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NEWS + NOTES

August 10, 2022

LCG launched an infrastructure

boom; Josh Guillory and his wife
launched an equipment company
by Leslie Turk

Josh and Jamie Guillory celebrate his election win in November 2019. The newly elected mayor-
president immediately tried to start a new law firm and since his election has earned $15,800
teaching as an adjunct professor at UL. Image courtesy The Acadiana Advocate

Side Hustle: This is the first in a two-part investigation into the mayor-president’s
attempts to earn additional income while in office. Read part two here.

I
n 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. 

Within a month, 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. 

“ A public servant or his company that he owns more than 25 percent

of, or exercises control of, cannot do work for someone that has a
contractual business or financial relationship with his agency [in this
case LCG].

— Louisiana Ethics Administrator Kathleen Allen

Why a couple with no background in construction — Josh is a lawyer and Jamie a

counselor — would get into this kind of business and whether WM&N has
generated any income for the couple are questions the Guillorys would not address
for this story. 

Both the Guillorys and other administration officials did not respond to questions,
including whether WM&N Supplies and Machinery has business with Rigid
Constructors, the Lafayette-based contractor that has taken in at least $47 million
from LCG since November 2021. 

A MESSAGE FROM OUR SPONSORS

‘Research & Development’

Backhoes, bulldozers, excavators, generators, light towers, track loaders and trailers
are among the equipment listed for lease on WM&N’s website, which was registered
in August.

As of now, however, the company has no equipment or yard to keep it in, according
to the firm’s lone employee: the office manager for its workspace at Saloom One
office park on Asma Boulevard.

The Guillorys’ company has a small office on Asma Boulevard in the Saloom office park. Its
lone employee says it’s still in R&D and doesn’t actually do any business.

A year since incorporating, WM&N isn’t really operating, according to the

employee. “We don’t own any equipment. We actually don’t own anything,” she says.
“We’re in the research and development stages of the company,” she adds, saying
she is the person who has been doing R&D since January.

Messages for Jamie Guillory left with the office manager as far back as late June and
on Jamie’s cell phone (which rolls over to a voice greeting from WM&N) were not
returned. “She said she doesn’t do interviews,” the employee says. 

Josh Guillory did not respond to an emailed list of questions seeking comment for
this story. An LCG spokesman says the company is not a government matter. The
mayor-president left for rehab late last month but is said to be nevertheless
“available” to perform his duties. 

For months, LCG officials have refused to answer the City Council’s questions about
drainage projects and have told this publication they have no documents
responsive to requests for subcontractors working on LCG projects.

WM&N’s website, decorated with stock images of construction equipment, explains

how the name of the company is an acronym derived from the first names of three
WWII vets related to both Josh and Jamie. The address listed in state records for the
business is a residence owned by Jamie Guillory’s father, according to tax assessor
records.

WM&N’s website, decorated with stock images of construction equipment, explains how the
name of the company is an acronym derived from the first names of three WWII vets related
to both Josh and Jamie.

While there’s now little public trace of the Guillorys’ connection to the firm, they
have not always shielded their involvement. A source close to the couple’s thinking
tells The Current it was formed as a way for Jamie to make money, and Jamie is
known to have discussed the company casually. 

The M-P’s wife told at least one council member about her new venture. 

“Last year Jamie mentioned in passing to me that she had started an oilfield
equipment rental company,” says Parish Councilman Josh Carlson. (WM&N’s website
indicates that it caters to the construction industry, not the oilfield.)

