PLAQUEMINE — An audit that examined the City of Plaquemine’s finances found Mayor Edwin “Ed” Reeves Jr. allegedly broke the city charter when he appointed a lawyer to be city attorney without the city council’s approval.
The legal fight of whether or not the mayor had the power to appoint an attorney despite repeated city council vetoes cost taxpayers at least $229,000. The firm Baxley and Associates, LLC conducted the audit and submitted their findings in April 2024. UWK obtained the results through a records request.
“Legal fees and attorney fees paid to the counsel for litigation appointed by the Mayor were not specifically approved by the Selectmen/Women as per the minutes dated May 10, 2022 – February 14, 2023,” auditors wrote.
The audit found the city spent thousands on legal fees.
“…Counsel appointed by the Mayor had been paid approximately $200,000 to date,” according to an April 2024 litigation report cited in the audit. In addition, “payments of approximately $29,000 were made to the previous City Attorney (Louis Delahaye/Canova & Delegate) as appointed by the mayor.”
UWK found different payment totals when comparing City of Plaquemine records with the results of the audit. It is possible the $200,000 sum came from legal fees paid to all of the lawyers involved but the audit did not specify that.
The City of Plaquemine paid Delahaye $24,521.28, according to UWK’s review of pay stubs. The city paid him $1,167.68 a week for 40 hours of work from March 25, 2022 until February 24, 2023. The city paid Delahaye’s law firm an additional $58,587.25 in legal fees, according to the documents.
Read the audit and see Louis Delahaye’s pay as city attorney. The mayor put him in the role despite city council rejection.
Alesia Ardoin, an attorney representing Delahaye, said he was not paid $200,000.
“I think the amount in your email was incorrect and the auditors incorrect, but I meant to look a little bit more into that,” Ardoin said. “Our amounts were a lot less.”
Baxley and Associates, the firm that conducted the audit, did not return UWK‘s multiple requests for comment.
Laurie Berthelot, finance director for the city of Plaquemine, wrote in an email to UWK that they would not release the litigation report because it has information on unspecified “current ongoing litigation” that they would not answer questions about.
‘You can’t just take tax dollars and do what you want to do with it’
The city gave thousands to Louis Delahaye, of the law firm Canova & Delahaye, according to the audit. Reeves chose Delahaye to represent him in a lawsuit and paid Delahaye $29,000 in other payments.
The city council did not approve the hiring of Delahaye, but the mayor pushed forward anyway. The city council then sued the mayor to uphold their votes and assert their role in approving or rejecting a mayoral pick for city attorney.
Tonya S. Lurry, a judge within the 18th judicial district court, ruled in November 2022 that the mayor acted outside of the city’s charter when he hired Delahaye.
“It is further adjudicated and ordered that Mayor Edwin Reeves unilateral appointment of Louis “Lou” Delahaye as City Attorney of the City of Plaquemine, in violation of Sections 6 and Section 13 paragraph 7 of the Charter of the City of Plaquemine is declared null and void and without full force and effect of law,” Judge Lurry wrote in her ruling.
Read the decision from Judge Tonya Lurry about the Plaquemine city attorney lawsuit.
Councilwoman Natasha Johnson said she is fighting for an accounting of this spending as a part of her oath when she took office.
“It was not right,” Johnson said. “You can’t just take tax dollars and do what you want to do with it. I can’t just take tax dollars and do what I just want to do with it. I am charged for being a good steward over the money, and this has been a battle that we have been dealing with for quite some time.”
‘He was lawfully engaged’
Alesia Ardoin, an attorney representing Delahaye, said in a phone call with UWK that Delahaye was rightfully hired by the City of Plaquemine and was paid for his legal services.
“We still maintain and have always been confident in our position that he was lawfully engaged by the city to represent the city,” Ardoin said.
Mayor Ed Reeves wrote in an email to UWK that he found justifications for his actions in the city charter.
“I have an attorney general[‘s] opinion dated March 8, 2022 that specifically gave me permission to hire Lou Delahaye as Plaquemine’s City Attorney,” Reeves wrote. “As a result, he was paid fairly for his services the same way we paid Phil Canova as City Attorney for the past 36 years prior to his retirement. As a result of a lawsuit against me and the City of Plaquemine, the City of Plaquemine’s charter dated March 8, 1878 (Sections 5 and 21) is clear that I had the right to hire attorney’s to defend and protect myself and the City of Plaquemine.”
Lurry wrote in her ruling that Reeves did not have that authority and his actions were “therefore declared inoperative and without full force and effect of law.”
The attorney general’s opinion Reeves referred to said the mayor could hire whoever they wanted if the city attorney is a municipal employee and not a department head. That debate was the core of the lawsuit that cost Plaquemine thousands of dollars.
