The state Senate voted 34-1 Tuesday for Rep. Rickey Hardy’s bill to make affiliates of housing authorities subject to the state’s public records law. The only dissenting vote came from Sen. Karen Carter Peterson of New Orleans.
Hardy says once Gov. Bobby Jindal signs HB 188, the law is retroactive, meaning affiliates of housing authorities that have developments under way will have to immediately open their books. For the purpose of the public records law, he says, these affiliates will be considered public bodies. Hardy anticipates full support from the governor: “It’s not a bill to open his office, so he won’t have any problems with it."
Affiliates of housing authorities are defined as any corporation, entity, partnership, venture, syndicate, or arrangement in which a local housing authority has an ownership or governance interest of less than a majority. The affiliates team up with housing authorities to secure low-income housing tax credits for development of single and multi-family projects, but until now the public had no access to their records — including who is involved and whether there are any conflicts of interest, who is profiting and if any federal funds are being misspent. For the only such venture complete and operational in Lafayette, St. Antoine Gardens, an independent auditor last year found that the Lafayette Housing Authority improperly used as much as $1 million of Section 8 and other funds for repairs, upkeep and an employee’s salary. “The public has a right to know who is spending their money and how it’s being spent,” says Hardy. “It’s just good government policy.”
It’s anticipated that the books of Villa Gardens Housing Corp., the developer of Villa Gardens, a federal tax-credit subdivision on Patterson Street near Alice Boucher Elementary, will be open for public review. Villa Gardens, like St. Antoine, consists of single family homes. Residents qualify to purchase the homes after renting them for 15 years. It’s unclear what impact the legislation will have on Cypress Trails Apartments, a $10 million development at Sophie and Moss streets, or Villas at Angel Point, another Patterson Street affordable housing project that’s only recently come to the public’s attention. The LHA was initially involved with both, but the developers kicked the LHA out of Cypress Trails once the feds starting investigating, and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development — which took over the LHA in the wake of its scandals — asked that the housing authority be removed from Villas at Angel Point. Richard Becker, a Lafayette attorney who does the legal work for all of these developments, has a pending request with state Attorney General Buddy Caldwell for an opinion on whether information on Cypress Trails Limited Partnership is a matter of public record.
Contacted Thursday afternoon, AG spokeswoman Sharon Kleinpeter said she was looking into whether an opinion on the matter has been finalized.
One sentence of the 1997 state law had exempted affiliates by virtue of their association with housing authorities, shielding these affiliates’ paper trails from public scrutiny: “Affiliates of housing agencies shall not, by virtue of their affiliation with such local housing agencies, become subject to the laws of this state applicable to public agencies and their governing bodies, including but not limited to laws pertaining to public disclosure of records, open meetings, minimum wage rates applicable to government contracts and employees, if any, procurement of goods and services, and laws relating to public employees.”
Along with his victory Tuesday to expand the state's sunshine law to these controversial low-income housing deals (the House unanimously backed the measure in May), Hardy played a key role in helping to expose potential corruption in the LHA, his efforts leading to multiple investigations including ongoing probes by the FBI and HUD inspector general.
Read more on the importance of Hardy’s bill here and here.
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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