By now, everyone should be painfully aware the proposed budget for the next fiscal year – which begins July 1 – is too lean to adequately pay for all the necessary state government services. It’s why state lawmakers are rushing to finish the work of the current regular session, so they can start a special session next week and provide some revenue nutrition.
Whether House leadership has an appetite to do so remains the big question. We should be able to gauge their hunger quotient somewhat on Thursday, as the full House will discuss and vote on the Senate’s changes to the budget bill. Expect plenty of partisan posturing, and more than a few raised voices, as the lengthy workdays needed to complete stacks of pending legislation have eroded proprieties among the legislators.
Maybe it’s exhaustion that’s bringing out the bigotry, but certain lawmakers are no longer hiding their meanness. Last week, Rep. Kenny Havard (R-Jackson) was again the model of misogyny, offending his female colleagues during debate over a bill to address safety and hygiene issues for female prisoners. It prohibits male correctional officers from entering areas where women prisoners might be undressed without announcing their entry. Havard, who has made no secret of his disapproval of female guards in male prisons, offered an amendment to require the same of women guarding male prisoners.
“We all want to be equal until it’s time for men to be equal,” he said, when the ladies of the House objected.
For the Women’s Caucus, it was Havard’s “third strike” on their scorecard. He had previously made derogatory comments about female prison guards in the early weeks of this session, and in 2016, he authored the infamous “stripper amendment”, trying to tack weight and age limitations for exotic dancers onto a bill intended to combat human trafficking.
This week’s poster child for prejudice is Rep. Tony Bacala. The Prairieville Republican has been delivering a diatribe on his belief that Medicaid recipient fraud is rampant in Louisiana at every available opportunity. His insistence on its existence and his determination to root it out triggered the meltdown of the earlier special session this year.
He brought the bill back this session, and when arguing Tuesday for the Senate Revenue and Fiscal Affairs Committee to advance it, here’s what he said:
“Every dollar we divert to someone who should not get it is a dollar we keep from someone who could use it. If we’re really worried about our poor and needy, we should be dividing the pie of money for the Louisiana Department of Health among those who are truly deserving. The pie remains the same, and we can spend more per capita on those who deserve it if we don’t spend on those who don’t deserve it.”
Leaving aside momentarily the judgmentalism implicit in the use of the word “deserving”, the foundation of Bacala’s argument is a lie. That’s not how Medicaid funding works.
The state receives a set amount of money PER Medicaid enrollee. If someone is disqualified from the program, the state does NOT get to keep the money and share it among others who do qualify. Louisiana has to give the funds for that individual back to the feds. The pie does NOT remain the same.
As for who might – on Bacala’s ledger – qualify as “deserving” of assistance, his argument for Sen. Sharon Hewitt’s SB 400 is revealing. The bill shuts down some of the “stat deds”, statutorily dedicated funds, and sweeps their dollars back into state general fund use. Bacala could have used any of the forty funds being eliminated as an example. He chose one.
“Take for example the ‘Sickle Cell Fund’,” Bacala said on the House floor Wednesday afternoon, “It is of no use. It’s been there since 2015, no money in it, so I don’t think it had a real purpose.”
Sickle cell is an inherited form of anemia that most commonly affects African-Americans. Those with the genetic disease are a ”protected class” under federal labor laws.
As was said during the House floor debates over Bacala’s Medicaid bill during the prior special session, “It is what it is.”
Also on Wednesday, the big distraction from numerous weighty issues lawmakers are still considering was the report that a House member and a Senate member had gotten into a bar fight the night before – over a piece of legislation. Sen. Norby Chabert (R-Houma), chairman of the Senate Natural Resources committee had allegedly punched Rep. Stuart Bishop (R- Lafayette, chairman of the House Natural Resources committee over SB 433, changing the makeup of the Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority board.
Initially reported mid-morning by Gannett’s Greg Hilburn, the story quickly hit the wire services and social media, and prompted each lawmaker to make a formal apology to his respective chamber, with each insisting that they are “still friends. We had a gentleman’s disagreement and settled it with our hands.”
By afternoon, each was in demand by reporters, as well as by circles of lobbyists. I asked Bishop – who had said his swings on Chabert never landed – if he was going to display his bruises. He pointed to his ribs on each side and the back of his shoulder and told me he was “pretty banged up”. Chabert displayed no visible signs of the alleged fist fight, not even reddened knuckles. And subsequent inquiries made to the Baton Rouge Police Department resulted in a statement that they had no record of being called to the bar the night before.
However, several lawmakers told me they had no doubt the incident had occurred, and that Chabert was the aggressor. He has a reputation for trying to settle disagreements with his fists.
Rep. Kenny Cox (D-Natchitoches) recounted an incident that occurred during the 2017 regular session. Cox, who is a retired U.S. Army lieutenant colonel, had a bill to require polluting industries that were “repeat offenders” to install fenceline monitoring equipment. Chabert came over to the House to inform Cox his bill would not, under any circumstances, be getting a hearing in his committee. When Cox protested, asking why, he says, “The senator put up his dukes and advanced on me.”
Other nearby members of the Black Caucus stepped in and defused the situation, and Cox says, “He apologized later, admitting he’d been under tremendous pressure from the Chemical Association to kill the bill.”
What is now verifiable about this most recent “fist fight” seems to resemble something known in radio broadcasting as “stunting” – when a station plays uncharacteristic music, done when they’re about to change format, call letters, frequency, or even ownership. It’s a way to generate more publicity and audience attention.
It’s certainly in keeping with Chabert’s prior campaign themes. He had this billboard:
And in February 2014, Chabert did this video campaign ad, called “Norby Chabert Fights Like Hell”.
For what change is this particular attention being sought?
Yesterday, the conservative “think tank” the Pelican Institute released what it called “a study” about the potential economic impacts of four of the main proposals currently being discussed as a part of the upcoming second extraordinary session.
It is the most absurd “economic study” you’ll likely ever encounter: a pathetically truncated four-paragraph-long talking points memo spread across four glossy pages and published by someone with the last version of Apple Numbers who apparently believed a color printer was an adequate substitute for legitimate analysis. It reads like Grover Norquist’s homework assignment from fifth grade, which was around the age he thought up the idea to one day demand all politicians sign his anti-tax purity pledge.
According to the Pelican Institute’s report, each and every plan to solve the state’s $648 million fiscal cliff will reduce Louisiana’s Gross Domestic Product and result in thousands of job losses. There is essentially nothing Louisiana can possibly do in order to ensure the state has the resources and funding required to operate state government, nothing. (I’ll unpack the reasons why this argument is absurd later in this article).
But first, in order to understand its context and appreciate its agenda, it’s important to know who, exactly, is behind the Pelican Institute.
The organization first emerged ten years ago.
“The Pelican Institute is a Louisiana-based think tank founded last year by native New Yorker and Tulane grad Kevin Kane,” I reported on CenLamar on August 1st, 2009. “Jeb Bruneau, son of former State Representative Peppi Bruneau, is its Vice President. (Peppi, as some may recall, was accused of timing his retirement announcement to maximally benefit Jeb’s campaign for the seat. Jeb lost anyway). Though it labels itself as ‘non-partisan,’ the Pelican Institute is undeniably bent toward conservative and libertarian political philosophies, with a concentration on limiting government.”
Following the tragic death of its well-respected founder Kevin Kane in 2016, at the age of 50, the Pelican Institute struggled for a couple of years to regain its footing and reassert its role in policymaking. Today, they are associated with the national conservative advocacy organization, State Policy Network, which promotes libertarian and anti-tax legislation across the country and is financed by large corporations and a small roster of notable conservative political donors. The Pelican Institute is also affiliated with the Buckeye Institute of Ohio, a right-wing organization largely funded by the Koch Brothers and their donor fund, which provided the resources for their most recent “economic study.”
In August of 2017, Daniel Erspamer, a Tulane graduate, became the Pelican Institute’s newest president. Erspamer’s previous job was with State Policy Network, where he had worked for slightly more than eight years as the organization’s Vice President for Strategic Partnerships. Prior to that, he spent a four-year stint with the Koch Brothers’ political advocacy organization, Americans for Prosperity. Erspamer’s first job out of college, in fact, was an assistantship with the Charles Koch Foundation.
During the past year, and most notably in the past four months, Koch-affiliated organizations have set up shop in Louisiana and have attempted and often succeeded to assert an outsized influence in policymaking and the media coverage of the legislative session.
Americans for Prosperity, for example, hired a state director, John Kay, who often uses his Twitter account to sharply and publicly excoriate anyone who deviates from his organization’s rigid anti-tax orthodoxy. (To Kay’s credit, though, he also latched onto state Sen. J.P. Morrell’s bill ending the practice of non-unanimous juries, which proved to be helpful).
This very small cabal of political operatives has worked throughout the past several months to help conservatives in the state House and Senate develop a coherent communications strategy, designed to justify a type of reckless disregard for the existential crisis currently faced as a result of the looming fiscal cliff. It’s often worked, even though it requires utilizing a national network of phony news publications to amplify and lend credibility to their message.
But really, this is just a small echo chamber of paid consultants.
The study published yesterday by the Pelican Institute exemplifies this strategy better than almost anything else.
A group of pelicans is called a “scoop,” and the waste from a scoop of pelicans is known, colloquially and obviously, as “poop.”
It is only fitting then to call the Pelican Institute’s most recent economic study a “scoop poop.”
The report categorically misrepresents both the problem the state of Louisiana currently faces and the solutions that have, thus far, been proposed to fix that problem. It demands that readers maintain a willful suspension of disbelief over a series of obvious facts about recent history. Here’s how it describes its findings:
As the state continues to shed jobs and population to neighboring states whose economies are growing, it’s important to take a deep look at the projected impact of new taxes. Today, the Pelican Institute, in partnership with the Buckeye Institute’s Economic Research Center, releases the results of a study projecting the economic impact of four difference revenue-raising proposals that have been discussed recently: increasing the state sales tax by a quarter-penny, increasing the state sales tax by a half-penny, compressing personal income tax brackets, and reducing individual income tax deductions.
All four scenarios would result in job loss and a decline in the state’s gross domestic product (GDP), key measures of economic health.
Raising the state sales tax by 0.25% would, within a year, lead to the net loss of 1,400 jobs and decrease the state’s GDP by $86 million, while raising $164 million in new tax revenue.
Increasing the state sales tax by 0.5% would, within a year, lead to the net loss of 2,800 jobs and decrease the state’s GDP by $173 million, while raising $329 million in new tax revenue.
