Sean O’Keefe Tapped
for Deputy OMB Post
New Orleans native and former Navy Secretary Sean O’Keefe has been tapped by President George W. Bush to be deputy director of the Office of Management and Budget. The OMB will be at the center of many of the president’s new tax and spending initiatives, particularly his plans to redirect and refocus military spending.
O’Keefe, who graduated from Loyola University and now lives in upstate New York, brings extensive experience in both military and fiscal affairs to his new task. Before serving as Navy Secretary in 1992-93, he was comptroller and chief financial officer of the Defense Department, and prior to that he worked on the staff of the Senate Appropriations Committee, where he directed the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee’s staff.
Former President George H. Bush appointed O’Keefe Navy Secretary not long after the Tailhook scandal broke, and O’Keefe got high marks for overseeing the Navy’s investigation into sexual harassment charges stemming from the scandal.
O’Keefe is presently a professor of business and government policy at Syracuse University’s Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs. He is a long-time friend of Vice President Dick Cheney, and he served in the Pentagon while Cheney was Defense secretary under former President Bush. He is a nephew of former state Senate President Michael O’Keefe.
The OMB appointment won’t become final until the U.S. Senate confirms O’Keefe, who told Gambit Weekly he expects his confirmation hearing to be scheduled near the end of this month.
Moving on
Denise Estopinal, the former director of communications for Mayor Marc Morial who recently left her job as chief spokesperson for the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeal, has started her own public relations firm.
"I was at the court for two years under a pilot program," Estopinal said. "The people were wonderful and I learned a great deal about the legal system."
Clients for her new public relations firm, The Estopinal Group, include Advantage Capital Partners, the law firm of Phelps Dunbar, and Calpine, an independent power company from San Jose, Calif. that is seeking business prospects in Louisiana. Calpine’s fourth-quarter earnings tripled "amid a giant leap in its electric-generating capabilities," according to Feb. 7 editions of The Wall Street Journal. Estopinal also says she hopes to get some work from "the City of New Orleans."
CABL Chides Teacher Unions
The Council for A Better Louisiana has weighed in against public school teachers’ recent wave of sick-outs, saying that if teachers want to be paid and treated like professionals, "it would be nice if they acted that way."
Teachers across the state have staged one-day sick-outs, sometimes called "Foster Flu," to protest low pay. Gov. Mike Foster wants lawmakers to adjust the state’s gambling taxes to generate money for a $2,000-a-year teacher pay hike.
In a letter to the editor sent to newspapers statewide, CABL president Nancy Jo Craig wrote that the group is "a strong supporter of increasing teacher pay." Craig added that CABL has been outspoken in its view that teachers ought to be paid and treated as professionals. But, she concluded, "the behavior of the unions has been anything but professional."
The CABL leader went on to criticize teacher unions for rejecting attempts to hold teachers accountable for student performance on LEAP tests in exchange for higher pay. CABL also supports merit pay raises for better teachers, an idea opposed by teacher unions.
Who Killed Huey Long?
David Zinman, author of the book, The Day Huey Long was Shot and a leading expert on the 1935 assassination of the late governor and U.S. senator, will discuss Louisiana’s famous homicide in light of new evidence uncovered in 1992.
His slide-show presentation begins at 7 p.m. Tuesday (Feb. 20), at Loyola University’s Bobet Hall, Room 332. The event is sponsored by the Department of History and is free to the public.
A prize-winning Associated Press newsman in New Orleans (1959-1965), Zinman is the only living writer to have interviewed the eyewitnesses, all Long partisans. His book, first published in 1963 and revised in 1992, challenged the "official" version of the shooting, that Long was assassinated by Dr. Carl Austin Weiss, a 29-year-old physician. Weiss himself was shot to death by bodyguards immediately after the former governor was shot in the State Capitol in Baton Rouge. Some experts believe Long was actually killed by ricocheting bullets from a bodyguard’s gun. Zinman will elaborate on his theory Tuesday.
Ethics, Anyone?
The Louisiana Ethics Commission is offering free seminars statewide to civic groups and political organizations on the Code of Governmental Ethics, the Campaign Finance Disclosure Act, as well as the Lobbyist Disclosure Act.
The last time the ethics folks took a seminar to New Orleans was in October. Separate presentations were made at Tulane Law School’s Public Law Center and to a convention of video poker distributors.
"We just need a group to invite us down," says ethics board spokesperson Kristen Morgan at (225) 922-1400 or (800) 842-6630.
