Voting in favor of validating BCBS’s campaign donations to Jindal and his wife’s foundation were Commission Chairman David Duplantier, John McClure, and Scott Hughes.
Absent and not voting were commissioners Lee Griffin and Kenneth Polite.
Fremin and Tobias apparently were less than enamored by the smooth talking mouthpieces for Piyush as reports filtered out of the meeting that there had been considerable disagreement among commission members in the hours leading up to the meeting.
If those discussions prior to the regular meeting involved a full quorum (four members), then it would have constituted a violation of the state’s open meeting laws.
But that’s no big deal; the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education has already set the precedent for ignoring that pesky little law that is of little or no consequence to this administration.
Accountable? Transparent? Open?
What a crock.
The commission majority on Wednesday apparently overlooked the Civil Service Department’s mission which is “to provide human resource services and programs that enable state government to attract, develop and retain a productive and diverse workforce that excels in delivering quality services to the citizens of Louisiana.” (emphasis ours.)
DOA and OGB officials were given time to explain in detail their reasons for wanting to outsource the Preferred Provider Organization which has accrued a $500 million surplus over the past six years but attorney J. Arthur Smith, who represented about 100 employees, was cut off in the middle of his presentation.
When Smith later attempted to respond to what he said was incorrect information provided by DOA, he was cut off sharply by Duplantier who snapped, “This was submitted in April and we just receive a three-inch thick stack of paper from you on Monday. This is not a debate and you have had your time.”
While Smith did, in fact, submit a thick stack of supporting documentation, including reports by two political scientists, and several publications showing problems with privatizing governmental functions, DOA’s complete proposal was contained in an eight-pate Power Point presentation that did little to evidence any real financial advantage of turning over the PPO and other claim services to BCBS.
At one point in the proceedings Wednesday, commission member McClure uttered the most curious statement since then-Rep. M. J. “Mert” Smiley, Jr. inquired of a state official if there were some way in which she could forbid employees from leaving her agency.
In the middle of discussion about whether or not the commission would approve the layoff of the 121 employees, McClure said, “Wisdom should be left to the political arena and not to us.”
Perhaps indicative of the way in which state agency heads across the board have capitulated to Piyush was the casual manner in which Charles Calvi Jr., chief executive officer of OGB (the third CEO since the administration first floated the idea of privatization/outsourcing a little more than a year ago), spoke of his employees who will soon be on the street.
Sixty-two of the 121 are eligible for retirement, he said.
Oh, good. That makes everything okay with them.
As for the others, he told the commission that they could avail themselves of training assistance from the state or pursue jobs with Blue Cross/Blue Shield.
“It is our hope that they find work,” he said.
That sounds vaguely reminiscent of another agency head who, in announcing to his employees that they were being outsourced, smiled as he informed them, “I still have my job.”
What went unsaid, of course, was if agency heads want to continue at their jobs, there had best be no dissenting opinions voiced.
Posted in Civil Service, Contract, Contracts, Governor's Office, Layoffs, Legislature, Legislators, OGB, Office of Group Benefits, Privatization, Transparency | 7 Comments »
“Given how salient the issue of health care is to national Republicans, privatizing the Office of Group Benefits (OGB) would further the national viability of Gov. Bobby Jindal in a number of ways. It would be difficult for Gov. Jindal to continue his strident attacks on President Obama’s ‘government-run health care program’ while leaving untouched a state-run health insurance program right under his nose.
“Therefore, given the idelogical thrust of both the governor’s rhetoric and his policies, coupled with the political timing of the proposed privatization of OGB, it is hard to escape the conclusion that the privatization of OGB is politically motivated.”
–Albert L. Samuel, Ph.D., Chairman of the Department of Political Science at Southern University, discussing Gov. Piyush Jindal’s incessant ongoing audition for the Republican vice-president nomination and his obsession with privatizing OGB.
Posted in Civil Service, Contract, Contracts, Governor's Office, Health Care, Notable Quotables, OGB, Office of Group Benefits, Privatization, Transparency | 2 Comments »
A Baton Rouge attorney has filed papers in opposition to the privatization of the Office of Group Benefits (OGB) for Wednesday’s Civil Service hearing but in the process he could get two university professors teagued by Gov. Piyush Jindal.
Attorney J. Arthur Smith filed his lengthy objection on behalf of 177 OGB employees who stand to lose their jobs if the proposed takeover by Blue Cross/Blue Shield (BCBS) goes through. He reminded the Civil Service Commission that the fundamental purpose of the Civil Service system “is to prevent permanent classified employees from being subjected to adverse personnel actions based on political influence.”
Political influence on the part of the Jindal administration is precisely what he is claiming—along with offering evidence that privatization has not proven to be the panacea claimed by governmental entities that have boldly gone where Piyush is attempting to go now.
BCBS was recently announced as the winner of the state contract to take over the OGB Preferred Provider Organization (PPO) which serves some 60,000 state employees, retirees and dependents.
