President's request for ethics review pulled; council rejects company's bid for remapping work

FRANKLIN — Disputes old and new flared up at Wednesday’s St. Mary Parish Council meeting, nearly resulting in the parish president being escorted from the council chamber by a sheriff’s deputy.
When the dust settled, Parish President David Hanagriff was allowed to remain. But Hanagriff wasn’t allowed to ask the council to seek an Ethics Board ruling involving Councilman James Bennett’s employment by Morgan City Mayor Lee Dragna's company. And the council voted down a move to hire a demographer for redistricting in a separate but equally heated transaction.
Hanagriff’s attempt to seek the Ethics Board ruling grew out of the long-standing debate over the consolidation of the drainage districts serving Morgan City and Amelia. The consolidation, which Hanagriff sought as an efficiency and cost-saving move, did not sit well with Dragna, who chaired the Morgan City drainage district board before his election as mayor a year ago.
At last week’s Parish Council meeting, Bennett talked about seeking Ethics Board and state attorney general investigations into what he said were delays by the consolidated Drainage District No. 2A board in responding to a public records request.
Bennett told The Review that he believes the district isn’t fulfilling its obligation to spend Morgan City tax revenue on Morgan City work and to do the same for Amelia.
For Wednesday’s meeting, Hanagriff had asked to be placed on the agenda to get council support for an Ethics Board inquiry into Bennett’s employment by Dragna’s LAD Services Inc.
After the meeting, Hanagriff pointed to state financial disclosure records in which Bennett described his job at LAD Services Inc. as “personal assistant to the owner and the mayor.”
That, Hanagriff said, represents a conflict.
“If he’s being paid by Lee Dragna of LAD, how can he be objective on issues involving Morgan City? ...” Hanagriff said. “All I’m asking for is transparency.
“How objective can you be when you’re a paid assistant to the mayor?”
Also after the meeting, Bennett said he filed the disclosure paperwork shortly before Dragna’s election, when he thought he would fill the assistant’s role.
“That was my original job description,” Bennett said.
But that didn’t happen, Bennett said.
He said he has never been paid a salary by the Morgan City government and that his role at LAD for more than two years has been as a truck driver working on a contract basis for LAD.
Bennett said he receives 1099 tax forms from LAD at the end of each year, not the W-2s that go to traditional employees.
After he sought advice from the Ethics Board, his wife filed an amended disclosure Monday, Bennett said.
During the meeting, council Chairman Dean Adams said he had Hanagriff’s item about an Ethics Board ruling on Bennett removed from the agenda after consulting with legal counsel Eric Duplantis.
“This is the council’s agenda, not the administration’s agenda,” Adams said.
Demographer
dilemma
The agenda for Wednesday also included council deliberation on a proposal to hire Mike Hefner’s Geographic & Demographic Services for the council redistricting based on the 2020 Census.
Before the council could vote, a competitor, Cedric Floyd of Data Center in Kenner, objected. Floyd had also asked the council for the redistricting work.
Floyd said he has 40 years of experience as a demographer and has performed redistricting work in St. Mary, for the School Board and the Parish Council itself.
He also said that in 2000, a plan from Hefner would have eliminated one of the two council districts with African American majorities. Floyd’s company developed a plan that maintained the two black-majority districts and was approved by the U.S. Department of Justice.
Another objection came from Bennett, who pointed to a story from The Daily Advertiser in Lafayette Parish, in which the city-parish government sued Hefner over district and precinct maps prepared by his company, which is based there.
At issue was a charter amendment backing away from the 1996 Lafayette city-parish consolidation by reinstituting separate city and parish councils. The precincts and districts listed as part of the ballot measure were inaccurate, leading to a controversial post-election ordinance to correct the errors.
Attempts to reach Hefner Wednesday night were unsuccessful. But in a January 2020 story, the Advocate quoted Hefner as saying he performed work on the charter measure for free and that the precinct and district descriptions attached to the charter proposition were changed without his knowledge or participation.
Hanagriff asked for the floor and began to speak in defense of Hefner, telling Floyd he thought it was unfair to criticize Hefner’s work when Hefner wasn’t present.
Chairman Adams used the gavel to try to cut Hanagriff off, but the parish president continued to speak. Adams banged the gavel twice more.
When Hanagriff kept talking, Adams asked the sheriff’s deputy who is on duty at council meetings to escort Hanagriff out, again citing advice from Duplantis.
Minutes later, as the deputy stood a few feet away from Hanagriff, Duplantis said that because Hanagriff had calmed down, the deputy escort wouldn’t be necessary.
Councilman Craig Mathews asked Floyd whether he had been involved in a physical altercation with former Councilman Paul Naquin in 2000.
Floyd replied that after a redistricting deliberation, Naquin came down from the council table to the audience to ask why Floyd was at the meeting.
“I pushed him back from off of me,” Floyd said.
The council voted 5-4 against hiring Hefner’s company for the redistricting.