BATON ROUGE - The House Select Committee on Homeland Security met Wednesday for the start of a two-day hearing on the state's COVID-19 response and recovery.

The Governor’s Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness, or GOHSEP, Director Jacques Thibodeaux gave testimony, saying there is always room for improvement and calling the hearing a step in a positive direction.

"I believe that GOHSEP has far more to offer," Thibodeaux said.
Thibodeaux is the current GOHSEP director, At the time of the pandemic, he was the Director of the Office of Emergency Preparedness for the City of Thibodaux. In the meeting, he offered both perspectives.

Thibodeaux said over the past 18 years, GOHSEP has become more of an administrative and logistical force. GOHSEP was renamed from the Louisiana Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness(LOHSEP) in 2006 and moved to be under the state Governor's Office. During the pandemic, the agency organized efforts to get masks, gloves, and other PPE where it was needed.

"It's my belief, working in and out of that building for 35 years, that we became slow," Thibodeaux said. "GOHSEP has got to be an operational arm. It is not a mini FEMA. It is an operational headquarters that is required to move quickly to save lives, to protect property, and maintain infrastructure."

He said emergency management must begin on the local level which has its own challenges.

"To enforce that executive order, large national chains, Walmart, CVS, Lowe's, it difficult to do that," Thibodeaux said. "When you have a small amount of state fire marshals enforcing that. I can tell you that in the City of Thibodaux, we issued no criminal citations in a year and a half for violations of that executive order because the Mayor's position was the State Fire Marshal was the jurisdictional aspect of that."

There is also the challenge of enforcement which again Thibodeaux said must begin on the local level.

"We have to have the buy-in from the law enforcement entities from the parishes to begin with. If we don't have that buy-in, we need to figure out how to come to a compromise," Thibodeaux said.

There were also questions regarding the medical monitoring station housed in a convention center in New Orleans. According to Thibodeaux, FEMA's Major Fraud Investigative Unit launched an inquiry to GOHSEP in March 2024. Thibodeaux said he had not researched the health facility and would not speak in detail about the site because he was expecting a federal subpoena in the case.

The hearing will continue Thursday and is set to start at 9:30 a.m.