By Gordon Russell
The Advocate
BATON ROUGE, La. — A maintenance supervisor at the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola who spent part or all of at least 21 work days in 2015 overseeing renovations to a private home owned by then-Warden Burl Cain will lose 21 days of vacation time and be docked five days’ pay, according to state corrections officials.
The Department of Public Safety and Corrections has also revised its policies regarding employees’ side work on their bosses’ properties — but not nearly as dramatically as some lawmakers would like. More changes are likely coming.
Corrections brass outlined their new policies at a recent meeting of the Legislative Audit Advisory Council, which was meeting to discuss a scathing investigative audit of the state’s maximum-security prison that was released in January.
Among many other findings, that audit said that maintenance director Tim Byrd had been clocked in at the prison on at least 21 days that he spent working at Cain’s private home near Central, more than an hour’s drive from Angola.
The new rules, outlined at the hearing by Corrections Undersecretary Thomas Bickham, direct supervisors to “use wise judgment” when hiring underlings for personal jobs, and “to stay clear of even the appearance of impropriety, coercion or conflict of interest” in such situations.
The new restrictions weren’t nearly tight enough to suit some members of the committee.
“Under no circumstances should an employee be allowed to work on the supervisor’s house — on their time off or any other time,” state Sen. Jay Luneau, D-Alexandria, thundered. “That’s inappropriate, and the reason it’s inappropriate is because you cannot control it. And it puts the employees in a horrible position.
“If I’m an employee working at Angola and the warden comes over and says, ‘Hey, do you mind coming over to my house? We’re gonna do a little barbecueing, and by they way, we’re gonna paint the house, too, so bring your paintbrush,’ how do you tell him no?”
State Sen. Mike Walsworth, a Republican from West Monroe, was similarly troubled by the wide-open nature of the policy.
“I think you’ve got to relook at that policy that says as long as you take leave, it’s OK,” he said. “Especially when there’s a supervisor relationship.”
In response to questions from The Advocate, a spokesman said by email Friday that Jimmy LeBlanc, the department’s secretary, plans to tighten the regulations along the lines of the senators’ suggestions.
Department lawyers are “in the process of reviewing the Legislative Audit Advisory Council’s recommended changes,” said the spokesman, Ken Pastorick. “Secretary LeBlanc is in support of these changes, which will come some time in the near future.”
The use of employees for such private work has a long history in the corrections department.
In fact, the audit found that at least nine employees besides Byrd worked on Cain’s house, but auditors found no evidence that seven of them had been paid by the state while they were working privately for Cain. Two other employees did work at least a few hours for Cain while on the state clock, but they were made to pay the time back months ago by filling out “leave slips.”
More broadly, the audit noted that an unspecified number of the correctional employees interviewed by auditors had also worked on at least one of four other properties owned by Cain — a house his wife owned in the Broadmoor neighborhood of Baton Rouge, a cabin in Tennessee, a home near Jackson and a property called the Bluffs North not far from Jackson.
Meanwhile, LeBlanc himself has acknowledged hiring an underling, Gary Shotwell, to work on his home in Jackson in years past.
Shotwell recently left the corrections department and was hired on a no-bid basis to oversee renovations to a building on the corrections department’s campus in downtown Baton Rouge.
Corrections officials have long defended such practices, saying that prison communities are tight-knit and that such side work affords low-paid corrections employees a chance to make some extra money.
But critics — including the senators at the meeting — note that subordinates can feel pressured to do such private work when the boss asks them to. Some employees have told The Advocate the same thing.
The situation also creates ample opportunity for corruption. The supervisor, for instance, would benefit by having the state pay for his labor if the employees don’t take leave. And that same supervisor is in a position to promote or otherwise reward employees who do his bidding.
LeBlanc and Bickham noted at the hearing that in addition to losing 21 days of leave time, Byrd is being docked the equivalent of five days’ pay for his indiscretion.
Byrd had told auditors that his time sheets did not always reflect when he was at work, but he said he always worked at least as many hours as he was paid for.
LeBlanc and Bickham also said that Byrd’s emails from the period when he was working on Cain’s houses — which had been deleted in violation of state records retention policy — had been largely recovered.
Byrd’s lawyer attended the hearing, as did lawyers representing Cain and two other former Angola employees criticized in the audit, Shirley Whittington and Deborah Leonard.
The latter two employees were terminated and charged criminally after auditors found they had looted upwards of $150,000 from a fund meant to improve recreational opportunities for Angola employees.
Whittington has pleaded guilty to a fraud charge in federal court, while Leonard faces a state theft charge in West Feliciana Parish.
Along with uncovering those missing funds, auditors discovered that the proceeds from the famous Angola Prison Rodeo had not been deposited into the state treasury but instead had been put into a private bank account.
That finding left legislators incredulous and worried that some of the millions of dollars in revenue the rodeo generates each year might have been misappropriated. But LeBlanc said the rodeo’s profits are relatively slim, and he emphasized that the funds were carefully tracked, even though they were not deposited in a state account.
Corrections officials also said they have revised the policies on who is responsible for furnishing state-owned homes on prison property where correctional employees live, something that was murky in the past.
The state audit flagged a series of purchases of appliances and other big-ticket items for Cain’s home on the Angola grounds. It said the warden rather than the state should have paid for them.
Bickham said at the hearing that the purchases were “inappropriate” and that the new policy makes clear that such homes will include only “built-in” appliances such as stoves, hot-water heaters and air conditioners.
He said that all of Cain’s purchases have been accounted for and are still in use at the prison.
Bickham also said policies have been tightened on who can stay at five guesthouses at Angola that Cain had built using rodeo proceeds. Auditors found that Cain often used them as housing for relatives, including his two sons and his daughter.
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©2017 The Advocate, Baton Rouge, La.