But two political science professors at LSU and Southern University were sharply critical of the administration’s motives for privatizing OGB and challenged the administration’s fiscal arguments in written reports.
The State Civil Service Commission will hear presentations by the administration and by opponents of the privatization proposal on Wednesday at 9 a.m. in the appropriately named Louisiana Purchase Room of the Claiborne Building on North Third Street in Baton Rouge.
Smith cited a court case—New Orleans Civil Service Commission v. City of New Orleans—in which the Louisiana Supreme Court ruled that the mayor and city council “do not have the unfettered discretion to potentially decimate the civil service system by eliminating all civil service positions to privatization, and, therefore, we find that checks on that discretion are necessary and authorized by the Constitution.”
That ruling also said that the city must turn over all documents and other evidence which enable the Commission to determine (1) whether and civil service employees will be involuntarily displaced from the Civil Service; and, if so, (2) whether the contract was entered into for reasons of efficiency and economy and not for politically motivated reasons.”
The Jindal administration has been conspicuously reluctant in providing “all documents and other evidence,” to the legislature as well as the media. The reason for non-disclosure, which has become almost a cliché, is the often-cited “deliberative process,” an obscure provision behind which the governor consistently hides. He pushed through the deliberative process provision shortly after becoming governor and since has boasted non-stop to the nation that he has made state government more responsive, accountable and transparent.
Smith cited several examples in which privatization has run into problems, including cost overruns, little or no cost savings, inferior service, and a lack of accountability. In many of those cases, he said, governmental entities have on occasion been forced to bring outsourced services back in-house. That has already happened with OGB once before.
He also cited what he considered to be conflicts of interest regarding BCBS. He cited contributions to Jindal of $43,500 by BCBS; $12,500 by Louisiana Health & Indemnity (BCBS’s parent company), and at least $100,000 by BCBS to the Supriya Jindal Foundation. The foundation is run by Jindal’s wife, Supriya Jindal.
Moreover, Smith said the State of Louisiana “essentially donated in excess of $1 million to Louisiana Health & Indemnity to expand and upgrade its headquarters building.” That subsidy, which produced only 22 new jobs, was approved in 2009 as an Enterprise Zone project.
Smith also said the Jindal administration has failed to prove that the proposed OGB privatization would result in increased efficiency.
He cited former OGB Director Tommy Teague as saying in March of 2010 that if OGB is dismantled, the PPO provider network, most of the agency’s extensive expertise in claims, provider services, customer service and information technology would be lost. Also lost, he said, would be the capacity to reinstate the existing self-administered PPO plan structure. Teague pointed out that OGB, in addition to providing “excellent customer service,” also holds down costs by self-administering the PPO plan.
His arguments notwithstanding, Smith’s aces are two political scientists who have weighed in on the side of OGB employees with comprehensive reports that take issue with the administration stand that privatization would be best for OGB and the state.
Albert L. Samuel, chairman of the Political Science Department at Southern University, was critical of the fiscal irresponsibility of the administration and legislature in the aftermath of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita which he said led to the current fiscal crisis.
“Due to federal recovery dollars as a result of the 2005 hurricanes and historically high oil prices, the (Jindal) administration inherited a budget surplus of nearly $2 billion. During its first year in office, the administration and its legislative allies swiftly passed a series of large tax cuts and spent millions of dollars in one-time money on road projects, deferred maintenance at state colleges and universities, levee improvements, coastal restoration projects and upgrades to Pennington Biomedical Center,” he said. “Perhaps most notably, Gov. Jindal signed a repeal of the Stelly Tax Plan which provided a substantial tax savings for upper-income Louisianians.”
When the 2008 financial crisis struck, however, Samuel noted that rather than reconsidering the deep tax cuts that were enacted in previous years, Jindal “held steadfastly to (his) conservative ideals.” Jindal, he said, “adamantly opposed every attempt on the part of legislators to deal with the financial crisis through tax increases.”
“Consistent with that Naomi Klein calls ‘The Shock Doctrine,’ the governor capitalized on the financial crisis of the state to advance an agenda that called into the question the rationale for government to perform basic services on a wide range of issues.”
Samuel concluded his 21-page report by saying that political motivations “are driving the Jindal administration’s push to privatize the Office of Group Benefits.
“It locates Gov. Jindal squarely on the cutting edge of a national Republican party, determined to pursue this course without making a clear and convincing case that OGB, as currently constituted, has failed to provide quality service and coverage to its plan members at reasonable costs to taxpayers.
“The proposed privatization cuts to the heart of the fundamental rationales for having a civil service system in the first place—the idea of protecting state government workers from dismissal driven by politics.”
LSU political science professor Belinda Creel Davis cited from Shrinking the State: The Political Underpinnings of Privatization, a book by Harvey Feigenbaum, Jeffrey Henig and Chris Hamnett who said that privatization “is a political tool having the end goal of realigning institutions and decision-making in order to privilege the goals of one group over another.”
