In yet another unusual twist in the Guillory administration’s drainage program, the state is holding up funding because Rigid Constructors bought property to keep digging detention ponds after a district judge forced it to move locations.
Local media turned up the heat on the mayor-president in August, reporting that may be turning into big-time investigations.
The FBI has joined two federal agencies scrutinizing Lafayette’s drainage projects, this time with an eye on the relationship between the contractor and Mayor-President Josh Guillory.
Since his election, the mayor-president has taught classes at UL, formed two LLCs and obtained a license to produce title insurance, on top of processing expungements for clients — all in search of supplementing his income.
The firm’s creation, timed as LCG fuels a local construction boom, creates a minefield of potential conflicts.
The councils’ letter sticks them in line for a response from the AG. Without it, Guillory could have withdrawn his request should the opinion be unfavorable.
The gist: Council members attempted to name an acting replacement for Mayor-President Josh Guillory while he’s in rehab. The administration resisted.
A success in LCG’s eyes, the overnight operation may have violated state law, federal law, a St. Martin Parish ordinance and, it now appears, Lafayette’s Home Rule Charter.
LCG paid quadruple for the land it razed to knock down spoil levees on the Vermilion River and left one of the land’s owners out of the deal. It could spell more legal trouble.
The $3.8 million project, now the subject of a barbed federal lawsuit with St. Martin Parish, was top secret and may have violated public bid law with a peculiar contract arrangement.
Documents released in a big win for public access shed some light on reasons for interim LPD chief’s removal.
Don Landry has demurred as a potential public corruption scandal brews, even as he placed on leave a prosecutor linked to the investigation.
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