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Patrick Hebert was administered the oath of office as St. Mary Parish Councilman for Dist. 6. Hebert, who ran unopposed, takes the seat of Casey Crappell, who was the interim council when former seat-holder Gabriel Beadle ran for and won the Dist. 10 at-large seat. The oath was administered by 16th Judicial District Court Judge Anthony Thibodeaux, with Hebert's family in attenance.

An ordinance that would require all St. Mary Parish Council and other parish bodies to send requests for proposals for accounting services drew heavy criticism from CPA firms Wednesday.
Councilman Gabriel Beadle, who moved the ordinance through the parish charter’s introduction and adoption process, tabled it.
Tim Matte, Pitts & Matte CPAs, said during an hour-and-a-half public hearing that he came to defend his firm’s profession.
Matte said this wasn’t the first time similar ordinances were considered, including one about a year ago that included all professional services, but was pared to only include accounting services.
“I’m here today to ask for fairness,” he said. “To treat all professionals, across the board, in a fair and similar manner. To single out CPAs is just not fair.”
He said he understands the move by Beadle is aimed at saving money. He said CPAs and accounts are not “where that would be.”
“It’s another level of regulation on a business that is already highly regulated,” Matte said. “We have national and state standards that we have to meet, so much so that there’s a smaller number of firms in St. Mary Parish practicing governmental auditing and accounting today than there used to be.”
He noted that with current consolidation efforts, having CPAs that have been dealing with those sub-entities of parish government would be beneficial rather than having a turnover.
The ordinance would also invite outside-the-parish competition, Matte noted.
Overruns of 10 percent or more would require new RFPs, which Matte said could become expensive and cumbersome.
Chief Administration Officer Henry “Bo” Lagrange said the ordinance exempts public bodies whose costs for auditing and accounting is less than $7,500 per year.
Councilman Kevin Voisin, noting that RFPs may be beyond the scope of members of some small boards and commissions, said to LaGrange, “Who’s going to do these RFPs? I’d hate for this to fall on you.”
Councilman Craig Mathews said there are upcoming additional requirements for audits from the state level. LaGrange said there would be “agreed upon procedures” when RFPs and cost requests are issued.
Ben Adams, a member of the Patterson Airport Advisory Committee and the Atchafalaya Golf Course Advisory Committee, said, “The last time you voted on an RFP was the golf course. That vote was 11 for. I have no issues with that RFP. You have to look at numbers…I can’t imagine that you can’t vote 11-0 for the audit. RPD only means you can pick whoever you want, whoever you think is best suited.”
Guy Pitts, Pitts & Matte, also pointed out many difficulties the ordinance would allegedly place on public boards. He also noted that board members aren’t experts, with only a few having any expertise in such financial matters and requirements. Pitts said the state legislative auditor receives all audit information at local levels.
“Good accounting and good auditing ain’t cheap, bad accounting and auditing is really, really going to cost you,” Pitts said.
Gerald Thibodeaux, CPA, pointed out several “technical difficulties” with the ordinance and the burdens it would place both on forms and public bodies, some with separate sets of standards. “I can’t tell you how much this is going to cost,” he said. “It’s like telling me to build you a box, but you don’t give me the dimensions of the box.”
Thibodeaux said the ordinance is “a slap in the face” to board members and commissioners. “We deal with them every day,” he said. “They work real, real hard trying to do things right. To me, you’re regulating them by saying you’re not doing the right thing, because, evidently, we’re robbing the parish, it seems to me.”
He urged the council to collaborate with CPAs working for the parish for a better understanding of their work.
Alan Taylor, CPA, said this is his third time facing such a move. “We’re not against competition,” he said. “We’re based on free enterprise. It’s good business, trying to lead people and help people make the best use of their limited funds. Where we stand with this is that we, as a profession, are being singled out, again. Twice before this ordinance has been defeated.”
Taylor said some council members or others may have problems with accountants, but, “What I see is a regulation being laid out for a single profession for no other reason than to try to say that you’re doing something.”
Councilman Craig Mathews said he’s spoken with some chairmen of public boards and the feedback has been, “We’re a volunteer board, we don’t get paid to do this, the work that we’re doing is always cumbersome enough, and we’re not interested in taking on additional responsibilities, as well as the fact that there is some concern about the additional costs, and the risk of compromising the efficiency they’re seeing.”
He said the administration should seek more input from the council when fashioning its annual budget, to help control costs.
Beadle said from the perspective of his own business, he keeps track of all expenses involved in its operation. “As a public official, we’re the same,” he said. “We need to look at every cent, every dollar of every taxpayers hard-earned money. We decide on how that money is spent, and the best way is to get RFPs on everything…let’s get the prices, let’s look at the prices, and get a just price for a service or product that we need.”
He said he understands the stance of the CPAs, but that there will be more RFPs for all parish professional services. He said the golf course RFP ordinance was a matter of taking the burden off the commission and into the council’s hands.
“Our job is to make sure everything is accounted for perfectly,” Beadle said. “So we can actually see how much things cost. That’s all I’m asking, is to see the prices before we make a decision on something that is every expensive to us.”
Beadle said, “We (the council) want to continue kicking the can down the road and not worry about it. Out of sight, out of mind. And that’s not the case. Maybe in your household you get the most expensive (things) but in my household and my business I look at everything.”
He suggested amendments to the ordinance are possible to smooth out some objections.
Councilman Patrick Hebert said he believes the ordinance could be corrected by simply removing the boards and commissions from the price of services cap. “I truly believe we need to look at it,” he said, also noting that some auditors he spoke to said they are only charging two or three thousand dollars a year, and “don’t want to have to deal with this.”
Councilman Glen Hidalgo said the RFP ordinance for the golf course it was intended to give the administration the authority to seek RFPs. “That’s for one entity, an entity since its inception has been losing money,” he said. “We’re not looking to replace the board, but to put somebody in place to help the board.”
When the ordinance was taken up, Beadle moved to table, and the council approved 6-5.

