Away from typical flashpoints over the budget and policy, the 2024 Regular Session of the Louisiana Legislature ended with some controversy over gubernatorial appointments, or lack thereof.
The Senate traditionally vets these on the last day of a regular session, given that any appointments made after the end of the previous regular session remain in effect without confirmation until the end of the next regular session. With Republican Gov. Jeff Landry onboard after last fall’s elections, essentially he cleaned the closet of the roughly 80 executive branch line agency appointees by naming his own appointees.
With one exception. Landry didn’t name a new Department of Public Safety and Corrections secretary to replace Jimmy LeBlanc, but expects him to stay on the job referring to statute that says public officers are to hold office until a successor is inducted. However, the Constitution states that the governor “shall” appoint the head of each department in the executive branch whose election or appointment is not provided for in the Constitution, leaving the question whether the “governor” is a previous one.
Corrections secretaries historically have had long tenures, in part because no job in state government is more amenable to building fiefdoms because of the department’s large budget, significant ability to self-finance, and interactions, often involving large sums of money because unique among the states so many state prisoners are farmed out for housing in local jails, with local law enforcement. LeBlanc has been on the job for 16 years and in that time found backing from many sheriffs.
But LeBlanc also has been around controversy. His business partner, friend, and ally, former Louisiana State Penitentiary Warden Burl Cain was forced out of that job under allegations of financial improprieties but never tried and later became head of Mississippi’s corrections. Cain’s son Nate, a warden at a different prison, and ex-wife later were convicted of similar allegations.
Perhaps one reason why LeBlanc survived that was he backed Democrat former Gov. John Bel Edwards’ criminal justice changes against most of the state’s criminal justice establishment, including sheriffs who lost needed dollars from a decrease in state prisoners sent to them. Landry, a vocal critic of this effort, led the charge that largely unwound these. LeBlanc also has expressed skepticism about further prison privatization, which is an option Landry may wish to pursue to alleviate future budget pressures. Thus, Landry soon may jettison LeBlanc.
Maybe he wished to do so in a way that when he made a replacement wouldn’t receive as much fire from leftist political opponents, the way he has over his pick of Kenny Loftin as deputy secretary of the Office of Juvenile Justice. Loftin has run for most of the past three decades the state’s major juvenile justice center, the Ware Youth Center. He also is considered a leading practitioner in the field.
However, a couple of years ago allegations surfaced about mistreatment of youth at Ware during much of his tenure, which he has characterized as false and which haven’t been established as factual. Landry has stuck by him even as a few Senate Democrats have said they oppose the move.
Detracting from the moral authority of Democrats’ accusations is how they remained silent when Edwards, who only after hours it happened was informed officially and through the media that black motorist Ronald Greene died in state police custody, then for over two years continued to allow the state police to propagate publicly a lie that Greene had died in a crash, and repeated it himself. If Loftin as center head was responsible for illegal behavior of staff even if he didn’t know of it, them Edwards was responsible for the same yet no Democrats called for his removal.
In the final analysis, Landry got his way with Loftin, but more political fireworks over LeBlanc’s fate may be to come.
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