IND sources say the federal lawsuit filed against Lafayette Consolidated Government by Waste Facilities will be settled Wednesday afternoon when a $3.4 million check is written to the local entity prevented from developing a waste transfer facility on Sunbeam Lane.
Playing election year politics with taxpayer money, the Lafayette City-Parish Council voted unanimously in October 2011 to revoke the company’s permit amid warnings from LCG legal counsel that its action could cost local government millions of dollars.
In late 2011, about 10 months after Waste Facilities had begun the permitting process and work on the 16-acre site in unincorporated north Lafayette Parish was well under way, neighbors unaware the facility had been permitted began complaining. In the midst of what could have been a contentious re-election, Councilman Brandon Shelvin, in whose district the facility was being built, introduced an ordinance to block it. The October election was days away.
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| District 3 Councilman Brandon Shelvin, leading an October 2011 protest of a waste transfer station on Sunbeam Lane, and his colleagues on the council cost LCG $3.4 million by voting unanimously to block the legally permitted facility from completing construction. |
Before the council’s vote, however, City-Parish Attorney Mike Hebert issued an urgent warning to council members about the potential repercussions of Shelvin's ordinance. Hebert said none of the permits or approvals had been issued by mistake or error and that all complied with state and local laws, ordinances and regulations. “If Waste Facilities has acquired a vested property right to its building permit, a withdrawal of that permit would likely be held a ‘taking’ of property obligating LCG to pay compensation to Waste Facilities,” Hebert wrote the council at the time.
Hebert predicted potential damages could extend into the millions of dollars and might also include relocation costs and economic damages such as loss of profits. View Hebert's six-page letter outlining the consequences here.
Despite the warning, the council voted unanimously for Shelvin’s ordinance. It became law after City-Parish President Joey Durel refused to sign it.
Durel, however, made it clear that he thought the council had made a big mistake. In an Oct. 28, 2011, memo sent to the City-Parish Council clerk after the vote, Durel told the council that he would not veto the ordinance, “even though my conscience tells me to do otherwise.”
Wisely, Durel feared that a vote to override his veto could set local government up for further damages in a lawsuit.
“Given that the council’s vote on this ordinance was unanimous, it seems that a veto would be a futile gesture that would force a useless, contentious and divisive override session of the council,” he said in the memo. “And ... anything said in that override session could be used against us in a lawsuit. I know you have to make extremely tough decisions, and I feel for you when they are emotionally charged. In this instance, my only ability to strongly disagree with this vote is simply not to sign the ordinance, reluctantly allowing it to become law.”
This is at least the second time the council’s action has had such costly consequences. Only a month before the Sunbeam Lane project was blocked, the council finalized a settlement for illegally repealing a zoning change that prevented Greyhound Bus Lines’ move to Moss Street in 2008.
And keep in mind that this $3.4 million payout to Waste Facilities is only a partial settlement. Progressive Waste Solutions, which had a contract to lease the transfer station from Waste Facilities, still has a federal suit pending. And today’s check does not include what may already amount to some $200,000 in LCG legal fees.
Neither Durel nor Waste Facilities' attorney would comment on the settlement this morning. The council voted in late January to approve the partial settlement.
The IND will have more on this story later today. In the meantime, we want to know what readers think of this council’s action and this costly settlement — and what should be done to prevent this type of council negligence in the future.
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MAY 24 Jarvis DeBerry posts here about the redonkulus rhetoric that would have us believe NOLA is a safe city with a murder problem. Maybe the city's crime stats don't compare with its murder stats because you can't manipulate a murder, he says: a dead body's a dead body. It just doesn't make sense, he says, and his readers agree: a poll asks if they believe the city is safe, and more than 90 percent say no.
MAY 24 Jindal administration officials announced Thursday that the privatization of public health care is going to cost a lot more than they budgeted for, the Advocate reports here. "I'm so surprised," said no one. Anywhere. The cost they're projecting now is more than $1 billion - a lot more than the $626 million budgeted for it. And, it's more than it cost the state to operate those hospitals. So why are we doing this again?
MAY 24 Blogger CB Forgotston ridicules the recent PR campaign by the state GOP in the wake of a legislative auditor's request to both major parties. The GOP (apparently unaware that the Dems got the same request) started yammering about being targeted because it had "killed" a tax increase. CB finds that laughable, but it's also pretty funny that the GOP was comparing this episode to the IRS scandal (Because the President has so much to do with our state auditor. Right?).
MAY 24 Politico details some recent fund-raising efforts by Sen. David Vitter, which have raised the question of his future political plans. This time, it is a $5,000 per head "bayou weekend" that includes "Cajun cooking" and an all-caps "alligator hunt," the story reports. Funds raised go to a super PAC that can spend money to support Vitter in federal or state races, the story points out.
MAY 24 The pink building on Royal in the quarter was sold at a sheriff's sale Thursday, this Picayune story reports. An injunction that would have halted the sale wasn't enforced because the family failed to post a $150,000 bond, the story reports. So the owner of the mortgages on the building bought it, for nearly $7 million. Now the feuding family will have to negotiate with that company to get a lease on the building that has housed their business for close to 60 years.
MAY 23 This post in Louisiana Voice tells us about a bill by a Winnsboro lege that would require all public high school students to take at least one Course Choice online class in order to graduate. (What?) Blogger Tom Aswell says it's a monument to "waste and corruption," especially in light of the problems he's exposed with the program in recent weeks. Idaho had a similar program, but voters removed it by a 2-1 margin, Aswell says.
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