Adjusting individual income tax brackets (reducing the top of the 4% tax bracket to $25,000) would, within a year, lead to the net loss of 2,600 jobs and decrease the state’s GDP by $191 million, while raising $190 million in new tax revenue.
Reducing the amount allowable for individual income tax deductions due to excess federal itemized deductions would, within a year, lead to the net loss of 700 jobs and reduce the state’s GDP by $56 million, while raising $56 million in new tax revenue.
But the Pelican Institute doesn’t show its math, disclose its assumptions, or provide any insight whatsoever about its methodology. There’s nothing about this that even remotely resembles economic scholarship.
Yet conservative operatives have shared the report as if it somehow proved something.
Even The Business Report of Baton Rouge reported on the study as legitimate news and not merely a distracting, manipulative, and fundamentally flawed analysis from a partisan interest group. It appears no one there had actually read the study, because if they had, they would have noticed several massive red flags, details that most journalists would find deeply problematic.
For one, the footnotes disclose a fact that should be considered automatically disqualifying: “Note,” it reads. “GDP (gross domestic product) and tax revenues in millions of 2009 (dollars).”
In other words, the Pelican Institute is constructing its entire analysis based on numbers nearly a decade old, and it’s using those numbers to create “a macroeconomic general equilibrium model calibrated to Louisiana’s economy.” At least that is what it asserts: Again, there’s no information about its actual methodology.
There’s another, perhaps more fundamental problem: The study claims that each proposal represents a tax increase, when, in fact, they will all actually decrease tax revenue from the previous year (and the state wouldn’t be “raising” or “increasing” sales taxes; it’d be reducing them from current rates), shrinking the size of government by nearly half a billion dollars.
Cliff Diving
For those of you who are confused or overwhelmed or perhaps not closely following the telenovela of the Louisiana legislature, the underlying issues are actually less complicated than many people would have you believe. The Louisiana Budget Project, a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization, put together this easy-to-understand video tutorial:
There are a few things necessary to clarify: While the total amount of the temporary revenue set to expire is slightly over $1 billion, the “fiscal cliff” is actually closer to $650 million; that’s the number it will require to ensure state government can continue to operate and meet its financial obligations.
That number, only a few months ago, was much closer to $1 billion, and some Republicans argue that their intransigence during the first special session (they didn’t solve anything, but were all happy to collect their per diem checks) somehow saved Louisiana citizens a $400 million tax increase.
That’s just fundamentally not true. First, the discussion is about replacing or renewing existing revenue, not increasing the overall tax burden.
Their politicization of the fiscal cliff didn’t have anything to do with sparing people from a tax hike, which is fairly easy to prove.
Second and most ironically, the only reason the fiscal cliff decreased by around $350 million in between February and today is because the Trump tax plan automatically triggered a provision in Louisiana state law that increased state income taxes in proportion to the reduction in federal rates.
In other words, Republicans who suggest that they spared a massive, new tax increase are hoping the general public isn’t savvy enough to realize that their Republican colleagues in Congress and the White House did increase Louisiana state income taxes, which allowed the state to recover a portion of the expiring, temporary revenue.
Jindalomics
Despite what the current governor’s political opponents may have you believe, we’re not in this predicament because John Bel Edwards is a “tax and spend liberal” who has massively grown the size of government. Louisiana is still dealing with the economic fallout from the previous administration, and that isn’t a convenient political blame game. It’s just the undeniable, factual reality.
Jindal left the state saddled with anywhere between a $1.3 billion to $1.8 billion structural deficit shortfall, the direct consequence of nearly a decade’s worth of financial mismanagement and the use of one-time monies in order to avoid confronting the need for additional sources of revenue. During the Jindal administration, Louisiana’s credit rating was downgraded (Moody’s was the first to point out our structural deficit), and toward the end of his tenure, this became an existential crisis.
Bobby Jindal was aided and abetted by the very same Republican members of the state legislature at the forefront of today’s debate, except, now, they assert any fault belongs to Democrats in the minority and to Gov. John Bel Edwards.
Among other things, they willfully confuse the public about Medicaid expansion, wrongfully asserting the program has cost the state money out of its general fund.
The math is clear: Louisiana nets around $300 million a year due to Medicaid expansion, a program that not a single Republican legislator has proposed to scrap and that all three of Gov. Edwards’ Republican opponents supported, and it hasn’t increased tax rates at all. The program is paid for through a 94% match from the federal government, and the state’s portion is covered through provider fees. (The notion that Louisiana could ever collect $500 million a year in beneficiary fraud, an absurd conspiracy theory cooked up in the waning hours of the regular session by Republican legislators who have failed to offer any meaningful plan to replace revenue, relies on a complete distortion of how Medicaid is funded. Even if there was massive beneficiary fraud- and there isn’t- that money wouldn’t go back to the state coffers, nor would it miraculously entitle Louisiana to even more federal funding).
We are faced with the current situation because the only acceptable additional revenue source for Republicans was through a sales tax increase, a regressive taxation disproportionately affecting the poor and working class.
As the video from the Louisiana Budget Project points out, our state income and corporate tax rates rank in the national average, but our combined state and local sales taxes are the very top in the nation. That’s a direct consequence of Republican leadership who refused to negotiate on anything except for increased sales taxes.
As he stated at the time, the governor made those taxes temporary because he recognized the regressive nature of sales tax; this had always been intended to be a stop-gap measure, with the hope and expectation that Republicans in the legislature would act in good faith to find another solution this year.
They haven’t. In fact, some of them are mendaciously peddling the talking point that Louisiana’s high sales tax rate was a priority for the Democratic governor.
Nursing a Lie
There’s one other issue that has become front and center in the state’s ongoing debate about how to best resolve the fiscal cliff.
From the very onset of this discussion, months ago, legislators had been warned that a failure to act would result in notices being sent out to people living in nursing homes and on a select number of programs that provide care for those with disabilities. Pursuant to federal guidelines, the state has a fiduciary duty to notify people within a certain period of time if there could be a change in their service care agreement under Medicaid.
With a deadline looming, the governor’s office was compelled to send out those notifications- 37,000 in total, including 17,000 to individuals in nursing homes.
Republican legislators immediately feigned outrage; they acted as if they were shocked by something they should have anticipated for months. And suddenly, for the first time in recent history, they became overnight advocates of government-subsidized health care.
The truth is: For far too long, many of these legislators have operated without any understanding or recognition of the real-life consequences of their decisions or their failures to make decisions. They attempted to spread the message that the governor was engaging in scare tactics, and they reassured constituents that everything would eventually work itself out. LSU still has a football team, after all.
When the Senate Finance Committee introduced and then adopted a budget resolution that restored funding for those 37,000 people, some state Republicans gleefully announced that they were right all along and used the opportunity to castigate the governor for ever sending out those scary eviction notices.
But there’s one major problem with all of this: The Senate’s version of the budget actually revealed the only way to spare 37,000 people in nursing homes or on a waiver program for the disabled would be to effectively shut down the entire government.
There’d be an across-the-board 24% cut in every department; district attorneys would be defunded, as would jails. TOPS would be gutted. There’d be massive layoffs, resulting in a huge spike in unemployment. We would have to completely end food subsidies for the poor. Our basic social safety network would be in tatters.
That was the point of the Senate Finance’s decision: To underscore what was at stake.
Some Republicans celebrated the pyrrhic victory of temporarily delaying the necessity of warning nursing home residents, because, pathetically, they thought they could use it as a talking point.
We ran state government on the fumes generated by talking points for most of the past decade. It bankrupted us.
Now maybe we should learn some simple economics and basic arithmetic.
The Senate returned the budget and related bills to the House Tuesday, sending a single-fingered message in doing so.
First up was HB 1, an appropriations bill that typically “provides for the ordinary operating expenses of state government (during the next fiscal year).”
As sent over from the House, it primarily cut funding for health care-related programs, including long term care, disabilities waivers, public-private partner hospitals, and graduate medical school education. It also only funded TOPS at 80%.
Last week, after hearing extensive testimony regarding the impacts of the House endorsed cuts, the Senate Finance committee made some strategic changes. They restored full funding to healthcare and hospitals, cut TOPS another 10%, and slashed budgets for all other state departments.
“This is a budget I don’t know if anyone here can vote for,” said Finance Committee chairman Eric LaFleur (D- Ville Platte), as he presented the modified budget to the upper chamber. “It demonstrates our priorities, that we don’t believe we should take a fragile person and put them in the position where they could die. We just believe that life and the quality of life is important enough to fund at the cost of everything else. It demonstrates the magnitude of the problem we face.
“Some people here and on the other side believe we need to cut government. Fine. We can cut. We do it here. To keep funding for our disabled, elderly and medically needy population, this cuts across every other department in state government by 24.2%. Most of those departments are labor-intensive, so that means they will lose manpower they need to accomplish their mission.”
Those senators who hadn’t been privy to the Finance Committee’s deliberations had questions.
“We were all shocked by the notices that went out to our elderly in nursing homes,” Sen Mike Walsworth (R-West Monroe) said. “This budget answers that?
“It would clearly be a lie to tell the public this ‘fixes’ the budget. It merely sets the stage to fix it,” LaFleur cautioned. “As for the notices that went out, I don’t know why you were shocked. We were all told during the last special session this would happen. We are losing more than a billion dollars in revenue, and it’s a problem we all knew we would have when we passed temporary tax measures. We all knew. We don’t have reliable revenue. That is poor public policy. You certainly don’t run your home or business this way.”
LaFleur reminded senators they are dealing with an overall pot of money that is approximately $650 million dollars less than what’s needed to fund state government functions in the next fiscal year.
“We only have limited choices for immediate money, is that correct?” Sen. Dan Claitor (R-Baton Rouge) asked.
“There’s not another dime we can create for this budget today,” LaFleur stated bluntly. “We cannot protect people. We cannot assure their safety without additional revenue.”
“Why would anyone think we could fund this state without additional revenue?” Sen Francis Thompson (D-Delhi) asked, not entirely rhetorically. “Using the analogy between this budget and a skinny pig, both of them are ugly, correct?
Lafleur chuckled.
“Skinny and ugly, yes, but tasty,” he said, licking his lips exaggeratedly.
“But it would take more lipstick than you could put on a pig to make it anything but ugly, right?” Thompson asked, grinning mischievously.
“It would take more than cosmetic surgery to make this pretty in any way,” LaFleur agreed.
There were numerous and repeated attempts by Sen. John Milkovich (D-Shreveport) to amend the budget bill – everything from mandating a statewide hiring freeze to cutting the state Department of Education by $600 million (which was really about advancing Milkovich’s personal vendetta against state Superintendent John White). None of those proposals gained any traction, most likely due to the members’ general distaste for Milkovich himself.
