[StBernard] Former St. Bernard President Junior Rodriguez to testify before grand jury

[Westley Annis]

Former St. Bernard President Junior Rodriguez to testify before grand jury
by Chris Kirkham, The Times-Picayune 
Monday November 10, 2008, 10:00 PM
Former St. Bernard Parish President Henry "Junior" Rodriguez on Monday was
subpoenaed to appear before a federal grand jury Thursday morning.

He said he did not know exactly what he was called in to discuss; however
Rodriguez's successor, Craig Taffaro, said last week that he had met with
the FBI twice this year to discuss mounting landfill costs billed to the
parish by SDT Waste & Debris.

"I don't know what the details are; I'm assuming they're going to ask me
some questions, " Rodriguez said Monday. "They don't tell you what it's
about. It just said when I need to appear."

Torres repeated on Monday that neither he nor anyone at SDT has been
contacted by the FBI, by phone or in writing. Taffaro said Monday that he
has not been subpoenaed.

Rodriguez was the parish president who oversaw a verbal agreement made with
Sidney Torres IV, SDT's owner, to take over a parish-owned garbage transfer
facility on Paris Road.

The waste-hauling company could bring trash and debris to the site from
other parishes in exchange for allowing St. Bernard residents and businesses
to dump debris into trash bins at the site. The parish pays SDT a $20
monthly fee for each household from which the company collects garbage, as
well as disposal costs at the landfill.

The amount of trash disposal costs billed to the parish at River Birch
Landfill on the West Bank began to rise sharply in mid-2007 -- an average of
$40,000 a month -- after SDT took over the transfer site.

The largest jumps came when Rodriguez was parish president, from $45,000 in
June 2007 to nearly $300,000 by the end of the year.

When Taffaro assumed office in January, he received a letter from River
Birch alerting him to the rising costs.

Rodriguez said Monday that he was unaware of the cost increases, but said
that restrictions placed on parish spending by the council in late 2007
would have slowed his ability to check finances.

"Everything had to go through the finance committee; everything had to go
through the council, " Rodriguez said. "If there was any increase at that
time -- a significant increase -- they should have detected it, not me."

He also mentioned two contracts signed with SDT in mid-2007 to do debris
sweeps for the entire parish that would have generated more debris than
usual.

Torres has said the sharp increases came from new-construction debris
generated by parish residents. Much of the debris was simply thrown onto the
garbage pile at the site, Torres said, as residents and contractors brought
in trailers filled with drywall, wooden beams and concrete.

Because the debris was mixed with household trash, it then had to be
disposed of in a more restrictive landfill at a higher per-ton cost than if
it were construction debris alone. There are no scales at the transfer
station to weigh incoming trash and calculate bills for separate customers,
and until April the parish had no one regularly monitoring the facility.

Taffaro said last week that he had met with the FBI twice, once in March and
again in May, to discuss the parish's rising SDT bills. An FBI spokeswoman
could not confirm whether SDT was under investigation.