Randolph’s appeal set for May 22

An appellate court on May 22 will hear Lafourche Parish President Charlotte Randolph’s contention that she did not breach the state’s ethics code when she leased her Grand Isle camp to BP months after the oil spill.

The state Ethics Adjudicatory Board found Randolph in violation of the ethics code after attorneys proved she and her husband George Randolph collected $50,000 from the oil major from June through October 2010. In May of that year, BP provided Lafourche Parish Government – and other local jurisdictions – $1 million to offset costs to the public stemming from the BP Deepwater Horizon disaster.

State law prohibits public servants from providing private services to parties who either have or seek a financial relationship with the public servant’s agency.

Randolph argued BP’s contribution was unilateral, akin to a donation, and that the agreement was fully satisfied once the parish received the funds. By this logic, Randolph’s attorneys argued she was free to conduct private business dealings with the company because there was no reciprocal arrangement.

Tracy Barker, staff attorney with the ethics board, argued at the time that reciprocation is not an element of the state law.

Per the public deal with BP, parish government was required to submit monthly an itemized, written report to BP detailing how the money was spent.

Randolph initially appealed for the EAB to rehear her case. The board declined a rehearing but did lessen Randolph’s fine from $10,000 to $5,000. The parish president was ordered to pay that amount in addition to a penalty of $50,000, the sum of the allegedly ill-gotten rental payments.

“As parish president, during the term of her public service, Charlotte Randolph was prohibited from receiving anything of economic value from any entity with a financial relationship with the parish. She violated this prohibition,” the three-judge EAB panel ruled in its original decision in March 2013.

BP rented camps throughout Grand Isle to house cleanup workers responding to the largest man-made natural disaster in U.S. history.

Charlotte and George Randolph self-reported the rental circumstances to the Louisiana Ethics Administration one day after they received an opinion that cast a shadow over the arrangement.

Following the Gulf of Mexico well blowout, the Lafourche Parish BP Oil Spill Committee – consisting of councilmen Joe Fertitta, Daniel Lorraine and Lindel Toups – requested a district attorney’s opinion on the legality of whether parish officials could do private business with BP.

The district attorney advised that such deals would likely be prohibited because of the public contract with BP. He attached an ethics board advisory opinion from June 2010 advising that a St. Tammany Parish councilman could not lease his boat to BP because of a similar public contract between the oil company and that parish.

Louisiana First Circuit appellate justices William Crain (St. Tammany), James Kuhn (Ponchatoula) and Toni Higginbotham (Baton Rouge) are slated to hear Randolph’s appeal, scheduled for 10:45 a.m. in Courtroom 1.

Randolph will be represented by Jerald Block, Gray Sexton and Jennifer Jackson. Representing the ethics board are Barker and Ethics Board Administrator Kathleen Allen.