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Saturday, March 06, 2021

Cancel Jim Bernhard's sorta sub-contract thingy

This wide ranging scandal at LSU involving systemic sexual misconduct and institutional cover-up is  pretty shocking. 

The 150-page report from law firm Husch Blackwell, which includes 100 additional pages of exhibits, is a damning indictment of LSU’s many failures in protecting its students.

Among its three key findings: LSU did not follow federal laws, best practices or even its own policies in cases of reported sexual misconduct; LSU’s athletic department incidents were not properly reported; and LSU has never appropriately staffed its Title IX office, which investigates such allegations.

Interim LSU President Tom Galligan released the report Friday to the LSU board of supervisors, describing it as “hard to hear and even harder to read” and pledging to right the many wrongs it illuminated. Galligan placed two athletic department employees on brief unpaid suspensions Friday, and he said LSU would adopt all 17 recommendations in the Husch Blackwell report.

The blame here goes all the way to the top.  Among the worst actors are former head football coach Les Miles and university administrators who tried to keep his actions quiet. It appears as though the institutional policy was to suppress any and every suggestion of sexual harassment or violence associated with the program.  

The Husch Blackwell report took a deep look at several incidents, including how LSU handled reports of sexual assaults from former star running back Derrius Guice, domestic violence from former wide receiver Drake Davis, reports of sexual harassment by Miles and dozens of other complaints involving other students and athletes.

In some cases, LSU took great pains to keep the bad behavior secret. When LSU engaged the local law firm Taylor Porter to conduct a sexual harassment investigation into Miles in 2013, for example, the university kept no file on the investigation and intentionally stored it off-site, Husch Blackwell found.

One example not cited in today's article was the subject of another report back in November. Multi-gagillionaire and LSU booster Jim Berhard played a major role in these cover-ups.  

When LSU Police investigated allegations in 2018 that a football player was abusing the tennis player he was dating, multiple witnesses told officers they were afraid of coming forward because they feared repercussions from influential Baton Rouge businessman and Democratic political donor Jim Bernhard.

Bernhard is mentioned by name in seven separate instances in police reports about former LSU wide receiver Drake Davis’ abuse of LSU tennis player Jade Lewis, who has recently spoken out publicly for the first time. Bernhard, the wealthy chief executive officer of Bernhard Capital Partners and former CEO of the Fortune 500 contracting firm known as The Shaw Group, took in Davis when he was growing up and helped raise him.

Had the university taken any of these multiple scandals as seriously as it claims to be taking them now, it would have cut ties with Bernhard a long time ago.  Instead, just last month, it announced a deal (cut in secret) to grant his company a lucrative piece of a major facilities contract.    

The LSU Board of Supervisors voted Tuesday to split an $810 million energy deal between two contractors, Enwave Energy Corp. and a joint venture that includes Baton Rouge businessman Jim Bernhard and the national firm Johnson Controls Inc.

The LSU board did not disclose the price of the deal during the meeting, but LSU officials confirmed it afterward. The agreement calls for the university to pay Enwave $27 million per year over the next three decades. How much money Enwave makes off the deal will fluctuate annually based on natural gas prices and the price of the energy Enwave produces for LSU, said LSU spokesman Ernie Ballard.

Enwave will pay Louisiana Energy Partners — the name of the joint venture between Bernhard LLC and Johnson Controls — directly, instead of LSU paying both entities, Ballard said.

Prior to the deal, the Bernhard group and Enwave had been competitors for the whole contract. Bernhard was so intent on getting it, in fact, he had to turn down a position he figured he had already purchased. 

Two months before LSU started negotiating with Bernhard and Enwave, Gov. John Bel Edwards offered Jim Bernhard an appointment to the LSU Board of Supervisors. But Bernhard, a major supporter of the governor and political donor to the Democratic Party, turned down the seat without explanation.

Sitting on the LSU board would have prohibited him from doing business directly with the university.

That bit about "doing business directly with the university" is interesting. It raises the question as to whether Bernhard's arrangement to be paid by Enwave leaves the door open for him to take that Board of Supervisors' seat after all.  

It's clear he expects the Governor owes him. People with even longer memories will recall that there had been rumblings in 2019 that Bernhard was considering challenging John Bel for reelection that year. But it turned out that those ambitions were sated by... another massive state contract.  

Louisiana will enter into a complex agreement that could lead to the widespread privatization of energy systems at state agencies and universities throughout the state, after lawmakers reviewed the deal for a final time Tuesday.

Gov. John Bel Edwards' administration struck the deal with LA Energy Partners, a joint venture between Johnson Controls Inc. and Bernhard Energy Solutions, one of several companies controlled by Baton Rouge businessman Jim Bernhard.

And now, of course, comes the LSU deal and.. maybe still the possibility of a seat on the board.  All of this for one of the worst enablers of a system of abuse that runs through the entirety of the school administration and athletic department. If no action is taken against Bernhard now, what does that say about LSU's commitment to putting any of this right?  What, in fact, does it say about the Governor's responsibility as well?

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