Louisiana Voice

Melissa Matey began her employment with Louisiana State Police (LSP) as a State Trooper on Marcy 27, 2007 and rose in rank until her retirement at the rank of lieutenant on June 27, 2024.

The day after her retirement, on June 28 of this year, she rejoined LSP as a WAE Trooper at an hourly rate of $35 – working from Greece, it seems.

WAE, an acronym for “When Actually Employed,” is a system under Civil Service by which a retired state civil service employee may be hired at an hourly salary for a temporary time and for a limited number of hours, usually a predetermined time, to fill a position in order to address filling a position to address an emergency or to work overload situations.

In reality, WAE is often abused by state agencies as a way to reward favored employees upon their retirements by supplementing their retirement incomes.

Working remotely has become the thing since the Covid pandemic, but we’re not at all sure what Matey could be doing on behalf of Louisiana State Police in Greece, but there she is, waving goodbye to New Orleans from her airplane seat on June 2, a little more than three weeks before her official retirement and re-hire as a hard-working WAE employee, bidding adieu with “see you next year:”

 …And on an earlier trip, in April, posting a picture of a beautiful sunset in Athens, where reports indicated her husband is completing his own career with the Department of Homeland Security.

 While it may be difficult for some to wrap their brains around how she will be managing to perform any official functions for Louisiana State Police while living in Greece, there are reports that there are other WAE employees working remotely for LSP – one in Mississippi and another in Gulf Shores, Alabama.

WAE employees are supposed to be approved by the Louisiana State Police Commission, but the commission canceled its June, July and August meetings and will not convene again until September but records obtained by LouisianaVoice indicate that Matey is already officially added to the LSP payroll.

We made a public records request of LSP for Matey’s employment information, including her appointment as a WAE employee, her salary progression, her time sheets and supervisor sign-offs of her time sheets but apparently LSP has a problem running down those records.

Despite the state Public Records Law LA. R.S. 44.1 (et seq.), which says the custodian of records “shall” produce requested records immediately or notify the requestor as to when they will be available “within three working days,” LSP informs LouisianaVoice that it could take them up to 45 days to secure and produce the records.

Fortunately for us, we were able to obtain her employment record from the date of her initial hire to her retirement and appointment as a WAE employee, along with her salary progression from other sources. We still don’t have her time sheets, but we are (ahem) almost certain LSP will be forwarding those any time now.

I’m being facetious, of course. LSP has no intention of complying with the Public Records Law, especially since what’s-his-name, the governor, has watered down the penalty phase of the law to make it meaningless. LSP has been ever-so-secretive since that brutal killing of Ronald Greene for which there has been scant prosecution and about which there has been even scantier news of late – except that brief story saying that Kory York, who is still awaiting his trial on charges of negligent homicide and malfeasance in office for Greene’s death, has been allowed to RETIRE  from LSP – with full benefits.

My bet right now is that there will never be an actual trial, that the charges will eventually be dropped or plea bargained to some minor punishment.

And we will still be waiting for those employment records for Matey that we requested.