Whenever federal prosecutors announce new corruption charges against a Louisiana politician or official, they tell us it is actually a positive development, a signal to the rest of the country that the state, with the generous assistance of the U.S. Justice Department, is rooting out wrongdoing, addressing its sorry image and thus making this a fine place to do business and raise families.
This celebration of cleansing Louisiana started early this century with the racketeering convictions of Edwin Edwards and son, which government lawyers hailed as the beginning of the end of the Louisiana Way. And yet, after years of scrubbing, the Louisiana Way does not seem to be going away, as each new indictment reveals how much more room we have for improvement.
Indeed, August is turning into a banner month for better living through criminal investigation.
It started with the sentencing of resigned Iberia Parish President Will Langlinais to six months of house arrest and five years probation for malfeasance, including using public funds on his property and having parish employees work on his election campaign. The charges stemmed from a legislative audit.
That was followed by the federal indictment of Avoyelles Parish Sheriff Bill Belt and his wife for allegedly illegally profiting from pay-phone calls made by his prisoners. They deny the charges.
Two weeks ago, one of the most popular officials in New Orleans, Oliver Thomas, said he would plead guilty to taking $19,000 in bribes and resign from the City Council.
The week ended with a criminal charge made against Mark Smith, former head of the state Office of Film & Video, for allegedly accepting bribes to exploit the nascent movie production tax credit program.
No doubt, these huge strides taken to address the state’s corrupt image did not escape the notice of U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and other congressional leaders who were here to gauge the state’s need and worthiness for more recovery aid.
Will the new exposures make it harder to defend Louisiana’s case in Washington and Hollywood?
Not if one listens to U.S. Attorney Jim Letten declare that the movie office investigation would benefit the state by “making Louisiana an even more attractive place for film companies to do business.”
Yet a few more dawn-of-new-days like this could mark the last here for many questioning why they should stay in Louisiana. How does the state’s citizenry prevent corruption so that the feds can’t cheerily rub our noses in it?
Indeed, the summer’s sleaze should grease the way for tough new ethics laws as proposed by candidates for governor and the new civic-action group, Blueprint Louisiana.
But even if those proposals covered local officials and state employees, they would not have stopped the brazen acceptance of cash or services by Messrs. Langlinais, Thomas and Smith. There is no source-of-income blank on disclosure forms for bribes.
The most troubling of the above cases
is Smith’s and others’ alleged corruption of the movie tax credit program, which was the most glamorous (and one of the most expensive) of the state’s economic development initiatives.
For all the jobs and investments the program has generated, its lax rules and oversight led not only to corruption but also to perfectly legal raids on the state treasury. Those rules, as interpreted by Smith and signed off by his superiors, allowed for the double-counting of expenses, which ballooned the tax-credit payments by the state. Smith allegedly pocketed $65,000, while investors and production companies made off with millions more in public money than common-sense accounting would have allowed.
This administration was so concerned that hurricane victims would rip off the Road Home program that it built a double-checking bureaucratic maze, which slowed payouts to a crawl. Yet in bending over to be show-business-friendly, it squandered millions and invited corruption. The Legislature added new safeguards to the program this year after the federal probe exposed its cracks.
It was an expensive lesson for state officials to learn that Louisiana would have more cause for celebration, and less corruption, by not making it so easy to be fleeced.
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