LPSS Board May Vote On Legal Fee Payments Wednesday

The Lafayette Parish School Board may decide Wednesday whether or not to approve a $200,000 budget revision that would be used to pay for the 2014-215 legal fees.

"The amount basically takes care of all of our general counsel needs, or should, through June," said Chief Financial Officer Billy Guidry at the Jan. 21 regular meeting. "It also takes care of our response to the lawsuit filed by the former superintendent (Pat Cooper). Should there be further action required to be taken, we would have to come back and request additional funds."

The issue was introduced two weeks ago and discussed briefly but the board will face a vote on the issue this Wednesday at the Lafayette Parish School System Administration Building during the meeting starting at 5:30 p.m.

If the $200,000 is adequate, and no additional legal fees are needed to be paid by the end of the school year, the 2015-16 total for legal fees would total near $375,000 which represents a more than 200 percent increase over the same fees over the previous school year. Guidry informed the board that approximately 75 percent of the $375,000 in fees would have been incurred from the Cooper lawsuit.

Even with the additional $200,000, should further action need to be taken with Cooper’s lawsuit, the board would have to once again be asked to offer more money to cover those future legal fees.