Tag: Rick Buller

The Times Picayune tackles a topic that has appeared here many times: A why Gwen Bollotte should have been fired years ago update.

In our coverage of Jefferson Parish Government we’ve run across the name of former Jefferson Parish CFO Gwen Bolotte a few times, normally with me expressing the opinion she needed to be fired for not doing her job as Parish Finance Director.  I termed her a doormat in fact and that is a good description of her job performance in both the Performing Arts fiasco and the Parish’s ham handed dealings with Waste Management in trying to cancel the contract with them so that the Parish’s garbage could be hauled to the River Birch Landfill at considerably more costs to parish residents.  I mention this because Bob Ross has a curious story in today’s Times Picayune that allows John Young and Chris Roberts to capitalize on Bolotte’s departure for purely self-serving public relations purposes. Roberts using this issue is particularly sickening given he employes the Master of Disaster Deano Bonano as a council aid at a nice 6 figure salary despite Bonano deserving the same fate as Bolotte. Instead Roberts recycled him from John Young’s chop shop.  First lets visit with Ross and his story for the Sunday Picayune:

Bolotte’s decision is more troubling, Roberts said, given her position as chief financial officer in Parish President John Young’s administration.

“Gwen is a CPA. She has a fiduciary duty to hold her ground in certain situations. I would expect our CFO — and I’ve told this to John already — that if she’s put in a compromising position that she knows may or may not be in the best interest of the parish, that she make a decision to stand up and say: ‘We have questions about this and I’m not comfortable, and we need further documentation.'”

Turning a “blind eye” to Whitmer’s order, as Roberts described Bolotte’s reaction, was not in Jefferson’s best interests. “That’s a real problem,” he said. “How many time have you heard her say over the years, ‘I was instructed to do that by my superiors.'”

Young generally agreed with Roberts’ assessment.

“Hindsight is 20-20, but if she had questions, she shouldn’t have processed the check,” he said recently, before Bolotte announced her retirement. “I can tell you this: We made sure Gwen knows that nothing will be paid without proper documentation. That will not happen again. Also, nothing will be paid without accounting doing the proper checks and balances.”

Both men act as if there was not an existing policy to never pay expenses without documentation in Jefferson Parish and of course there was and is such a policy. Continue reading “The Times Picayune tackles a topic that has appeared here many times: A why Gwen Bollotte should have been fired years ago update.”

Modular News generated on demand: Waste Management and the Parish are still holding hands…..

Folks monitoring a PACER docket is sometimes an interesting exercise in compare and contrast. For example earlier this week Paul Rioux at the T-P wrote a PACER based story on the latest newsworthy developments on the Parish’s suit against Waste Management. The long and short of it is both parties want the July 11 trial postponed as their mutual love and affection continues to grow. But there was something in Rioux’s story that bothered me to the point where I pondered the subject matter over the past couple of days before writing a post on the topic. Two sentences in two paragraphs in fact:

Young’s administration had not responded by Tuesday evening to a request for information on how much the suit has cost the parish. Margie Seemann, vice chairwoman of Citizens for Good Government, said the parish’s response to her recent public records request pegs the legal bill at $250,000.

Seemann has repeatedly urged the parish to drop the suit and cancel the River Birch contract. But parish officials have said they are continuing the suit in hopes of obtaining a court order declaring the River Birch deal null and void.

I’ve been around the block long enough to know a journalistic dig when I see one. Continue reading “Modular News generated on demand: Waste Management and the Parish are still holding hands…..”

Team River Birch beclowns their clowns: A putting in the fix on the inside for River Birch update.

Paul Rioux at the Times Picayune checks in today with a report that is masterful in its nuance as Team River Birch has the full court PR press on and one again they manage to put egg on their own face as well as the Parish, specifically Public Records.  There is lots of fodder for discussion in Paul’s lengthy story but since I am time strapped I’m going to focus in on 2 items the first being that thanks to Steve Theriot and John Young it appears Jefferson Parish no longer has a cohesive, functioning public records department. Taken a step further I’ll add Paul conveys the obvious without saying it as it certainly appears the Parish Attorney’s office is simply an adjunct legal department for Freddie Heebe, Jim Ward and the River Birch Landfill. This snippet illustrates that point:

River Birch obtained the notes and other parish documents about the draft study Monday through a public records request and in turn provided them to The Times-Picayune. Parish attorneys denied a similar request by the newspaper for the preliminary study in December, citing an exemption in the state’s disclosure law for documents prepared “in anticipation of litigation or in preparation for trial.”

I will point out that normally newspapers are big on access to public records so the silence on the major problems with public records in Jefferson Parish, well reported here, means the T-P sucked on it in silence for at least the past 3 months.  I’ll add that while Jefferson Parish was stonewalling the Times Picayune while giving it all up for Freddie Heebie they also continue to retaliate against the whistleblowers and John Young is ass deep in it right along with his political blowbuddy Tom Capella and their puppets Peggy Barton and Louis Gruntz.  As long as the Parish Attorney’s office, at the behest of elected officials work for the River Birch Landfill instead of the taxpayers expect to see more such clusterfucks as the many Paul Rioux details today. Continue reading “Team River Birch beclowns their clowns: A putting in the fix on the inside for River Birch update.”

The end of the mystery: Paul Rioux reports on the Waste Management suit for the Times Picayune

I was wondering which T-P employee was camped out with us last week on our Waste Management posts. Turns out it was likely Paul Rioux, who checks in today with a long report on the Waste Management suit and the continued revelations about the fix Aaron Broussard and his cronies in Parish government put in for River Birch. My read indicated there was not much new ground broken on the topic but Rioux’s report has a few quotes from River Birch PR man Glenn Smith and is still worth reading.

On this general topic I’ve had a few emails asking my professional opinion of Gwen Bolotte’s performance as Finance Director in this entire fiasco as she did not share her concerns about the shady way the River Birch deal was handled except with the perpetrators.  If she knew of a crime and failed to report it, she should lose her license to practice as a CPA and be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. That said I think this is more of a case that she feared Tim Whitmer and Tom Wilkinson as both were notorious bullies in the Broussard Administration and she figured standing up and voicing her concerns would cost her job.

I think a fine line separates misprision of felony and employment self-preservation.  If one of my clients had a CFO that was too timid to speak their minds, especially when the going got tough, my advice to the CEO would be to find a new CFO.

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Waste Management drops another Nuke, exposes more information on the shithouse way the River Birch contract was let.

Team Waste Management has been very busy of late taking depositions etc in the Parish’s suit against them and man o’ man is there a treasure trove of information coming out, hopefully all of which will be discussed in the upcoming public meeting.

For one, I’m not sure why anyone is wasting time on these after the fact costs analysis because it is clear Broussard, Wilkinson and Whitmer were lying through their teeth about the “savings” when this contract was  bum rushed through as it is clear no cost projections or other financial analysis was ever performed.

Document 104 has some good stuff, including Team Waste Management wanting to amend their counter-claim to include new allegations that have come to light after certain depositions were taken. Team Waste Management explains:

The initial discovery and depositions in this case took place only months ago, in November and December, 2010, when Waste Management took the depositions of three high ranking officials employed by Plaintiffs, namely, Margaret Winter, Director of the Continue reading “Waste Management drops another Nuke, exposes more information on the shithouse way the River Birch contract was let.”