East Baton Rouge Mayor and Community President Sharon Weston Broome has fired two senior administration officials, according to several Metro Council members.
Council members said they were individually briefed Thursday by members of the Broome administration that purchasing manager Kris Goranson and environmental services manager Rick Spear had been fired, Racca said.
The Broome government declined to confirm the two redundancies in a statement on Friday.
“We are currently considering administrative changes, but we cannot comment on pending or active personnel matters,” wrote borough spokesman Mark Armstrong. “City-Parish is committed to ensuring that all services continue efficiently and without disruption.”
The news came as a surprise, Council members Jennifer Racca and Laurie Adams said.
“These two guys were very responsive and worked well with District 12,” added Racca.
Councilor Cleve Dunn Jr. also said he had been briefed on the layoffs.
Councilor Aaron Moak said he was not told why the two were fired and asked Broome’s administration for more transparency on the matter.
“I feel like the borough lost two great employees, and I think there needs to be more discussion and rationale as to exactly what happened,” Moak said. “These are two employees who have been very direct with us in every conversation we’ve had since I was elected. They were two of the most transparent people I’ve had conversations with.”
News of Goranson’s sacking broke days after his department was criticized during a Metro Council meeting on Wednesday for making a blunder on a bid request that angered several bidders for a road rehabilitation project.
Goranson’s firing had nothing to do with events at the council meeting, and he was released due to a series of events over the past few months, Racca said, her chief of staff Dante Bidwell said.
As procurement manager, Goranson is responsible for managing hundreds of millions of dollars in city-town contracts and other procurements. Speer, meanwhile, monitors compliance with environmental regulations — particularly the community’s problematic stormwater system.
This system has long failed to comply with federal regulations, and the community is at risk of legal action from state and federal regulators. In recent months, how to raise millions of dollars to pay for improvements to repair the system has been a central debate in community politics.
Goranson and Speer’s firings come several months after the borough’s deputy manager, Kelvin Hill, resigned in October after Broome’s administration was criticized for handling a proposed stormwater supply fee. Assistant District Attorney Bob Abbott also announced that he would be retiring in early November, shortly after receiving criticism for his handling of the introduction of the stormwater fee.
“I’m very concerned about the turnover in administration,” Adams said. “The institutional knowledge, the time, the efficiency that is lost when employees change is difficult. If changes lead to improvements and over the next three, four months we see things working better, that’s good, but my concern is that if you lose key people, you lose ground.”
This is an evolving story.
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