Local activist files suit against City of VP for public records

A lawsuit has been filed against the City of Ville Platte in an effort to compel the production, inspection and reproduction of public records in the possession of Mayor Jennifer Vidrine.
According to the lawsuit, which was filed on behalf of Arthur Sampson by local attorney Anthony “Tony” Dupre, Sampson first made the public records request on May 3, 2018, and received a response to his request from the city’s clerk on May 9, 2018. In the response it stated that Sampson would be charged “$1.25 per sheet plus the hourly salary of the individual researching and compiling the documents, which depends on the length of hours of the employee that will research and retrieve the requested documents.”
In the city’s response to the public records request, Sampson was also told that “it will be several months before we can fulfill your request of documents.”
Information being requested by the local civil rights activist included an array of things such as the city’s general fund budget, monthly reconciled bank balances and accounts payable for the City of Ville Platte’s bank accounts, a list of the city’s financial responsibilities as it relates to city court, receipts from every trip taken by the mayor, which was paid for by the city between February 1, 2017 to February 1, 2018, a breakdown of the bank over draft fees totally over $39,000, a list of all certified state licensed and non-state licensed contractors used by the city, and the total cost for the pavilions built at Hargrove Park.
Following the release of the city’s budget for the fiscal year that began on July 1, 2018, Sampson addressed the council during an open meeting in June bringing up the issue of the mayor’s salary for the fiscal year that ended on June 30, 2018, which was listed as $80,141. What the mayor’s salary is listed as in her most recent budget is nearly double the $40,620 she made during her first complete fiscal year as mayor.
Sampson’s recent questions about the Mayor’s salary increase was a result of the fact that when Mayor Vidrine’s raise was approved in December of 2015 by the council, her salary was increased to $70,000. However, the Mayor’s budget for the current fiscal year reports her salary as $80,141.
Sampson said, “I am trying to figure out how she made $80,141 last year when her salary was suppose to be $70,000. It doesn’t add up, and they won’t give me the information I requested which could answer those questions.”
Following a special Ville Platte City Council meeting in June, where the budget was approved, Mayor Vidrine said her salary is shown as $80,000 because it had to be adjusted to include expenses and benefits.
Beneath her salary in the budget, there are benefits such as retirement, group insurance, dues and conventions, payroll taxes, medicare taxes and miscellaneous are listed as separate line items. (visit evangelinetoday.com to view)
A similar lawsuit regarding public records request was filed back in November of 2015 against Lafayette City Marshal Brian Pope after The Independent Weekly, a newspaper out of Lafayette, was denied public records from the marshal.
After the court determined that the records being requested by the Lafayette newspaper were indeed public record, Pope was ordered to produce the information being requested. The court also ordered that Pope remained liable to the newspaper for statutory penalties at the rate of $100 per day for the newspaper’s two public records request, with the penalty continuing to accrue until complete document responses were provided.
As it relates to Sampson’s lawsuit, the civil rights activist said, “It shouldn’t take several months to provide me with information that as a resident of Ville Platte I should be entitled to see. By law they say everything should already be in place when a public request is made.”