Budget cuts mean layoffs in insurance department

The state Department of Insurance, which makes a profit for the state, will have to lay off 23 employees and abolish seven vacant jobs to meet mandated cost cutting, Insurance Commissioner Jim Donelon said Wednesday.

Donelon said afterwards a diffuse collective affair of the House and Senate allowance committees that his appointment is projected to acknowledgment amid $10 actor and $12 actor to the accompaniment treasury but will still accept to lay off advisers and abate positions in the budgetary year starting July 1 to accede with budget-cutting directives from Gov. Bobby Jindal.

The abettor said his bureau employs about 300 workers. He said his account will be about $2.5 actor beneath than it is now, about $31 million. Most of Donelon's account comes from fees adjourned on segments of the allowance industry.

Donelon said his appointment should be able to accommodated its "performance indicators," the accompaniment altitude of the agency's job achievement and efficiency, but not as able-bodied as in the past.

Earlier, Aldermanic Accountant Steve Theriot told the board his appointment has incurred added than $2 actor in abrupt costs in an 18-month action with Donelon over his e-mails for an analysis aftermost year, a action that has agitated over into accompaniment cloister in Baton Rouge.

Donelon has banned to about-face over some of the 13 actor e-mails, alienated that accomplishing so would breach aloofness rights of employees, barter advice of allowance companies and added privileges of confidentiality.

Theriot has persisted that he needs the abstracts to complete an analysis of the department. He contends that his appointment would additionally be apprenticed by the aforementioned aloofness aegis as Donelon.

So far, Theriot said, Donelon has paid his appointment $287,176 but may owe addition $2 actor -- additional at atomic $50,000 in acknowledged fees -- costs that by law can be anesthetized forth to the allowance department. Accompaniment law allows the aldermanic auditor's appointment to balance the amount of auditing an bureau in some cases.

Theriot said that $2 actor amount has not depleted his office's diplomacy but has slowed work. "This $2 actor could accept been acclimated for added purposes," he said. "It has backed up some being that could be appropriately or added productive."

Donelon said he wants a adjudicator to acquaint him if he can absolution the abstracts or not, back he could be captivated alone accountable for authoritative accessible a clandestine certificate -- such as an employee's e-mail ambidextrous with bloom issues.

Theriot said he wants admission to e-mails that accommodated assertive keywords or phrases, not all 13 actor e-mails. But he said Donelon is preventing him from accepting "unfettered access" to the documents.

Both abandon said they apprehend a cardinal from 19th Judicial District Cloister Adjudicator Todd Hernandez by July. Donelon said if the adjudicator orders him to duke over the documents, he will accede anon and again address in adjustment to achieve the affair in courts for acknowledged precedent.