Then it was time to argue for – or against – the bill as a whole. One of the first to speak was Jim Fannin. The Republican from Jonesboro formerly served as the House Appropriations chairman.
“My name is on a lot of the budgets that have been put through this legislature, and I can honestly say that this is not a good one,” Fannin said. “This is, however, a $28 billion document, with only $600 million in needs not funded. We can’t deal with that until we get to the special session next week, so the right step is to take care of the $28 billion now.”
“We’re told this budget is the opportunity to share with the House our priorities – that it’s a ‘moral’ document, stating we in the Senate choose to support life,” Sen. Karen Carter Peterson (D-New Orleans) declared. “The reality is, this does not reflect our values. We know it’s inadequate. This is just an exercise in futility.
“It’s all part of gamesmanship – foolishness – that we can’t get the House to move Senate bills unless HB 1 comes back to them. We have to pass this to appease them, because we don’t know how else to deal with them,” she continued, then urged, “Don’t pass this. We’re coming back next week anyway, with the ability to craft an adequate budget. Don’t perpetuate this farce.”
In his closing, though, LaFleur masterfully gathered all the disparate arguments together, braiding them back into a narrative that the majority of Senate members could unite behind.
“We’ve been caught up in a lot of petty political nonsense, and we can argue all day about the size of government, whether Medicaid expansion hurt or helped, whether it’s irresponsible to pass this. Many members feel that passing a budget is their fiduciary duty, their obligation, their responsibility. So let’s make our statement, and send an important message that could help change the discussions over the next two weeks.”
The vote was 27-10, sending the revised budget back to the House.
The Senate then continued to vote on – and approve – the remainder of the budget bills, putting each of them in a posture consistent with their budget. They cut the judicial branch budget by 24%, and cut the legislative budget equivalently, too.
They also sent another major message to the House, in the form a resolution, listing revenue-raising options the upper chamber would consider in the upcoming special session, and estimated amounts available through each.
Senator Norby Chabert (R-Houma) got up to speak in favor of SCR 101, by Sen. Jack Donahue (R-Mandeville).
“As much as it pains me to say it, we have to work with the other side,” Chabert remarked, through clenched teeth. “But we can’t just be a body of reaction. Proactivity is a good thing.”
“The House never sent anything to which we could react,” Donahue reminded his peers. “With this, we wanted to tell the public we understand the problem, that there are solutions, and we want to solve the problem.”
That resolution was adopted, 29-3.
In the five days since the Senate Finance committee initially issued their declaration of defiance, the House Republican leadership has been strangely quiet. Their barrage of bombastic videos has slowed markedly, with only an anemic offering by Rep. Nancy Landry (R-Lafayette) posted in response.
They have, however, gotten the Senate’s message, as evidenced by House Appropriations scheduling a meeting bright and early Wednesday morning. They’ll be – finally – hearing twenty Senate measures. Some of those have been pending on the committee’s calendar since late March.
“Gamesmanship – foolishness,” indeed.
In a press statement issued late yesterday afternoon, Dr. Tammy Savoie, a retired Air Force psychologist, announced her candidacy for Louisiana’s First Congressional District.
She faces five-term incumbent Rep. Steve Scalise, one of the state’s most well-known elected officials. He currently serves as House Majority Whip, the third most powerful job in the GOP-led Congress.
Scalise won his last election with 74.6% of the vote and has more than $1.5 million in campaign cash, according to the most recently available reports.
Savoie, who had actually filed with the FEC on May 9th, is Scalise’s third announced challenger and the second Democratic candidate in the race. In addition to her press statement, Savoie also released a one-minute-and-45-second video announcement titled “Bring It On.”
Jim Francis, a Democrat from Covington, became Scalise’s first opponent when he launched his campaign in late March, though he didn’t file a statement of candidacy with the FEC until yesterday. Howard Kearney, a libertarian from Mandeville, entered the race on April 11th, and one of Scalise’s 2016 opponents, Lee Ann Dugas, has indicated that she will run again, which would make her the third Democrat in a district that heavily favors Republicans.
Right now, though, Savoie’s opponents all have something in common, and it’s not just that they’e all men.
“Tammy’s declared opponents include: Steve Scalise – a computer programmer and now career politician, Jim Francis – a computer programmer, and Howard Kearney – a computer programmer,” her campaign notes in its announcement. (Francis points out that his work is concerned with Information Technology security, which has become increasingly important in the aftermath of Russian election interference).
Savoie, who has never before sought political office, retired from the Air Force as a Lieutenant Colonel in 2016, following a 38-year-long career in the military, including 15 years in the Louisiana National Guard. After earning her Ph.D in psychology from Emory University, she joined the Air Force, which took her across the world, including a deployment to Afghanistan. Prior to her retirement, she worked as Chief of International Health, traveling extensively across the Middle East.
She is also a single mother, a native of the greater New Orleans area, and a graduate of St. Mary’s Dominican High School and UNO.
Lt. Col. Tammy Savoie and daughter Jessica Savoie (Credit: Savoie campaign)
Her name was first floated as a potential political candidate in late January, when she was a member of the inaugural class of Emerge Louisiana, a nonprofit organization that works to elect more Democratic women. “Class member Tammy Savoie (is) a New Orleans native that the organization hopes to groom for Republican Rep. Stephanie Hilferty’s district seat and, one day, Congressman Steve Scalise’s seat on Capitol Hill,” Sarah Gamard of LAPolitics reported at the time.
While some Democrats privately express concerns that a crowded primary field undermines the opportunity, however remote it may now seem, to edge out a victory against a powerful incumbent, Savoie’s campaign argues the opposite is true.
“More Democrats in the race just means more resources working to educate voters that Steve Scalise isn’t looking out for the people of his own district, and bring his vote share below 50%,” Kristine Breithaupt, Savoie campaign consultant, tells me. “The voters will decide which one of our Democratic candidates will take on Scalise in a runoff. And I’m confident it will be Tammy Savoie.”
Although both Francis and Savoie are each running a serious campaign operation, staffed by professionals, it remains to be seen whether either of them will be able to raise enough money to compete with the $1.5 million already behind Scalise. Francis had previously disclosed he had collected a little less than $7,000, and Savoie has yet to reveal any details about her campaign finances (reports are due within the next two weeks).
A few short hours after Savoie sent her announcement to the press (which was embargoed until the time of publication), the state’s only Democrat in Congress, Rep. Cedric Richmond, seemed to make it clear what he thought about the chances of defeating Scalise. “I’m gonna do everything in my power to make sure that Steve Scalise is the majority leader next Congress,” Richmond told members of the Louisiana House of Representatives. He’d meant to say “minority leader,” but the punchline got away from him. Either way, the joke doesn’t exactly help the Democrats hoping to unseat the House Whip.
Still, Democratic insiders, even those who acknowledge the odds are stacked against them, believe that Savoie is destined to become a leader. Two different Democrats used the same term to me in describing Savoie: “Rock star.”
And to her credit, Savoie isn’t naive at all about the challenges she faces.
“I know the political elite will say I’m running against the wind in a red district,” she said in her announcement, “but to that I say: ‘Bring it on.’”
Stating unequivocally that “the Senate budget proposal does not reflect the priorities of our state,” Governor John Bel Edwards announced the regular legislative session will end this Friday, and that he’s issuing the call for the next special session to convene at 4 p.m., on Tuesday, May 22.
“Both the House and Senate have now validated what we’ve been saying all along – you cannot fashion a budget that adequately funds our priorities without maintaining a portion of the revenue that is expiring,” the governor said during a Monday afternoon press conference. “I have no plans to allow either of those budget documents” (meaning neither the House version nor the Senate version) “to control government in the next fiscal year.”
Since Senate Finance amended the House-passed budget bill last Friday, a strange disconnect has manifested in the messaging from some Republican House members, doubling down on criticism of the administration, rather than responding to what senators intended with their changes, i.e., a duel-inducing slap in the face to the House.
For example, Rep. Nancy Landry (R-Lafayette) tweeted: “Senate Finance committee passed their version of the budget Friday FULLY FUNDING nursing homes. As we said all along, no hospitals will be closed and no nursing home residents will be evicted. #ShameOnJBE for his scare tactics.”
It’s as though she is saying, “See? We told you the Senate would fix it,” meanwhile totally ignoring that in order to fully fund health care, the Senate had to cut every other state department by 24%.
The governor said, “The Senate budget does not fix the problem – the dropoff in revenue that prevents adequately funding the priorities of our state. But those letters went out because of prolonged inaction by the House, followed by their passing a budget that expressly cut those programs by reducing eligibility.”
Edwards did commend Senate Finance for its resolution – and Sen. Jack Donahue (R-Mandeville), its author – that acknowledges the $650-million revenue deficit and makes suggestions for filling that hole. All of those – renewing a portion of the fifth sales tax penny, cleaning the remaining sales tax pennies, and making the “haircuts” to credits and rebates permanent – are included in the special session call.
“The call has options that have been seen before,” the governor said. “These ideas are not new, and they don’t improve with age — not like a good wine.”
Included are options to address income tax brackets, sales tax on services, and corporate tax incentives and rebates. Not included is any legislation dealing with gaming, although reporters asked the governor about a bill to legalize sports betting, in light of the U.S. Supreme Court decision handed down Monday, striking down a federal ban on such activity.
“I’m not inclined to put sports betting in, because it would require parish-by-parish referenda, and wouldn’t really generate any revenue in the next fiscal year,” Edwards said. “The issue could further complicate this special session.”
The call also does not include permission to file bills for calling a constitutional convention, despite an 11th-hour letter from 51 House members requesting that be included. It should be noted, however, that both Rep. Neil Abramson’s (D-New Orleans) perennial bill calling for a constitutional convention, and Rep. Franklin Foil’s (R-Baton Rouge) study resolution on whether such a convention is needed, died on the House floor last week.
The rest of this week will be frenetic, then, as both chambers push to finalize the several hundred bills remaining on their agendas, and come to concurrence on the tweaks each has made to the other’s legislation. The full Senate is taking up the budget bill Tuesday, and it’s highly unlikely any ensuing compromise will be reached between their version and the House stance. The dissension between political parties and the two chambers, exacerbated by simple weariness of each other and the process, will be on full display.
And yet…
Monday afternoon, there came a special moment, when Louisiana’s lawmakers embodied the nobility of the democratic process. They chose to move past this state’s sordid history of institutionalized racism, as they agreed to overturn a 138-year-old provision that – to this day – perpetuates unequal treatment under the law: Louisiana’s non-unanimous jury rule.
