Our Views: Temple role was blunder
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Gov. Bobby Jindal’s administration blundered in letting a man who does millions in state business help pick the official who awards the contracts.
The obvious blunder was compounded by a foolish attempt to deny an undeniable embarrassment to an administration that trumpets its determination to avoid even the appearance of unethical conduct.
The businessman, Collis Temple Jr., owns Harmony House, which has a two-year contract for more than $5.9 million with the state Office of Youth Development to provide halfway houses for juvenile offenders.
Temple was one of four men who interviewed seven candidates to head the state agency that controls three juvenile prisons and awards contracts for halfway houses.
The seven candidates included Marlyn Goins-McCants, who was then employed by Temple. Goins-McCants didn’t get the top OYD job, but the man who was hired, Richard M. Thompson, gave Goins-McCants a newly created $102,000-a-year job as Thompson’s chief of staff.
As if all that weren’t damaging enough to the administration’s credibility regarding ethics, Gov. Bobby Jindal’s chief of staff, Timmy Teepell, preposterously professed to see nothing wrong, as did Temple.
Jindal campaigned as a champion of ethics reform, and he quickly made that the centerpiece of his administration by calling a special legislative session on ethics issues.
During the recent special session on ethics, some legislators embarrassed themselves by whining about administration proposals, while the administration burnished its image by preaching the gospel of ethics reform.
If the Jindal administration is to retain its positive public image, it must practice the reform it preaches.
Equally important, the administration must admit ethical lapses when they occur, rather than deny the obvious, and the administration must move aggressively to correct such mistakes and prevent their recurrence, rather than try to excuse them.
To do otherwise is to insult the public’s intelligence and guarantee a loss of the public’s trust.
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