![City Council members Pat Lewis, left, and Andy Naquin and Nanette Cook, seated, with Mayor-President Josh Guillory and City-Parish Attorney Greg Logan (right) at a June 2021 meeting.](https://media.thecurrentla.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/14154129/logan-with-josh-and-council-members-by-travis.jpeg)
No boundaries: LCG may have violated charter in spoil banks land purchase
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.
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.
LCG employees and consultants delivered an overview of dozens of drainage projects before Lafayette’s City and Parish councils Tuesday night. Absent in the discussion was an issue playing out in the courts — whether LCG pursued such an aggressive program of construction according to a plan.
Taking aim at Mayor-President Josh Guillory’s broken promise and a conflict of interest for the project’s engineer, District Judge Valerie Gotch Garrett today ruled that LCG’s quick-take expropriation of Bendel family land for a massive detention pond project was improper. She ordered that work on the 270-acre tract “cease immediately” and assigned court costs to LCG.
In court filings related to the public records lawsuit, the attorney for former interim Chief Wayne Griffin says her client was not fired for sexual harassment; a judge is weighing how much more information should be released.
Facing a federal lawsuit claiming its panhandling crackdown was unconstitutional, Lafayette is seeking to repeal portions of its panhandling ordinances.
LCG is once again at the state trough for the $60 million Bayou Vermilion Flood Control project currently halted by court order. LCG has asked for $23 million in the 2022 state budget, on top of $27 million awarded last year.
The Guillory administration’s plans to declare two more private properties a “public necessity,” carving a legal path to seize the land for drainage projects, may hit a snag at tonight’s City Council meeting.
While Mayor-President Josh Guillory frames his approach to drainage as a way of cutting red tape, two cases allege Lafayette Consolidated Government is running roughshod over property rights.
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