BusinessReport.com

A BREC commissioner who didn’t attend a single committee meeting last year⎯including the one he chaired⎯as well as campaigned against funding to keep the city’s parks and recreation facilities going and once falsely accused a top staffer of racism has more Metro Council support than any other candidate for the spot.

Most council members dodged questions about backing the schismatic Darrell Glasper, but three of them indicated he’s close to securing enough votes for another three-year term.

At January’s meeting, votes from Charles Kelly, Martha Jane Tassin, Byron Sharper and Lorri Burgess put Glasper at the top of a runoff with three other candidates. On the second round, two of those candidates⎯Herbert “Hal” Butt and Rodney Dunn⎯received no votes. Time ran out, leaving the council to consider Glasper and Bettsie Baker Miller when it reconvenes Feb. 13. Seven votes are needed.

The nine commissioners are unpaid, but they do control millions of dollars in parks and recreation spending in East Baton Rouge Parish. And Glasper has made a name for himself stirring up drama on the scene almost since the day he arrived.

Two of the council members who already have thrown their support behind Glasper⎯Burgess and Sharper⎯did not respond to several requests for interviews. Kelly declined to comment.

Martha Jane Tassin, a white Republican whose district is now majority black and largely Democrat, insists there’s no truth to accusations she’s supporting Glasper in hopes of staving off opponents in the next election.

“I try to make sure my district is equally represented because it is majority African-American and I want to make sure they’re supported,” she says. “It’s in no way motivated by anything other than the fact that I have supported African-American representation on other boards because I believe the makeup of the boards should be balanced.”

While Tassin admittedly doesn’t extol all of Glasper’s political tactics, she contends he brings a sense of “checks and balances” to BREC. “Sometimes you need someone who’s going to come in and question the way things are done,” she says. “Whether you believe in Mr. Glasper’s opinions, he does bring things to the forefront that wouldn’t be brought up. I don’t always approve of his tactics, but it’s not my place to tell someone how to do or not do what they feel is right.”

Glasper is predicted to pick up the support of Wayne “Spider” Carter and Ulysses “Bones” Addison for this vote.

Addison didn’t vote to put Glasper on the commission to begin with, and had his own highly publicized differences with Glasper, namely over a proposed theater for kids in Addison’s north Baton Rouge district. The councilman says while he hasn’t yet decided his vote, he thinks Glasper brings transparency to BREC.

“It seems now that we’re penalizing him for asking questions,” Addison says. “But we have people on boards and bodies who don’t say anything or raise a single question. They said nothing, they didn’t want to be controversial, they just vote when someone says ‘vote.’ We can imagine if people raise no issues, how much stuff gets through because they didn’t say anything. I think he brings another level of understanding and appreciation to the table. He makes people think about what they’re doing. And at the end of the day, he’s only one vote.”

Carter⎯a recently failed candidate for Commissioner of Agriculture whose campaign manager, BREC Commissioner Dan Kyle, hired Glasper to set up a computer network for the campaign⎯accused Business Report of “going off on a witch hunt here,” and promptly hung up the phone.

Still unknown is how councilmen Mike Walker and Joe Greco will vote.

Walker says his first choice for the commission is Butts. “I’ve supported him every time,” Walker says. “Hal is not out of the running, and I’m going to stick with him until it’s proven to me otherwise. He has my total and complete allegiance until it’s proven there’s no way he can get those votes. That’s the only thing I’m sure of.”

As to whether he might eventually kick his vote to Glasper, Walker insists he hasn’t made up his mind. “I don’t have any problems with Mr. Glasper,” Walker says. “I’ve known him for a long time. If he and I have any problems, I just pick up the phone and call him. We get along great.” Asked if Glasper has the votes needed for reappointment to BREC, Walker says, “I’d say it’s possible.”

Greco refused to lend any insight into his position. “I’m dodging you,” he told the Business Report. “I really don’t want to talk to you. I don’t see any reason to discuss it.”

But that’s where Glasper’s potential support ends. Fellow councilmen Pat Culbertson, Darrell Ourso, David Boneno and Mickey Skyring all point out they didn’t vote for him the first time around and have no intention of doing so now.

“He has been too divisive,” Skyring says. “I want someone with a more positive approach to BREC. He just has not been a positive influence; he has created dissention since he first got on the board.” Culbertson is a bit more blunt: “My last choice⎯and I never have and never will vote for him⎯is Glasper. Clear enough?”

Glasper was at the center of a plot to oust former Superintendent Mark Thornton, who opposed a proposal by Baker developer Ted Hicks to move the Baton Rouge Zoo to a piece of property near Interstate 12 and O’Neal Lane where he had an option to buy land. Hicks⎯who wanted to build an ecological park adjacent to the zoo⎯had served as campaign finance manager for Glasper when he won a spot on the Metro Council [Glasper served his first term from 1989-92 and his second from 1993-96].

