Photograph: St. Landry Parish Council members Dexter Brown, Timothy LeJeune and Coby Clavier. (Photograph by Freddie Herpin)
BOBBY ARDOIN
Editor/Consulting Writer
The St. Landry Parish Council and parish president Jessie Bellard have scheduled a meeting later this month, but their combined appearances won’t occur during a committee or regularly-scheduled meeting.
Instead council members and Bellard have a court date scheduled tentatively April 24 or sometime during the next two weeks in order to decide the legality of proceeding with a council resolution that intends to investigate the parish Human Resources Department.
Bellard filed a court petition on March 27 which seeks to half the investigation which Bellard feels is unnecessary. Ballard has maintained in more than one Parish Council meeting that the Home Rule Charter provides the parish president with the broad authority to determine who works in all areas of parish government except for the Council Clerk position.
Council members who are now state court defendants in connection with the Bellard court petition,have indicated that there is perhaps something wrong with personnel decisions that have been made in the parish HR department. Council members have said during meetings that 21 employees were dismissed working for parish government during 2022.
Some of those former employees, Council members point out, have claimed they were not provided sufficiently with reasons for their terminations. A parish policy manual approved several years ago by the Council resolution, states fired employees should be given reprimands before they are terminated.
Ballard has said that in some cases, he has attempted to reassign workers scheduled for dismissal as a way of providing employees with second opportunities to remain with the parish.
On Thursday night the Council met in a primarily closed meeting to hire a pair of attorneys that will defend them during the series of court proceedings.
Derwood Conque, a retired district judge, has been appointed to oversee all the court proceedings between Bellard and the Council.
In addition the Council also voted during the closed sessions to hire Lafayette attorney Gary McGoffin and New Orleans attorney Ellen Rains to investigate the HR Department of parish government.
Council members have agreed that hiring attorneys from St. Landry Parish or asking a 27th Judicial District Court judge to preside over the case would perhaps reflect a conflict of interest. The Council annually funds the offices for all parish district court judges.
During a Saturday interview, Council member Harold Taylor said that Rains has recommended narrowing the scope of the HR investigation. Rains intends Taylor said, to examine primarily the reasons for the personnel dismissals during 2022.
The court petition filed by Lance Person, a Lafayette attorney hired by Bellard stated that the March 15 Council resolution was too vague for determining the specific areas that are seemingly intended in the investigation.
Although the March 15 Council resolution intended to launch the investigation, council member Wayne Ardoin said on Friday that council members Vivian Olivier, Dexter Brown, Timothy LeJune and Jimmie Edwards voted against hiring a Council attorney that would represent the Council during all court dates.
