Rodriguez, who has been traveling to Lafayette from Houston for the past couple of weeks to help turn the troubled housing authority around after a series of blistering audits questioned its management and expenditures, gave explicit instructions to the LHA’s board of commissioners: not one penny can be spent without HUD approval.
When the board met on Oct. 28, three days after Guillory and Carmouche resigned, board member John Freeman told his fellow commissioners that Rodriguez had informed him it was standard HUD policy to pay for 30 days, according to fellow board member Donald Fuselier, who voted to make the payment. “Freeman advised us Mr. Rodriguez had agreed to it. I relied on what Mr. Freeman said.”
Freeman did not return voice mail messages left on his cell phone Monday and Tuesday.
Rodriguez, through the LHA’s human resources director, issued the following statement via email on Nov. 4: “The payment to the ED and Deputy ED of 30 day pay is NOT APPROVED by HUD even if the Board approved it,” he wrote. Rodriguez directed the HR head to send the statement to all board members.
Guillory, who was getting more than $186,000 a year plus a $5,000 business allowance when he resigned, and Carmouche, whose salary was $85,000 (though he got an extra $20,000 for inspecting homes in 2009 and had already been paid $11,300 when he stopped conducting inspections this year after the 2009 audit questioned the extra work), were eligible to receive payment for 48 hours worked and up to 300 hours of accrued annual leave, according to the email.
At that same Oct. 28 meeting, the board also came close to voting on whether to pay fired Disaster Housing Assistance Program case managers for a month of back pay, The Daily Advertiser reported. It was the first meeting attended by newly appointed board member Shirley Vige. The Advertiser noted that Freeman and board member Leon Simmons attempted to amend the agenda to include a vote on the back pay matter for the DHAP workers, who claim they are owed for 30 days because they did not get a 30-day notice of their dismissal, a requirement of their contracts -- all of which had expired when they were terminated in August. But when Fuselier and Vige shot down an attempt to vote on the matter, it failed to make the agenda for lack of a two-thirds vote.
Rodriguez did not return phone calls or an email seeking comment on these issues.
MAY 24 Blogger Robert Mann posts this entry about the Baton Rouge Chamber's recent report on Louisiana's higher education system. It's critical to economic development, and yet our system is facing a "funding crisis" with no way to resolve it, the report says. The Chamber says control of tuition and fees must be returned to the higher ed governing boards.
MAY 24 Here's a NBC33 story about Tyrann Mathieu. He has signed with the Arizona Cardinals, inking a $3 million, four-year deal. He gets a signing bonus of $265K, but gets another, larger bonus if he doesn't get cut from the team for doing drugs. The deal reportedly includes mandatory tests and meetings for the player.
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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The trio - Freeman, Dennis and Best - also attacked Mr. Fuselier, saying he made the motion to give Mr. Guillory a raise. Best argued Joey Durel should have fired the whole board, including Fuselier.
They brought up most of the issues about everything and everybody, and offered excuses for everything, and laid blame everywhere except on themselves. They did everything except accept responsibility and offer to resign for the obvious mistakes made on their watch.
At least Mr. Best challenged Mr. Freeman when he argued that the new executive director should be allowed to work for LHA and for other entities, including other housing boards, at the same time.