Debate over who is a department head
The city council members have approval power for certain jobs, according to the city’s charter.
“…The appointment, hiring, termination and removal of the department heads, supervisors, and any assistant supervisors shall be subject to approval by the board of selectmen,” per section 2-64 of the charter.
The attorney general’s office wrote in a memo that the mayor has final say on all employees except for the department heads. Jeffrey Wale, assistant attorney general, wrote he could not determine whether the city attorney ran their own department and left that up to Plaquemine.
“…If the city attorney is a department head, supervisor, or assistant supervisor, then the Mayor’s hiring, termination, or removal is subject to approval by the Board of Selectman under the ordinance,” Wale wrote. “This office declines to make a factual determination on whether the city attorney is a municipal employee, department head, supervisor, or assistant supervisor.”
Read the memo from the attorney general’s office about the Plaquemine city attorney situation.
The city council passed a resolution in 2022 to establish and later reaffirmed the city attorney as the head of Plaquemine’s legal department, thus giving them jurisdiction of who runs it.
The resolution said “the position of City Attorney, has always been considered and treated as the head of the legal department of the City,” and ”every one of the past five City Attorney’s appointment[s] were required to be confirmed and approved by a vote of the Board of Selectmen.”
Ardoin said Delahaye did not run any department as city attorney.
“There’s not a legal department that he is the head of,” she said. “There’s no department that he’s the head of. He is not a department head.”
Ardoin said Delahaye stopped trying to be the city attorney in order to stop the litigation but did not agree with any rulings.
“We believe the judgment was incorrectly decided, but the best interest of the city was not to continue to litigate this matter, and he no longer serves in the position,” Ardoin said.
The audit offered a single recommendation.
“The City of Plaquemine should follow the Charter of the City and seek appropriate approval as deemed necessary by the Charter,” the auditors wrote.
Johnson said the audit’s recommendation did not go far enough.
“So you found him in error of taking this money and having this money disbursed at his discretion, but the recommendation only recommends to follow the charter, and that’s the problem that we have,” Johnson said. “The recommendation should have stated that he needed to pay this money back. He needed to pay fines.”
Johnson said she wants further independent scrutiny from outside of Plaquemine.
“We are in the process of asking the Louisiana legislative auditors to render down a fair recommendation,” she said. “Because that’s these people’s tax dollars just gone, gone to whatever he wanted them to go to. That is against the law.”
READ THROUGH THE FULL RESPONSE FROM MANAGEMENT:
“On April 22, 1997, the Board of Selectmen/Women passed Ordinance 100, to amend and reenact
section 2-64 and abolish sections 2-65 through 70 of the Code of Ordinances. Ordinance100 gave
the Mayor the power to hire, terminate and remove municipal employees. Additionally, Ordinance
100 also gave the Mayor the power to hire, terminate and remove municipal department heads,
supervisors and any assistant supervisors which must be approved by the Board of
Selectmen/Women. The Mayor obtained AG Opinion 22-0008 which stated he did have the right to
hire municipal employees. Based upon the AG opinion, under advice of counsel, and the fact that
the city attorney was an IRS W-2 employee since the late 1970’s or the early 1980’s, the mayor
hired a city attorney as a municipal employee pursuant to Ordinance 2-64. The Board of
Selectmen/Women filed a lawsuit against the City of Plaquemine and the Mayor as a result of this
Decision.
The Mayor retained legal counsel on behalf of the City of Plaquemine and in his capacity as the
elected Mayor of the City of Plaquemine, all based on the March 8, 1878, Town and now City
Charter, Sections 5 and 21. The City Council sued the City and the Mayor. The Charter, Sections 5
and 21 provided the legal basis for the Mayor to defend the City of Plaquemine and himself. The
Mayor and the City were not required to seek permission from the same City Council that sued
them to hire attorneys to defend the suit. While fees paid for legal counsel were not specifically
approved, they were approved and ratified by the Board with the approval of the amended 2021-
2022 fiscal budget on a vote of 5 to 1. A detailed. line-item amendment to legal expenses of
$175,000 for the lawsuit was presented at the September 27, 2022 Committee Meeting and the
October 25, 2022 Special Meeting. Additionally, payment of accounts payable invoices does not
require Board approval.
At the May 9, 2023, regular meeting of the Mayor and Board of Selectmen/Women, Ordinance 100
of 1997 was repealed and Section 2-64 of the Code of Ordinances amended, giving the Mayor the
power to hire, terminate and remove municipal employees as originally intended in 1997.
Additionally, Ordinance 426 was adopted clarifying the procedure for appointing/hiring a City
Attorney.
Going forward, the City Clerk will work with the City Attorney to ensure all ordinances and/or charter
amendments comply with LA R.S. 33:1181 (Preparation, publication, approval and recording of amendments).”
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