| Advisory opinion request by Travis Johnson regarding the application of the post employment prohibitions in his new position with Motorola Solutions, Inc. after his termination from the Governor's Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness (GOHSEP) and Office of Technology Services (OTS). |
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Travis Johnson was previously employed by OTS as an IT Technician until August of 2016. In this position, he performed several duties and functions including providing technical oversight and functional supervision during installation, system enhancements, upgrades, and expansions to infrastructure, maintaining critical wide-area network communications systems along with wireless data, voice communication, satellite peripherals, computer network, and PC systems, and overseeing vendors to ensure the systems integrity and dependability while maintaining and supporting the network. He stated that he did not supervise any employees while employed by OTS.
From August 1, 2016 until September 6, 2017, he served as the Interoperability Program Manager for GOHSEP where he was responsible for administrative and support functions; complex policy planning, research and analysis involving statewide communications plans and procedures; operational and tactical telecommunications support; and, interoperability training statewide. In short, his job was to make plans that made the best use of whatever equipment the agencies he was working with had and not to advise them to buy something else. In this position, he only made one request for purchasing public safety equipment when he was unable to locate the antennas for sixty-one of the GOHSEP emergency cache radios which totaled $1537.20. Since 2008, he has also served as the Secretary for the Statewide Interoperability Executive Committee (SIEC), the committee responsible for the Louisiana Wireless Information Network (LWIN) statewide radio system. His position is a staff position and was not a member of the committee nor was he involved in the decision process to purchase radio equipment or software.
He has been hired by Motorola Solutions, Inc. (Motorola) as an Account Manager selling radios, repeaters, software, and other communications related equipment and services. Motorola is actively trying to sell SIEC additions or upgrades to the software system architecture since the infrastructure was manufactured by Motorola as the sole-source and is in the process of changing out a group of forty-four radio repeaters for approximated 1.7 million dollars.
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La. R.S. 42:1121B prohibits a former public employee, for a period of two years following the termination of his public employment, from assisting another person, for compensation, in a transaction, or in an appearance in connection with a transaction in which such former public employee participated at any time during his public employment and involving the governmental entity by which he was formerly employed, or for a period of two years following termination of his public employment, render, any service which such former public employee had rendered to the agency during the term of his public employment on a contractual basis, regardless of the parties to the contract, to, for, or on behalf of the agency with which he was formerly employed.
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| Assigned Attorney: |
Brett Robinson |
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