While neither Jamie’s nor Josh’s name is listed on

WM&N’s website, both initially appeared on August Timeline
records with the Louisiana secretary of state, Jamie as
July 2021 – Guillory proposes massive
registered agent and member/manager and Josh as
drainage spending plan
member. 
Aug. 2021 – Josh and Jamie Guillory register
And the phone number on the site was once used for WM&N with the state
both Josh’s failed Congressional campaign (including
Rudy Giuliani’s robocall in support of Guillory) and Sept. 2021 – Josh’s name removed from
Jamie’s counseling practice, according to online records.  state filings

Dec. 2021 – Jamie’s named removed from

The couple removed Josh’s name from state records a
state filings
month after incorporating. And on Dec. 6, a week before
LCG sent out a Request for Qualifications for the $76 Dec. 2021 – LCG issues RFQ for Bayou
million Bayou Vermilion Flood Control project, they filed Vermilion Flood Control
to delete Jamie’s name, state records show. Their roles
as members of the LLC were replaced with Jacques Pitre, Jan. 2022 – Rigid Constructors awarded

Josh’s cousin who is now the only person publicly Bayou Vermilion Flood Control contract

associated with the company.

Pitre and Josh Guillory also started another company last year called J.E.P LLC.

The RFQ, which called for $30 million of work to be completed by midnight on June
30, drew responses from only two potential contractors, The Lemoine Company and
Rigid Constructors, the firm LCG would come to lean on heavily for its blitz of
drainage work. 

The pace and push on the project has raised eyebrows among state facilities staff,
according to email records. 

The nearly 400-acre Homewood Detention Pond project was shut down by a district judge May
4, after ruling LCG’s land grab was unlawful.

“Looks like they’ve really been moving some excavated material,” state project
manager Lyle Savant wrote after viewing progress photos of the Homewood ponds
in early April, according to email records. 

“This operation is like no other I have seen in my 38 years of engineering,” replied

LCG engineer Fred Trahan. “Not sure if this contractor can boil water, but he sure
can dig dirt.” 

A MESSAGE FROM OUR SPONSORS

Anxious to get started

LCG was in a hurry to spend a windfall of cash, before it was even in hand. In June
2021, LCG reps probed state officials for ways to get moving on Bayou Vermilion
Flood Control, according to email records obtained from the Louisiana Division of
Administration.

“Our mayor is being told we might get quite a bit of money this year,” LCG engineer
Jessica Cornay wrote to state officials in June, asking whether state capital dollars
could fund real estate purchases or could be used on projects built on expropriated
land. 

On Aug. 16, state officials emailed CAO Cydra Wingerter to kick off talks on a CEA
with the state for the project ultimately awarded to Rigid. By September, the mayor-
president was “very anxious” to get started, according to emails sent to the Office of
Facilities, Planning and Control, the state agency that oversees projects funded by
state capital dollars. 

WM&N was officially incorporated on Aug. 19.

Josh Guillory’s aggressive approach to Lafayette Parish’s drainage problems would

eventually land LCG in legal hot water. LCG expropriated 370 acres of land near
Milton to build the Homewood portion of Bayou Vermilion Flood Control, a seizure
later ruled unlawful by a district court. (Appeals are still pending.) Homewood and
the controversial spoil banks project, also the subject of litigation, share a common
thread: haste, big money and Rigid Constructors, the contracting firm helmed by
Cody Fortier that has netted nearly $54 million in LCG work this year, most from
Bayou Vermilion Flood Control. 

“ This operation is like no other I have seen in my 38 years of

engineering. Not sure if this contractor can boil water, but he sure
can dig dirt.

— LCG engineer Fred Trahan to the state’s project manager

Fortier’s firm is far and away the largest beneficiary of LCG’s infrastructure bonanza
and the only major contractor on record to receive payments by wire transfer.
Bayou Vermilion Flood Control alone will earn his company $75 million to build two
of the largest detention ponds in the state at a breakneck speed. Rigid was awarded
the BVFC project just weeks after Fortier donated $10,000 to Guillory’s campaign via
four of his 40 known companies. 

The administration’s lack of transparency in what has grown to be a three-year,

$100 million drainage infrastructure plan led the City Council in early June to issue a
wide-ranging list of questions that center on Rigid’s role; Guillory, who announced
on July 25 that he was entering an inpatient rehab program for alcohol abuse and
untreated PTSD, has refused to answer the council’s questions. 

