Prison Phone Justice

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SHREVEPORT, LA 7t161·0010
318/676·7464

Foster L. Campbell
Commissioner

6 October 2015
Ms. Eve Gonzalez
Mr. Brandon Frey
Louisiana Public Service Commission
By Email
Dear Eve and Brandon:
It took me several days following the September 23rd meeting of the LPSC to get over the
disgust I felt at the actions of commissioners and st.'tff during our latest discussion of inmate
telephone rates.
The Commission has now spent five years on this topic: two years developing, debating and
voting unanimously to lower inmate call rates by 25 percent and remove illegal surcharges from
bills, and another three years watering down those same reforms.
In those five years I have seen the Commission at its best and its worst. I have seen
commissioners, st.'tff and citizens speak the truth about injustices committed against the weakest
among us. I have also seen individuals run backwards trying to please politically connected special
interests.
September 23 took the prize. Commissioner Lambert Boissiere and I asked the Commission
to revoke the May 2013 order that prevents the LPSC from enforcing the January 2013 order
stripping away the illegal surcharges. Mr. Boissiere wrote his stay order to last six months, to give
staff time to write a procedure for evaluating surcharges on a case-by-case basis.
Now that more than two years have passed we wanted to pose the question: what does six
months mean? The order took effect in May 2013, so by the calendar it should have expired in
December 2013.
Before we could put the question to staff we faced two lawyers for an inmate telephone
company who took the witness stand uninvited. Then came the Louisiana Sheriffs Association
lawyer summoned by the chairman. Someone was trying to take over our discussion.
The Boissiere stay order says enforcement of the surcharge ban will be stopped "for six
months (or such greater or lesser time as may be determined by the Commission)." When he
finally got to speak, Mr. Boissiere said the stay had "clearly expired and was no longer in effect,"
and with it went d1e protections granted to any providers still charging illegal fees.
When we asked staff for clarification, we got a series of "I don't knows" from Executive
Counsel Brandon Frey.
PAGE ONE OF 1WO

LEITER TO EVE AND BRANDON
6 October 2015
Page Two of Two

To be absolutely clear, here is what happened: The actions of a few commissioners and staff
have made it possible for just two inmate telephone companies to collect at least $11 million in
unauthorized fees from their customers since 2008. These are the families of 40,000 jail and prison
inmates in Louisiana - the poorest of the poor, the people with no political influence and virtually
no one to take up their cause.
Had this case been about an electric utility, or a gas company, the commissioners and staff
would have raced each other to the microphone to proclaim their outrage.
As if to prove my point, the very next item we took up September 23 was an order making
CenterPoint Energy Arkla refund half a million dollars to gas customers. What for? Overcharging!
I knew going into this project that reforming the Commission's inmate telephone business
was not going to be easy. There is a reason only 10 states have taken on this industry: it is infested
with politics and special interests. What I didn't anticipate was how certain commissioners and
staff would turn themselves inside out trying to undo what we had originally accomplished in 2012:
o
Opening a copycat docket on inmate telephone regulation mere seconds after the
unanimous vote was cast on the original reform in December 2012;
o
Hiring political associates with obvious conflicts of interest to serve as LPSC
consultants on the copycat docket, which would ultimately cost double the original study;
o
Taking campaign money from inmate phone companies charged with violating LPSC
orders and then trying to settle their cases behind closed doors for pennies on the dollar; and
o
Learning that millions of dollars in unauthorized charges have been collected from
customers and yet refusing to audit the books of these companies to get a precise amount.
Now we cannot even get a straight answer on what "six months" means.
I've been on the losing side of this Commission when "tluee solid votes'' are locked in,
regardless of the merits. Seeing that reality here I thought negotiating rates direcdy wid1 the
sheriffs might bear fruit, but it appears they can count, too. Now that staff has finally gotten busy
with the copycat docket the sheriffs sense a sweeter deal coming. They'd better hurry, because
some folks at the Federal Communications Commission have another plan in mind, and they can
count, too.

FOSTER CAMPBELL
Public Service Commissioner
FC/br
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