The Lafayette Housing Authority audit delivered to 15th Judicial District Attorney Mike Harson in mid-January could be in front of a grand jury next month.
Harson told The Independent Weekly Thursday morning that he plans to let a grand jury decide if criminal charges should be pursued, possibly some time in February. “I think the public will prefer that,” he said. The state’s legislative auditor began a probe of the LHA’s operations in August and publicly released its troubling findings on Jan. 17. An ongoing federal investigation is being conducted by the FBI and U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s inspector general.
Harson said he is still reviewing the audit for possible violations of state law and declined to comment specifically on the red flags raised in the state’s review. “They have several issues,” he said, noting primarily the excessive (my word, not his) salary and raises for former Executive Director Walter Guillory, who was earning $186,000 (plus an estimated 26,000 in fringe benefits) when he resigned from the LHA in late October, having been given a $55,000 raise by the board of commissioners in late 2009 — about the time he was leaving the Opelousas Housing Authority. He was paid $80,000 a year to also serve as executive director in Opelousas when he was making $150,300 from the LHA — where at the time he got another $26,000 in fringe benefits, including a $5,000 business/clothing allowance and $19,000 in medical insurance premiums. When he was doing double duty, his salary alone from both agencies reached $242,000, the auditors noted. The Opelousas agency is also now under investigation.
State auditors said the LHA's management was unable to provide any documentation that Guillory received performance evaluations before his salary was increased or that the full board of commissioners ever approved the raises.
Another area of interest for Harson was money paid to Disaster Housing Assistance Program case managers, among whom was former Lafayette City-Parish Councilman Chris Williams. Auditors found 91 hours that overlapped between Williams' jobs at UL (where he works full-time and also teaches part-time) and his DHAP work. Williams' answer: He's not Superman — Employees of his nonprofit did the DHAP work. The problem with that explanation is everyone at LHA believed Williams was doing the work, and he was unable to tell state investigators which of his employees worked on the program and when. He has no such records.
Additionally, the audit notes instances where LHA employees or immediate family members appeared to have entered into contractual relationships with housing authority (in likely violation of state law), questions the use of state grant funds and credit cards and points out possible violations of U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development guidelines in hiring professional service vendors. The latter issues will be taken up by the feds.
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.
Most Read
in case you missed it
Subscribe to this comment's feed