The law came out of the post-Reconstruction era, the same time period that created the infamous “separate but equal” doctrine of segregation. It was made part of the state constitution in 1898, the drafters of which said unequivocally that “Our mission was to establish the supremacy of the white race in this state to the extent that it could be legally and constitutionally done.”
“This is truly historical legislation,” said Rep. Sherman Mack (R-Albany), as he brought Sen J.P. Morrell’s (D-New Orleans) SB 243 to the full House for consideration. “Louisiana only requires ten of twelve jurors to agree on felony convictions, up to and including taking away a person’s freedom for the rest of their life. Forty-eight other states and the federal court system require unanimous juries. It’s the right thing to do, and it’s time Louisiana got it.
“Our state enacted this in the late 1800s. Why? You know the answer. Opponents – many DAs – argue that without this rule, it will be too hard to get convictions. Yet the rest of the country does it. It is time.”
Mack invited Rep. Ted James (D-Baton Rouge) to join him in urging passage of the bill. James said, “We’re told we cannot recreate history, but we can erase it for the future and right this 138-year-old wrong. Let’s make the right decision.”
With no questions and no further discussion, Mack gave his closing, saying simply, “It’s time. Do the right thing.”
As a proposed constitutional amendment, it needed 70 votes to pass, and seemed everyone was holding their breath as the buttons were pushed to vote yea or nay. The tote board lit up rapidly, and the Speaker announced, “Close the machines. 82 yeas, and 15 nays, and the bill passes.”
Cheers went up – with the Black Caucus members high-fiving and hugging their nearest neighbors—black and white.
This fall, it will be up to Louisiana’s voters. Will we perpetuate the prejudices of our forbears by saying no, or will we choose to embrace equality under the law, by truly requiring prosecutors to make their cases “beyond a reasonable doubt”?
It’s time, Louisiana.
Websites like Facebook and Twitter, Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote last year in Packingham v. North Carolina, “can provide perhaps the most powerful mechanisms available to a private citizen to make his or her voice heard. They allow a person with an Internet connection to ‘become a town crier with a voice that resonates farther than it could from any soapbox.’”
Kennedy may be exaggerating the democratizing effects of the internet. Let’s not kid ourselves.
For the most part, the gatekeepers of our media are corporations led by a very small number of upwardly-mobile, highly-educated people; they’re still disproportionately white, disproportionately male, and almost exclusively from a huge city on either the East or the West Coast.
But Kennedy isn’t entirely wrong about the ways in which social media, in particular, can amplify ordinary voices.
More fundamentally, though, it has relocated the venues of government.
Because the President of the United States dramatically changes domestic and foreign policy, even fires his own Secretary of State, via Twitter, he has forced us to completely redefine our understanding of when and how a government actor can take government action. And because he routinely blocks American citizens from reading or replying to his Twitter account, the legal and constitutional implications are no longer academic abstractions; they’re urgent.
Although Donald Trump may represent the apotheosis of government in the current age of social media, he’s actually following the example of thousands of state and local elected officials all across the country, many of whom have exclusively relied on Twitter or Facebook to conduct virtual town halls, engage with their constituents, publish press releases from their office, and announce their support or opposition to proposed legislation or policies.
A month after Kennedy wrote for the majority in Packingham, a case that did not inspire any dissent, Judge James C. Cacheris for the Eastern District of Virginia moved the goal posts even closer, ruling that when the Chair of the Loudoun County Board of Supervisors, Phyllis J. Randall, had banned a local critic named Brian Davison from her official public Facebook account for nearly a dozen hours, she was guilty of violating Davison’s First Amendment rights.
Thus far, Judge Cacheris’ decision in Virginia provides the most significant court decision prohibiting government actors from blocking critics on their public social media accounts. Cacheris ruled the practice amounts to an unconstitutional restraint on free speech.
Within the next year, the Supreme Court is likely to consider similar cases, and it’s all but certain the Court will agree to create a new framework and limitations on governing through Twitter.
While the national focus has almost entirely been about the First Amendment, there is another issue that will eventually need to be addressed by lawmakers or the courts here in Louisiana.
Unlike many other states, in Louisiana, a citizen’s access to public records is considered a “fundamental right.”
“When an elected official uses his or her own social media to engage with the public in their capacity as a government actor, they may have a duty to comply with state public records laws,” Gary McGoffin, a Lafayette-based attorney, told me. McGoffin recently represented The Independent in a blockbuster public records case against Lafayette City Marshal Brian Pope.
So, what happens when an elected official decides to delete criticism or ban critics from their public social media accounts?
Criticism and Punishment
A few days ago, I conducted an informal and totally unscientific survey on both Twitter and Facebook, asking people if they had ever been blocked online by an elected official from Louisiana. I’d hoped to get at least a general understanding of how widespread the practice truly is.
It didn’t matter if a politician served in a small city hall or in the corridors of the state Capitol or on the floors of the United States Congress. It was extraordinarily commonplace for elected officials in Louisiana to treat their public social media pages as if they were bouncers at an exclusive, members-only club in which the only currency was sycophancy.
Two federal officials, Congressman Clay Higgins (R- LA-03) and Senator Bill Cassidy (R), were mentioned more often than anyone else.
“Clay Higgins blocked me because he didn’t like that I was spewing facts about him and confronting him about it,” Kayla Diz, a small businesswoman from Lafayette, wrote. “He threatened me and said ‘Any help you ever need, you will not get from me.'” Four others reported that the Congressman known as “the Cajun John Wayne” had blocked them as well.
At least five people claimed they’d either been blocked by Sen. Bill Cassidy or prevented from commenting on his official Senate page after he was elected.
Susan Clark of Shreveport claims that Congressman Mike Johnson (R- LA-04) had blocked her on at least one occasion.
Clay Fondren of New Orleans said that he’d been blocked by state Sen. Fred Mills (R- Breaux Bridge). “The delete king of New Iberia,” he joked.
Jeff Pettit, the manager of the Ascension Citizens Group, reports that he was blocked by Ascension Parish Councilman Aaron Lawler (R- Prairieville).
Until recently, after nearly a decade on Twitter and more than a dozen years writing online about state politics, the only two of the 144 members of the Louisiana legislature who had blocked me on social media were, notably, both registered Democrats, Rep. Neil Abramson (D- New Orleans) and Rep. Katrina Jackson (D- Monroe). I had been banished by each of them a few years ago for the same unpardonable sin: I criticized and questioned them publicly and directly. (I’m not the only Democrat to have earned their ire online).
Last week, following my report that state Sen. Sharon Hewitt (R- Slidell) had deceptively edited video testimony from a meeting of the Senate Finance Committee, she became the one and only Republican legislator who exiled me from her Twitter account.
I hadn’t even “followed” her; this was a preemptive block. And she didn’t just block my account; she also blocked The Bayou Brief‘s Sue Lincoln, a veteran journalist who has been covering the state Capitol for several years.
A few days later, Hewitt explained her reasoning to a constituent.
“This issue has been completely blown out of proportion by Mr. White,” she wrote an e-mail from her public account. “Instead of having a respectful debate, he has chosen to call me names and attempt to trash my social media. In my experience, people who do that aren’t interested in the facts and it is a waste of time to convince them otherwise.”
I hadn’t called the state senator any “names;” I merely uploaded the 12-seconds of testimony that she had removed from the video record. I thought it merited an apology or, at the very least, an explanation. She has yet to comment publicly, but in her e-mail to a constituent, she acknowledged that she had, in fact, deleted the footage. “Concerning the video, I honestly was not trying to mislead anyone, but rather shorten it so it was more likely to be viewed,” she wrote. “Yes, it is technically correct that the Auditor said that folks could over or under-report their income by $20k because the data provided to them by the Department of Revenue did not differentiate it.”
Hewitt’s explanation- that she had shortened the video to make it “more likely to be viewed”- is belied by an obvious fact: She had actually shared two different videos, a 2-minute-and-3-second version on Twitter and a 2-minute-and-29 second version on Facebook; both of them spliced out the same “technically correct” 12-seconds.
To me, at least, the story about an edited video is far less concerning than the state senator’s reaction to the story, which, unfortunately, is becoming a much more common practice.
In April, after The Advocate‘s Elizabeth Crisp reported that state Rep. Dodie Horton (R- Haughton) had cited a satirical news article “claiming 37 people died on the first day recreational marijuana was legalized in Colorado in January 2014,” Horton blocked Crisp on Twitter. (She later apologized to the reporter and said a staffer was responsible for the faux pas).
But it’s not just reporters and constituents who may find themselves “blocked” by a member of the Louisiana legislature.
Conrad and His Colleagues
State Sen. Conrad Appel (R- Metairie) is one of the chamber’s most prolific and active users of social media. He also has the distinction of being the only legislator who has actually blocked two of his colleagues from following his Twitter account, specifically state Sen. Jay Luneau (D- Alexandria) and state Sen. J.P. Morrell (D- New Orleans).
I asked Appel about his decision to exile two fellow senators.
“I have a simple policy for all media,” he explains. “If someone is abusive, threatening, uses bad language, or is insulting, I block them. If I blocked anyone, it is probably because they did one of the above.”
But that’s not how both Luneau and Morrell remember things.
“What’s most interesting is why I got blocked,” Morrell tells me. “During the special session (in 2017), he dropped into my Twitter feed to spout some huge budget inaccuracies. After I refuted every point he made, he blocked me.”
Luneau was a part of the same thread, and there’s no evidence that either Morrell or Luneau ever violated Appel’s “media” policy.
“The only discussions we have ever had online were about the budget,” Luneau asserts. “That’s it.”
I would love to engage in this conversation with my colleague, Sen Appel. Unfortunately, I can’t do so because he still has me blocked on Twitter.
Appel claims he does not have a “recollection of specific instances” in which he blocked someone from Twitter, including his two colleagues. He points out that he regularly engages with people who disagree with him, even his most outspoken critics. “You can judge my motives best by (that) fact,” he says.
“Wait, I have better proof than that. I don’t block you.” He is only slightly joking.
“That’s not lost on me,” I tell him.
Still, though, it’s not exactly reassuring.
In this brave new world of “fake news” and “alternative facts,” the internet has actually made it easier than ever for an elected official to misrepresent basic truths and to crowd out criticism.
Because the law is still catching up with technology, there isn’t yet a “legal test” to determine when it’s proper for the government to censor or ban people from following public social media accounts, but a test is clearly needed.