MIDLAND, Texas (AP) — Eddy Lozoya never failed a drug test in the three years he hauled water and sand across the West Texas oil patch, even though he used at least $200 a day in cocaine to keep his eyes open on brutally long days behind the wheel of a Kenworth T600 semi-truck.

The Houston Chronicle reports Lozoya, like his fellow truckers, found ways to beat the tests and keep driving. Earning six-figure salaries, they consumed cocktails of drugs to push themselves to their physical limits on trips between scattered drilling sites that could last 36 to 48
consecutive hours. They would drive their 35-ton vehicles in tight, single-file formations, blowing air horns when the sleepiest among them began drifting off the road.

“We always had cocaine,” he said.

Lozoya, a recovering addict at 23, is among the thousands of oil field workers who have succumbed to the mix of money, boredom and drugs that often accompanies energy booms. Drillers of all sizes have poured billions of dollars into the prolific Permian Basin this year, rebuilding operations after a two-year oil bust that devastated the region. But for all the economic benefits of the industry’s high-paying jobs, the oil rush again is bankrolling an expanding market for illegal drugs.

Law enforcement officials say drug trafficking, drug abuse and drug-related crimes have spiked in recent years, evidence that energy’s boom-and-bust cycles have had enormous social consequences in West Texas. Inside a small Nazarene church in Midland, converted a decade ago into a drug and alcohol addiction treatment center, the number of people seeking help is on track to more than double from last year.

Some 1,200 people have come through the doors of the Palmer Drug Abuse Program in the first six months of the year, one in five of them under 18.

“We’re losing a generation of children to drugs and alcohol,” said Michele Savage, the longtime director of the program.

Lozoya knows drugs of all kinds are easy to find here. After an injury left him unable to drive commercial trucks, he found another lucrative trucking route, this time transporting narcotic pain medications and other drugs from his home state of California to West Texas. Here, he said, dealers can sell cocaine, marijuana and opioids for two or three times the price in neighboring states because of the remote location and the river of money flowing from the oil patch.

“There’s a lot of profit to be made out here because it’s in such high demand,” he said. “People want it here, and they’ll pay for it.”

While the U.S. opioid epidemic has captured national attention, the drug of choice in West Texas is methamphetamine, or crystal meth, a powerful stimulant oil field workers use to cope with long hours in the Texas heat, and one that is increasingly supplied through Mexican drug cartels, according to law enforcement officials. An analysis of data from the Texas Department of Public Safety and the Houston oil field services company Baker Hughes found a strong correlation between the rise of drilling activity and the number of crystal meth seizures in the area surrounding the Permian Basin. Between 2009 and 2016, as oil companies dispatched more rigs into West Texas, the number of meth seizures rose sharply.

