These various and sundry business roundtables that stretch from Mobile to New Orleans at Newhouseville are the brainchild of Times Picayune Publisher Ricky Mathews. Thanks Ricky. 😉
Mississippi Press Business Roundtable: Indicators point to improving economy, leaders say (photos) ~ April Havens
Joe may be laying on his huntin’ fur. [Image]
Funny how these two subjects are up for discussion on the same day. Joe Cloyd and Joe Spraggins are two repub peas in an R pod. They have been associated in various ways since Cloyd washed ashore after Katrina. I used to be a member of the Harrison County Republican Club with these two until I got sick of watching these self serving individuals do their dirty work. Now we see both are working with their mutual friend Jamie Miller at the DMR. What General Spraggins will be doing there is yet to be determined. I suspect he will be managing on behalf of the DMR those future CONtracts that are given to the CONsultants. They almost have everybody in place now it seems. With all of these high dollar people in place it seems Jamie Miller will be out working on his golf game or something outside of the office. All lower level employees will be known as troops come Teusday. Get ready for boot camp DMR people.
I find it rather odd how Miller was asking for more money but has steadily been hiring more higher paying folks. If you look at millers salary, add the chief scientist, add the CFO, and add the other being filled by some retired military officer it’s no wonder they are short on cash.
Eye-Spy look into the connections betweem Miller. Cloyd and Spraggins. Looks like some type of retirement enhancer to me. Look into who backed him for mayor of Gulport, who he has worked with since 2005,who he has been associated with politically and you will be convinced there is more at work here than being COO with duties to be announced later. We the taxpayers still have not heard one word about what Frontier Gulf Coast has done at the DMR for the thousands they were paid thru Horne. I guess maybe one day the FBI will pry it from somebodies files and make it public. Miller has been bold in the wrong direction since being appointed to the Director’s job.
I would not doubt the connections at all.
I think it’s fair to say that dots can be connected to just about everyone, if not all who have been hired under the dictatorship of Miller. Especially the ones who gained employment without advertisement.
Inside operators have been feeding information about the clan miller has brought in since his inauguration. They all have said that it is very apparent that they either had or developed a close relationship with miller and it is very noticeable during interactions. A little unprofessional and too buddy-buddy I have thought.
From this article you have to wonder how exactly Cloyd pulled it off. A project called Riverside he claims cost $15 million to build funded mostly with CDBG funds for the purpose of long term work force housing ends up being a senior independent living facility. As this article says “Cloyd reported his new independent living center for seniors in D’Iberville is getting off to a great start since opening last month.” I drive by Riverside going home each day and as of yesterday they still have a sign in front of this property advertising it as a CDBG Long Term Work Force Housing project. Somebody allowed this change to happen. Is it a legal use of these federal funds? Did he use any of this CDBG money to purchase and rehab his million dollar home? All good questions that are begging for answers. The taxpayers have a right to know how/if our money is being squandered. You cannot find any info about his projects on the MDA site while all others are listed in detail. Does Michael Janus or Scott Walker now work for Cloyd? Something is very suspect about all of this and needs to be investigated/audited.
Cloyd also owns the Cottages at Oak Park in Ocean Springs and the Cottages in Pass Christian. Someone needs to look into how they were funded. They were built with MEMA “eco-cottage” grant money…It would be interesting to see the terms on that deal and who knew who to make it happen. As head honcho of the Harrison County Republic Club, Ol’ Joe loves these multi million dollar government-funded-privatized-profit deals…just don’t let those greedy single mothers milk the system for their WIC payments!
As Joe Cloyd says on the First Bank commercials “They get to know you as a person, they get to know your business.” That is sort of what is going on here at Slabbed and some of the other blogs. The people just want to know everything about Joe Cloyd and his business.
The unintended consequences when our government throws money into private industries like we have seen since Katrina are negative for people already in the business that are not connected and cannot access the free government cash. You now have doctors, lawyers,and former state employees like Joe Cloyd who have become real estate developers financed by the taxpayers .Not only did they have no experience they also had no skin in the game in most cases. The subsidized developments have skewed the entire market and driven private market rate developments away from the Coast. I think all CDBG funded developments should be audited because the fees these consultants took up front was outrageous. That was the only real money made and because of that many of these projects have or will fail. The Riverside development in D’Iberville Joe Cloyd spoke of at the Roundtable of Experts was funded with taxpayer money and has an unfair advantage competing with existing properties that cater to retirement customers. How this was funded through the Long Term Work Force Housing program is hard to understand unless Cloyd’s connections at his previous place of employment allowed for it. This should indeed be investigated for the possible misuse of these funds. I predict what will be found is the people at the MDA made it work for Joe Cloyd and not many others.