No one would fault Sen. Appel for removing threatening or criminally harassing responses or for deleting spam followers, for example. But who should determine what constitutes an “insult” worthy of censorship? And when does a social media account that a politician uses during their campaign become a public account once they win office?
Donald Trump continues to argue, audaciously, that his Twitter account is a personal one, though Americans know it’s a now very obviously an instrument of the White House.
In Louisiana, the government doesn’t hand out Twitter handles once you win an election. Most legislators, like Appel, repurpose their existing social media. That may create some confusion about their obligations under the law.
As a default and unless it’s otherwise made abundantly clear, we should consider the public social media accounts of any elected official as an instrument of their office.
Arguably, you can learn just as much about a politician from who they pay attention to as you can from who they purposely silence.
I doubt either state Sen. Morrell or state Sen. Luneau believe their colleague restrained their First Amendment rights, and I certainly don’t think that of anyone who has decided to block me online. But I recognize why it’s imminently reasonable that most people who find themselves blocked online by a government official understand it differently.
For many, it may even seem like an act of public intimidation and oppression.
Either way, it’s decidedly anti-democratic. It allows lawmakers to evade accountability from the media and critics and to cut off access from their constituents. That’s textbook viewpoint discrimination, which is unconstitutional.
Recently, The Arizona Capitol Times filed a series of public records requests to determine which members of their legislature blocked people on social media and, more importantly, who they blocked. Not surprisingly, many of their requests went unanswered, and several lawmakers argued that their very public accounts were somehow private. They also discovered that several legislators banned their own colleagues.
This should not be considered a partisan issue, because, as I can attest, it’s a practice employed by members of both political parties.
We’re considering following The Arizona Capitol Times‘ example, even if it proves to be an exercise in futility.
“We should know who our state legislators are telling to shut up,” journalism professor David Cuillier told the paper.
Since taking office in 2016, Attorney General Jeff Landry hasn’t been shy about asserting his desire for more power and control. From his ill-fated attempt to carve out a separately appropriated budget from the executive branch under which he serves, to his courtroom battles over one of Gov. John Bel Edwards’ executive orders (insisting the governor exceeded his authority), to demands that state funds be withheld from Louisiana cities that implement sanctuary policies, the AG has been waging a campaign to expand his authority.
Landry announced plans last month to change the state Senate into a more “conservative” body, by pouring money into 2019 candidates’ campaigns through the newly-branded Louisiana Committee for a Conservative Majority which he heads.
25 of the upper chamber’s 39 members are Republican, but Landry says, “They’re Republicans in name only. That’s the problem.”
This legislative session, his cause celebre’ has been Medicaid fraud, and more specifically, Medicaid recipient fraud. The fact that the federal government, which provides the vast majority of funding for the Medicaid program, prohibits the state from prosecuting Medicaid recipients hasn’t dissuaded Landry.
He’s been aided and abetted by two members of the legislature in particular: Rep. Tony Bacala (R-Prairieville) and Sen. Sharon Hewitt (R-Slidell). Despite all evidence to the contrary, each of them has become fixated on the idea that the main reason for the immense Medicaid budget is not that Louisiana has one of the nation’s highest proportions of citizens living in poverty; rather, it’s because too many of those now getting health care under Medicaid expansion are doing so deceitfully.
No one should find it unusual that politically ambitious members of the party that has deified Ronald Reagan would also preach the dogma of the “welfare queen.”
Though research has subsequently shown that the fur-coat wearing fraudster driving a Cadillac was actually a psychopath with several dozen aliases, kidnappings, and murders-for-profit in her bag of tricks, the resentment and suspicion has remained. The hostility has morphed into judgmentalism, masking only slightly the institutionalized racism that drives the new narrative of policies that only help those who are “deserving.”
Landry has had mixed results for “his” bills thus far this session.
HB 447, the bill to recreate the Department of Justice – a procedural requirement for state departments every six years – is awaiting House concurrence on Senate-made changes. The bill authorizes a new section for the Attorney General’s office: the federalism division, described as being “responsible for the appellate work of the state relating to federal litigation, multistate actions, amicus briefs and other complex litigation as determined by the attorney general.”
A Senate committee had stripped that new division from the bill, but the full Senate restored it, with no questions and no objections, even though the phrasing “as determined by the attorney general” ought to raise some red flags.
What issues is Landry seeking to pursue?
In his own words, from a letter to the editor of The American Banker, published May 8th, the attorney general vents his vitriol for federalism by excoriating the federal Consumer Financial Protection Bureau for implementing restrictions on the payday loan industry.
Calling the agency “a tool of the political left,” Landry maintains “the short-term, small-dollar lending rule”is “federal encroachment” on “the economic liberty of our people”. Further, he states, “Ensuring citizens have options to obtain credit when traditional avenues through financial institutions are unavailable is a critical issue in my state.”
Of course, that’s in direct contradiction of the campaign against predatory lending that’s been waged for several years by groups like Together Louisiana and the Louisiana Budget Project. Though LBP scored a victory this week by killing SB 365 – a bill to increase the amount and time allowed for payday loans – the group’s executive director Jan Moller finds Landry’s letter disturbing.
“It’s a shame the attorney general takes sides with national predatory lending corporations over the people of Louisiana who fall victim each year to the deliberate debt trap caused by these unaffordable loans,” Moller says.
A separate bill to expand Landry’s authority, creating the Medicaid Recipient Fraud Unit within the attorney general’s office, was withdrawn from consideration this week, by its author, Rep. Sherman Mack (R-Albany).
“I felt we were putting the cart before the horse,” Mack said by way of explanation, as he presented the ”horse” power part of his legislation to the Senate Finance committee Thursday. HB 88, which Mack has previously stated is ”the Attorney General’s bill,” creates the crime of ”government benefits fraud,” designating it a felony.
“Do you think this is targeting certain people?” Sen. Regina Barrow asked, directing her question to the Louisiana Budget Project’s Jeannie Donovan, who was testifying in opposition to the bill.
“Those who are elderly or confused by the details and quantities of information required on the applications could be swept up, if this becomes law,” Donovan replied.
Mack insists it is not aimed at Louisiana’s poor.
“It contains the element of mens rea: you have to prove they intentionally falsified their application in order to receive the benefit,” the House Criminal Justice committee chairman explained. “It is not targeted at low income people. It’s targeted at people who are NOT low income, but are still trying to get benefits.”
Not unexpectedly, Sen. Sharon Hewitt supports the bill, saying, “Kentucky passed legislation similar to this last month, and here’s what they found as they looked at other states: Michigan found 7,000 lottery winners who were on welfare; Illinois found dead people receiving welfare benefits; and Arkansas had 20,000 people with fake identities enrolled in their welfare program. These are real cases in other states, so we need to do a better job of making sure people here meet the requirements and we enforce them. Medicaid is a new program – it’s a lot of people and it’s a big program.”
Linda Hawkins from the League of Women Voters, who was testifying against the bill, didn’t hesitate to correct Hewitt’s litany of misinformation.
“Medicaid expansion is new, but Medicaid has been around since 1966,” Hawkins said. “And what you read off was all about welfare. Additionally, Kentucky’s new law is in limbo, as CMS is questioning their fraud unit.
“Further, Medicaid program money goes to providers. It does not go to recipients,” Hawkins reminded Hewitt.
Committee chairman Eric LaFleur, clearly wearied of Hewitt’s fixation at this point in the session, reminded her, “This bill doesn’t say anything about Medicaid.”
“It may not specify Medicaid or welfare in the bill, but the spirit is clear — that’s what it’s aimed at,” said Sen. Wesley Bishop (D-New Orleans). “And if we’re not talking Medicaid, but rather any and all government benefits programs, what about the kid who falsifies his ACT score to get TOPS? He’s definitely got a motive.”
“And he could be prosecuted,” Rep. Mack replied.
“And I expect you to apply the same energy to that as to these 80-year-old grandmothers,” Bishop said, directly addressing Ellison Travis, who heads the AG’s Medicaid Fraud Unit. “And what about these corporations that straight up lie about the number of jobs they will create, in order to get subsidies? Will that command your same energy, Mr. Travis? After all, for the return from twenty grandmothers you’re going to prosecute, you can get one corporate executive and get it all back.”
The committee did approve the bill, on a 6-3 vote, sending it to the full Senate.
As currently worded, HB 88 says, “The crime of government benefits fraud is the act of any person who, with intent to defraud the state or any person or entity through any government benefits…does any of the following: (1) Presents for allowance or payment any false or fraudulent claim for furnishing services, merchandise or payments (2) Knowingly submits false information for the purpose of obtaining greater compensation than that to which he is legally entitled for furnishing services, merchandise or payments…”
Considering Attorney General Jeff Landry’s use of “government benefits” from his office’s HUD Fair Housing grant, won’t that put him in an awkward position – having potentially violated his own law?
Tell me more about this “welfare queen”…
It felt a lot like the death of King Joffrey in season four of Game of Thrones, seeming like a victory, after the varieties and magnitude of his cruelty had been documented, episode by episode, not unlike the news cycle of late – demonstrating the maltreatment of Louisiana’s disabled, elderly and infirm that would result from the House-passed version of the budget.
You’ll understand then why the initial response was internal rejoicing, when Senate Finance chairman Eric LaFleur (D- Ville Platte) announced the changes they were proposing to HB 1.
“These are our budget priorities: fully fund health care and fully fund GO Grants. Our version protects medical schools, the public-private hospital partnerships, clinic services, disabilities waivers, the long-term care program, and pediatric daycare. For too many of our people, it’s a life and death situation without those services.”
But just as in Game of Thrones, knowing Margaery, Sansa, and others were finally safe from Joffrey did not mean that everybody was safe at all. You knew there would be a reckoning.
“We’re not saving anything,” LaFleur said bluntly. “How we do this is we take away the $346 million from the REC forecast, and we reduce TOPS by another 10%. We cut 5% off dedicated funds and self-generated funds. And we cut every other department by 24.2%, including the legislative and the judicial branches, DCFS, higher ed, Department of Corrections, state police.
“These are our priorities. How we do this, and the way we do this, demonstrates to the public the seriousness of the budget crisis,” LaFleur continued. “By putting what’s ridiculous below the line, we demonstrate the ridiculousness of the situation. Without the funding, nothing is safe.”
Other members of the committee weighed in, as well, to emphasize their solidarity with this approach.
“It’s imperative to indicate this is a step. We don’t want people to think we can legitimately cut 25% of state government,” Sen. Conrad Appel (R-Metairie) stated. “This is not the final budget. It has to go back to the House, and our intention is to continue the discussion. But we feel this should be included.”