The rig count’s average of 103 in 2009 increased more than fivefold by 2014, the peak of the oil boom. In the same period, Texas state troopers saw meth seizures jump from 3 to 73, a 4,000 percent increase in the dozens of counties encompassing the Permian Basin.
CRS Diagnostic Service, a drug-testing company in Odessa, found the number of local workers who tested positive for methamphetamine in the first half of this year was more than three times higher than in the first half of 2009, shortly before the so-called shale oil revolution got underway.

“Meth is booming,” said Craig Smith, a senior vice president at the company.

For the oil industry, increased drug abuse in West Texas has exacerbated the struggle to find workers as they rebuild labor forces after widespread layoffs during the recent downturn. Patterson-UTI Energy, a Houston drilling and hydraulic fracturing contractor, has hired 4,000 people this year to fill jobs on rigs and fracking fleets, but more job applicants have failed drug tests this year than in 2014, said Diana Dotolo, the company’s vice president of human resources.

The Houston firm recruits workers from around the United States, but for local companies without a nationwide reach, the problem is far worse. Dynamic Oilfield Services, an oil-equipment company based in Corpus Christi, has seen roughly half of its job applicants from West Texas fail drug tests this year, and most of its employees in the region are hired from other areas.

Decades ago, biker gangs made meth from phenyl-2-pronopol, which was outlawed in the United States in the 1980s. Now, Mexican drug cartels dominate the commerce of meth, often transporting the substance in liquid form across the U.S.-Mexico border, stored in fake gasoline tanks, iced tea bottles or windshield washer fluid reservoirs, law enforcement officials said.

They take it to stash houses in places like Phoenix and Dallas before it reaches high-demand markets in West Texas, said Will Glaspy, special agent in charge of the Drug Enforcement Administration’s El Paso division.

“Oil field workers are big consumers of methamphetamine,” Glaspy said. “The Mexican cartels are the biggest sources of supply.”

Across the West Texas and New Mexico counties that encompass the Permian Basin, the DEA has seized 2,200 pounds of meth since October 2015, more than triple the amount confiscated in between October 2011 and September 2013. Last year, the agency seized 66 pounds of methamphetamine in the Midland area, compared with 11 pounds in 2012.

“When the oil price is up, there’s more methamphetamine in our entire community,” said Steve Thomason, executive director at the Springboard Center, an alcohol and drug treatment facility in Midland. It’s not uncommon, he said, to see a young oil field worker “roll up to outpatient treatment in a Corvette.”

In the first six months of this year, more than 1,000 people working or applying for jobs in the oil-producing business failed urine-based drug tests, double the pace of failures last year, according to Houston-based DISA Global Solutions, the largest provider of drug-testing policies to U.S. oil producers. The number of industry workers failing hair follicle tests, which are more effective in detecting long-term drug use, jumped to more than 4,600 over the past 18 months, tripling the number in the two years from 2009 to 2010; the number of people testing positive for methamphetamine jumped five times.

Large oil companies and oil field contractors said they have adopted tougher drug-testing policies in recent years. Houston oil producer Apache Corp., for example, conducts random, pre-employment, post-accident, reasonable-suspicion and random drug tests. If an employee or contractor fails a test, he could face termination.

“We are vigilant about ensuring a drug-free culture,” said Castlen Kennedy, a spokeswoman at Apache.

But substance abuse specialists believe drug-test failure figures grossly underestimate the number of oil field workers who abuse drugs. Traces of methamphetamine, for example, linger in a person’s system for only few days, making it harder to catch meth abusers. Several recovering drug addicts said managers in the oil patch tip off crews to a random drug test several days before it takes place, some to dodge fines by regulators, others to avoid having to hire new workers.

“There’s a million and one ways to beat the drug tests,” said Patrice Owens, director of the Greenhouse Outpatient Center, an Arlington addiction treatment facility. “If people want to use drugs, there’s always a way.”

Even if they get caught using drugs, oil field workers often find their way back to the oil patch. For the seven years Cody Watson worked as an oil field electrician, using meth and cocaine as he worked nonstop for several days at a time when storms knocked out rig powerlines, it wasn’t hard to pass drug tests because managers gave him and his crew plenty of advanced warning.

Once, after Watson smashed his finger with a pipe, a drilling company fired him when he came up positive in a post-accident drug test. He drove 18 hours across Texas for a job interview with another company, purging his system with water to erase any trace of drugs. He passed the pre-employment drug test.

“During the boom times, I could leave my job and there’d be plenty of places to work,” said Watson, now a 41-year-old recovering addict. “A lot of these guys hop from one rig to another. It’s a never-ending cycle.”