Land Scam, You are pulling at some very potentially damaging unraveling strings that might bode well for your predictions. When one thinks MDA, there are actually 2 and/or maybe 3 MDA’s. MDA #1 is your standard front line Brent Christensen, Gray Swoope, jay Moon, Jimmy Heidel, Manning McPhillips, Skip Scaggs, Griff Salmon type ribbon cutting economic development gang……, auto plant, smokestack chasing crowd. #2 is the MDA gang like Liz Cleveland, Marcia Crawford, clerical, long term state employee folks who survive no matter who the governor is. #3 is John Mabry and the entire CDBG HUD workforce housing, low income, retirement subsidy, Newmarket Tax credit, GO Zone Credits, etc. MDA #3 ran afoul of MDA #1 and that’s why they have separate offices. And I will say MDA #3 AKA John Mabry is a really good guy and has helped the Coast a lot. The problem is we have been inundated with tax credit workforce housing disaster relief projects that (as you correctly indicated) are killing our rental market. There is a venting process that you have to go through that is run by a panel of people that are made up of career MDA staff as well as political operatives and I don’t think HUD would approve if it didn’t pass the smell test. SO, my point is, if someone knows how to pull all of those strings and get the blessing on Federal funds they can win a workforce/retirement housing deal, Audits will uncover nefarious activity. I do agree Eye Spy with you. Somebody let a big FART and it will be interesting to see who they can pin the creator of that fart or series of farts. I will say I’m scared to light a match around the Tax Credit crowd…. I might get my eyebrows singed
On this rainy Sunday, that by all measurements is a beautiful day compared to the possibility of a category one storm named Karen sitting over us. We are blessed to have been spared. Good day to research some of our favorite crooks. I am hearing from multiple sources that indictments will be forth coming this week. While we know this has been said before one source has been very accurate with info provided. If they come to pick up Scott Walker at his home it would be terrible if the got the address wrong like they do sometimes and went to the house next door and got the wrong consultant. They are so similar and live so close it is possible for law enforcement to error. Oh well, hope that does not happen. One thing that is obvious. When you Google someone like Scott Walker you will find that Slabbed comes up often with older posts displayed that are really entertaining to read. Same with Joe Cloyd. Amazing how a lot of speculation becomes reality. The info available online about all will be around for a long long time and I know these type individuals love to read about themselves. I bet they are very angry with the McClatchy organization for taking down all of the Sunherald comments from their fan base hear on the WWW. Guess I better get back to my letter to Mr. Shaun Donovan with the US Dept. of Housing and Urban Development about the possible misuse of CDBG funds within the Long Term Workforce Housing Program. Never hurts to ask somebody to look into our concerns.
HUD was not prepared to handle any of the major housing problems after Katrina, and when Congress put billions into disaster CDBG grants in December 2005, HUD did not get any extra staff or contract authority to add the expertise to handle it.
Gene Taylor called the HUD Disaster CDBG DC administrators into our office to lay out some of the problems that were delaying the housing recovery and delaying the approval of the state requests for the funds. He asked them to come down to Mississippi to meet with the state and local officials to work out resolutions to all the state’s requests for waivers and new programs. We were told that HUD had a total of 14 people handling $22 billion of flexible CDBG block grants that by that point were in about 20 states, and they had no budget for travel or contracting for engineers, planners, or other needed expertise. They basically were running the program with desk reviews of the plans. One HUD person in Jackson had CDBG responsibilities but not really the expertise or authority to make decisions or approvals. Mississippi was asking for waivers of the low/moderate income rules for some programs, of the environmental rules for others, and constantly coming up with new ways to distribute the money. Then the state had all the connected engineering firms writing new plans and options for the CDBG funds.
No one remembers it now, but the first housing proposal out of the Bush Administration HUD was the Katrina Recovery Homesteading Act. Under this proposal, HUD would have given the federally owned properties to the states to give to displaced residents who make a five-year commitment, similar to the original homesteading act of 1862. Jindal introduced the House bill with cosponsors from LA, MS, and AL, but not Gene Taylor. See H.R. 4514 from 2005: http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/D?c109:2:./temp/~c109DEY7Y1:: The Bush Administration, HUD, and Jindal were pestering Gene to cosponsor the bill, so we asked HUD how many federal properties they had, where they were, and how this would work. They responded that they did not have that many yet, but would be getting a lot of properties in a few months when FHA, VA, et al started foreclosing. My response was something like, “Are you kidding me? Your proposal is to foreclose on people who lost their houses so you can give them to other people who lost their houses?” So Gene did not cosponsor and our description of the proposal helped to kill the idea. At the time we were getting Fannie, Freddie, and major lenders to give long forbearance commitments and here was HUD making plans to divvy up the foreclosures.
I will say the MDA had some good and capable people working on the housing programs, in Jackson and on the Coast, and they worked with the Taylor office pretty well, but Gov. Barbour set the policy priorities and that established a heavy bias for subsidizing developers and investors rather than directly helping homeowners. The Governor tried to narrow the Homeowner grant program even though Taylor’s relentless 4-month campaign for helping the people who did not have flood insurance, or not nearly enough, and were not getting paid on homeowners insurance, was what forced Congress to give the CDBG money in the first place. After that obligation was covered as far as Barbour was concerned, MDA used the CDBG money to subsidize the power companies, the wind pool (i.e. the insurers and reinsurers), water and sewer projects for new inland developments, the port, and various incentives for housing developers and investors. I remember traveling around to city council meetings in the fall of 2007 and every city/town was being hounded by developers wanting to build more tax-credit low-income apartments and/or tax-credit high-end condos on the beach but the cities did not want more than they had already approved and were trying to figure out how to bring back their single-family housing. Unfortunately, all CDBG programs and GO Zone tax credits were not much good for that purpose.
Thanks Brian. Always enjoy your informed comments. It is so obvious that the friends, family, and political allies were in most part the main beneficiaries of the CDBG monies. Like the CIAP money that Walker was passing out to a select few, I think the same applied in a much bigger way with these miilions. Joe Cloyd is just one example of a Republican political operative who once his contacts were secured he got the money flowing into to his new venture in the private sector. While I do not believe anything will change we all should be vigilant about keeping the spotlight on these political roaches so they will stay in the dark.