Beatrice Wilson is now the fourth terminated Disaster Housing Assistance Program case manager to sue the Lafayette Housing Authority for failing to give her a 30-day notice when she was terminated in August 2010. In her lawsuit, filed last month in state district court, she is asking for 90 days of back pay, what would amount to about $27,000.
Wilson, better known as Porsha Evans, and former City-Parish Councilman Chris Williams both have ongoing suits against the local housing authority. Williams, who sued in August, is seeking $19,560.
Earlier lawsuits filed by two DHAP workers also fired with Evans and Williams, Linda Jefferson and Myra Parker, were settled by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and the Lafayette Housing Authority for $10,000 and $30,000, respectively. The fifth worker, Charlie Esie, has not taken legal action.
“While the Housing Authority is confident it would have prevailed in court, the HA chose to settle, on the advice of its legal counsel, because the cost of continued litigation would have exceeded the amount of the settlements,” HUD Regional Public Affairs Officer Patricia A. Campbell wrote in an email response to The Independent in August. “HACL’s focus is on moving forward, and providing the best possible services to residents and the community.”
HUD spokesman Scott Hudman, who was filling in for Campbell last week, would only confirm that Wilson’s and Williams’ suits are ongoing. “It would not be appropriate to comment until those processes are resolved,” he wrote in an email response.
In an interview earlier this year, longtime LHA attorney Daniel Stanford called HUD’s decision to settle the lawsuits “ridiculous.” Stanford has maintained that the contracts were expired and never formally renewed. After March 31 of 2010, the DHAP workers were operating as independent contractors without a contract and subject to termination at any time, with or without cause, he says. “Basically, the contracts lapsed. They were kind of on an as-needed basis.” Stanford, who has represented the LHA for 12 years, is not the “legal counsel” who advised settling the cases.
Jefferson, Parker, Wilson, Williams and Esie were hired in late 2007 to work on the disaster housing program, which was initially created to help people displaced by hurricanes Katrina and Rita and then extended for Ike and Gustav. The workers were terminated by the LHA board of commissioners in August 2010, on the recommendation of Stanford and then-Executive Director Walter Guillory, after an audit pointed out numerous deficiencies in how the program was conducted and managed. For example, when the LHA’s 2009 books were audited, the independent accounting firm found that the case managers were paid a hefty $37/hour for 40 hours each week (along with a monthly $600 car allowance) but were not turning in time sheets or any other supporting documentation of their work or travels.
Some of the contractors had other jobs, and in the case of former City-Parish Councilman Williams, multiple jobs including a full-time position at UL Lafayette. In large part due to the troubled DHAP, the LHA got the attention of the state legislative auditor, inspector general for HUD, which funds the DHAP, and the FBI. The housing agency has been embroiled in controversies of alleged corruption and mismanagement for the past year, with HUD now running its day-to-day operations.
Read more here.
It was soon revealed after her termination that Evans should never have been allowed to work at the housing authority because of her multiple felony convictions, among which were possession of cocaine, distribution of controlled dangerous substances and theft by forgery. On her job application, she failed to answer a question about whether she had ever been convicted of a felony.
Evans, who maintains she has turned her life around, says she was the only DHAP worker who did her job. “To tell you the truth, I was the only person that went to work,” Evans told The Independent in an October 2010 interview. “If you check HUD records, if you check those documents, those systems that we used every day, Porsha did all the work. My clients can testify to that. My clients, the landlords, and everybody else can tell you, when they needed to find somebody for DHAP, Porsha was there, every day. Didn’t miss a day of work, didn’t take a day of vacation.”
Read more here.
Evans, who could not be reached for comment this morning, also is running for the at-large seat on the Lafayette Parish Democratic Executive Committee in the March 24 election.
MAY 17 Here's a column from James Gill, this time in the Advocate. Gill, who has jumped ship from the Picayune, writes about the absurdity of dueling polls in this post. The numbers are so wildly different, it is obvious that both sides are "cooking the books," he writes. In particular, he looks at Sen. Mary Landrieu, and how her recent actions in DC have been received by those polled. Gill's acerbic, amusing prose is a welcome addition to a paper so conservative as to be occasionally lacking in personality.
MAY 17 Blogger Tom Aswell continues delivering bombshells about the state education department and Gov. Jindal's education "reform" efforts. In this post, he reports that students in the Shreveport area have been signed up for a charter school without their knowledge or consent. Most interesting to Aswell is how this Texas-based charter (with ties to GOP types) got the personal student information it has, if the students didn't give it.
MAY 17 This post by JR Ball in the Baton Rouge Business Report is an interesting tongue-in-cheek look at recent Baton Rouge economic development efforts. Among the items he examines is the idea that gaining a Costco makes BR a "world-class city." (Really? All you need is a different brand of Sam's? MK!) This effort, and other recent ones, are all built on the taxpayer's back, with tax zones, tax incentives and tax rebates, Ball writes.
MAY 17 Blogger CB Forgotston is critical of the legislature's reliance on a revenue-estimating committee's decision to include projected tax amnesty income in this year's forecast. That's a problem, CB posts, because the deadline for these people to pay their taxes is June 30, 2014. So when do you think these people who haven't paid taxes in years are going to pay their taxes? Surely not before June 30, and that means the money won't be there for this year's budget, he argues.
MAY 17 Here's an interesting blog out of California by a Hollywood writer, attorney and academic named Brian Alan Lane. He blogs about higher ed, and was a whistle-blower in a scandal over false credentials. In this post, he takes aim at LSU's new top dog, King Alexander. It's convoluted and a little confusing, but it sure makes Alexander a lot more interesting than he was yesterday.
MAY 17 Blogger Robert Mann writes about the LSU Board's refusal to allow Dr. Fred Cerise to testify before the legislature about Gov. Jindal's plan to close down all the state's charity hospitals and dump the poor on the private system. It's hard to imagine anyone more qualified than Cerise to testify about that, so why would anyone try to prevent him doing so? Mann thinks it is because the powers that be aren't interested in hearing any truth about the plan.
MAY 17 This post on the Louisiana Sinkhole Bugle, a blog that notes developments in the Bayou Corne and Jefferson Island salt domes, talks about a proposed expansion of the salt dome storage under Lake Peigneur in Iberia Parish. Residents are working against it for several reasons, including two biggies: the sinkhole disaster in Bayou Corne and the continuing, unexplained bubbling on the surface of the Lake.
MAY 17 NOLA police arrested more people Thursday accused of either being involved in the Mother's Day shooting or hiding the suspect afterward, this Gambit story reports. The NOLA police chief said he suspects the whole thing was gang-related and throws out a challenge to the gangs: he's got informants now, he says, and he knows a lot more than the gangs want him to know. The people who live in the neighborhoods terrorized by gangs are ready to talk, he says.
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