Inside Report for July 3, 2009

• By GREG GARLAND
• Advocate staff writer
• Published: Jul 3, 2009 - Page: 9B

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If East Baton Rouge Parish Attorney Mary Roper feels as if she has a target on her back, there’s a good reason.

She does.

Metro Councilman Chandler Loupe, one of 10 new council members elected in November, says the office is “dysfunctional” and he wants Roper replaced.

Tensions between the two have been evident at recent council meetings, with several testy exchanges.

At one point in late May, Loupe asked that a resolution be placed on the council’s agenda calling for a top-to-bottom audit of the operations of the Parish Attorney’s Office, although it was withdrawn shortly before the meeting started.

Since then, Loupe has sent several requests to Roper for data and reports, prompting Mayor Pro Tem Mike Walker to complain in a June 26 e-mail to council members that Loupe’s “requests may be interfering with work needing to be performed by the P.A.’s office.”

Loupe said the Parish Attorney’s Office is in need of a shakeup, and he’s compiling information to document the problems.

He said too many driving-while-intoxicated offenses have been dismissed for failure to prosecute; cases are backlogged, and some lawyers who are employed full time by the Parish Attorney’s Office are putting in only part-time hours.

Loupe said he is “disappointed with the way the Parish Attorney’s Office is operating” on several fronts.

“Mary’s been an employee of the Parish Attorney’s Office for 15 years, so she knows the problems,” he said. “They are not new problems. I do not believe she is the right person to make a change.”

Roper took over as the parish attorney after Wade Shows resigned in July 2008. She had been his first assistant. The previous Metro Council named her parish attorney in late August after interviewing four candidates.

Roper said Loupe came to her office after his election to the council and told her he wanted to make a change.

“He said that he had a friend that he really wanted to have the job and he wanted to reopen the process,” Roper said.