Years before , a compliance firm hired by the city-parish raised alarms that a taxpayer-funded Baton Rouge health and violence-prevention initiative was marred by conflicts of interest, duplicate payments, improperly used credit cards and no proof that the work was being done.
Leaders of the program and its companion nonprofit โ started under then-Mayor Sharon Weston Broome โ repeatedly disregarded concerns raised from 2021 to 2024 by CSRS, the company said in internal memos obtained by ถถา๕h.
โIn these cases, the concerns expressed by CSRS were ignored, and exceptions were frequently made by the Mayorโs Office, directing expedited payments to vendors,โ company employees wrote in October 2023.
ถถา๕h obtained 27 memos totaling 213 pages detailing risks reviewers identified in the handling of federal funds by the mayorโs office and Healthy BR, as the initiative was commonly known. It is unclear whether those memos were circulated outside the company.
The taxpayer-funded nonprofit engaged in practices raising โsignificant risks,โ including cutting CSRS out of the loop in drafting and processing contracts even though the firm was hired to participate in both tasks, the company noted in one memo.
A grand jury recently charged former Broome staffer taking kickbacks and bribes from taxpayer funds that flowed through Safe, Hopeful, Healthy and Healthy BR.
Contractor Veronica Mathis was also charged. ถถา๕h Attorney General Liz Murrillโs office says Mathis received nearly $750,000 through the nonprofit,
Investigators say Scott, who oversaw the nonprofit for Broomeโs office, helped give Mathis those funds and in turn received nearly $200,000. Sources close to the investigation say she used the money to pay off her mortgage and credit card debt.
Scott and Broome did not respond to requests for comment.
Broome, who was mayor from 2017 to 2024, has not been accused of any wrongdoing.
Conflict of interest
Several memos raised red flags about a conflict of interest, citing a crossover in program oversight involving mayorโs office personnel and the healthy city nonprofit.
CSRS said the employees tasked with scrutinizing Safe, Hopeful, Healthy contracts for the mayorโs office were also doing that work for the nonprofit. Contractor reimbursement requests were approved without the necessary scrutiny of proof of work, reasonable costs or compliance with grant rules, the memos say.
โThe lack of proper oversight and the approval of expenditures without due process exposes the City-Parish to significant risk and raises serious concerns regarding non-compliance with federal guidelines,โ CSRS officials wrote in October 2023.
Mayor-President Sharon Weston Broome speaks during a press conference about St. George at City Hall on Thursday, August 29, 2024.
Javier Gallegos
As the mayorโs office continued to make improper payments to contractors, the CSRS memos said, risks grew that the city-parish and nonprofit could both be hit with negative audit findings.
A 2022 independent audit conducted by the accounting firm Kolder Slaven & Company scrutinized $1 million in federal grants issued to the nonprofit that year and found more than half of the spending was noncompliant. That prompted an โadverse opinionโ โ the most severe audit response possible โ pointing to a lack of internal controls and unreliable financial statements.
Duplicated payments
CSRS also noted that the mayorโs office improperly used city-parish credit cards โ or โP-Cardsโ โ on an array of expenses in 2024, often with little to no documentation supporting the spending.
โMost of the transactions were for travel, including payments made for flights, limousine rides, rideshare and hotel accommodations,โ reviewers wrote. โOther charges include payments made to restaurants, food delivery service and event vendors. There is lack of evidence indicating public purpose.โ
The cards were funded by COVID-19-era federal grant dollars under the American Rescue Plan Act. CSRS stated concerns that many of the transactions were not compliant with federal grant rules.
One memo said, โCSRS has previously identified duplicative expenditures in HealthyBR, where reimbursements were submitted for the same expenses under two separate contracts funded by different sources.โ
That September 2023 memo says Safe, Hopeful, Healthyโs violence intervention contracts still lacked safeguards to prevent those duplicate payments.
Auditors from Kolder Slaven found duplicate payments by the nonprofit totaling $27,083 in 2022. The duplicated payments were later reconciled, healthy city officials said in their response to the accounting firmโs findings.
The firm did not specify which contractors received duplicate payments.