“We all know this is not sustainable,” added Sen. Ronnie Johns (R-Lake Charles). “We know you can’t ask agencies to take 24-25% cuts.”
“It will shut everything down,” LaFleur acknowledged.
“But hopefully this will send a message to every member of the House that we have to have some revenue,” Johns added.
Without a single objection, the changes to HB 1 were adopted, and the budget bill advanced to the full Senate.
But the committee wasn’t done speaking out. They had resolutions, expressing in no uncertain terms that the Senate has had quite enough of the House’s attempts to prevent solutions to the fiscal cliff, and they intend to be involved in solving it.
“The Senate needs to be able to make its own statement about the revenues that are in the budget, but when we don’t get things forwarded by the House, we are silenced,” said Sen. Jack Donahue (R-Mandeville), determinedly. “These resolutions indicate what we believe should be considered in special session, and this expresses what we think is available.”
The resolutions enumerate amounts for renewing part of the fifth penny of sales tax, “cleaning” exemptions from the remaining pennies of sales tax, and reducing 17 tax credit and exemption programs by 27% apiece.
Without objection, those resolutions were also adopted: one, simply a Senate resolution; the other, a concurrent resolution – meaning it would go to the House for agreement, as well.
“I’m not sure they would agree,” Donahue said with a chuckle, “Because it says we have to work with the governor.”
The committee then invited the governor’s Commissioner of Administration to the witness table, for his comments on the actions they had just taken.
“The resolution is highly unusual,” Jay Dardenne told them, “But these are not normal times. I commend you for taking a proactive approach on revenue, which has never been laid before you. As we all are aware, nothing has come out of the House for you to vote on in that regard. This gives you a head start on the special session, and the administration appreciates your non-committal expression of possible revenues. Overall, this is a creative way to engage.
“Regarding HB1: When I came before you the last time, I told you most efficient would be to defer the bill. We need to move as expeditiously as possible into the special session, whereas moving this bill will elongate the session.”
Dardenne then proceeded to iterate the ramifications of the budget choices they had just made: “You need to know the impact of 24% cuts. State employees will get pink slips. You just cut higher ed by $96 million. The LSU Ag Center will declare financial exigency. You funded TOPS at 70%, signalling you favor a cut higher than the House. State parks will close. Meat inspectors will be terminated. Sheriffs will return 15,000 inmates to the state. We don’t know where they’ll sleep. LPB will go dark the end of this year.
“And Louisiana will become the first state to tell the feds we will not administer the SNAP program. No food stamps. No one will be eligible.”
As Dardenne paused to take a deep breath before continuing, LaFleur interrupted.
“You know, we know all of this. We contemplated this,” he said.
“I’m not chastising you,” Dardenne said. “I’m helping to demonstrate how serious the problem is. This is not saving the Department of Health. It’s not saving Medicaid. Nobody who receives state funding should be confident.”
“We knew what we were doing,” LaFleur insisted. “I wanted to park this, but the members wanted to make a statement, because basically the House didn’t give us any options. We were fully aware of the implications of doing this.”
“Commissioner, you were chastising us,” Sen. Bodi White (R-Baton Rouge) complained. “Your responsibility is to present the budget, and the House’s responsibility is to pass it to us. We don’t like it either. But if we had raised what you asked us to before – too much — what would the people think of us? And as of right now, the number we need has still yet to be determined!”
“I think you are throwing stones – more than that, you are pouring gas on the fire,” Sen. Sharon Hewitt (R-Slidell) told Dardenne, with some venom in her voice. “You called us in to special session before we even had a budget, just saying you wanted more revenue. That’s no good until we pass budget.”
“I agree we need a budget, but not this instant,” Dardenne replied. “We need to know what revenue is available first.”
“I, for one, am not willing to take a shot in the dark,” Sen. White said adamantly. “You insulted all of us. Now the governor can scare as many people as he wants – that’s his prerogative. I hate this budget, but our responsibility is to give it to you.”
Senate President John Alario then waded into the fray.
“We are all in this together. This committee took the position that if had to make a choice, we would choose life first. Some very conservative members chose to help with this. There is still a long way to go in the whole process. This is not the final budget, but we have a responsibility. This is the hand we were dealt. The House did what they thought was right. Now we are doing what we think is right.”
Yet as the meeting adjourned, Sen. LaFleur admitted, with a grin and a shake of his head, “This is the craziest, most cockamamie budget we could pass.”
As for House members’ reaction to what was – effectively – the Senate’s demand for “trial by combat” – the lower chamber had adjourned for the weekend just as the committee was announcing its decisions.
Me? I’m still waiting for the dragons…
It appears the Senate is not as enamored of Speaker Taylor Barras as his sycophants in the House. The Speaker’s marquee pieces of legislation have run into roadblocks in the upper chamber.
Bills that are carryovers from the prior ineffective special session – measures that Barras demanded become part of that call – are stalled, awaiting hearings in Senate Finance. They include the “Louisiana Checkbook” bill, HB 510, and HCR 5 which recalculates and reduces the spending limit for the upcoming fiscal year. The spending cap passed the House on a unanimous vote, 97-0, and the transparency website measure advanced to the upper chamber on a vote of 96-2. That bill has a multi-million-dollar pricetag.
Tuesday, the Senate Judiciary A Committee slammed the trunk closed on the Speaker’s bill to grant ride-sharing services Lyft and Uber authority to operate statewide – the same committee that put the brakes on a similar bill last year. In 2017, Rep. Kenny Havard (R-Jackson) carried the legislation, and the ride-sharing services – backed by LABI in their efforts – turned to Barras this year, hoping his weight behind the bill would help drive it through.
Unfortunately the two companies, both headquartered in California, don’t quite understand how things work in Louisiana. And the Speaker – who should know how things work here – doesn’t have the clout to force a fundamentally flawed piece of legislation past certain senators.
“Forty-four other states have consistent policy for these transportation network companies,” Barras told the committee, “And this is needed because access to ridesharing services in Louisiana varies widely. For example, you can access the service in Lafayette, but can’t get a ride from them in Broussard or Carencro.”
The bill calls for the Louisiana Department of Agriculture and Forestry to regulate the industry.
“Why in the hell are we having the Department of Agriculture regulate this?” asked Sen. Danny Martiny (R-Kenner). “Shouldn’t it be the Public Service Commission, just like conventional taxis?”
“The Department of Agriculture actually regulates more taxis than the PSC,” replied Uber’s Nick Juliano.
“They regulate the taxi meters,” Martiny replied.
That is part of the Ag Department’s duties as the state regulator of weights and measures. Just as they certify gas pumps are accurately measuring fuel, and scales at grocery store checkouts are accurately weighing your fruits and vegetables, the Department of Agriculture certifies that cab meters are measuring the distance traveled accurately.
Martiny wanted to hear the Public Service Commission’s position on all this.
“Right now, we are the constitutionally designated regulator of passenger carriers,” stated PSC executive secretary Brandon Frey.
“Is what Uber and Lyft do in any way different than the passenger carriers you regulate now?” Martiny asked.
“No,” Frey replied, “It’s effectively the same. They may be using new technology, but – to give you an analogy – we also regulate telephone service. And just like cellphones and VOIP are new technologies, we still regulate them, since they are essentially still telephonic service.”
“If the Legislature was to designate Uber and Lyft as common carriers – passenger carriers – the PSC would be required to regulate them?” Martiny inquired.
“Correct,” Frey said.
Another major cause for concern in the bill was background checks for drivers.
“Let’s face it, the people who are driving for Uber and Lyft are nothing more than glorified cab drivers,” Martiny said. “But this bill says even though you do the same thing as those cab drivers over there, they’ve got to do more, and they’ve got to put up more money, and they’ve got to go through more testing.
“Do you fingerprint your drivers?” Martiny asked the Uber representative.
“No,” Juliano replied. “The only thing a fingerprint serves to do is discriminate.”
“But what if they’re convicted sex offenders?” Martiny wanted to know. “Wasn’t Uber fined $8.9-million in Colorado, because of bad background checks?
“We maintain that the federal fingerprint database is fundamentally unreliable,” Juliano responded. “We perform a check through a third party service, going that extra mile that simply checking fingerprints doesn’t do.”
Throughout the debate, Speaker Barras stayed silent, not injecting himself in the discussion to explain or defend the provisions – almost as though he was utterly unconversant with the bill’s contents of the controversial provisions.
As Speaker, he should have known.
And in the end, Barras resorted to the ignominious end of asking to have his bill voluntarily deferred.
Barras’ other piece of high-profile legislation is HB 553, which would grant a no-bid 30-year extension to Harrah’s operating contract for the land-based casino in New Orleans. Currently, that contract expires in 2024.
The Speaker had no trouble with the measure in his own chamber, with the Criminal Justice committee giving it a 15-0 thumbs-up vote to advance. The full House approved it 79-12.
But as The Advocate‘s Tyler Bridges has been reporting, the deal to increase the state’s annual payments from the casino from $60-million to $67-million while Harrah’s invests $350-million in improvements to the property, is not as tidy as presented by the Speaker in the House.
First, there’s a five-year option to purchase the casino property and others owned by Harrah’s, which was filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, as well as the Louisiana Gaming Control Board, last October. Extension of the present contract, which runs until 2024, would inflate the overall property value for purposes of that purchase. If, on the other hand, the contract expires, Harrah’s interest in the casino would be worthless.
The Speaker has yet to answer whether he knew of the purchase option before Bridges revealed it. The Governor, Senate President, Criminal Justice committee chairman Sherman Mack, and Speaker Pro Temp Walt Leger – who co-sponsored the bill with Barras – have all said they were unaware, according to Bridges.
Meanwhile, Harrah’s has reportedly sweetened the deal by offering an additional $21-million, retaining more than a dozen lobbyists to push the legislation forward. And, as Bridges has also pointed out, the bill says future contract extensions – after 2054 – would only go before the Joint Legislative Committee on the Budget, not the entire legislature. That’s something no one has quizzed the Speaker about.
Barras has stated he’s reluctant to commit to an early end to the regular session, as long as the budget bill and the Harrah’s bill are unresolved. When a nola.com reporter asked the Speaker what might happen if the Harrah’s bill didn’t pass, he responded, “the building could go black until 2054.” That’s because the City of New Orleans has already extended the casino operator’s lease on the building till then.
Since the questionable details behind the bill became public, Senate Judiciary B committee chairman Gary Smith (D-Norco) has twice kept the bill off his committee’s agenda.
