Questions are being raised about whether the Livingston Parish Council violated Louisiana law when it went behind closed doors to discuss a settlement with engineering firm Alvin Fairburn and Associates over $312,000 in alleged overbilling.
In recent days, local businessman Earl Price has written to District Attorney Scott Perrilloux, Council Chairman Chance Parent and the council’s clerk, alleging an executive session held prior to a vote on the matter was illegal because the agenda did not list all of the information required by Louisiana’s open meetings law, including the case number and the parties involved in the litigation.
Chris Moody, who represents the Livingston Parish District Attorney’s Office as the council’s lawyer, told Price in an email obtained by Daily Report that while he previously has advised the council of the need to include docket numbers for cases being discussed in executive session, “many public bodies don’t often do this since no one complains, and because it takes time to look up the number, etc.”
The council finalized the settlement last week, effectively ending three lawsuits and three years of litigation with the parish’s former road engineering firm. Both sides are paying their own legal expenses and no money is changing hands.
In his email sent to Price on Monday, Moody says the contractor is apparently the first Livingston Parish citizen to ever complain about the failure to follow the public meetings law, which the lawyer deemed “some technical violation.”
“No one could say that the numbers were left off so the council could pull a fast one and discuss and pass something that no one knew about,” Moody wrote. “Are you taking that position? If so I suppose you could file a suit to challenge the action that was taken. The federal court has already signed and approved the dismissal in one of the suits. I suspect that the judgment has been signed in the state court matters, too. It will be very hard to undo this action on the basis of some technical violation of the [public meetings] law.”
Nevertheless, Moody indicated he planned to notify Perrilloux of Price’s concerns and “will endeavor to make sure that we list numbers on all future agendas.” Efforts to reach Perrilloux prior to deadline were unsuccessful.
—Penny Font
