EBR Parish Attorney refuses to talk about drainage debacle

BATON ROUGE- East Baton Rouge Parish Attorney Andy Dotson is refusing to comment on the drainage debacle one week after Major Sharon Weston Broome said she would ask to have it pulled from the council agenda.

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During an interview last week, Broome said the parish attorney’s office was responsible for much of the misinformation tied to a non-disclosure agreement that was being floated around about the stormwater project. That project would have imposed a fee on all residents of the parish in the Baton Rouge city limits and unincorporated areas regardless of their income status.

Wednesday, the WBRZ Investigative Unit went looking for Dotson. A woman in the lobby of his office said Dotson had “no comment.”

This week, Metro Councilman Cleve Dunn proposed a measure to discuss terminating Dotson. The WBRZ Investigative Unit polled all councilmembers Wednesday. Most said they did not have enough information to make a decision. At least two said they would vote to terminate him if it happened Wednesday.

“I do have concerns that the Metro Council’s attorney would sign an NDA that would include him from telling me as a metro councilmember and other metro councilmembers where we are in a case we are a party to,” Councilwoman Laurie Adams said Tuesday.

Adams said she had a meeting with Dotson earlier this week and was not pleased with the level of information she was given. She said Dotson was still citing the NDA as reason why he couldn’t release certain information.

However, the WBRZ Investigative Unit documents obtained through a public records request showed Dotson is not among the 14 employees who signed an NDA.

“I think there’s plenty of blame to go around on this one,” Adams said.

With so much confusion and a push for more transparency, some are calling for the NDA to be torn up.