Audit attorney questions payment made to former director of port

Published 12:00 am Saturday, October 28, 2000

LEONARD GRAY / L’Observateur / October 28, 2000

LAPLACE – A question was raised over an unused sick leave payment of $35,000 was raised by an attorney reporting on the Port of South Louisiana annual audit.

Former director Gary LaGrange, now working on the Mississippi Gulf Coast, rewrote his original 1997 employment contract in mid-1999 with then-port attorney Joseph Accardo, allowing the payment.

Normally, the sick leave payment could only have been made if LaGrange was terminated. Instead he departed by his own choice to become portdirector in Gulfport, Miss.

Audit attorney Peter Butler Jr. said the $34,947 payment violates thestate constitution and added that a 1990 attorney general opinion states that such illegal payments are more serious when paid to an unclassified employee, as LaGrange was.

LaGrange could not be reached for comment.

Accardo said he and LaGrange added the new sick leave clause two months before LaGrange’s voluntary departure in August 1999. Since then,following an extensive executive search, Accardo was named to the position.

Accardo added the clause was approved by the commission at that time and he didn’t think anything was improper about it.

Accardo added that normally such discussion would have been conducted in executive session but this was in an open meeting of the port’s audit committee. Port commissioners present included Louis Joseph, JayRoberts, Joey Murray and E.J. Martin.Accardo said now the question will be reviewed by the port’s attorney, former district judge Joel Chaisson, and the commission prior to being submitted to the legislative auditor’s office for review.

“It’s not official until it’s filed there,” Accardo said. “Meanwhile, I’lldefer to the legal advice of our attorney.”

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