ERIK SANZENBACH / L’Observateur / August 26, 2000

LAPLACE – Louisiana State Commissioner of Elections Suzanne Haik Terrell gave a lesson in state bureaucracy to the St. John the BaptistParish Rotary Club during its monthly luncheon this week at Bull’s Corner Restaurant in LaPlace.

Terrell is the first Republican woman to be elected to a state office in Louisiana. A former member of the New Orleans City Council, Terrell’sfamily is from the Reserve area. In fact, she said her relatives used toown Haik’s Grocery Store on River Road.

Winning the run-off election against state legislator Woody Jenkins in 1999 was only the beginning of Terrell’s daunting challenges as commissioner of elections.

She was voted in on a mandate of cleaning up the waste and fraud in the Department of Elections and Registration. The former commissioner,Jerry Fowler, had just been indicted for fraud and taking kickbacks, and the office was in chaos.

“When I took over I found a bloated bureaucracy with institutionalized incompetence wrapped up in political patronage,” Terrell said.

On top of that, Terrell was a political newcomer to the byzantine world of state government.

“I was the only person in a public office in Baton Rouge who had never been in a state office before,” said Terrell.

But with determination and a desire to clean things up Terrell has managed to start straightening up the Department of Elections and Registration.

It hasn’t been easy.

Because of the system, reform has become a difficult process for Terrell.

“I needed a bulldozer to clean things up,” said Terrell. “Instead, they gaveme a shovel.”First of all Terrell had to trim her staff. She started with 190 people inher department. Today, she has 140.”I know there is a good reason for Civil Service,” she said. “But the systemwe have tends to protect people who are incompetent.”As an example, she said not one person in her department has received less than a favorable rating on their employment reviews.

“How can this be?” Terrell asked.

One of her assistants explained to Terrell that it was the Peter Principle at work. It is easier to promote incompetent people than fire them. Terrell also had to cut $4.7 million from her budget.”This was the right thing to do,” Terrell explained.

She did things like cancel a $200,000 yearly contract with an outside computer company and hired an in-house computer expert at $65,000 a year to maintain their system.

She also canceled a $2.7 million contract to hire out-of-state workers tocome in and reprogram the voting machines every time there was an election.

She said the former commissioner would bring in people from out of state, pay their air fare, food, lodging and even limousine service for up to six weeks at a time. These workers were making from $40 to $60 an hour tore-program voting machines.

“This work is not brain surgery,” Terrell said. “Anybody with averageintelligence can do this.”Her solution was to get 80 off-duty firefighters from around the state to do the work on the voting machines. Their schedules were adjusted aroundelection time, and they were paid their normal salary. Terrell also gotretirees to volunteer to do the same thing.

“You just have to think of a different way of doing things to save money,” said Terrell.

Terrell has also started a program to cross-train some of her employees.

For example, she said she has workers who are in charge of the warehouses where the voting machines are kept. Between elections she istraining these people to do clerical work in the department’s offices.

Despite the obstacles, Terrell feels she is making progress. Right now oneof her projects is to make election returns more efficient. During theOctober elections the Department of Elections and Registration will be testing out new vote tabulation methods in six parishes.

Terrell said she would also like to use the internet for elections. She saidthat in a presidential primary, Arizona used internet voting.

“It resulted in a very high voter turnout,” said Terrell, “but there is still a great distrust of the technology.”Right now Terrell’s job of cleaning up the waste in her department is taking all of her energy.

“I have found that there are no rewards for doing things right,” she said, “but if I come back here as a jaded politician and tell you all that this is just the way thing are, then it is time for you all to tell me it is time to leave office.”

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