The Legislative Auditor's office has added a list of "fiscally distressed municipalities" to its website and four Acadiana towns made the list.
The towns of Baldwin, Basile, Melville and Washington are among a list of municipalities that may not be able to continue providing basic services - such as law enforcement or water and sewer - to their residents in the near future.
In determining which municipalities would be placed on the list, the Legislative Auditor's office analyzed each entity's most recent financial information, as well as its financial trends compared to other municipalities. Other factors were considered as well, including:
· Whether the CPA auditing the municipality was able to determine if financial information provided by officials was complete or accurate
· Whether the CPA auditing the municipality was concerned that the municipality would be able to continue operating
· Whether the municipality had more liabilities than assets and was able to pay its bills
· Whether the Rural Water Infrastructure Committee identified the municipality as one with significant problems with its water system that could increase the risk of a public health emergency or the need for expensive repair and/or replacement of equipment
Legislative Auditor Daryl Purpera said the purpose of the list is give the public and state and local officials earlier notice of a municipality's financial difficulties and start the fiscal rebuilding process as quickly as possible. "Our goal is to work with each municipality's elected officials and to provide recommendations to place the municipality on a path to fiscal stability," he said.
The list of fiscally distressed municipalities is at https://LLA.La.gov/go/FDM.
This list is different from the Legislative Auditor's non-compliance list. The non-compliance list shows local governments that have not submitted a required financial report to the LLA by the statutory deadline or for which the CPA was unable to issue an audit opinion. The non-compliance list is at https://www.lla.la.gov/reports-data/non-compliance/index.shtml.
