In testimony before a House committee on May 11, Sen. Regina Barrow, D-Baton Rouge, said she didn’t receive an opinion from the state Attorney General stating Council on Aging leaders were prohibited from using their own resources to campaign for their dedicated tax until after the COA had already started campaigning for the tax.
It was a curious assertion. Barrow had requested the attorney general opinion on April 4, 2016, and the AG’s office had drafted its response to the senator, then a COA board member, on April 19, 2016, according to a copy of the opinion included in a recently released Louisiana Legislative Auditor’s report.
Now, Daily Report has confirmed that the AG’s office did, in fact, send the opinion to Barrow on the same day it was drafted. According to email logs provided by the AG’s office, an electronic copy of the opinion was sent with an email cover letter to Barrow at 5:19 p.m. on April 19, 2016.
“The opinion concludes that a CEO of a Council on Aging organization may not expend public resources to support a millage on a public ballot,” Assistant Attorney General Shannon Dirmann wrote in the email, reiterating what was stated in her formal opinion.
The following day, April 20, the AG’s office mailed a paper copy of the opinion to Barrow, according to records.
What COA leaders knew about state election laws and when they knew it is significant because the recent audit suggests the board of the embattled agency may have violated state law by using public resources to campaign for a dedicated 2.25-mil tax that voters narrowly approved last fall.
Barrow told Daily Report this morning she may have received the opinion in April but was not aware of it because the legislature was in the middle of a busy session and it got pushed to the back burner. She says now she first made COA leadership aware of the opinion in June, by which time they had already begun engaging in campaign activity.
“They are showing they didn’t receive it from me until June,” Barrow says. “I was not involved in the day to day activity so I had no idea what was happening over there every day. I just thought (the opinion) would serve as a guide.”
Barrow says she does not recall discussing the issue at any COA board meetings last year nor did she ever sit down with COA leadership and discuss the issue.
“I have over 9,000 emails right now,” she says. “Last year, was worse. We were in the middle of three very busy sessions. … so this was sort of on the back burner.”
Barrow and other Capital Region members of the Legislative Black Caucus have been vocal supporters of COA leadership—namely, CEO Tasha Clark-Amar—in the face of mounting criticism of the agency’s financial performance, campaign activities and involvement in drafting the will of an elderly COA client.
Barrow continued to defend Clark-Amar this morning and said criticism of the agency is misdirected.
“Prior to the millage passing, no one ever questioned her leadership, management style or anything,” Barrow said. “She has worked really hard to try to build the agency up. There may have been some missteps but it was unintentional.”
—Stephanie Riegel
