Louisiana Voice

For today’s lesson, class, we’re going to be studying how to turn a $4.3 million surplus into a deficit of almost $6.4 million in a mere six years.

Said another way, because in mathematics, you must be able to check your works by looking at the problem from a different angle, how do you lose more than $10 million of taxpayer money in a single term of office?

Perhaps we could borrow from the classic 1964 Peter Sellers-George C. Scott movie and simply call this class DA Duhé (or How I Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love the Deficit).

Or, Honey, I Shrunk the Surplus. Or maybe even The Incredible Shrinking General Fund.

When it comes to deficit accrual, 16^th JDC District Attorney Bofill Duhé is virtually unchallenged in Louisiana.

There are 42 judicial districts in Louisiana, some of which, like the 16^th JDC, encompass more than one parish. The 16^th JDC is comprised of Iberia, St. Martin and St. Mary parishes.

Only six other district attorneys showed budget deficits in their latest state audits. Five of those only did so in the most recent accountings, having finished in the black in previous audits. They are the 19^th JDC (East Baton Rouge Parish), the 1^st JDC (Caddo), the 26^th JDC (Bossier and Webster), the 37^th JDC (Caldwell), and the 7^th (Catahoula and Concordia).

Orleans was the only district besides the 16^th to show multi-year deficits but Orleans has historically experienced financial problems.

When Duhé took office in 2014, he inherited a budgetary surplus of $4.3 million for the year ended Dec. 31, 2013. A year later that surplus had shrunk to $2.1 million. The next year that figure had decreased to less than $240,000 and in 2016, the office experienced its first deficit when it finished the year $906,529 in the red. It more than doubled to a bit north of $2 million in 2017 and by the end of 2018, the last year for which audit figures are available, the deficit had swollen to an eye-popping $6.4 million.

In football parlance, that’s a swing of more than $10 million in only four years, or an average loss of $2.5 million per year.

In May of this year, Duhé furloughed 38 percent of his staff, attributing the difficult times to the COVID-19 pandemic. But the pandemic did not raise its ugly head until March of this year, so what is the reason for the deficit spending for all the previous years of his tenure?

Well, perhaps we should start by taking a peek into his educational and professional background.

Nope, that’s not it. He graduated in general business from UL-Lafayette in 1984 and began his working career as a special assets officer for two Lafayette banks until he decided to enroll in law school in 1989. He still sits on the board of directors of a local bank so, if anyone should know a thing or two about handling money and how to operate a budget, you’d think that someone would certainly be one Bo Duhé.

Duhé once said, “We, like other businesses in our community, must operate within our means.”

Perhaps if Duhé had not spent so much of his time pursuing cases that he should not have he could have saved a dollar or two. Several of his prosecutions look a lot more like persecutions, a waste of taxpayer dollars.

Let’s begin with his puzzling feud with District Judge Lori Landry. Duhé filed MOTIONS OF RECUSAL on more than 300 criminal cases docketed for Judge Landry’s court. That story, chronicled by The Daily Appeal reporter SARAH LUSTBADER, has more twists and turns than a barrel of chains – not to mention obvious conflicts of interests involving First Assistant DA ROBERT VINES.

Judge Landry, it should be noted, is opposing Duhé’s reelection in next month’s election.

And then there’s the story of DONALD BOUSSARD who paid dearly after he had the temerity to initiate a recall of former Sheriff Louis Ackal after 20-year-old Victor White III supposedly managed to (a) obtain a gun and (b) shoot himself in the chest while (c) he was seated in the back seat of a sheriff’s department patrol car (d) with his hands cuffed behind him.

Finally, there is that questionable indictment of Iberia Parish Clerk of Court MICHAEL THIBODEAUX on (count ‘em) 14 criminal counts of perjury, racketeering, malfeasance, theft of advance court costs, and filing false/altered public records.

The fact that the indictment came a full 20 months after the release of the October 2016 audit should raise eyebrows. And considering a blindfolded man could turn around three times and spit and most probably hit a legislative audit report at least as serious as this one which produced not even a slap on the wrist, and you really start wondering about the local political affiliations.

Thibodeaux’s cardinal sin: Ryan Huval was an employee of the clerk’s office and Thibodeaux terminated him. The official reasons are not known and Thibodeaux is prohibited from discussing it because of privacy issues.

But the reasons, whether justified or not, don’t matter. Ryan Huval is the son of Ricky Huval.

Ricky Huval is the parish assessor and he was not happy with his son’s firing. And Ricky Huval and District Attorney M. Bofill Duhé are tight.

But the question must be asked: where was the DA’s office when prisoners were being abused and killed while in custody of Sheriff Louis Ackal? Yes, Ackal was indicted, but it was a federal indictment. Duhé was nowhere to be found.

And if Thibodeaux can be indicted by Duhé for the alleged misapplication of $300,000, what does that say about the man who indicted him losing $10 million in four years?

Without having ventured into Iberia Parish, it certainly appears that Duhé is not above using his office to carry out political vendettas – even at the waste of millions of taxpayer dollars.

(And I say “without having ventured into Iberia Parish” for a reason. Given the obvious underhanded political hijinks that take place there and given all that I’ve written about Ackal and Duhé, there’s no way I’ll be taking a leisurely drive through the 16^th JDC anytime soon. I’m slow but I ain’t stupid.)