Lafourche Parish Council OKs $56.4M budget

The Lafourche Parish Council passed a $56.4 million spending plan for 2012 last week after first approving 22 amendments that increased spending by $793,500 through various dedications of royalty funds to parish projects and social causes.

The budget passed unanimously. Councilman Matt Matherne was absent.

With the parish president and six of eight councilmen in attendance locked in for four more years, the first meeting following the 2011 election cycle featured several moments of contention, and a palpable tension between Dist. 9 Councilman Daniel Lorraine and President Charlotte Randolph was apparent throughout.

Lorraine sponsored the most hotly debated budget amendment, an allotment of $78,500 to fund a created position of internal auditor, who would answer solely to the council.

The amendment passed 6 to 2. Councilmen Phillip Gouaux and Jerry Jones opposed the measure.

The parish’s Home Rule Charter grants the council authority to create the position. Lorraine said an internal auditor is necessary because the council is currently reliant on the administration’s word when making decisions. The position would bring the council closer together and give it a trustworthy source, he said.

“All we’ve got is hearsay,” Lorraine said. “You have to believe some of (what the administration says) because it’s all hearsay.”

Lorraine said the Randolph administration dodges questions and accused the executive branch of procrastinating in its delivery of unflattering responses. After the meeting, Lorraine said he does not trust Randolph because “too many times, we are not told the truth.”

Parish Finance Director Ryan Friedlander said he would work with whoever is hired, but stressed that he has been willing to work with council inquiries in the past. “I’ve done my best to answer the few questions that have been directed toward me.”

Gouaux called attention to an independent auditing service that looks over the parish’s finances on an annual basis. The parish has scored perfectly for seven consecutive years, Gouaux said, and this money could be better spent on enhancing the parish’s pump stations. He said he has yet to have an issue with the administration’s answers to his questions.

“All you have to do is ask,” Gouaux said. “I guess you need to know what to ask.”

Councilman Joe Fertitta, District 4, said his assent with Lorraine is not a complaint against Friedlander. “This is checks and balance,” he said.

Randolph was outspoken against a separate amendment, sponsored by Councilman Rodney Doucet, that eliminated a newly created legal assistant position and dedicated $79,451 in allotted salary and benefits to repairing a swimming pool managed by Lockport’s Recreation District No. 1.

The amendment passed 6 to 2 with Jones and Councilman Louis Richard opposed.

Randolph said the legal assistant would approve the wording in every ordinance, a necessary assignment in order for the parish to craft the “most sue-proof ordinances” in a “litigious society.”

“If something is not quite correct, someone will find a way to sue us,” Randolph said.

The council opted instead to repair infrastructure issues with the swimming pool that cause the recreation district to use between 1.5 and 1.75 million gallons of water each month, according to Doucet’s figures.

The council approved a contingency to the amendment that states the funds will only be released if the municipality recreation district doesn’t have the money to repair the pool itself.

“If they had the money to repair the pool, they would have already done it,” Doucet sniped.

The District Attorney’s Office acts as a legal advisor to the parish, Randolph ceded, but it is overworked because it has to serve all public bodies in the parish.

The council also approved dedicating royalty revenue to the following causes: $200,000 to install culverts and catch basins between Country Club and Edgewood boulevards in Thibodaux; $200,000 for bank stabilization at the Hyland Drive Outfall Canal; $140,000 to purchase mitigation credits for the Mathews Canal project; $50,000 for engineering services pursuant to repairing a bulkhead at Industrial Road; $50,000 to convert the Gautreaux Pump from electric to natural gas; and $25,000 each to three entities: Gulf Coast Social Services, Circle of Hope and the Bayou Country Children’s Museum.

Several other approved amendments were clerical in nature.

Royalty intake, the parish’s largest stream of autonomous revenue, was projected with the expectation a barrel of oil will be priced between $75 and $80 on average next year, Friedlander said.

The royalty fund is projected to have an end-year balance of $48,600 after the additional spending. If oil prices boom, so will the balance, and Friedlander called the projection “conservative.”