State Rep. Rickey Hardy’s ethics complaint against development consultant Greg Gachassin (which, according to Gachassin’s attorney, prompted an ethics investigation) appears to be benefiting his opponent in the District 44 race.
Vince Pierre (at left), nephew of former District 44 state Rep. Wilfred Pierre, raised $5,230 from Jan. 1 to Sept. 12, according to campaign finance reports. Of that amount, $3,000 comes from the Gachassins: $2,500 from Nick Gachassin Jr., Greg’s father, and $500 from Gachassin law firm.
On May 2 Hardy, who helped expose mismanagement and fraud at the Lafayette Housing Authority, lodged a formal complaint with the state Board of Ethics. “It would seem as if Mr. Gachassin has violated the ethics laws of the State of Louisiana while serving as chairman and member of the Lafayette Public Trust Finance Authority... [and] appears to have been in ethics violation even after his resignation from the [LPTFA],” Hardy wrote to the state’s top ethics administrator, Kathleen Allen. Hardy’s complaint is connected to Gachassin’s work for two low-income housing developments financed or spearheaded by the LPTFA while he was serving on the board.
Hardy, who pledged in August to stop taking all campaign contributions and returned donations he had received from the previous month, did show $1,000 in contributions he took in early in the year — $250 from Air Product Political Alliance, $500 from CRPPA Local PAC, and $250 from Robert D. Lowe.
The most recent reports, which were due by Sept. 22 — 30 days prior to the primary election — show Pierre with $914 cash on hand and Hardy with $9,830.
View Pierre’s report here and Hardy's report here.
MAY 21 Gambit columnist Clancy DuBos writes about the Mother's Day shooting, and how the stages of shock and blame and healing mirror those traveled by the same city following Hurricane Katrina. The city will recover, just as it did following the storm, by reaching out to help the people injured most seriously by the event, DuBos writes. It's how we heal, he says.
MAY 21 Here's a post on the Advocate (but buried on a subpage, not on the front) that reports something Louisiana Voice reported some time ago: a top DOE official lives in Los Angeles and "commutes" to Baton Rouge. The positioning of the story caused a stir on Facebook Monday, with several posters asking if the Advocate was covering someone's hiney. Sentell's stories on DOE are notoriously soft, and this one is no different: don't expect any hard questions in here.
MAY 21 Here's another post from blogger Tom Aswell about the "course choice" program. He's already reported on kids being signed up without their consent or knowledge, and has more here: For example, he tells of a six-year-old who was signed up for high school Latin. He also digs a little deeper into the sister companies of the main one operating in Louisiana; all of them seem to have complaints against them. Stinky.
MAY 21 Given the 80 percent cut in higher ed funding since he's been in office, it's clear Gov. Jindal would rather give tax cuts to out of state companies than have a functioning system, blogger Dayne Sherman argues in this post. The cuts have been such a disaster, Sherman says, that it will take 30 years to fix what's been broken. He says he believes the aim is to shut down most of the schools before Jindal leaves in 2016.
MAY 21 Blogger CB Forgotston says there are too many elections in Louisiana, and they're costing us too much money. The proof is in the pudding: turnout for most of these nonsensical pollings gets worse and worse, CB opines, even as millions of dollars that could be spent on health care or higher ed go down the tubes. The legislature must take action to stem the tide of pointless elections, he says.
MAY 21 Here's an interesting investigative piece by WVUE on the retirement benefits of some Jefferson Parish public employees. According to the story, the taxpayers are paying 100 percent of the retirement contributions of employees who started work prior to a certain date in April 1986 -- and have done for more than 30 years. It costs the parish millions annually, and might not be legal, the story reports.
MAY 21 This post on Bayou Buzz provides insight from Louisiana's intrepid pollster, Bernie Pinsonat, on the winners and losers from this year's legislative session. But to hear Bernie tell it, there's almost nuttin but losers: Jindal, the Republican party, the Fiscal Hawks all get big goose eggs in his win column.
MAY 20 This post on The Lens takes a look at a huge (either $500K or $250K) bill that one NOLA charter now has for school lunches. The RSD says the charter group didn't fill out the proper paperwork for federal reimbursement, but the story details how the RSD didn't ensure the people running the charter had the proper training, despite requests from hapless charter employees trying to fill out forms. Either way, somebody's asleep at the wheel.
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