Laf. permit director resigns

Often criticized openly by those who grew to detest the way Lafourche Parish Government conducts its building inspections and issues permits, Frank Morris, the department’s chief, will resign on Dec. 1.

Morris was absent from last week’s Lafourche Parish Council meeting, when Parish President Charlotte Randolph iterated to the lawmakers that Morris made his decision the week prior.

“The parish is losing a good man,” she said after the meeting. “There’s a better way to make a living other than listening to constant criticism over a few issues.”

During his 10-month tenure as the Director of Planning and Permitting, Morris became a lightning rod for critics of the permit process. He will forfeit his $75,000 annual salary, which made him the highest-paid government employee, to join the private sector and return to teaching, according to Randolph.

Morris did not respond to multiple phone messages left at his office as of press time.

The parish council, at consecutive meetings in July, twice attempted to fire Morris, who survived by one vote the first time and garnered an extra favorable vote on the second occasion. The nine-member council needs seven votes to fire a department head mid-year.

Still, the five of nine votes against him would have been enough to refuse his confirmation at the first meeting of next year. Councilman Daniel Lorraine, a vocal critic of Morris, said the writing was on the wall. “This should have been done a long time ago,” he said. “I don’t care if (Randolph) is re-elected or not; he was gone (in January).”

The complaints against Morris started from the outset, with the owners of a Galliano RV park speaking out against him at a council meeting one year ago because he was hampering their ability to open the park while they bordered on defaulting on hundreds of thousands of loan dollars, as Yvette Pitre told it. They were the first in what would become a long line of Morris’ public critics.

Initially, Randolph and Morris deflected the criticism by blaming it on Act 12 of the 2007 Louisiana Legislature, which adopted the strict International Building Code. FEMA conducts random inspections and would strip the parish of its flood insurance if variances from the code were issued, Randolph said.

As time went on, however, the complaints began to focus on the manner the code was relayed to builders. Morris was charged with leading an office that sometimes lost paperwork, causing unnecessary delays. He was also criticized for being unwilling to use discretion when it was allowed and too vague when informing builders exactly what modifications they needed to make, which resulted in builders making numerous trips to the centrally located office, open only Monday through Thursday.

“He’s set in his ways,” Lorraine said. “He’s from north Louisiana, and he’s dealing with Cajun people. You’re not going to push Cajun people into doing things over and over. It ain’t going to happen.”

Morris consistently maintained that he was enforcing the code as it was written and denied claims that he was unwilling to help builders attain permits. Randolph has said builders make it more difficult on themselves by applying for permits after construction is complete, which requires them to sometimes make necessary modifications and attain re-inspections as ordered by the code.

Morris is a Certified Building Official with 38 years of construction experience, 61 construction-related certifications and a general-contractor license in six states across the Southeast. He was hired last year as LPG looked to ease the installation of an in-house permitting department after a falling-out with quasi-governmental South Central Planning and Development, which continues to issue permits for several other parishes.

Randolph praised Morris for kick-starting the department, including the procurement of two grants totaling $760,000 that helped cover expenses for new equipment and personnel, saying he “moved us very, very far forward.”

Still, the department’s future remains in flux as he exits the public-service realm.

The parish has on staff a classified employee who is a CBO and who will continue to issue permits once Morris leaves. Randolph said the parish would not fill the vacated director post this year.

Councilman Phillip Gouaux said last month the permit department does not collect enough revenue to sustain itself, but the council voted to cut some permit fees by as much as 50 percent to lessen the burden on builders and entice more construction.

One of the grants Morris helped attain, worth $300,000, could be applied for again through South Central Planning, Randolph said last month, but she said she wasn’t sure whether or not the parish would secure it.