Environmental expert named senior planner
January 16, 2012
Richard N. Bollinger
January 19, 2012In the first legislative showdown of the New Year, the Lafourche Parish Council reappointed four top-level executive branch employees, an indication that the parish president has regained the upper hand over her councilmen detractors.
Lafourche’s parish president is required by the Home Rule Charter to nominate existing department heads for council approval before the fifth meeting of every new term. Reappointment is granted or denied by a majority vote, which differs from the seven votes required mid-term to oust a cabinet member.
Crystal Chiasson, the parish administrator, and Donna Adams, director of Human Resources, were each reappointed, a 5-4 vote with the same voting lines.
Councilmen Jerry Jones, Michael Delatte, Aaron Caillouet, John Arnold and Lindel Toups voted in their favor. Councilmen Joe Fertitta, Phillip Gouaux, Jerry LaFont and Daniel Lorraine voted against them.
Kerry Babin, director of public works, and Ryan Friedlander, director of finance, were reappointed by the same 8-1 vote, with LaFont as the lone dissent.
Most of the discussion took place during the resolution reappointing Chiasson, the first of the four addressed by the council.
Arnold, attending his first meeting since being elected in District 5 last fall, said he felt like the administration put new councilmen in an “unfair” situation because he, Caillouet and LaFont haven’t had the opportunity to work with staff yet. Still, he said he cast his vote in favor of Chiasson mostly because finding and training a replacement could take “years.”
“I spoke with (Parish President Charlotte Randolph) and I spoke with some other councilmen, and I’ve got some good and some bad vibes off of all of them,” he said. “For the most part, I think Lafourche Parish needs to move forward, and that’s what I’m here to promote n moving forward.
“I voted for Charlotte myself, and I’m putting my confidence in Charlotte.”
The personality of the new council began to surface last week. Tension has been in the air since the election ended and after years of discord between the parish’s president and council, the administration received the votes it needed for cabinet reappointments.
In three of the higher-profile issues to close out the last council term, lawmakers budgeted money for an internal auditor who answers to the council against Randolph’s wishes, rededicated money that would fund a legal assistant position against Randolph’s wishes and refused to supplement a Community Action program.
Just more than two years ago, on a resolution sponsored by Toups, the council attempted to fire Chiasson. The resolution fell one vote shy of the seven required. Toups said he changed his opinion regarding Chiasson because she has become a better communicator with the council.
“(Randolph) lost three department heads,” Toups said after the meeting. “I thought it would be too hard to replace too many department heads. I spoke with (Randolph) and she said if they do some wrong, then she’s going to get rid of them. The people elected her three times n there has to be something good in her.”
Three department heads have resigned since Dec. 1: Gretchen Caillouet (Grants and Economic Development), Frank Morris (Planning and Permitting) and Thomas Turner (Community Action). The directors of Coastal Energy and Environment and Parks and Recreation also vacated their positions within the last year.
Delatte cautioned new councilmen of creating too many upper-level vacancies that would disrupt the flow of parish business.
“We can work together as a team,” Delatte said. “You can walk into any one of these offices at any time, including the parish president, and discuss (issues). That’s a blessing. If you don’t have that open-door policy and you don’t have people that care about Lafourche the way we do, then we would have a problem.”
LaFont, the new councilman from District 8, voted against each reappointment. He said he sent Randolph an email on Nov. 28 requesting names of department heads seeking ratification, resumes, salaries and job descriptions at least two weeks prior to nomination.
“Charlotte, I hope we can have a good relationship going forward from here, but I received this six days ago,” he said. “If I’m going to make an educated decision on something, I need more than six days.”
The parish administrator is second in line to the parish president and would succeed the top executive official in the event Randolph is forced to leave office. Because Chiasson lives outside the parish in Napoleonville, her reappointment would prompt extra responsibility from the next-in-line council chairman, Gouaux reasoned.
“Because of that, I’m not eligible to serve as council chair, as well as anyone else that does not agree to give up their job on a temporary basis to take on that responsibility,” Gouaux said. “I think it’s totally absurd for parish government to change the way they operate because of one person.”
Gouaux said he would introduce an ordinance in the future that would prevent department heads from living out of parish.
The council unanimously elected Fertitta as its 2012 chairman. Toups, on the nomination of Delatte, was unanimously elected as vice chairman.
Caillouet, a former parish president who ran his council campaign on the promise that he would strive for compatibility between lawmakers and executives, urged the council to act in good faith for the sake of the parish.
“I believe this is one way of showing the parish president that we’re willing to work for her,” Caillouet said. “Hopefully, she would reciprocate and we can work together.”
