AG takes steps to terminate contracts

Recently elected Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry has canceled dozens of contracts his predecessor had with private attorneys, saying they had the “appearance of corruption.”

Landry announced the changes after a series of WWL-TV investigations exposed former Attorney General Buddy Caldwell’s no-bid contracts with several of his top campaign supporters, including campaign manager T. Allen Usry and campaign treasurer E. Wade Shows, as well as Jefferson Parish District Attorney Paul Connick, who endorsed Caldwell in his campaign against Landry.

WWL News reported that at the top of the list of canceled contracts were about 60 deals with the private law firms of three district attorneys around the state — 41 of them worth $1.3 million are with Connick’s family law firm, Connick and Connick.

“What we’ve seen is there’s been a pattern of abuse inside this office, which is what we’re trying to ferret out,” Landry said at a press conference at the State Capitol.

Jefferson Parish D.A. Paul Connick said Thursday that it was Landry’s prerogative to cancel the contracts, but vehemently denied that political favoritism played a role in his firm getting the work with then state AG Buddy Caldwell, according to WWL.

“The contracts that my private law firm received were not secured through any illegal or unethical backroom political deals,” Connick said in an emailed statement to WWL. “In fact, my law firm has done work under four attorneys general since 1985 — William Guste, Richard Ieyoub, Charles Foti and Buddy Caldwell — more than a decade before I was elected Jefferson Parish district attorney. The inference that I used my public office to secure professional services contracts from the attorney general’s office is totally false.’”

Connick has said that there is nothing unethical about him getting contracts for civil work, not only with the state but even with the parish he serves as an elected prosecutor. Landry said it may not be unethical, but it just looks bad.

“This may not be unethical with the Ethics Code, but we believe it’s improper and creates a bad perception,” Landry said.

The Louisiana Attorney General’s Office said Landry canceled about 14 contracts for cases handled by St. Landry Parish District Attorney Earl Taylor, worth about $650,000, and another four cases by East Carroll Parish D.A. James Paxton.

In addition, Landry pledged to stop Caldwell’s practice of using a special medical fraud statute to hire outside attorneys on what amounts to a contingency fee contract, paid by the drug companies after they struck settlement agreements with the state.

This article originally published in the February 22, 2016 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.