Lafayette’s City Council has decided to stop it's investigation of the Guillory administration in favor of a duplicate investigation underway by the Louisiana Legislative Auditor's Office.
Last fall, the City Council voted to hire a Baton Rouge firm to investigate the Guillory administration's drainage projects - which have embroiled the city and parish in a number of lawsuits - as well as the Mayor-President's use of city-parish funds or resources. To read about the investigation, click here and here.
At Tuesday's City Council meeting, Council Chair Glenn Lazard announced that an invoice from that firm, Faulk and Winkler, would probably the last "for now."
"As everyone knows by now, the Legislative Auditor has initiated an investigation that's basically on a parallel track and addresses most of the same issues that we had retained the services of Faulk and Winkler to investigate," Lazard said. "So, we didn't see the need to continue with the services of Faulk and Winkler when the Legislative Auditor's Office is basically doing the same thing."
Of the $100,000 the council set aside to fund the investigation, about $49,500 has been spent, Lazard said.
"A lot of people have been inquiring about findings and what have you, because we know that initially we were told by Faulk and Winkler that they were going to try to have a preliminary report ready for us by the end of January," Lazard said. "But this is really a very complex matter, so Faulk and Winkler will not be issuing any reports of any findings of what they have, all of their information has been turned over to the Legislative Auditor's Office."
Once the Legislative Auditor's Office completes their investigation "in their own time," findings will be released as the office usually does, Lazard said.
"So that's the status of that. I really wish I could provide more information, but because this matter is still under investigation it is not appropriate to do so at this time," Lazard said.
If you'd like to hear Lazard's comments for yourself, you can watch below. His remarks about this begin about one hour and 35 minutes into the playback:
