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Lafourche Parish President Charlotte Randolph has been charged with violating state law after she allegedly conducted personal business with BP weeks after signing a public agreement with BP that granted Lafourche $1 million in oil spill-recovery funds.
Randolph and her husband George, doing business as Randolph Publications LLC, allegedly received $50,000 from BP for the rental of their Grand Isle camp between June 18 and Oct. 23, 2010, according to the charge disclosed by the Louisiana Board of Ethics.
If convicted, the parish president could be ordered to forfeit the $50,000 and would be subject to a fine up to $10,000, said Tracy Barker, who is serving as one of the ethics board’s attorneys during the proceedings.
The charge was filed with the state’s Division of Administrative Law, and the ethics board has requested the state’s Ethics Adjudicatory Board, a panel of three administrative law judges, to conduct a hearing.
“I self-reported this alleged violation on October 21, 2010,” Randolph said via email. “I now await the opportunity to discuss this with the Ethics Adjudicatory Board.”
The Louisiana Board of Ethics made Randolph aware of the charge via certified mail on Dec. 16 of last year.
The ethics board’s attorney could not estimate when the case would be heard.
“We have filed charges, but that’s really all that has been done at this time,” Barker said. “We’ve got to have telephone conferences with the EAB. Then they’ll set a scheduling order with discovery, cut-off dates, times for any type of preliminary motions to be filed before they’ll set a hearing, so it probably won’t be in the near future.”
Randolph allegedly “entered into discussions with representatives of BP regarding BP’s use of her camp on Grand Isle to house workers helping in the oil spill clean-up,” the charge reads.
The specific individuals were not named in the disclosure, but Barker said those people would likely be identified through the discovery process.
Regardless, “the rental contract was with BP,” Barker said.
Randolph, as a representative of Lafourche Parish, signed the contract for spill-recovery funds on May 11.
The public partnership prevents Randolph from receiving “any thing of economic value for or in consideration of services rendered, or to be rendered, to or for any person during (her) public service,” according to Louisiana Revised Statute 42:111, the law cited in the ethics board’s charge.
In the public contract, BP required Lafourche Parish to “keep reasonably detailed records regarding how the payment was spent; send an annual report of disbursements of the payment to BP until the payment has been fully spent; and allow BP to have the ability to make inquiries of Lafourche Parish to monitor the use and disbursement of the payment,” according to the ethics charge.
Because BP has a financial relationship with the parish, Randolph cannot accept gifts from the company, according to state law. In the same vein, state law prohibits Randolph from entering into personal economic agreements with the company.
Lafourche Parish President Charlotte Randolph and her husband George sit at the Police Jury conference in Houma on Saturday. The two are currently under investigation for renting BP their Grand Isle camp.
