Public Service Commissioner Jay Blossman can now officially be counted in the politicians-without-a-clue category. Blossman thinks it’s perfectly OK for him to use a PSC-generated list of more than 200 transportation companies — businesses he’s responsible for regulating — and then write a letter on agency stationery to those companies asking them to accept a sales meeting with his friend who sells a mobile technology product. The Times-Picayune reports that some of the companies were not too happy about Blossman’s boneheaded and heavy-handed move, and promptly alerted the Metropolitan Crime Commission. Now it’s up to the state inspector general to determine whether Blossman’s correspondence qualifies as an abuse of public office.
The friend that Blossman was pitching for is Nicholas Larussa, a new sales employee of Acadian Ambulance’s Acadian Monitoring Services division. Larussa’s sister apparently babysits Blossman’s children. The T-P writes:
Blossman said he was impressed with the technology when Larussa showed it to him and offered to write a letter to let people know about the product. ... He thought his letter did not encourage the motor carriers to do business with Louisiana, but only encouraged them to accept an appointment if Larussa called. He said that if the law prohibits that type of letter, “the law needs to be changed.”
In regards to Larussa, Acadian Ambulance Vice President Tyron Picard told the Picayune: “In retrospect, the fact that we had a junior salesperson who was probably not very experienced, coupled with the fact with not having a complete understanding of dealing with the governmental arena, I’m willing to chalk that up to youthful inexperience and aggressiveness on his part that he has probably learned a good lesson on.”