ERIK SANZENBACH / L’Observateur / July 31, 1999

LAPLACE – Councilman Steve Thornton is worried about the way the St. John Parish Council does business.

In a letter written to his District 7 constituency, Thornton blasted the council for its actions at the July 27 Parish Council meeting, a standing- room-only, sometimes raucous affair dominated by the recent Department of Housing and Urban Development report on the disarray found in the St.

John Public Housing Authority.

“Once again, irresponsibility in local government reared its ugly head,” Thornton wrote.

The irresponsibility, he said, is the way in which the Council hired a lawyer to help with its investigation into alleged wrong doing in the Housing Authority.

“While I am open to legal representation from outside the district attorney’s office and St. John Parish in general,” Thornton wrote, “I foundit very coincidental that the lawyer the council hired on the spot was in the audience, sitting amongst the public housing tenants.”During the meeting, Councilman-at-Large Dale Wolfe successfully passed a motion to put aside $10,000 to hire a lawyer and turn the council into an investigative body with subpoena powers. Immediately after the vote,Wolfe nominated Walter Willard as council attorney, who as Thornton said, was sitting in the audience.

Thornton was the only council member to comment on the sequence of events.

“Am I the only one to think that this is a little strange?” Thornton asked the council. “I think we need an unbiased representation here. I feel likeI’ve been left out of a closed door meeting.”Wolfe retorted, “There are no closed door meetings in government.”Council President Duaine Duffy said he was satisfied with the selection of Willard.

“I had talked to the Parish Council’s attorney, Charles Lorio, and he had no problem with it,” Duffy said. “I knew that Willard was counsel for the St.Charles Housing Authority, and I felt he was qualified. We had also put alimit on the money, so I really have no problem with hiring Willard.”Thornton said he’s also upset because Willard’s qualifications were not checked out before he was hired. Willard did hand out his resume to thecouncil and was very eloquent about his qualifications at the podium, but as Thornton writes, “The council once again failed to require a statement of qualifications from this professional prior to his hiring.”After the meeting, Thornton stated strongly, “This whole thing was staged.” He added, “I wanted to hire someone who would tell us the facts,not what we wanted to hear.”Thornton did vote to hire Willard, but he said he voted with the majority in order to “reserve the right to reconsider in the future.”Thornton also questions the practicality of spending $10,000 to hire Willard.

“Ten thousand of our tax dollars have already been approved for consumption,” he said. “Unfortunately, I believe that the deck is beingstacked to one side of this issue. I fear that this entire issue will becomea major legal battle in the courts with thousands of taxpayer dollars expended on legal fees. I am not willing to put myself or the parish in thatposition.” Councilman Joel McTopy agrees that an investigation needs to be carried out because the allegations in the HUD report were very serious. However,he said he has reservations about how the investigation is to be carried out.

“This council needs to find out what the truth is,” McTopy said. ” We haveto gather all the sheriff’s reports, and find out who did what. We can’t doany of this ‘he-said-she-said’ type of thing. The way to do it is the legalway.”Despite that sentiment, Thornton is leery of the council’s motives.

“I have learned in the past three and a half years that every year is an election year.” he said.

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