The Current has posted the results of an investigation into a business that Mayor-President Josh Guillory and his wife, Jamie Guillory, created last year in the midst of millions of spending on infrastructure projects.
Here's how the story begins:
In July 2021, Mayor-President Josh Guillory rolled out a big spending plan with his upcoming budget. Flush with $86 million in federal coronavirus relief and record local tax revenues, he proposed a massive capital plan that would churn millions of cubic yards of dirt, combining a historic influx of federal, state and local cash.
A month later, he and his wife formed an equipment supply company, later removing their names from its public filings.
The firm, WM&N Supplies and Machinery, is little more than a website, a phone number and closet-sized office with a single employee. It has no equipment, and no longer any apparent public connection to Josh and Jamie Guillory.
It’s also not the only venture associated with the Guillorys. Since taking office in 2020, the mayor-president has been eager to add income to his public salary of $122,000. He took heat for incorporating a family law practice the month after he was elected and quickly shuttered it. Since then, he’s earned at least $15,800 teaching as an adjunct professor at UL.
While not illegal on its face, the firm’s creation, timed as LCG fuels a local construction boom, creates a minefield of potential conflicts. State ethics laws prohibit public servants from doing business with companies that have or are seeking work from the agencies they represent.
To read the rest of the story, with all the details uncovered by The Current's investigation, click here.