No one should be surprised at Barras’ insubstantial efforts to advocate for his bills. In his eight legislative years prior to ascending to the Speaker’s dais, he authored primarily local bills. The bills he carried of a more general nature – involving notarial functions, mortgage and lender regulations, and leasing laws – were decidedly non-controversial.
Yet as Speaker he should have expected heightened scrutiny of any bill to which he attached his name, and – in the case of the Harrah’s legislation – he should have done his homework.
Instead, he continues to waffle over ending the session early, using that as oblique pressure to try and keep the Harrah’s bill on track.
Senate President John Alario told reporters Tuesday that he’d met with Barras that morning, and it appeared they were in agreement they could end the session by May 18. But when directly quizzed about it, the Speaker said the two had simply compared their calendars, agreeing that target might be “do-able” – calendar-wise. Barras insisted he’s made no decision as yet.
As a clever tweet from @skooks described this:
“Reporter: So the end of the session is May 18?
Barras: Who?
Reporter: Sine die.
Barras: Third base!”
Time to get sent back to the minors.
A week after The Bayou Briefreported that Louisiana State Sen. Sharon Hewitt (R- Slidell) had deceptively edited the video record of state legislative auditor Daryl Purpera’s public testimony to the Senate Finance Committee, removing a critical 12-seconds of footage and sharing the altered recording with her online followers, Hewitt continues to push a fake news story that Medicaid beneficiary fraud is “widespread” in Louisiana and costs the state nearly a half a billion dollars a year.
Yesterday, she repeated her assertions in an article published by Watchdog.org, a well-known propaganda arm of the Franklin Center for Government Integrity, a far-right, anti-science organization funded by the petrochemical industry and loosely affiliated with the Koch brothers’ group Americans for Prosperity and the American Legislative Exchange Council (better known as ALEC).
Hewitt promoted the paid content, which was written by John Haughey, a freelance blogger from Florida and long-time contributor to the publication Outdoor Life, on social media.
Disappointed that #lagov has chosen to threaten the security of 37,000 elderly & nursing home patients rather than actively investigating Medicaid fraud within the 1.6 M participants. #LaLegehttps://t.co/1uKtpuF8pY
And if you were to take the senator at her word, you’d probably think she had just ingeniously uncovered the panacea for all of the state’s budgetary woes.
All we need to do is “actively investigate” 1.6 million people (or nearly 35% of the entire state population) for suspected Medicaid fraud.
“Hewitt said the legislative auditor’s office estimates the state could save about $480 million in removing ineligible people from Medicaid’s rolls,” Haughey writes. “That would, essentially, restore the $431 million in LDH cuts in the proposed budget, which would mean an additional $1.6 billion or more in federal matching dollars.”
It’s complete hogwash.
As anyone with a working knowledge of Medicaid can tell you, Hewitt reveals a fundamental misapprehension of how federal matching dollars operate and interact with state discretionary spending.
This has nothing to do with the fiscal cliff.
Contrary to Sen. Hewitt’s assertions, Gov. John Bel Edward’s decision to avail the state access to federal funding for Medicaid expansion has been a wild success, creating more than 19,000 jobs, generating $178 million in state and local taxes, and resulting in a $3.5 billion economic impact, according to a recent, independent economic analysis conducted by three LSU professors.
The program is also wildly popular, supported by 69% of all citizens. Only among Republicans is the program narrowly unpopular, dropping from 51% approval in 2017 to 47% during the first few months of 2018.
But more importantly, Medicaid expansion has increased access to health care for nearly half a million people and reduced the state’s uninsured rate from 16.6% to 10.3%.
If there was any factual basis to Sen. Hewitt’s claims, it would be a blockbuster story.
Instead, though, it is a prime example of the cynical partisanship and dishonest arithmetic that continues to place the state’s finances on the brink of insolvency.
It should be obvious that any budgetary solution involving criminally investigating more than a third of the state’s citizens is patently absurd and unserious.
Yet this is where Louisiana currently finds itself.
Later in this report, we unpack the precise ways in which Sen. Hewitt and some of her Republican colleagues have manufactured a fake news story about widespread Medicaid beneficiary fraud, but in order to appreciate the larger political context, it’s important to remember a sordid story from the not-so-distant past.
The Curious Case of Bruce Greenstein
In one of his very first actions as attorney general of Louisiana, Jeff Landry dropped the most significant criminal case against a state public official since the the FBI found $90,000 in cold cash in Congressman Bill Jefferson’s freezer.
Bruce Greenstein, the former secretary of Louisiana’s Department of Health and Hospitals, had faced nine counts of criminal perjury for allegedly lying to members of the legislature about his efforts to improperly award a $200 million contract to his former employer, Client Network Services Incorporated (or CNSI).
In 2014, after an exhaustive, eighteen-month-long inquiry, a grand jury decided to indict Greenstein, who was appointed to the position four years prior by then-Gov. Bobby Jindal.
The contract in question, ironically enough, was about identifying Medicaid fraud and had been necessitated by changes enacted under the Affordable Care and Patient Provider Act (also known as Obamacare), which mandated states to suspend payments to “a provider when it determines that there is a credible allegation of fraud.”
To be sure, there is absolutely no evidence nor was there ever any suggestion that CNSI itself engaged in anything illegal, and in fact, the company had subsequently sued the state of Louisiana for breach of contract. But there were thousands of text messages and hundreds of e-mails that had built a strong case against Greenstein.
And Jeff Landry waited only three months after he took over as attorney general to drop that case.
Today, Bruce Greenstein is serving as the Trump administration’s Chief Technology Officer for the Department of Health and Human Services.
Given Landry’s newly-found interest in pursuing Medicaid fraud and the coordinated, hair-brained, propaganda campaign by his Republican colleagues in the state legislature to “actively investigate” 1.6 million Medicaid recipients for potential fraud, it’s worth remembering how easily and how quickly these same elected and appointed public officials had been willing to overlook and overturn a grand jury’s decision to criminally indict a man accused of repeatedly lying about how he facilitated a $200 million state Medicaid contract with his former colleagues.
There’s another reason it’s important to remember the rise and fall and then the fall and rise of Bruce Greenstein: We are often willing to overlook abuses of corporate welfare but more than happy to stigmatize those most in need and most deserving of public support.
Medicaid fraud is almost exclusively committed by providers. Medicaid beneficiary fraud, therefore, is more accurately defined as eligibility error.
Unlike other government entitlements and earned benefits, Medicaid recipients do not receive a fungible product.
Your Medicaid card cannot be used like a credit card or bartered away to someone else.
“The Medicaid program makes zero payments directly to recipients. Zero,” Jen Steele, Louisiana’s Medicaid director, recently explained in a letter to The Advocate.
Given the misinformation about beneficiary fraud being peddled by Republican state legislators, it’s a simple, incontrovertible fact about the program that is worth underlining in black ink: Providers are the only people who actually make money from Medicaid.
Last year, Gov. Edwards created the Task Force on Coordination of Medicaid Fraud Detection and Prevention Initiatives, and charged members with five simple priorities, as outlined in the 2017 Regular Session (see Appendix A for Act 420 of the 2017 Legislative Session):
1) To study and evaluate on an ongoing basis the laws, rules, policies, and processes by which the state implements Medicaid fraud detection and prevention efforts.
2) To identify and recommend opportunities for improving coordination of Medicaid fraud detection and prevention initiatives across state agencies and branches of state government.
3) To identify any systemic or system wide issues of concern within the Medicaid program with respect to fraud, waste, and abuse.
4) To develop recommendations for policies and procedures by which to facilitate and implement all of the following:
a. Random sampling of Medicaid cases to be selected for verification of enrollee eligibility.
b. Improvements in the Medicaid program integrity function of the Louisiana Department of Health (LDH).
c. Optimization of data mining among state-owned data sets for purposes of Medicaid fraud detection and prevention.
5) To make reports to the governor and legislature
The state’s Task Force was chaired by state legislative auditor Daryl Purpera and included ten other members: Sen. Fred Mills (R- Breaux Bridge), of the Louisiana State Senate; Rep. Tony Bacala (R- Prarieville) of the Louisiana House of Representatives; Matthew Block, the Executive Counsel for Office of the Gov. John Bel Edwards; Ellison Travis, the Director of the Medicaid Fraud Control Unit (MFCU) for the Office of Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry; Michael Boutte, the Medicaid Deputy Director over Health Plan Operations and Compliance for the Louisiana Department of Health; Tracy Richard, a Criminal Investigator for the Office of the Inspector General; Jarrod Coniglio, Program Integrity Section Chief for the Louisiana Department of Health; Luke Morris, Assistant Secretary of the Office of Legal Affairs, Louisiana Department of Revenue (LDR); Jen Steele, Medicaid Director for the Louisiana Department of Health, and Dr. Robert E. Barsley, Oral Health Resources, Community and Hospital Dentistry at the Louisiana State University School of Dentistry.
Beginning in August 2017, the Task Force met once a month for five consecutive months. It was like the movie Groundhog’s Day, according to more than a couple of people who attended the meetings, acharacterization that is corroborated by the written draft memos and the minutes of Task Force meetings, which were subsequently assembled and shared publicly by the state legislative auditor’s office.
A Solution in Search of a Problem
From the very beginning, a handful of members of the Task Force, including Daryl Purpera, the legislative auditor, both Republican legislators, and the delegate from Attorney General Jeff Landry’s office made it well-known they were primarily interested in addressing a single directive, 4(a), which charged them with studying a random sampling of recipients that could be used to better understand the total number of people who may not meet eligibility criteria.
There was very little discussion on the best ways to eliminate fraud among health care providers, like pediatric dentistry and behavioral sciences, niche specializations with a well-known record of attracting fly-by-night clinics that briefly open shop, collect a substantial sum in Medicaid reimbursement payments, and then quickly disappear.
Instead of substantively addressing the best ways to confront and eliminate provider fraud, the Task Force, led by Daryl Purpera, became singularly obsessed with proving the theory that tens of thousands of Medicaid recipients had fraudulently been deemed eligible for a health insurance program by under-reporting their income.
Their methods were swiftly and strongly criticized by those most familiar with the complexities and variances the program had been designed to accommodate.
Apples to Oranges
At the same time, a comprehensive audit conducted by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) revealed that Louisiana is “both compliant with all federal fraud reporting requirements and has the proper procedures in place to detect and report fraud,” state Medicaid Director Steele subsequently explained in The Advocate. “The federal audit sets a high bar for its anti-fraud efforts, making it notable that Louisiana was one of only four states to pass this audit since 2014.”
Steele was not exaggerating. The full report is available for download here.
“In truth,” she wrote in March of 2018, “Louisiana is a national leader in Medicaid fraud prevention.”