Not long ago, drug use on a drilling rig was out in the open, said Kevin Tyson, a 55-year-old recovering addict. He recalled fellow rig workers tying a syringe filled with meth to a machine that pulls pipe out of the earth, then running it up to the derrick hand 90 feet above the rig floor, where the man took a hit.

Meth kept Tyson working and partying for years. They’d go on benders for days and didn’t think much of it. Once, he missed a pipe he was supposed to catch. It swung right past him across the rig floor. Another guy smashed a coworker’s hand with a sledgehammer. Some would die in oil field accidents, car wrecks or from overdoses. “Oh well,” he said, “just keep going.”

Doctors told him he weighed 70-something pounds when he arrived at a hospital in Lubbock, where he spent a month in an intensive care unit. He has the paperwork, but he still doesn’t know if that is true. One doctor said if he used meth again, he would die. He thought about that for a long time. Four months after his release, he got bored, called his buddy and started shooting meth again.

“I knew I was going to die,” said Tyson, who had worked in oil patch for 16 years before he began his recovery in November 2001, at age 39. “But I just figured, let’s have a good hard run.”

The rules have changed since Tyson began his career, as companies impose stricter testing regimens. But the tough-guy culture still drives roustabouts, mechanics, truckers and rig hands to work long hours under grueling conditions and find ways to beat the tests. And sometimes, it drives them to the breaking point.

In mid-April, around 2 a.m., Robert Orosco Jr. put a gun in his mouth and pulled the trigger. The 34-year-old had lost everything to his relapse with Xanax, a highly addictive medication for anxiety, and cocaine.

The drugs were so readily available, he could have them delivered. His wife had left him. He lost his house. He lost his job as an oil-equipment salesman. In every scenario he played out in his head, his six children were better off without him.

The gun didn’t fire.

Orosco checked himself in to a treatment facility the next day.

Today, a few months sober, Orosco is building a new company that offers drone imaging to oil companies to identify leaks and assemble 3D maps of the earth’s surface.

“The boom brings the good and the bad,” Orosco said. “There’s so much here.”

Lozoya, the former oil field trucker, in June found a job at a local department store selling women’s shoes for $13 an hour, plus commission. He remembers his days as a 19-year old earning paychecks that were five times larger than the average American his age and how he blew it all to feed a habit that eventually cost $500 to $1,000 a day.

He also remembers a downward spiral that cost him his job and led him to steal RVs, dirt bikes and even copper from the oil field.

Several times, he nearly overdosed, and ultimately he sought help at a treatment center after his girlfriend and others persuaded him to get clean.

Today, he likes getting dressed up for work, with a suit, tie and well-groomed hair. He hopes to pursue a college degree and, perhaps one day, have his own clothing brand. And, for at least the next few months, he plans to heed the advice his counselors gave him: Don’t go back to the oil patch.

“I don’t see myself being able to work 100 hours a week sober,” he said. “The oil field is tough.”
___
Information from: Houston Chronicle, http://www.houstonchronicle.com

Children’s Day 2016 King and Queen Jalen Butler and Audrey Cheramie will be selecting the new royalty for 2017 in a random drawing Sunday.
Area children are invited to participate in the Louisiana Shrimp and Petroleum Festival’s Children’s Day King and Queen Event being held at the Spray Park in Bayou Vista. The event will be held from 3:30-5:30 p.m. Sunday.
Entry forms may be filled out at the Spray Park. There is no entry fee.
All children are welcome to attend the party, however only children ages 8 to 12 will be eligible to enter the drawing that selects the new king and queen.
The new royalty will be presented at the adult Royal Coronation on Aug. 26 at the Morgan City Municipal Audit-orium.
The 2017 Children’s Day King and Queen will reign over the Children’s Day Activities that begin at 9 a.m. on Sept. 2 in Lawrence Park in Morgan City. Children are encouraged to participate in a variety of field games, races and more.
The Children’s Day Mini Street Parade will start at 11 a.m. Sept. 2 at First Street and Lawrence Park.
All children who participate and are present at the drawing Sunday will be eligible to ride on a float in the Louisiana Shrimp and Petroleum Festival Parade at 3 p.m. on Sept 3 in downtown Morgan City.
Children are also invited to attend the opening ceremonies of the Festival at 5 p.m. Aug. 31 in front of Mitchell Brothers Carnival on Second Street in Morgan City.
For more information, contact the festival office at 985-385-0703.