The controversy surrounding the questionable campaign tactics the East Baton Rouge Council on Aging engaged in leading up to last fall’s election for a 2.25-mil tax to support the agency has proven to be costly in more ways than one.
Between November 18 and March 30, the COA spent more than $31,000 on attorney’s fees with Breazeale, Sachse & Wilson, which was retained by the agency after allegations surfaced that the nonprofit COA might have violated state or federal election laws by campaigning for the millage.
One of the firm’s senior partners, Murphy Foster III, is representing the agency at a billing rate of $400 an hour. An associate on the case is billing $225 an hour.
The COA has also spent $20,000 of a total $32,700 contract with SSA Consultants, which was retained by the agency in December to “facilitate stakeholder outreach” efforts in connection with the millage, which will generate an estimated $7.8 million a year for the COA.
The six-month contract calls for SSA to prepare and facilitate a board retreat, which was held earlier this spring, and also to prepare and facilitate stakeholder outreach sessions. The COA agreed to pay SSA $5,000 per month for the first five months of the contract period and $7,700 for the final month. The contract expires in June.
The COA provided the attorney and consultant billing records to Daily Report in response to a public records request. The documents do not include invoices for legal services provided in April or May, both of which were busy months for the COA.
In April, allegations surfaced that COA Executive Director Tasha Clark Amar and COA board member Dorothy Jackson named themselves to paying positions in the disposition of the estate of a former COA client. Also in April, former board chairman Brandon Dumas resigned after WBRZ-TV reported that he did not live in East Baton Rouge Parish.
In May, a Legislative Auditor’s report confirmed allegations that the COA engaged in campaign activity relative to the millage election and could have violated election laws.
It is unknown how much Breazeale Sachse will bill the COA for services provided during those months. Invoices from November through March range from as low as $3,400 to as high as $8,100.
While $400 an hour isn’t an unusually high billing rate for a corporate attorney, even in a midsized market like Baton Rouge, it isn’t typical for nonprofit agencies like Councils on Aging to spend that much on legal fees.
The Jefferson Council on Aging, for instance, has an outside counsel who represents the agency on an as-needed basis at a discounted rate of less than $200 an hour, according to Jefferson Council on Aging Executive Director Al Robichaux.
But Robichaux points out that his agency’s legal issues are routine and haven’t risen to the complex level of those experienced by the EBR COA.
“He’s never had to file a lawsuit or defend us in a lawsuit so our situation is totally different,” Robichaux says.
Newly elected COA Board Chairman Jennifer Moisant, who was not a member of the board when either the legal or consulting contract was signed, did not return a request for comment in time for publication. Former board chairman Dumas could not be reached for comment.
Metro Council member Dwight Hudson, a frequent critic of the COA and the author of a controversial ordinance that would allow voters to rededicate the COA money to another agency for senior services, says the amount of public money spent on legal and consulting services is further evidence of why the COA needs a complete overhaul.
“They wouldn’t need to spend those dollars on those things if we had the right people on board and the right structure in place going forward,” he says. “So this is just, again, more and more evidence that we need to clean house at the CoA.”
—Stephanie Riegel