Yet a small contingency of lawmakers were determined to castigate tens of thousands of health care recipients as nothing more than criminals who had defrauded the government, even if those lawmakers had to rely on a flawed methodology to make their case.
Luke Morris, the legal analyst for the Louisiana Department of Revenue, detailed his criticisms in a memorandum to the Task Force on Oct. 4th, 2017.
“(The) LDR (Louisiana Department of Revenue), LDH (Louisiana Department of Health), and LLA (Louisiana Legislative Auditor) all agreed that the comparison of gross income and federal AGI (Adjusted Gross Income) would likely produce very few matches,” he reported. “This exercise is a quintessential apples to oranges approach for several reasons.” (emphasis added).
Morris explained the significant differences between what applicants disclose on their Medicaid eligibility forms and the ways in which a person’s federal adjusted gross income is calculated and how deductions for things like “educator expenses, moving expenses, student loan deductions, and tuition and fees deductions” may be accounted for in a person’s federal AGI but are specifically “not accounted for in the reported gross income on the Medicaid application.”
There are other significant discrepancies. “(T)he comparison of household size and exemptions would likely produce few matches,” Morris explains. “Household size includes all individuals living in one household. Exemptions include taxpayer, spouse, and dependents. An individual may live in the same household as another but may not be claimed on another’s tax return as a dependent based on the Internal Revenue Code.”
Fuzzy Math and Alternative Facts
State legislative auditor Purpera had been repeatedly advised by subject-matter experts in health care policy on the Task Force that the way in which he decided to calculate the potential rate of fraud among Medicaid beneficiaries was itself fraudulent and riddled with false assumptions and fuzzy math.
Purpera publicly released his preliminary analysis on Oct. 25th, 2017:
Six months later, these are the numbers State Sen. Sharon Hewitt is peddling as incontrovertible evidence of widespread Medicaid beneficiary fraud and the central justification for her call to “actively investigate” the tax returns of more than 1.6 million citizens.
Luke Morris had been prepared for Purpera’s fundings. “(He) said the results were in line with expectations,” according to the minutes of the meeting that day. “(Morris) did some further digging to look at major differences between gross income and federal AGI to reconcile why such large variances. There were a number of reasons and none were indicative of fraud.” (emphasis added).
There are also a number of different ways one can become eligible for Medicaid, and Purpera admittedly only looked at aggregate data, not individual-level information.
More than Zero
To be abundantly clear, although the number is certainly nowhere near 83,000, no one is suggesting that there are zero incidents of Medicaid beneficiary fraud in Louisiana; there are certainly a handful of people in any given state who would be willing to intentionally lie about their income in order to access health insurance.
Even if Sen. Hewitt was completely accurate- for the sake of argument, let’s say it’s true 83,000 Louisiana citizens intentionally lied about their income- it speaks volumes about the true character of any leader who only sees dollar signs and jail time instead of a government led by people who would rather prosecute those among us too productive to qualify as poor enough for publicly-subsidized health care, not nearly wealthy enough to afford what the private sector is selling, but desperate enough to commit a crime just so they or their child can seek quality medical treatment.
The same exact legislators who are now urging the IRS to provide the state government access to the individual tax returns of 1.6 million of their fellow citizens so that they can prosecute the crime of fibbing a few numbers in order to qualify for health insurance are also vigorously opposing any effort to force a small group of wealthy individuals and businesses to publicly disclose how much they benefit from taxpayer-funded corporate welfare.
There’s a reason Sharon Hewitt decided to frame this particular issue as a zero sum game between nursing home residents and 1.6 million Medicaid recipients, and it has very little to do with a commitment to “grandma.”
Unlike almost everyone else enrolled in the state’s Medicaid program, those nursing home beds make a handful of people an astronomical amount of money from the government.
“Louisiana Nursing Home Association Executive Director Mark Berger said, when including the loss of federal matching Medicaid funds, the budget cuts nearly $1 billion for nursing homes,” John Haughey writes in the Watchdog article promoted by Sen. Hewitt.
Louisiana currently leads the nation in the disproportionate amount of Medicaid spending for nursing homes.
“The only way around the stipulation is for nursing homes to close,” Haughey claims.
“That is the business side of the scenario,” Berger tells him.
To some lawmakers, it’s the only side of the story that really matters.
Berger, to his great credit, understands the real stakes.
“The human side is thousands of residents and their families will go through grief and stress,” he says.
And in February 2014, Chabert did this video campaign ad, called “Norby Chabert Fights Like Hell”.
For what change is this particular attention being sought? 
A few days ago, I conducted an informal and totally unscientific survey on both Twitter and Facebook, asking people if they had ever been blocked online by an elected official from Louisiana. I’d hoped to get at least a general understanding of how widespread the practice truly is.
It didn’t matter if a politician served in a small city hall or in the corridors of the state Capitol or on the floors of the United States Congress. It was extraordinarily commonplace for elected officials in Louisiana to treat their public social media pages as if they were bouncers at an exclusive, members-only club in which the only currency was sycophancy.
Two federal officials, Congressman Clay Higgins (R- LA-03) and Senator Bill Cassidy (R), were mentioned more often than anyone else.
“Clay Higgins blocked me because he didn’t like that I was spewing facts about him and confronting him about it,” Kayla Diz, a small businesswoman from Lafayette, wrote. “He threatened me and said ‘Any help you ever need, you will not get from me.'” Four others reported that the Congressman known as “the Cajun John Wayne” had blocked them as well.
At least five people claimed they’d either been blocked by Sen. Bill Cassidy or prevented from commenting on his official Senate page after he was elected.
Susan Clark of Shreveport claims that Congressman Mike Johnson (R- LA-04) had blocked her on at least one occasion.
Clay Fondren of New Orleans said that he’d been blocked by state Sen. Fred Mills (R- Breaux Bridge). “The delete king of New Iberia,” he joked.
Jeff Pettit, the manager of the Ascension Citizens Group, reports that he was blocked by Ascension Parish Councilman Aaron Lawler (R- Prairieville).
Until recently, after nearly a decade on Twitter and more than a dozen years writing online about state politics, the only two of the 144 members of the Louisiana legislature who had blocked me on social media were, notably, both registered Democrats, Rep. Neil Abramson (D- New Orleans) and Rep. Katrina Jackson (D- Monroe). I had been banished by each of them a few years ago for the same unpardonable sin: I criticized and questioned them publicly and directly. (I’m not the only Democrat to have earned their ire online).
Last week, following my report that state Sen. Sharon Hewitt (R- Slidell) had deceptively edited video testimony from a meeting of the Senate Finance Committee, she became the one and only Republican legislator who exiled me from her Twitter account.
I hadn’t even “followed” her; this was a preemptive block. And she didn’t just block my account; she also blocked The Bayou Brief‘s Sue Lincoln, a veteran journalist who has been covering the state Capitol for several years.
A few days later, Hewitt explained her reasoning to a constituent.
“This issue has been completely blown out of proportion by Mr. White,” she wrote an e-mail from her public account. “Instead of having a respectful debate, he has chosen to call me names and attempt to trash my social media. In my experience, people who do that aren’t interested in the facts and it is a waste of time to convince them otherwise.”
I hadn’t called the state senator any “names;” I merely uploaded the 12-seconds of testimony that she had removed from the video record. I thought it merited an apology or, at the very least, an explanation. She has yet to comment publicly, but in her e-mail to a constituent, she acknowledged that she had, in fact, deleted the footage. “Concerning the video, I honestly was not trying to mislead anyone, but rather shorten it so it was more likely to be viewed,” she wrote. “Yes, it is technically correct that the Auditor said that folks could over or under-report their income by $20k because the data provided to them by the Department of Revenue did not differentiate it.”
Hewitt’s explanation- that she had shortened the video to make it “more likely to be viewed”- is belied by an obvious fact: She had actually shared two different videos, a 2-minute-and-3-second version on Twitter and a 2-minute-and-29 second version on Facebook; both of them spliced out the same “technically correct” 12-seconds.
To me, at least, the story about an edited video is far less concerning than the state senator’s reaction to the story, which, unfortunately, is becoming a much more common practice.
In April, after The Advocate‘s Elizabeth Crisp reported that state Rep. Dodie Horton (R- Haughton) had cited a satirical news article “claiming 37 people died on the first day recreational marijuana was legalized in Colorado in January 2014,” Horton blocked Crisp on Twitter. (She later apologized to the reporter and said a staffer was responsible for the faux pas).
But it’s not just reporters and constituents who may find themselves “blocked” by a member of the Louisiana legislature.
State Sen. Conrad Appel (R- Metairie) is one of the chamber’s most prolific and active users of social media. He also has the distinction of being the only legislator who has actually blocked two of his colleagues from following his Twitter account, specifically state Sen. Jay Luneau (D- Alexandria) and state Sen. J.P. Morrell (D- New Orleans).
I asked Appel about his decision to exile two fellow senators.
“I have a simple policy for all media,” he explains. “If someone is abusive, threatening, uses bad language, or is insulting, I block them. If I blocked anyone, it is probably because they did one of the above.”
But that’s not how both Luneau and Morrell remember things.
“What’s most interesting is why I got blocked,” Morrell tells me. “During the special session (in 2017), he dropped into my Twitter feed to spout some huge budget inaccuracies. After I refuted every point he made, he blocked me.”
Luneau was a part of the same thread, and there’s no evidence that either Morrell or Luneau ever violated Appel’s “media” policy.
“The only discussions we have ever had online were about the budget,” Luneau asserts. “That’s it.”
Tell me more about this “welfare queen”… 
But more importantly, Medicaid expansion has increased access to health care for nearly half a million people and reduced the state’s uninsured rate from 16.6% to 10.3%.
If there was any factual basis to Sen. Hewitt’s claims, it would be a blockbuster story.
Instead, though, it is a prime example of the cynical partisanship and dishonest arithmetic that continues to place the state’s finances on the brink of insolvency.
It should be obvious that any budgetary solution involving criminally investigating more than a third of the state’s citizens is patently absurd and unserious.
Yet this is where Louisiana currently finds itself.
Later in this report, we unpack the precise ways in which Sen. Hewitt and some of her Republican colleagues have manufactured a fake news story about widespread Medicaid beneficiary fraud, but in order to appreciate the larger political context, it’s important to remember a sordid story from the not-so-distant past.
Six months later, these are the numbers State Sen. Sharon Hewitt is peddling as incontrovertible evidence of widespread Medicaid beneficiary fraud and the central justification for her call to “actively investigate” the tax returns of more than 1.6 million citizens.
