Lafourche asked for plan to rectify permit problem

The Louisiana State Uniform Code Council is in the process of drafting and sending a letter to Lafourche Parish Government requesting a response on how it intends to rectify issues stemming from late 2008 and early 2009 building permit issuances the parish granted illegally.

The Code Council offered specific steps to rectify the situation, which the parish has fulfilled excluding the submission of a plan to notify the building owners who received the illegal permits and re-approve the buildings.

“They gave us a plan of action as to how they intend to issue permits, provide plan review and inspections, they notified us of the qualified individuals that they hired,” said Marta Salario, administrative program specialist for the Code Council. “They obviously have a qualified building official. But what they never provided to the committee or council was how they intended to address those specific projects that did not receive code enforcement as a result of the actions that the permit clerks took.”

Lafourche Parish President Charlotte Randolph did not respond to a message left at her office on Monday, but the parish did release a statement.

“Lafourche Parish Government is currently reviewing the information submitted to us by the Code Council [last Tuesday],” Brennan Matherne, public information officer, wrote in an e-mail. “The Council is requesting additional information regarding the Permitting Office. Lafourche Parish Government will review this request and issue a response at some point in the near future.”

The parish’s permit department is accused of issuing permits without consent of the acting certified building official and by proxy, clerks were acting as building officials themselves, a violation of Louisiana RS 40:1730.36.

Frank Morris, the parish’s new CBO, can retroactively grant permits for the buildings, which is the direction the Code Council would like the parish to take, Salario said.

The Code Council awarded the parish a $460,000 GOHSEP reimbursable grant to be used to purchase vehicles, computers and software for the newly created Department of Planning and Permitting, which will be established Jan. 1, 2011.

Salario said the reimbursement will come after an audit and should not be affected by the results of the ongoing permits problem.

“I think those two things are separate and apart from each other because they have come into compliance with the new building official, with the new permitting procedure and everything that has been done from this point forward,” Salario said. “But I’ve never heard anyone on the committee or in full council discuss the possibility of them not receiving funding.”

During the period in question, South Central Planning and Development was the party responsible for issuing Lafourche building permits. SCP Certified Building Official Mike Wich said he discovered the parish was issuing permits without his approval.

“In some cases, they were issuing permits without any approvals from myself, as the building official,” Wich said. “Other cases, not only did they get the permit out that way, people would have a third-party provider and those inspection reports and plan reviews, according to the law, are required to be reviewed by myself. They weren’t forwarding those to me. They were issuing certificates of occupancy without any approval from me.”

Wich said there were more than 100 different complaints over a six-month period spanning from late 2008 to early 2009, and in some cases, “brand new construction was issued permits with no plan review or inspections from anyone n my group, third-party providers, anyone. No fire marshal involvement, nothing.”

Before he filed the complaints with LSUCC, Wich held several public and private meetings concerning the infractions.

“To be exact, we had no fewer than six private meetings with the parish president, and we discussed it on 17 different occasions at public meetings that we have with our regional code council before we ever approached the state,” Wich said.

Lafourche Councilman Phillip Gouaux suggested the parish scrap the new Planning and Permitting Department and return the permitting duties to South Central Planning at the Nov. 9 council meeting, an idea Randolph strongly rebuffed.

“South Central Planning accused our employees of violating the rules,” she said. “I am appalled by the idea that we would even consider it.”

Wich said his offer to assist the parish in rectifying the situation was also rebuffed.

“I did offer on several occasions to do whatever I needed to do to help them rectify as many of those permits as we could rectify,” Wich said. “There were plenty of them at the time that we could have went back in after the fact, saw what we needed to see, provide the inspection reports and close those permits out the correct way. They didn’t want me to do that.”

Salario said Lafourche is not the first jurisdiction to have complaints logged against it, and the Code Council has never had an instance where the offending jurisdiction has failed to comply.

“We’ve been able to show [other jurisdictions that they were not in compliance], and agreed that that did not happen properly and they provided us a letter, an ordinance or some form of action that showed the council that they intended to comply in the future and whatever actions were necessary to correct the problem took place,” Salario said. “This is the first instance in which we haven’t come to that resolution.”