Louisiana's top gambling regulator has never suffered from his salary. In fact he has an excess of a salary of over $15,000. If seemed for the span of 15 months this has been the case. This wasn’t the only thing that he did that seemed inappropriate, not to mention illegal. He also allowed another worker to drive his state-owned 2004 SUV.
Charles Gaudin, Chairman of the State Gaming Control Board, must have thought that his salary wasn’t enough, because he received payments on top of his $100,166 annual salary. It was called a miscalculation, not wrongdoing, according to the Department of Public Safety. This is the same department that funds the board, so no one is completely clear if that statement was made purposefully. Only an investigation will be able to tell if all this was a crime, or a mistake.
Gaudin got these checks as "supplemental pay" for miscalculations in is regular salary. These are payments that he was not entitled to. The $15,608 was paid to Gaudin between April 2004 and July 2005, but even if there were miscalculations it took over a year to discover it.
The money will be returned to the public safety department, but not all at once. They have decided to be fair, they will deduct money from Gaudin's paychecks, until it is all back in the right places. Gaudin is challenging the findings, and says he was entitled to the pay. Despite his comments no one looks at him as the culprit, but the victim.
They must seem him in honest eyes because Gaudin is a former chief judge of the state's 5th Circuit Court of Appeals. This is not Gaudin's first suit over money. One has to wonder, if he is a troublemaker. At the moment there is no proof for that claim or against it. |
