The Louisiana Board of Ethics has dismissed an eight-year-old complaint against Scott Angelle that was brought against the public service commissioner when he was secretary of the Department of Natural Resources.
The complaint was filed by Baton Rouge land man Dan Collins in 2010 in connection with his long running environmental whistleblower lawsuit against the state over dredging in Bayou Postillion in the Atchafalaya Basin.
The board’s decision to dismiss the complaint against Angelle is the latest blow to Collins’ efforts to find justice for what he says were environmental violations he uncovered in the early 2000s while working as a land man for the state in the Atchafalaya Basin.
“Clearly the Louisiana Board of Ethics has sent a message to the thousands of companies that performs work for the State of Louisiana that corruption is allowed if you are politically connected,” Collins says.
In 2015, a jury in 19th Judicial District Court awarded $750,000 to Collins, who alleged that the state withheld work from him after he alerted his superiors at DNR, including Angelle, to a dredging project that was supposed to improve water quality in the basin but was actually done to facilitate oil and gas drilling to benefit politically connect landowners.
But the First Circuit Court of Appeal overturned the decision in April 2017. In October, the Louisiana Supreme Court refused to take up the matter, effectively ending Collins’ case for good. The Board of Ethics did not give a reason in its letter for dismissing the complaint, but given the outcome of the lawsuit the board’s decision was not unexpected.
Still, Collins is bitter.
“While Louisiana is seeking billions of federal dollars to save our diminishing coastline, public employees performing work for the State of Louisiana apparently have no rights to report inappropriate activity—corruption associated with state run projects,” he says. “The story of the dredging of Bayou Postillion in the Atchafalaya Basin should be reported on a national level prior to those billions of restoration dollars flow into the state.”
In an a twist of irony, the Board of Ethics in its letter to Collins refers to him as an employee of the state. In its decision last year, the First Circuit Court of Appeal ruled Collins did not have standing to file a whistleblower lawsuit against the state because he was an independent contractor, not a governmental employee.
“It’s ironic that now they’re referring to me as an employee,” he says.
