Contractor’s role questioned

• By SANDY DAVIS
• Advocate staff writer
• Published: Feb 26, 2008 - Page: 1A

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One of the four men tapped by the Governor’s Office in January to interview and recommend who should head the state’s juvenile prison system holds more than $5.9 million in contracts from that agency.

Collis Temple Jr., along with three others, interviewed seven candidates who applied to head the Office of Youth Development, the office that controls the state’s three juvenile prisons as well as awards contracts for such services as halfway houses.

Harmony House, owned by Temple, has a two-year contract for $5,946,896 with the youth office  to provide halfway houses, according to the state’s Office of Contractual Review.

On Jan. 24 at the Governor’s Office, the four-man panel interviewed seven applicants, including Marlyn Goins-McCants. At the time of the interview, she was employed by Temple to coordinate counseling services for Hurricane Katrina victims in an $8 million federal contract, documents show.

Goins-McCants didn’t get the deputy secretary’s position; Richard M. Thompson did. He did, however, hire her as his chief of staff, a newly created position for which she will be paid $102,000 a year.

Gov. Bobby Jindal appointed Thompson, of Puerto Rico —who headed OYD from 1996-2000 — as deputy secretary of OYD in February.

The deputy secretary of OYD — unlike some with that title in other state offices — is a Cabinet-level position appointed by and reporting to the governor. Thompson’s salary is $123,613 a year.

Temple said Friday he doesn’t see anything wrong with his involvement with interviewing and recommending someone who will be in a position to approve his contracts when they come up for renewal.

He also said he doesn’t see anything wrong with having interviewed Goins-McCants.

“Mr. Teepell asked me to be on the committee,” Temple said of Timmy Teepell, Jindal’s chief of staff. “I didn’t ask to be on it. My concern has always been just with the youth.”

Temple said he had contracts with OYD for years and has provided halfway houses for adults and children in Baton Rouge for 30 years.

“It never struck me at all that I was doing anything wrong,” Temple said of interviewing the job candidates.

Teepell, during a telephone interview Monday, downplayed Temple’s role in the hiring of Thompson.