Ethics inquiry delays first meeting of new drainage board

East St. Mary has a newly consolidated drainage district. But the labor pains aren’t over yet.
The first board meeting for the new district, which the St. Mary Parish Council formed by combining the districts now serving Amelia and Morgan City, will be delayed because of an ethics challenge involving one of the newly appointed board members, President David Hanagriff told the Parish Council on Wednesday.
That happened one day after Lee Dragna, who chairs the board of the district that has served Morgan City and Siracusa, resigned that post at a Tuesday meeting after registering displeasure with the consolidation process at recent public meetings.
The inquiry to the State Ethics Board was instituted by Parish Council Chairman Dean Adams of Morgan City, who represents At-Large District 11.
In a phone interview Thursday, Adams said the ethics inquiry involves Tim Tregle. He was appointed to the newly consolidated district’s board by the council May 29 along with Leroy Trim, Larry Aucoin, Charlie Solar Jr. and Hanko Hoffpauir
The council had already created the new district with an ordinance consolidating gravity drainage districts No. 2, in the Morgan City area, and No. 6, in Amelia, into a new District 2A.
Adams said Thursday that Tregle works for the parish government as a senior planning analyst whose duties include analyzing possible consolidation of districts.
“I just feel like [Tregle’s presence on a drainage district board] is a conflict of interest,” Adams said.
The Ethics Board is scheduled to take up the question July 2, he said.
The Daily Review was unable to contact Tregle for comment Thursday.
The new board had been scheduled to meet June 15. But Hanagriff told the Parish Council on Wednesday that the meeting will be postponed until July 6.
“My belief is Mr. Adams didn’t get accurate information,” Hanagriff said.
Hanagriff said he obtained a legal opinion that there was no conflict. He called moving ahead with the consolidation “critical.” He noted that Adams voted to seat Tregle and the other board members May 29.
“If the chairman truly believes it is unethical to the extent that he files an ethics opinion and he votes for it anyway, I see a problem with that,” Hanagriff said. “If there’s any ethical issue there, that’s it.”
Adams didn’t respond during the meeting. But on Thursday, he noted that the council voted on the nominated board members as a group.
“There are some good people there,” Adams said. “All the members were put up at one time. You either voted them all up or voted them all down.”
The consolidation of the two districts is part of an effort to simplify St. Mary’s patchwork of special-purpose and taxing districts. Hanagriff has also said combining the two districts would reduce administrative costs.
Officials are anticipating an election later this year on a consolidated property tax for the consolidated district. Hanagriff has said the money raised in the Amelia area would be used for work there, and the same is true of the Morgan City area now served by the current District 2.
Dragna’s resignation from the pre-consolidation District 2 board comes after he has questioned the consolidation process recently. At one point he said he wasn’t opposed to consolidation but was hoping for more time to complete projects before consolidation takes place.
Later, Dragna said he believed the consolidation ordinance wording would force District 2 to turn over money to the consolidated district even before it was ready to begin operation.
Dragna served on the current District 2 board for seven years. Along with Jean Paul Bourg, now the parish public works director, Ron Berry and Paul Cheramie, he took on leadership of a district in trouble in 2013.
Maintenance supervisor Peter Businelle had been accused of directing millions in district business to his own company and of making payments to the former board Chairman Carl Kraemer. Both men later pleaded guilty as part of plea agreements.
The district emerged from the scandal to put into a motion plans for an upgrade of Morgan City flood-control pumping stations and the district’s portion of an $18 million-$20 million levee improvement project that is nearing complete.