With budget looming, govt. animosity gets personal

A serious discussion about progress in Lafourche Parish can’t be had without broaching the tug of war between its political factions, a battle that intensified last week when prodded residents fired a non-elected official at the polls.

Lafourche Parish Administrator Crystal Chiasson was ousted last week at parish voters’ – and the council’s – behest. The council first approved Home Rule Charter amendments to pose to the public, and the public granted the changes, which rewrote necessary qualifications for holding the position in the parish governing document and retroactively enforced them.

Chiasson was fired ostensibly because she lives in Assumption Parish.

It’s important to note that the number of votes it took for the council to present these amendments to the public (6) is one less than it is to fire an administrator or department head mid-term (7).

Just as the parish loses Chiasson’s faults, such as residence, the blame for overseeing the mismanaged Office of Community Action and strong insinuations that she disrespected parish employees, it loses her experience in overseeing parish projects, contracts, budgets and the parish workforce.

The removal of Charlotte Randolph’s top assistant was a major victory for the anti-parish president movement, a persistent crusade with successes and defeats that peaked when the Council Five dominated Parish President Buzz Breaux’s administration, not passing a budget for four years and generally stagnating progress. That the latest victory may impact parish operations is irrelevant to some of its supporters.

To be certain, Lafourche’s political climate now is not as rancid as it once was, but the push-pull laces almost all issues, and council meetings have devolved into a place elected officials commonly use as their bi-monthly campaign stump, even with their terms not ending for three more years.

“The acrimony is not something that is experienced on a day-to-day basis,” Randolph said. “What you see at the council meetings with the lights, camera, action is a very small part of what we do.”

Randolph said she holds court with most councilmen on a regular basis. Of course, her relationship with some, including longtime personal friend Jerry Jones, who proposed the Charter amendments, is not as allowing.

“He seems to be getting more and more distant, and I’m sorry for that because he was a good friend to the extent I got him tickets for Mr. Obama’s first inauguration,” said Randolph, who said the amendments were politically charged. “We were very good friends and enjoyed being together. I’m sorry this has happened. This is personal now.”

Councilman Daniel Lorraine, Speaker of the Anti-Executive Party since 1984, is gleeful with Chiasson’s termination. He denies the notion that the council passed one of its chief duties – ratifying and firing cabinet members – to the voters. It was done legally, he stresses.

Besides, the 11-member Charter commission intentionally scribed the seven-vote rule to tilt the balance of power in favor of the executive branch, says the man who only admits to harmony with three of the seven parish presidents he worked with. This is the council’s way of fighting back, he says.

Someone else will take the job, and the parish must move on.

The Lafourche Parish Government budgetary process began this week, and the process to shape the financial plan will likely enflame the tenuous relationship between councilors and administrators.

Expect Internal Auditor Tommy Lasseigne to feature prominently in the discussions, either as a participant or a reference.

Qualified financially beyond many of the elected officials, the former councilman and failed parish presidential candidate’s primary duty is to work fulltime as a council-directed investigator. His role, carved during last year’s budget process, is the centerpiece of most pressing issues facing the parish: the budget, the jail and federal grant programs.

His proposal to finance a new detention center – largely by taking property-tax revenue from the bloated library system and nascent elderly programs – was not well received by the administration, which promised a rebuttal. Randolph said last week she would likely present the proposal in 2013.

Some councilmen are expecting roughly 20 proposed amendments to the budget. Twenty-two were proposed last year, and seven the year before that. With Lasseigne able to devote hours to pouring over the numbers, it will be easier for councilmen – some of whom have admitted in the past to not reading the budget – to manipulate the document.

Some of these issues have already started to trickle out. Councilmen have said a proposed $200,000 appropriation to the office of Coastal Zone Management for “future projects” will be challenged, as will the proposed new position of personal assistant to the parish president, which would command a $57,415 salary.

As with all ordinances, the budget process will be a political numbers game. It takes six votes to override a presidential veto, but five votes could derail another councilman’s plans. This structure rewards cooperation of the council with one another in lieu of compromise with the administration.

Lorraine, of the 9th District, is often regarded as the ultimate inhibitor of progress. He led the charge to create Lasseigne’s position and routinely draws Randolph’s ire as her biggest detractor, an unrelenting stalwart in the District 9 seat.

“My thinking and her thinking is way off base,” Lorraine said. “It’s very seldom the same thinking.

“The game is played a lot with the Randolph administration, but she’s not going to play the game with Lorraine. You’re not going to get my vote because you do a project for me … I really have no use for her.”

Lorraine dismissed the perception that he obstructs progress, regarding himself as a populist seeking “what’s right” for the parish.

Newcomer to the council Jerry LaFont said the meetings give off the impression that councilmen and the administration are always at odds, but said that’s not entirely true. He attributes this to the absence of committee meetings, which requires all details to be hashed out at the full council meetings.

The first-term councilman said he wants communication between the administration and the council to improve and that petty attacks should be shelved.

“I never was a fan of Daniel (Lorraine) before I got into office. Daniel and I work together on a lot of things, and I’m starting to learn why Daniel gets so angry. … I’m not knocking either one of them, but I think the picking on each other needs to stop.”

Councilman Aaron Caillouet, a former parish president who opposed the Charter amendments, campaigned on the premise of bringing harmony to the council. His efforts thus far have failed, and he underestimated the disparity between the two sides, he said.

“It’s a lot more contentious than I could have ever imagined,” Caillouet said. “It seems like in the last four or five months it has gotten worse. Personal animosities prevail. … It has gotten personal lately, so when you get to that point, it’s a little more difficult.”

Randolph said she will move now forward with filling Chiasson’s role. The soon-to-be-former administrator oversaw the budgetary process and would have been an administrative asset in its ratification.

The fact that department heads, and Chiasson, have appeared before the council many times with their jobs in jeopardy means recruiting for the position includes the “difficult task of finding someone who wants to put themselves in that position,” Randolph said.

“It’s difficult to give up one job to take on a job with parish government because of the politics of it.”

The Lafourche Parish Council, as elected in 2011, surrounds Parish President Charlotte Randolph. The nine lawmakers are examining Randolph’s proposed 2013 budget and should bring forth their changes next month, which may enflame long-running tensions.

COURTESY PHOTO