I do my best to stand firm in my beliefs. Through the years, I have had many people compliment me for speaking out, even if they don’t always agree with me.

I have challenged powerful special interests. Major oil companies eroding our coast, utilities earning excess profits, Public Service Commissioners and staff too cozy with utilities – these are a few issues that I have raised, first as a senator and now as a member of the PSC.

For three years, I have raised another hot topic: the high charges for telephone calls from jail. This is hot because it involves millions of dollars collected by monopoly telephone companies, the correctional facilities they do business with and the families of 40,000 people held in state and local jails across Louisiana.

This issue has troubled me since the mid-1990s. Then I was one of only five members of the 39-member Louisiana Senate to support a bill that applied public bid law to the selection of inmate telephone providers by correctional facilities. I learned those who run correctional facilities, including the Louisiana Department of Corrections, don’t choose the low bidder to run their inmate phones. They choose the bidder promising them the highest commission, as high as 80 percent in some jails.

It is the job of the PSC to regulate monopolies, so early in 2011 I asked the commission to investigate the inmate telephone business. We hired experts to evaluate the rates charged to inmate families to communicate with their family members behind bars. Here are some facts we uncovered in our 18-month investigation:

• Louisiana has more people in jail per capita than any other place on Earth – 40,000 inmates in state and local jails.

• It’s not the inmates but their families who pay for calls from prison.

• Jail and prison administrators hire specialized telephone firms to handle inmate calls, commanding big commissions for the business. The state’s contract with Securus Technologies of Dallas, for example, requires Securus to pay the state a 70-percent commission.

• Most calls from jail are routed through modern, Internet-based technology which has greatly lowered administrative costs and made irrelevant such factors as call distance and time of day.

Despite these advances, the rates for calls from jail in Louisiana average 30 cents a minute, 15 times higher than calls made on the outside.

Most troubling to me is the practice of these phone companies padding their bills with fees and surcharges never approved by the PSC. For example, purchase of a $50 block of call time can cost a surcharge of $10. Adding a phone to take calls costs $2.50 per phone.

Getting a refund on unused call time costs another $10. To top it off, the companies eventually seize funds left in accounts too long.

In my opinion these charges are more than illegal; they are unconscionable and downright sickening.

Our investigation considered the need for jail operators to monitor inmate calls to detect illegal or improper activity. The reform order that we eventually adopted in 2012 did nothing to hamper the ability of jails to monitor calls and deter criminal activity by phone.

Matters came to a head at the end of 2012. The commission heard testimony from all sides and ultimately voted 5-0 on a reform plan. Commissioner Lambert Boissiere of New Orleans amended my recommendation to specify that the 25-percent rate cut I proposed would only apply to four categories of people receiving calls from inmates: family members, lawyers, clergy and schoolteachers.

Commissioner Boissiere’s amendment helped to answer critics who said lowering the price of calls from jail was a giveaway to criminals and would compromise law enforcement.

The December 2012 reform measure took effect a month later. It gave phone companies with jail contracts 30 days to eliminate unauthorized fees and surcharges to bills and up to two years to reduce their rates by 25 percent.

At the end of February 2013, PSC staff surveyed the companies to see if they had complied with the fee ban. Securus, the state contractor, and City Tele-Coin of Bossier City said they were continuing to collect illegal fees and so they were cited by the commission for contempt.

These contempt cases are being tried before PSC administrative law judges whose verdicts will eventually be reviewed by the full commission.

The companies have offered to settle their contempt cases, and they got support from commission Chairman Eric Skrmetta of Metairie. City Tele-Coin hosted a campaign fundraiser for Commissioner Skrmetta in October of last year, raising nearly $20,000 for him from inmate phone companies and related interests.

Skrmetta later sponsored motions to have the cases removed from our judges without trial and brought to the commission for settlement behind closed doors. I objected, saying Skrmetta’s acceptance of campaign money from companies under investigation by the agency he chaired was improper. After heated debate, his efforts failed.

The Public Service Commission must assure that monopoly utility companies do not abuse their customers. The families of inmates have few advocates to defend them against these companies with their outrageous phone rates and questionable surcharges.

I am grateful to the Catholic Bishops, Episcopal Priest Father Dan Krutz and the Louisiana Interchurch Conference, Baptist preacher the Rev. Donald Hunter, Lloyd Thompson of the Shreveport NAACP and other brave advocates for inmate families who have stepped up to this debate despite the fear of political fallout.

I am especially grateful to the Rev. David Melville of the Amite United Methodist Church. During his testimony before the PSC, he quoted Jesus in Matthew 25, a Bible reference particularly relevant to this discussion. In part it reads:

“For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.”