None of the questions so far are explicitly related to the Guillorys’ new heavy
equipment company; in Josh Guillory’s absence, the councils tried to muster
support for appointing an interim mayor-president amid a heated debate over what
constitutes the M-P’s “availability.”

The scope of the inquiry, however, which includes documentation of Rigid’s

subcontractors on LCG projects, could probe the involvement of a firm like WM&N.
Rigid’s Fortier did not respond to a text message seeking comment. 

“Since the questions have been put out there [on June 7], there’s been more
information regarding [the Guillory] companies,” says City Council Chair Nanette
Cook. “The next step for me is to find out a few more details of what that means
and how that relates to any of our LCG projects.”

“ I do not know of any connection between Rigid and Jamie’s company,

but I believe the Guillorys would be more than willing to answer any
questions to bring clarity to the matter.

— Lafayette Parish Councilman Josh Carlson

Cook and City Council Vice Chairman Glenn Lazard, a lawyer, have a meeting
scheduled Wednesday afternoon with an independent auditing firm to get the
answers they have waited more than two months for. Both say they hope to have
more information after the meeting. 

State ethics law prohibits companies owned by public officials from doing business
with companies that have contracts with their public agencies or are pursuing
them. 

“A public servant or his company that he owns more than 25 percent of, or
exercises control of, cannot do work for someone that has a contractual business or
financial relationship with his agency [in this case LCG],” says Louisiana Ethics
Administrator Kathleen Allen. That prohibition concerns any work, public or private. 

The state’s ethics code also includes an abuse of office provision, again a civil
matter, that would prevent Josh or Jamie from using their position to compel
anyone to do business with WM&N. 

For the time being, WM&N has no work to speak of, claims its lone employee. This
week, she confirmed that Jamie Guillory is her boss. It’s impossible to know how the
company pays her, its rent and utilities and other expenses if it’s not generating any
revenue. A clearer and more recent picture of the Guillorys’ finances won’t be
available until later this year. The M-P requested an extension on the couple’s 2021
personal financial disclosures till Oct. 15.

In the interim, Parish Councilman Carlson says he’s confident the Guillorys will
eventually answer questions about WM&N.

“I do not know of any connection between Rigid and Jamie’s company, but I believe
the Guillorys would be more than willing to answer any questions to bring clarity to
the matter,” Carlson says.  

Side Hustle: This is the first in a two-part investigation into the mayor-president’s
attempts to earn additional income while in office. Read part two here.

SHARE:     

 Posted on August 10, 2022  News + Notes

 audit, Budget 2022, Cody Fortier, Drainage, Fred Trahan, Government, Jacques Pitre,
Jamie Guillory, Josh Carlson, Josh Guillory, Kathleen Allen, Lafayette, local, Louisiana,
Nanette Cook, Politics, Rigid Constructors, State, WM&N Supplies & Machinery

ABOUT LESLIE TURK

A founding editor of both The Independent and ABiz and senior editor at The Times of Acadiana
in the 1990s, Leslie Turk is an award-winning investigative reporter who has worked in the
newspaper business in Lafayette for more than three decades. In 2007 and again in 2017 she
received the Louisiana Press Association's highest honor, the Freedom of Information Award. Her
work has also appeared in The New York Times, The Acadiana Advocate, The Daily Advertiser,
Baton Rouge Business Report, Louisiana Illuminator and Gambit. Contact her at (337) 207-4312
or leslie@thecurrentla.com.

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2 COM M ENTS

Jennifer McKay August 10, 2022 at 7:15 pm

How dumb do they think their constituents are? What an insult to his supporters.

Jennifer Borel Doucet August 11, 2022 at 11:33 am

Great reporting, as always. Thank you!

L E A V E A CO M M E N T

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NEWS + NOTES

August 31, 3:04 pm August 30, 3:06 pm

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breaking heatwave is exacerbating health problems and duties we elected them to perform.
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