It’s been a tough few years for the town of Jeanerette as local government has continuously tried to get its finances in order.

At government meetings alone, there has been a good deal of shouting and accusations from frustrated Jeanerette residents over the years about the problems that seem to stem from an inability to maintain financial records and reconcile bank statements. 

All of that culminated in a hearing Wednesday morning, where a 16th Judicial District judge appointed a state-recommended fiscal administrator to fix those problems.

There’s been a divide between Jeanerette’s Board of Aldermen and Mayor Aprill Foulcard about the issue. The resolution consenting to fiscal administration that the board voted on last week made clear that the board was speaking for themselves when they said that fiscal administration was in the best interests of Jeanerette. 

“Jeanerette’s been in the spotlight so long, we hope that we can begin to heal,” Alderman Clarence Clark said after the hearing. “Mr. Greer is a nice man, he knows what he’s doing, the board is going to support him.”

Foulcard, on the other hand, has said that Jeanerette finances are actually in pretty good shape, and getting the audits to Baton Rouge has been the only problem Jeanerette is having. When Foulcard spoke in Baton Rouge to the Louisiana Legislative Auditor’s Fiscal Review Committee in January, she made clear that the auditor’s who were engaged were the ones who couldn’t deliver in the timeline that was agreed upon. 

We’ll have to wait and see what David Greer, the court appointed fiscal administrator, has to say about that once he gets settled into his new position. Greer is nearing completion on a successful run as fiscal administrator in the town of St. Joseph, where Gov. John Bel Edwards held a ribbon cutting on the town’s water plant that was created under Greer’s supervision.

While Greer is serving in the role, there won’t be a check signed or expenditure made without his signed authorization. The consent judgement that was made at the hearing lays out that not following Greer’s authority would be synonymous with contempt of court.  

I doubt that will be a problem, though. If Greer can produce the same results as he did in St. Joseph, Jeanerette residents might even be open to a ribbon cutting for when the missing audits that started all of this finally get completed. 

 

COREY VAUGHN is the senior staff writer for The Daily Iberian.