Around the same time, Glasper also accused then-BREC Chairman Carroll Breeden and former Recreation Director Bert Neal of engaging in racially offensive behavior at two national parks conferences, insisting there were photographs of the two wearing Afros and dreadlocks wigs. An investigation turned up no evidence the incident ever took place, but Glasper refused to apologize.

Most recently, after finding himself at odds with Bill Benedetto over the firm hired to tape meetings, Glasper urged his fellow commissioner to resign, insisting that his previous employment with Entergy posed a conflict of interest. Earlier this year, the commissioner openly campaigned against renewal of a 3.96-mill tax for the agency that voters ultimately approved.

“I don’t have no problem with Mr. Glasper. He represents his constituents,” says fellow BREC Commissioner Audrey Nabors-Jackson, an ex-officio Planning & Zoning Commission appointee. “There’s nothing you can do about how a person feels. That was his decision, and that’s why we’re appointed to these boards, to make decisions about what’s best for Baton Rouge.”

But while Glasper appears to have an intense passion for the high-profile issues, his day-to-day commitment to the public agency is often questioned. The commissioner didn’t bother to attend a single BREC committee meeting last year⎯including Recreation & Programming, which he chairs. He also serves on committees that oversee golf and the Baton Rouge Zoo. In fact, he’s attended less than a third of those sessions since he was appointed three years ago.

He also didn’t show for a workshop and three meetings of the full commission last year. In his first two years with BREC, Glasper missed just one commission meeting, in April 2006.

Butt, who has served the maximum two terms as a BREC commissioner and was hoping the Metro Council would muster the nine-vote supermajority needed to reappoint him, says it appears that Glasper “gets a lot more interested in showing up when the meetings are on television.”

“His attendance at commission meetings is fair to poor, and his attendance at the committees on which he serves is terrible,” Butt says. “He doesn’t make any committee meetings, so he isn’t informed of the issues. Then, when he gets in front of the commission, he picks something to attack, then attacks. Those are the kinds of things that make me wonder why the council is happy about putting him back on. It seems to me that overall he’s not really interested in BREC as much as he’s interested in whatever may be his next political opportunity.”

But Addison says those attendance numbers are misleading because the committee meetings are more about gleaning input from ordinary citizens than commissioner participation.

Glasper declined to comment. He initially promised to answer questions, but when reached later on his cell phone, said, “I don’t have any comment at all about what y’all are doing. Just don’t call my phone anymore.”

The remaining BREC commissioners await the council’s decision with mixed views on Glasper’s possible return. Kyle is convinced a reappointment would be “a good thing. It would be a little unfair to take someone off the board simply because they express their views. I’ve known Darrell for a long time, and I think he is honest and says what he thinks. You don’t ever have to wonder where he stands, and he expects the same from everyone else.”

But David Guillory, Mayor Kip Holden’s representative to the commission, said a reappointment could spell further trouble for the agency. As of late, Glasper is making a point of questioning Superintendent Bill Palmer’s salary as well as the performance of other staffers.

“I don’t have anything personally against Commissioner Glasper, but sometimes I think his motives are a bit questionable,” Guillory says. “I understand he has concerns about how the money is spent, but we’re all concerned about that because tax dollars are involved. I’d like to see BREC move forward with building more parks and offering more activities for young and old, but sometimes I don’t know if Commissioner Glasper shares that vision.”

THE OTHER CANDIDATES

Herbert “Hal” Butt: Two-term BREC commissioner; treasurer for last five years

Rodney Dunn: Former Georgia-Pacific crew leader; now a real-estate consultant and property manager

Derek Fitch: Director of operations for Red Stick Farmers Market and Main Street Market; former legislative assistant for former House Speaker Charlie DeWitt

Tanya Moye Freeman: Business development manager, University of Phoenix’s Baton Rouge campus

Kathryn Jones: Southern University assistant professor with two degrees in recreation

Bettsie Baker Miller: Runs BBM Consulting

Robert A. Myer: Runs Express Personnel Services, a staffing office

Dianna R. Payton: Programs manager for the Louisiana Family Recovery Corps; previously with Volunteers of America Greater Baton Rouge and the Governor’s Office of Policy & Planning

Joshua Posey: Program consultant with Louisiana Department of Education

William Scheffy: Former CFO of Gulf Coast Wireless; serves on BR Green

Scott Wilfong: Capital Business Services owner; serves on Alcohol Beverage Control Board

Joe Wills: Contract instructor for Louisiana Department of Transportation and Development, former staff lawyer for Department of Insurance

ANATOMY OF A BREC VOTE

• Two slots are available on the commission.

• The same 13 candidates are nominated for both positions. Seven votes are needed, unless the candidate already has served two terms, in which case nine votes are needed for reappointment.

• Once one candidate is selected, voting begins again to select a second commissioner.

• In January, the Metro Council narrowed the field to four candidates for the first position. Council members gave no votes to Hal Butt or Rodney Dunne, but ran out of time before voting on Darrell Glasper or Bettsie Baker Miller.