Davis cited the privatization of Louisiana’s Medicaid program as “an excellent example” of the difficulty in evaluating the effectiveness of privatization, specifically citing Jindal’s reluctance to approve legislative oversight of privatization programs.
“The Louisiana Legislature has passed bills in the 2011 and 2012 sessions that were designed to give legislators more information on the way the Jindal administration is implementing health care programs for the poor via private health care firms.
“For the second year in a row, Gov. Jindal has vetoed the bills, claiming they were unnecessary and duplicative since the Department of Health and Hospitals (DHH) issues extensive evaluations.
“It is interesting to note that his veto message does not claim that the report issued by DHH provides all or even most of the information sought by legislators. In the 2012 session, Senate Bill 569, seeking greater transparency on this matter passed unanimously in the House and Senate. Legislators seeking transparency regarding implementation must find the reports lacking if they have sought additional information, but they are unable to access the information they seek—resulting in a more difficult accountability process under privatization than you would see under government provision of the service.
“This is exactly the type of consequence systemic privatization predicts,” she said.
“In my opinion, as a scholar of public policy and government, privatization is an inherently political process. The evidence from both national and state studies supports this view. I believe the case before you is a clear case of politically motivated privatization.”
Those are the kinds of statements, bold and insightful as they may be, that seem to get people teagued these days.
Teagueing, after all, is the one activity in which this administration is abundantly transparent and open.
Posted in ALEC, American Legislative Exchange Council, Campaign Contributions, Civil Service, Contract, Contracts, Governor's Office, Health Care, Layoffs, Legislature, Legislators, OGB, Office of Group Benefits, Privatization, Teague, Transparency | 7 Comments »
A nurse at Southeast Louisiana Hospital in Mandeville is standing by her story about details of negotiations between the state and Magellan Health Services of Avon, Connecticut, despite denials by a spokesman for a state representative who she insists told her about the preliminary talks with the health care company.
The nurse, who asked that her identity not be revealed because of her job, said Hollis told her that Department of Health and Human Services (DHH) Secretary Bruce Greenstein had confided in a meeting that included legislators that the state was in preliminary negotiations with Magellan to take over the hospital after it begins shutting down as a state facility on Oct. 1.
James Hartman of James Hartman & Associates represents Rep. Paul Hollis (R-Covington), who the nurse said was at the meeting. Hartman emailed LouisianaVoice on Thursday to insist that Hollis “has had no such conversation with Secretary Greenstein.”
“In fact,” said Hartman, “Rep Hollis told me he has never had a private conversation with Secretary Greenstein at all.”
In a second email, Hartman said, “Your source is unreliable. Rep. Hollis has had no such conversation with Secretary Greenstein and, again, has never even had a one-on-one conversation with the secretary.”
The careful choice of “private conversation” and “one-on-one conversation” appear to be the key phrases in Hartman’s denial; LouisianaVoice never said there was a “private” or “one-on-one” conversation between Greenstein and Hollis.
The LouisianaVoice post of Wednesday said that Greenstein “recently confided” in Hollis and Rep. Tim Burns (R-Mandeville) that he (Greenstein) had been in negotiations with Magellan about taking over the operation of the hospital once it is privatized. There reportedly were others in that meeting as well, which would at least lend credibility to the claim of no “private” or “one-on-one” meeting between Hollis and Greenstein.
The nurse, contacted for clarification, stood by her story. “There was a meeting of about 40 people with Greenstein,” she said. “Pat Brister (St. Tammany Parish President) was there and Rep. Burns also attended. It was at that meeting that Greenstein revealed the negotiations.”
She said Hollis called her on Tuesday night after she had initially attempted to contact him. “He told me he had been contacted by more than 30 people in opposition to the closure of Southeast Louisiana Hospital.
“During our telephone conversation, he revealed to me what Greenstein had said. He (Hollis) didn’t name the private company at first and when I asked if it was Magellan, he acknowledged it was,” she said.
Greenstein is in the process of formally declaring the 300-acre site on which the hospital sits as surplus property so that it may be sold at auction. More than 1400 acres of hospital property was sold to St. Tammany Parish last month for $6.45 million, less than half the $14.7 million appraisal of the property in February 2011.
The entire 1900-acre tract (before the adjoining property was sold last month) was appraised at nearly $67.9 million, according to information contained on the Office of State Lands web page.
Even if the property is declared surplus and put up for sale, Magellan would still have to submit the high bid to obtain the property but bid specifications and requests for proposals can be written in such a way as to give a favored vendor an advantage over competitors.
Magellan currently holds three contracts with the state totaling more than $392 million, state records show.
Posted in Governor's Office, Health Care, Legislature, Legislators, Privatization, Transparency | 9 Comments »
