Big Picture: Who’s regulating the regulators?

Who’s regulating the regulators?

STEPHANIE RIEGEL

AMONG THE MANY lessons of Hurricane Ida, and recent events related to it, is that government isn’t doing a very good job regulating the entities that do business in the state.

Take the Louisiana Department of Health, which signed off on nursing home owner Bob Dean’s plans to evacuate nearly 850 residents of his facilities to a warehouse in Tangipahoa Parish on the eve of the storm. Yes, warehouse.

Granted, Dean wheeled in cots and a couple of port-a-potties for those in his care, so it’s not as though these already vulnerable elderly had to lie on the bare floor in diapers, though some, apparently, did.

But conditions in the facilities were so bad, according to one of many lawsuits since filed against Dean and LDH, that employees have been haunted in their sleep by the sights, sounds and smells of human suffering.

A dozen of the residents have since died, not incidentally, which Dean said in a truly stunning media interview, was not such a bad average, given that he typically loses two to three patients on a good week.

While LDH regulators, to be fair, were onto the problems at the warehouse within 48 hours of the storm, eventually evacuating the residents and revoking Dean’s licenses, the bigger question is: How was this guy was in the nursing home business at all.

As far back as 1998, Dean was fined by an administrative law judge for faulty evacuation procedures during Hurricane Georges that led to the deaths of two residents. (He took them to the unair conditioned Lyceum Dean building he owned on Third Street.)

Subsequent investigations by New Orleans media in 2005 and WAFB-TV in 2018, revealed multiple problems and violations at numerous facilities, all of which had a one-star rating from Medicare.

A one-star rating on a nursing home is like a C in graduate school. It’s effectively a failing grade that should sound all sorts of loud alarm bells. But the state didn’t do anything until it was too late.

Meanwhile, over at the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality, regulators continued to shrug as Shell continued to “flare” at its Norco facility more than one month after the storm. Refineries flare or burn off large quantities of hydrocarbons they are processing when they lose power, as the Shell facility did during Ida. It’s a necessary evil to prevent an explosion.

But is it necessary for six weeks?

DEQ won’t say. More troubling, is that no one has said what toxins, specifically, are being released into the air of the small St. Charles Parish community, much less in what quantities.

The EPA is supposedly monitoring air quality, but it hasn’t released any information to residents. A report that Shell filed with DEQ in the early days after the storm was deemed incomplete, according to DEQ, so it was granted a 60-day extension, which means we won’t know anything until at least the beginning of November.

In contrast, regulators have said plenty about Entergy’s handling of widespread power outages caused by Ida. There’s nothing like a massive grid failure to inspire bold, incendiary rhetoric from Louisiana Public Service Commissioners and members of the New Orleans City Council, which regulates Entergy in the Crescent City.

But talk is cheap. Hardening the grid is expensive, and as the discomforts of Ida fade into the collective memory, there’s a good chance so, too, will the efforts to force real change to the way we get our power.

Entergy, after all, holds a lot of sway in these parts and doesn’t want to change. It has a monopoly in New Orleans and the lion’s share of the market in Baton Rouge. Perhaps that’s why city officials here have been unable to get the company to fix the 60 or so lights along I-10 that are currently not working.

It’s the responsibility of the city-parish to pay for the lights’ maintenance and repairs. But since Entergy owns the equipment, only Entergy and its subcontractors are authorized to physically make repairs, which they have not done because the city-parish has not said it will pay for them, which the city-parish has not done because Entergy will not come up with an estimate of how much the repairs will cost.

“We’re not going to just give them a blank check,” says City Parish Chief Administrative Officer Darryl Gissel, which is the right thing to say.

But the larger question is, who wrote the contract like this in the first place? Who gave the utility so much leverage over the city-parish, and why?

Perhaps, it’s the same lawyers who wrote Republic Services’ $30 million contract to do garbage collection in Baton Rouge. As detailed elsewhere in this issue (page 74), that contract, negotiated during the Kip Holden administration, does not allow the city-parish to fine the company for repeated, missed collections.

It does allow City Hall to impose liquidated damages, which could be mistaken for fines. But damages only kick in when there’s been a breach of contract, and breach of contract is not easy to prove. It also opens a can of legal worms that likely end up costing more money than liquidated damages bring in.

How much do campaign contributions from big businesses and wealthy individuals factor into the way contracts are negotiated and regulatory decisions are made?

We already know the answer, but is it really as blatant as it seems? Or are there more complex reasons the average citizen keeps getting the short end of the stick?

Is anyone looking out for our interests, and do they even care?

REFLECTIONS

THE SUFFICIENCY OF HOPE

This feature is a tribute by our publisher in honor of Business Report founder, Rolfe H. McCollister Sr.

HOPE, FROM GOD’S perspective and definition, is not hoping something might happen. Rather, it is the “solid assurance” that things will happen based on His promises, which is backed up by His character. Notice the sufficiency of hope found in Romans 15:13, “Now may the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that you will abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.” God describes Himself as the God of hope. Hope is based in Him! Then God desires to fill you with all joy and peace. Who does not want to be filled with these two qualities? This happens in believing. Believing what? Believing the God of “solid assurance” will come through. When a person is filled with all joy and peace, the result is abounding in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is a Person of God and is the One who fuels the joy, peace, and hope with the power He provides. When God fills us with all peace and joy, what keeps hope abounding and causes the peace and joy to overflow is the utilities-power the Holy Spirit. Beloved, live in the sufficiency of hope! —COL Jeff Mitchell, retired Army State Chaplain, present Hospice Chaplain