To The Residents of Bay St. Louis:
In the very near future you are going to have to decide which direction you want your city to go in. You have the choice of continuing with the policies and errors of the “proven leadership” of Mayor Fillingame or choosing new leadership that will hopefully lead your city back into prosperity with lower taxes, better services and prompt attention when you have need of those services.
Mayor Fillingame insists his administration has been one of leadership and responsibility, but that bears closer inspection. In the past five years he’s “lost” tremendous amounts of money the city is now responsible for replacing, been involved in numerous law suits that you, the tax payer are responsible for through your taxes, failed to pay the city’s debts on time and soiled the city’s reputation.
It was his choice to remove Chief Tom Burleson from his position as the city’s police chief and replace him with Michael De Nardo, a person who was known to the St. Tammany Parish Sheriff’s Office in Louisiana to be someone not of good character and failed to have an in depth background investigation conducted before elevating him to that position. In fact De Nardo was fired from that agency for numerous and repeated violations of the Sheriff’s policies and other misconduct. So here we are in 2017 after the Hancock County Sheriff’s Office has conducted an investigation into the financial business of the city which again does not speak well of Mr. Fillingame or Mr. De Nardo.
That investigation revealed that De Nardo had been involved in the theft of several thousands of dollars through payroll fraud by submitting false payroll records on behalf of Patricia De Nardo, his wife, knowing she had not worked the number of hours claimed nor, in fact, had she even been in the State of Mississippi during many of those times. Further investigation revealed that De Nardo was also involved in the theft of police equipment and guns that had been confiscated and secured in the city’s evidence vault.
Mr. Fillingame is responsible in that he either condoned or failed to stop it and simply signed off on those financial records and that no accurate inventory was being kept of either city equipment or evidence maintained by the police department. Now he may say he didn’t know or realize what was being done, but he should have since he’s required to approve every expenditure including the payroll. It is his responsibility to double check anything he’s signing off on. Continue reading “Guest Post | Why Les Fillingame has got to go: The Ballad of Detective Sergeant Joe Kepfer”