About Town…

28th July 2014   ·   0 Comments

By Christopher Tidmore
Contributing Writer

Hollis Out…Baton Rouge Re­pub­lican Congressman Dr. Bill Cassidy got fantastic news a week ago. One of his GOP challengers, State Rep. Paul Hollis, had decided to drop out of the November U.S. Senate race.

The danger had always been that Hollis, an independently wealthy businessman, could self fund a race that would divide the vote sufficiently to allow incumbent Mary Landrieu to win in the primary. Cassidy already had a challenger from the Tea Party right, Ret. Air Force Col. Rob Maness. Endorsed by Sarah Palin, Maness easily draws off 3-5 percent in the worst case scenario in a primary. With both Hollis and Maness attacking him from the Right, Cassidy might not have been strong enough to force Landrieu into a runoff.

Generous retirement benefit boost for Jindal’s State Police Ally…Tom Aswell’s website, louisianavoice.com has become a must read for political insiders. It has managed to find stories the mainstream media often missed. Most notably, Aswell learned that State Police Col. Mike Edmonson earned a generous retirement books on the last day of the legislative session.

If you haven’t heard of him, Aswell explained, “He is on the cover of Gov. Piyush Jindal’s ghost-written book Leadership and Crisis. In case you don’t remember that very forgettable book, it’s the one purportedly written by Jindal but in reality, hastily slapped together by Hoover Institute flak Peter Schweizer.”

“You’ve seen him standing solemnly (never smiling) in the background at virtually each of those rare Jindal press conferences as well as during the governor’s staccato briefings whenever he pretended to exhibit leadership, usually during a hurricane or oil spill.”

One of those events, Aswell observed, “may have even been when the governor pitched his ill-fated state pension reform legislation a couple of years ago that, had it succeeded, would have slashed retirement income for thousands of state employees—by as much as 85 percent for some.”

But not for Mike Edmonson. A special amendment to an obscure Senate bill, passed on the last day of the recent legislative session will put an additional $30,000 per year in Edmonson’s pocket upon retirement. SB 294, signed into law by Jindal as Act 859, was authored by Sen. Jean-Paul J. Morrell (D-New Orleans) and appeared to deal with procedures for formal, written complaints made against police officers.

“There was nothing in the wording of the original bill that would attract undue attention,” Aswell outlined. “Until, that is, the bill turned up in Conference Com­mittee at the end of the session so that an agreement between the different versions adopted in the House and Senate could be worked out. At least that was the way it appeared.”

“Conference Committee members included senators Morrell, Neil Riser (R-Columbia) and Mike Walsworth (R-West Monroe), and Rep. Jeff Arnold (D-New Orleans), Walt Leger, III (D-New Orleans) and Bryan Adams (R-Gret­na). That’s when Amendment No. 4 popped up — for which Ed­mon­son should be eternally grate­ful… Basically, in layman’s language, the amendment simply means that Edmonson may revoke his “irrevocable” decision to enter DROP, thus allowing his retirement to be calculated on his higher salary and at the same time allow him to add years of service and longevity pay.”

”The end result will be an increase in his annual retirement benefit of about $30,000—at the expense of the Louisiana State Police Retirement System and Louisiana taxpayers. The higher benefit will be paid each month over his lifetime and to any beneficiary that he may name. Edmonson makes $134,000 per year and has some 34 years of service with the Department of Public Safety. The Actuarial Services Department of the Office of the Legislative Aud­itor calculated in its fiscal notes that the amendment would cost the state an additional $300,000 as a result of the in­creased retirement benefits.”

In the Senate, only Karen Carter Peterson (D-New Orleans) voted against the bill while Sen. Jody Amedee (R-Gonzales) did not vote.

Over on the House side, there were a few more dissenting votes: Reps. Stuart Bishop (R-Lafayette), Raymond Garofalo, Jr. (R-Chalmette), Brett Geymann (R-Lake Charles), Hunter Greene (R-Baton Rouge), John Guinn (R-Jennings), Dalton Honoré (D-Baton Rouge), Katrina Jackson (D-Monroe), Barbara Norton (D-Shreveport), Kevin Pearson (R-Slidell), Eric Ponti (R-Baton Rouge), Jerome Richard (I-Thibodaux), Joel Robideaux (R-Lafayette), John Schroder (R-Covington), and Jeff Thompson (R-Bossier City).

Yet, Aswell added, “The remaining 127 (37 senators and 90 representatives) can probably be forgiven for voting in favor of what, on the surface, appeared to be a completely routine bill, particularly if they did not read Conference Committee amendments carefully—and with the session grinding down to its final hours, there was the usual mad scramble to wrap up all the loose ends.”

“But while the sneaky manner in which this matter was rammed through at the eleventh hour is bad enough, it is especially so given the fact that numerous bills have been brought before the House and Senate retirement committees in the past few years which would have allowed a revocation of a DROP decision and without exception, each request has been rejected.”

“This was done in Conference Committee and was done on an obscure bill with obscure references to old acts in hopes that the conferees would never have to answer any questions about why this was done,” said one observer. And, only Aswell’s louisiana­voice.com caught the controversy.

Since he broke the story, word is there are retired state troopers scattered across the state who are not at all happy with the special deal for Edmonson. The Louisiana Retired Troopers Association is ready to file suit over the matter, claiming that he (and the other recipient, a retired trooper from Houma) received unfair and preferential treatment.

Running for Whip is Expen­sive…National Journal magazine noted that newly minted GOP Whip Metairie’s Steve Scalise campaigning for his new Republican leadership position spent more money last month than at any point since his 2008 election to Congress.

That $359,000 in expenditures included over $26,000 on meals for meetings at steakhouses and other eateries (including one tab, at a Cajun restaurant in D.C. where Scalise dined with his whip team, amounting to nearly $9,000); $30,000 in campaign donations to 14 different Repub­lican members; and $7,000 worth of baseball bats (presents for his campaign team). All of this in just 20 days.

Of course, after the GOP conference elections, Scalise recouped some of the costs: Over $122,000 came into Scalise’s campaign account from 64 different PACs on the last day of the quarter, along with a smattering of donations from presidents and partners of Washington government-relations firms.

That helped power Scalise to almost $350,000 in total receipts in the second quarter—again, more than he had brought in since he last ran a competitive election. Scalise had averaged just over $200,000 per quarter in fundraising since the beginning of 2013.

This article originally published in the July 28, 2014 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.