Audit shows that Larry Cochran mismanaged funds
A 2006 audit of the financial statements of the St. Rose Fire Department shows several violations and questionable spending of tax payer’s money by the department.
St. Rose Fire Chief and Councilman Larry Cochran admits that he allowed his mother to live in a FEMA trailer, and a school teacher who works for the school district, from New Orleans East and her husband to live in the fire house, because they had no place else to go.
“My mother moved out last Friday,” Cochran said. “She received her Road Home money last Wednesday and now she’s ready to start to rebuild.” Cochran says he didn’t want to talk about the school teacher being housed at the station and couldn’t say when she’d be ready to move out. But the Louisiana Legislative Auditor’s annual report of the fire station’s financial activities reveal much more.
During 2005, the fire department sold a trailer purchased with public funds to an individual for $3,000 without holding a public auction. $2,000 of the revenue derived from the sale was deposited in the department’s private account. All of these transactions occurred during Parish President Albert Laque’s administration.
“We stopped sending checks to the fire station last year in June,” Lori Toups, financial director for the parish, said. “They failed to turn over their financial statements to the accountant in a timely manner and so Mr. Laque advised that we should stop paying them until the audit was complete.”
Toups says the fire station continued to support itself off of money from another account.
“No one was in jeopardy,” she said. “We checked with them to make sure they were okay financially because, while we withheld their money, we didn’t want to risk endangering lives.” Toups says by withholding the funds, utilities to the fire station and gas for fire trucks still needed to be paid.
The state audit was complete in Sept. 2007 and the final report was released in November. Toups says that’s when the parish started issuing the department checks again.
“I wasn’t aware of these deficiencies and in the future will start to look closely at their documentation, although it’s the auditor’s responsibility,” Toups said. “The fire stations are required to submit recorded checks, bank statements and quarterly reports to the parish.”
Other inaccuracies included sums of money that couldn’t be verified by proper receipts.
In 2006, all December checks were written out of the operating account and weren’t recorded in the general ledger. The operating account had $6,190 of unrecorded checks, and according to the documentation, several financial transactions took place during the year that lacked proper documentation. Seven payouts, totaling $9,817, were also unaccounted for according to the tax audit.
Cochran says a plan is in place for his mother to pay the money back for using the water and the electricity.
According to the audit, the fire station agreed to make corrections and these violations will be looked at again to ensure that changes were made during the next audit, which is scheduled for June 2008.
“I know in the past when an auditor finds a discrepancy or some type of accounting violation that appears to be criminal it gets turned over to the district attorney’s office,” Toups said. “Sometimes criminal charges are filed, but in this case that didn’t happen, so the auditor must not have believed this to be criminal.”
Toups will be drafting a letter to inform Cochran that the parish is aware of the FEMA trailer hooked up to the fire station and that letter will be sent to the Firemen’s Association and to the Louisiana Legislative Auditor.
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