Bandits on the Bayou - public officials - corruption - Brief Article

Washington Monthly, April, 2001 by Corine Hegland

LOUISIANA USUALLY FINDS ITSELF AT the bottom of most national rankings lists: 48th in child poverty, 44th in teacher salaries, 50th in state bond ratings, 49th in safe water, etc. But it seems the state has finally found a list it can top: most corrupt public officials.

The Louisiana FBI office led the nation with 31 corruption cases last year, and three of the state's eight statewide elected officials were convicted of criminal offenses: former Gov. Edwin Edwards, former Elections Commissioner Jerry Fowler, and former Insurance Commissioner Jim Brown.

Brown, the third successive insurance commissioner convicted in federal court, was the sucker-punch. His predecessor, Doug Green, is still serving a 25-year sentence for taking $2 million in illegal campaign contributions. Green's predecessor in turn spent three years in the hoosegow after pleading guilty to extortion charges for selling insurance licenses. All Brown did was lie to the FBI during its investigation of his alleged misdeeds. Still, nobody's rushing to commend his regulatory management; Louisiana has some of the nation's highest insurance rates.

Louisianans are getting used to seeing their elected officials in prison blues. Former Louisiana Senate president Michael O'Keefe is serving a 20-year sentence for fraud and money laundering, and former state Sen. Larry Bankston just did 31 months on racketeering-related charges.

With its gumbo of impoverished residents and rich oil reserves, Huey P. Long's home state has never been a model of good government. Corrupt politics is as much a part of Louisiana as crawdads and kudzu. But when the oil market plunged in the '80s and the state opened the craps tables, things really got hanky.

Among the punters felled by gambling were the governor, his son, and the elections commissioner. The Edwardses were found guilty last May of extortion for shaking down riverboat gambling operators, and Fowler pled guilty in November to taking almost $1 million in kickbacks on voting machine contracts--largely to support his gambling habit.

With its low income and property taxes, Louisiana doesn't have much choice but to keep spinning the wheel. By year's end, Louisiana will be left without a single Fortune 500 company. When a desperately needed tax increase to finance a raise in teacher salaries was voted down, Republican Gov. Mike Foster decided to go with the gris-gris. Now, according to the Louisiana Fax Weekly, the raise will be financed through gaming taxes, and the gaming industry is showing teachers' unions how to lobby for it.