[Editor's Note: This story was updated at 5:27 p.m. Thursday to reflect our conversation with Glenn Dugas.]
Members of the all-volunteer Lafayette Workforce Investment Board must disclose their personal finances beginning in May of next year, according to an advisory opinion issued by the Louisiana Ethics Board on Wednesday.
In a letter to Glenn Dugas, executive administrator of the LWIB, Ethics Board member Tracy Barker explains that because Lafayette Parish’s population has exceeded 200,000, LWIB board members are subject to the financial disclosure rule enacted as part of Gov. Bobby Jindal’s sweeping ethics reform package a few years ago. That requirement led to a wave of resignations from boards and commissions statewide, many by volunteer appointees who didn’t want their personal finances subject to public scrutiny.
Dugas tells The Ind that the personal disclosure requirement “isn’t very onerous,” and that board members are not required to disclose personal income. They are only required to divulge ownership of private companies and income earned in industries like gaming. Dugas adds that none of the 31 members of the LWIB has expressed an intention to resign from the board due to the new disclosure requirement.
The LWIB, according to LCG’s website, “serves Lafayette Parish and receives federal money that is used to provide a variety of services to businesses and job seekers through the Lafayette Business and Career Solutions Center.”
Lafayette Parish’s growth beyond the 200,000 population threshold is likely to affect most of the boards and commissions in the parish. State ethics law requires members of boards that “disburse, invest, or expend $10,000 or more in funds in a fiscal year to file an annual personal financial disclosure statement.” There are nearly 30 such bodies operating in Lafayette Parish.
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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If I was a conspiracist, this personal financial disclosure requirement, while activating our noblest notions of undoing public corruption would instead seem all part of a well orchestrated sleeper move to push good people out of government leaving only knuckleheads, numbskulls and know-nothings behind while the puppetmasters do their dirty work.
This is not a good direction we are going in. Check out the recent LCG minutes, another person resigned from a city-parish volunteer committee for needs of privacy of financial assets, mind you, not active dealings and contracts and personal relationships.
If the public continues to have fewer and fewer outlets to civic participation, and few trade unions and other civic associations, we may yet see more sufferable alternatives pop up. We're better than this.