[StBernard] St. Bernard council asks Taffaro to stop comments on SDT audit

[Westley Annis]

St. Bernard council asks Taffaro to stop comments on SDT audit

05:59 PM CST on Saturday, January 31, 2009

Michael Luke / Eyewitness News 

ST. BERNARD, La. - A rift may be growing between the St. Bernard Parish
Council and Parish President Craig Taffaro over the investigation into the
parish's garbage contracts, after several council members sent a terse press
release telling the president to stop making public comments about the
contract. 

Four members of the council, Wayne J. Landry, George R. Cavignac, Kenny
Henderson and Fred Everhardt released a statement saying, the "council
wishes to strongly clarify that President Taffaro is not speaking for the
governing authority of St. Bernard Parish, nor is he authorized to given the
council's vote to launch the previously mentioned formal investigation." 

The statement follows a story earlier by Eyewitness News Reporter Lee Zurik
in which Taffaro questioned the audit of SDT Waste and Debris Services'
billing to the parish for garbage collection. 

An investigation by Eyewitness News found that SDT may have overbilled the
parish by as much $3 million, but a forensic audit cleared the garbage
hauler.   

Taffaro disagreed with the report after new discoveries that SDT may have
overbilled the parish for something else.  When Taffaro reviewed the cart
list -- the homes collected from by SDT and charged to the parish -- the
president found approximately 2,600 were duplicate or triplicate addresses.


Taffaro said the parish may have been overbilled $50,000 a month.  

Taffaro is withholding that money until he can investigate, and he said the
report by the forensic accountant is in question because of the discovery. 

"One of the things I've continued to ask is that when we look at this
information, does it pass the reasonable person's test?" Taffaro asked
previously. 

"There are still questions, when I show this to a reasonable person, that
they still have." 

Several auditors in the previous story questioned the effectiveness of the
audit.  

"Obviously there is not enough information to come up with a conclusion,"
Lee Yao, a Loyola University accounting professor and certified forensic
accountant, said previously. 

But the council disagrees. "During the investigation, the parish council
allowed the president to select the forensic auditor," reads the statement,
"and an eventual methodology was agreed upon by all parties given the
tremendous amount of incalculable information involved." 

The council, according to the release, said that a settlement between the
SDT and the parish, agreed upon by the council, had been reached, and they
advised Taffaro to accept SDT's offer of more than $200,000.