The internal strife that has taken hold of the Louisiana Alcohol and Tobacco Commission in recent months, according to commissioner Troy Hebert, all stems from policies that require workers to do what they're paid to do; i.e., work.
"When you kick employees' butts and make them work, sometimes you get a little crap on your boots," Hebert tells The IND.
Hebert
Hebert, a former state senator from Jeanerette, says all the complaints filed by ATC employees are the result of a more stringent set of policies he has implemented since being appointed to head the agency by Gov. Bobby Jindal in Nov. 2010.
"Of course these disgruntled employees are going to complain; I put a GPS on their state vehicle, I stopped them from taking their state vehicle home each night, I stopped them from using state cell phones for personal use, I made them punch a time clock and I implemented a performance based system that makes them work more productive," Heber says. "As commissioner I am fighting to make sure that the taxpayers are getting their money's worth. Incompetency and laziness will not be tolerated on my watch."
Those comments come on the heels of a post by Louisiana Voice blogger Tom Aswell, who argues in this Jan. 6 blog that Hebert is single-handedly wrecking the commission:
If he's not cracking down on state cellphone use by ATC agents - even after explicitly informing them that they were free to use the phones for personal use because of their unusually long working hours across the state (and because the phones come with unlimited minutes), he is putting his agency in such a state of disarray that other law enforcement agencies now exclude ATC from participation in raids - a radical departure from past protocol.
Prior to Hebert's appointment ATC regularly participated in raids with other law enforcement agencies but two recent raids-one in Baton Rouge and the other in Lafayette-were carried out without ATC's involvement.
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