What gives? During Gov. Bobby Jindal’s 25 months in office, more than a dozen cabinet officials and staffers have left his administration. If ever there were a political bandwagon worth hitching onto, this would seem to be it, given Jindal’s national profile and the amount of action coming from the Fourth Floor.
The latest to bite the dust is Tammie McDaniel, a member of the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education who questioned certain budget decisions and who had been asked by the Jindal administration to resign as early as last July. (McDaniel stood her ground initially, but resigned from BESE last week.)
Another recent defection was William Ankner, who resigned from his post as secretary of the Department of Transportation and Development earlier this month. By many accounts, Anker had little choice. DOTD has been under fire for awarding a controversial $60 million highway contract to the highest bidder. Apparently, someone had to fall on his sword — and it wasn’t going to be the governor.
For now, Jindal & Co. are staying mum, but this isn’t the first time that a sacrificial lamb has been offered up. After complications with assistance programs in the wake of Hurricane Gustav, Department of Social Services Secretary Ann Williamson “resigned” as well. If anything, it was an early sign that Jindal was willing to roll heads in a businesslike way, as in his way or the highway.
Last October, Melody Teague, a DSS grants reviewer, was terminated and told it involved her poor performance during Hurricane Katrina four years earlier. (Side note: The day before Teague was fired, she publicly opposed the administration’s plans to privatize state services.)
And who could forget Jim Champagne, who had served as the executive director of the Louisiana Highway Safety Commission for 12 years before Jindal gave him the boot. In March 2008, Champagne disagreed with Jindal’s plan to repeal the state’s motorcycle helmet law. He was promptly shown the door.
Others simply couldn’t operate within the political climate that Jindal and his top aides created. In June 2008, after serving only six months, Tommy Williams, a respected veteran lobbyist, gave up his legislative liaison post. A year later, Richard Sherburne shelved his title as ethics administrator — after Jindal gutted the Ethics Board’s adjudicatory authority and gave it to a set of administrative law judges.
Then there’s politics. Some folks became free agents because they wanted their own share of the action. So far this year, Office of Community Programs Director Natalie Robottom quit to run for St. John the Baptist Parish President, and Department of Environmental Quality Secretary Harold Leggett has said he wouldn’t mind being a member of the Legislature. Both resigned in January. Executive Counsel Jimmy Faircloth stepped down last July to make an unsuccessful bid for the state Supreme Court.
The private sector has been a draw as well. Tim Barfield, the labor chief who succeeded Faircloth as executive counsel, resigned in December to chase corporate dollars. Luke Letlow, special assistant and director of intergovernmental affairs, followed suit in January.
When you bring it all to a boil, these folks left the Jindal administration either because they were incompetent, thrown under the bus, had a political agenda, wanted more than public service could provide, or couldn’t work within the administration’s rigid framework.
Overall, the departures speak volumes about Jindal’s managerial style — sometimes it’s easier to kill a problem than fix it. No doubt the governor’s supporters will paint most of the departures as voluntary and not reflective of any administration turmoil. Others speculate that it’s a sign Jindal may not seek a second term, on the theory that some of the departed insiders know something we don’t — and they want to cash in on their connections while they can. Given the amount of money Jindal has been raising out of state, you never know when or if he might decide he’s tired of being governor — or that he’s ready for a higher calling.
Whatever the causes of the many departures his administration has seen, Jindal cannot deny that he hired the former staffers amid great promise and high expectations. Now he must account for their collective record as well as his own.
Jeremy Alford can be reached at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .
MAY 24 Blogger Robert Mann posts this entry about the Baton Rouge Chamber's recent report on Louisiana's higher education system. It's critical to economic development, and yet our system is facing a "funding crisis" with no way to resolve it, the report says. The Chamber says control of tuition and fees must be returned to the higher ed governing boards.
MAY 24 Here's a NBC33 story about Tyrann Mathieu. He has signed with the Arizona Cardinals, inking a $3 million, four-year deal. He gets a signing bonus of $265K, but gets another, larger bonus if he doesn't get cut from the team for doing drugs. The deal reportedly includes mandatory tests and meetings for the player.
MAY 24 Jarvis DeBerry posts here about the redonkulus rhetoric that would have us believe NOLA is a safe city with a murder problem. Maybe the city's crime stats don't compare with its murder stats because you can't manipulate a murder, he says: a dead body's a dead body. It just doesn't make sense, he says, and his readers agree: a poll asks if they believe the city is safe, and more than 90 percent say no.
MAY 24 Jindal administration officials announced Thursday that the privatization of public health care is going to cost a lot more than they budgeted for, the Advocate reports here. "I'm so surprised," said no one. Anywhere. The cost they're projecting now is more than $1 billion - a lot more than the $626 million budgeted for it. And, it's more than it cost the state to operate those hospitals. So why are we doing this again?
MAY 24 Blogger CB Forgotston ridicules the recent PR campaign by the state GOP in the wake of a legislative auditor's request to both major parties. The GOP (apparently unaware that the Dems got the same request) started yammering about being targeted because it had "killed" a tax increase. CB finds that laughable, but it's also pretty funny that the GOP was comparing this episode to the IRS scandal (Because the President has so much to do with our state auditor. Right?).
MAY 24 Politico details some recent fund-raising efforts by Sen. David Vitter, which have raised the question of his future political plans. This time, it is a $5,000 per head "bayou weekend" that includes "Cajun cooking" and an all-caps "alligator hunt," the story reports. Funds raised go to a super PAC that can spend money to support Vitter in federal or state races, the story points out.
MAY 24 The pink building on Royal in the quarter was sold at a sheriff's sale Thursday, this Picayune story reports. An injunction that would have halted the sale wasn't enforced because the family failed to post a $150,000 bond, the story reports. So the owner of the mortgages on the building bought it, for nearly $7 million. Now the feuding family will have to negotiate with that company to get a lease on the building that has housed their business for close to 60 years.
MAY 23 This post in Louisiana Voice tells us about a bill by a Winnsboro lege that would require all public high school students to take at least one Course Choice online class in order to graduate. (What?) Blogger Tom Aswell says it's a monument to "waste and corruption," especially in light of the problems he's exposed with the program in recent weeks. Idaho had a similar program, but voters removed it by a 2-1 margin, Aswell says.
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