With our last post examining the ethics of a local ethics professor generating such interest a second post on the general topic is certainly in order. IMHO one of the most thankless public service jobs has to be as a non political staffer at your local State Ethics Administration. Both Louisiana and Mississippi’s are fairly ineffective by design of the political class and indeed just a year ago the Mississippi Business Journal called out Ben Stone, chair of the Mississippi Ethics Commission for blatant double-dealing. Along those same lines it appears as if the Louisiana Ethics Commission is routinely neutered by the courts and/or the legislature but the folks at the Louisiana Ethics Administration has Mississippi beat by miles in the transparency department as a few clicks on their website gets you the meeting agendas in advance. Website like that are favorite of the journalistic class for good reason.
So today I take a reader tip and click away and we find a clue that the insurance portion of what would become known as the Jefferson Parish Corruption Scandal is still percolating away as the various slow motion wheels of government grind, cuss and discuss Mr Scott Fontenot and Fontenot and Associates. Names such as Tim Coulon, Tim Whitmer, Wally Pontiff among others also occupy this general vicinity of the scandal. I’ll add that I have reason to believe the federal grand jury has also taken a look at Fontenot so there is a reasonable basis to surmise he may be in bigger trouble than the potential $210,000 in fines plus forfeitures.
Along those lines the last council meeting as portrayed thus far on Slabbed deal with garbage as the Parish awarded the new landfill contract to IESI despite the fact their bid was more expensive than Waste Management’s and that indeed was a big deal. Discussed both here in comments and elsewhere was the redundant hiring of a Parish Council Legal Analyst, the brainchild of the ethically challenged, bucktoothed interim councilman Mike Thomas. But my mind is open to the possibility the most underhanded double deal of them all was the selection of Coventry for the Parish’s health insurance. I suspect the evaluation committee scores for that contract would be interesting reading.
As an added bonus for visiting the Louisiana Ethics Administration today we find Paul Connick wants to hire the offspring of his first assistant Stephen Wimberly. The talk of Chinese firewalls is funny but not nearly as much so as the notion that Connick ever shows up at the office to be available to supervise young Tucker under his proposed Berlin Wall of separation from his Paw. As an aside IMHO Tucker would get more personal growth and benefit in a job away from his daddy and the bad influence of daddy’s boss Paul Connick.
sop